Innocent On Her Wedding Night by Sara Craven

Author:Sara Craven [Craven, Sara]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2013-12-28T13:21:12+00:00

Chapter 7

So, why did I go on with it, as if everything was all right? Laine asked herself wearily. Because our engagement was a pretty muted affair by anyone’s standards.

Even with my inexperience I could see that.

Not that he’d been there very much, she reminded herself. And when he had come to see her he’d never stayed at the house, but made Langbow Manor his base again. And, though she’d dined with him there, it had always been in the restaurant. He’d never once suggested that they should be alone together in his suite. And she had been too shy to ask. To tell him how desperately she wanted to go into his arms—to belong to him completely.

‘So, where’s your ardent lover this weekend?’ her mother had once asked witheringly. ‘Conspicuous by his absence yet again.’

‘Wordwide are involved in a takeover bid for a German magazine company,’ Laine had said quietly. ‘It’s—thrown up some problems, and he needs to be there.’ She lifted her chin. ‘Besides, we have the rest of our lives to be together.’

‘If you say so,’ Angela had retorted with a shrug, and left Laine to her own devices.

But even when absent Daniel had been as good as his word on other matters. All the arrangements for the wedding had been in place without fuss or argument, and Laine had found that a bank account had been opened for her, containing more money than she could ever envisage spending.

In addition, a Mrs Goodman had been installed as temporary housekeeper, and had listened patiently to Angela’s orders and counter-orders, then gone her own briskly efficient way.

And Laine had received a phone call from a local driving school, requesting her to obtain a provisional licence as a course of lessons had been booked for her.

Everything I could have wished for, she thought. Except one—the most important—the most crucial of all. The knowledge of his true feelings where I was concerned.

So why didn’t I simply face up to the problem—ask him if he loved me?

Well, she told herself, she knew the answer to that. She’d loved him, and wanted him more than anything in the world. And Daniel’s own restraint—those brief, gentle kisses and fleeting caresses which aroused but did not satisfy—had only served to intensify her longing to fever-pitch.

It was as well, she thought, that she’d had so much to do, or she might have gone a little crazy. As a result, she had just allowed herself to be carried forward on the non-stop tide of activity, and tried not to think too much.

One of her tasks had been to sort through her books and other personal possessions, and transfer those she wished to keep to Daniel’s London flat—something had made the idea of being his wife seem slightly more real. That and the exquisite ruby and diamond cluster that they’d both spotted at the same moment from the myriad brought out for their inspection, smiling at each other and saying in unison, ‘That’s the one.’

The tangible evidence that he truly was going to marry her, she’d often thought, touching it gently.

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