Bad Brides (39 page)

The soles of my feet
, she thought naughtily.
That’s pretty much the only bit of me that doesn’t hurt.

Her smile became so saucily full of reminiscence of last night’s activities that a maid, changing the candles in the huge silver branch on the piano, looked up at Tamra descending the
stairs and was hypnotized, unable to take her eyes off Tamra’s face: it was as radiant as the sun, as bright as the rays of morning light that were glittering across the Great Hall, thrown
down at angles from the high arched windows. Tamra didn’t even notice the maid’s rapt gaze as she headed around the base of the stairs, towards the dining room, happily anticipating her
first Bloody Mary of the day, made, according to her orders, in New Orleans style, with plenty of horseradish and pickled green beans.

With Edmund’s agreement, she had promoted Mrs Hurley to housekeeper and allowed her to hire cooks to replace her in the kitchen. Mrs Hurley had taken to her new role like a duck to water,
having effectively been cook/housekeeper of the Hall for years, and was very enthusiastically embracing all the new elements Tamra wanted to introduce to Stanclere, pickled green beans and all. By
now, in fact, Mrs Hurley’s emotions for Tamra could best be described as heroine-worship. Tamra’s money was preserving the Hall and keeping it out of the hands of hotel developers who
would probably want to drain the lake to build a golf course, and Tamra’s taste was dragging the Hall into the twenty-first century, making it into a showplace that was the wonder of the
County.

Mrs Hurley was in the dining room, supervising the breakfast buffet and taking orders for omelettes, as Tamra tripped in, sleek in her tight jeans, beige sweater and hair arranged in a glossy
curled ponytail, barely any make-up on her face. Even brushing her hair, pulling it back and wrapping a lock around the elastic to cover it, had been a little sore: her scalp was tender from the
enthusiasm with which Dominic had dragged back her hair last night. He had, as promised, sunk his teeth between her legs, which no one had ever done before, and her cheeks flushed pink as she
remembered it: he had driven her almost literally out of her mind. It had been unquestionably the best sex she’d ever had in her life.

I mean, I could tell he’d be kind of a dirty fuck, but who knew we’d have chemistry like that? Shit, that was off the charts. That kind of chemistry happens once in a lifetime,
if you’re lucky.

And to think I was assuming that’d be a one-night stand!
She wanted to whisk him off somewhere for at least a couple of weeks – maybe the Maldives, she’d never been,
and everyone said they were stunning. They’d fuck each other’s brains out non-stop for a while, then see if there was anything more than just the sexual connection between them, if it
would burn out with time or whether there was something else beyond it . . .

Tamra poured herself a Bloody Mary and loaded a plate with bacon and cheese muffins. That was food she would never normally touch, of course, but last night she must have burnt so many calories
she was frankly going to allow herself to eat whatever she damn well wanted. She flashed Mrs Hurley a dazzling smile of appreciation and floated over to the dining table. Only Lady Margaret was
down yet, and Tamra took a seat next to her, a footman pulling out the chair for her as she settled in and ordered coffee.

‘You look like the cat that got the cream,’ Lady Margaret observed, as Tamra sipped her morning cocktail.

‘Honey, I got the cream about five times in every conceivable place!’ Tamra said naughtily, but at a pitch low enough for none of the staff to hear. Her friend spluttered out
cappuccino foam. ‘Dominic turns out to be the biggest stud ever. Honestly, I may never need to pay for it again!’

God, I wish I were still up there in his room
, she thought wistfully. It had been so tough to get up at dawn and slip out without waking him. She’d struggled with the temptation
to pull back the bedcurtains, to see him in a sliver of the morning light that was filtering in through a crack in the curtains at the high-framed window: but the light might have woken him, and
he’d have pulled her back for another bout – mmn, morning sex, slow and sticky and languid – and then Stanclere Hall would be stirring, which meant someone might have seen her
sneaking down the corridor, like a teenager coming back from doing her boyfriend under her parents’ roof. Which would be way too humiliating.

I wonder how he felt when he woke up and realized I wasn’t there? I hope he missed me.

She grinned at how pathetic she sounded, like a sixteen-year-old with a mad crush. God, she hadn’t felt like this since she didn’t remember when!

‘Darling, you need to get a grip on yourself,’ Lady Margaret said, her eyebrows raised. ‘You look positively giddy.’

‘I
am
giddy,’ Tamra said, thanking the waiter bringing her coffee with so beautiful a smile that he almost tripped as he put it in front of her. ‘Which is fabulous.
You know I don’t want anything serious – this guy’s perfect. I’ll fuck his brains out for a few weeks or months, see if it burns out or not. Have a lovely time and no
expectations. What could be better?’

‘Well, if you put it like that . . .’

Her friend raised her own Bloody Mary and clinked it with Tamra’s.

‘These are delicious, by the way,’ Lady Margaret said approvingly.

‘Good and spicy,’ Tamra said with great satisfaction, extracting a pickled green bean from her glass and biting into it with a snap of her perfect white teeth.

Then she paused, the second half of the bean still between her fingers. Dominic had entered the dining room, and he didn’t look remotely as she had expected. After the night they’d
had, the sheer volume of orgasms, the amount of blood rushing to their faces, the sheer delight they’d given each other, he should have looked as glowing as she did: tired, maybe, but also
smug, his eyes meeting hers with conspiracy about their shared secret.

But Dominic, instead, just seemed – hungover. His eyes were bloodshot, the bags underneath them were large enough to store bowling balls, and his gait was shambling: not in an
I-fucked-a-hot-cougar-all-last-night way, more I-passed-out-in-an-armchair-and-my-back-is-fucking-killing-me. Tamra stared at him in disbelief. His curly hair was plastered to his forehead, damp
and unattractively sweaty.

‘My God, what did you do to that poor boy?’ Lady Margaret huffed out a laugh. ‘He looks like a shell of his former self! Honestly, Tamra, he looks like you sucked his brains
out through his cock!’

Tamra couldn’t help a giggle at this, even as she stared, bemused, at Dominic. His hair was so curly: surely she’d remember that texture between her fingers? His lips were full,
pouty – they hadn’t felt that wide and luscious when she kissed them, bit them, when they fastened between her legs last night and made her scream with pleasure. And the cock he’d
pressed her hand against in the corridor, she recalled, had felt considerably smaller than the one that had driven itself, on her orders, up her ass last night as she wailed and bit down on the
pillow—

She was on her feet without even realizing it, the heavy dining chair rocking back as she jumped up reflexively, picking up her cup of coffee in one hand, the Bloody Mary in the other, walking
swiftly over to Dominic and saying to him: ‘Come outside on the terrace for a moment, okay?’

Close up, he was even more pitiful-looking; the whites of his eyes were pink as an albino rat’s, his skin was greyish with fatigue and he didn’t smell as fresh as he could have done.
Tamra’s brow was furrowed in confusion as she led him to the terrace doors, nodded at him abruptly to open them, walked outside, leaning against the balcony in the sunshine, the cool air was
a sharp relief to her overheated face. Dominic winced at the sunlight, turning himself with his back to the east, hunching his shoulders against it. Tamra handed him the coffee, saying sharply:
‘Drink that up and tell me what the hell happened last night.’

Too sharply: Dominic coughed on his mouthful of coffee, dribbling it down his shirt front.

‘Look, I’m sorry,’ he said, when he finally managed to swallow some. ‘What d’you want from me? I drank too much and passed out. I’ve got the most hellish
hangover, if you must know. I woke up in a room reeking of the smell of my own puke.’

Tamra blinked frantically, trying to process this information. The glass in her hand was shaking; she looked down at it as if she had no idea what she was even holding.

‘What room?’ she heard herself say. ‘What room did you wake up in?’

‘Why is this even a question? Why does it
matter
? Fuck, my head hurts like buggery,’ Dominic whined.

Tamra took the coffee cup from him and handed him the Bloody Mary instead.

‘Try that,’ she snapped.

‘Oh, hair of the dog.’ Dominic cheered up a little as he took a long pull on the cocktail. ‘Nice one.’

‘
What room did you pass out in?
’ Tamra hissed at him. Through the French doors, she saw her daughter come in for breakfast, sitting down next to Lady Margaret.

‘I don’t know why you’re making such a fuss about this,’ Dominic said fretfully. ‘It’s not like I put a rotting fish in
your
bed, is it? Look,
I’ll leave something extra for the maids if that’s the problem here. Did one of them come and complain to you? Bloody sneaking if she did. It’s Ed’s house, when all’s
said and done, and if I put a fish in my host’s bed as a joke, that’s between him and me.’

‘A
fish
?’ Tamra repeated blankly.

‘Bit of a traditional thing here when someone gets engaged,’ Dominic said. ‘Going to have a fish in your bed for the rest of your life – see how that works? Jolly funny,
really. Bastard couldn’t take it like a man, though, complained about the stink and made me swap rooms with him—’

His face convulsed suddenly and he thrust the glass back at Tamra as if it were burning him.

‘Feel a bit sick – that fish smell was really strong when I woke up,’ he muttered, and turned to dash down the stone steps to the lawn, where he could be heard gagging.

Tamra actually envied him: she wanted to throw up too. Wordlessly, she lifted the glass to her lips and drained it, then she walked like a zombie back to the terrace doors, a footman coming
forward to open them for her, since both her hands were full. She handed the glass and coffee cup to him and sank into a seat at the table opposite Brianna Jade and Lady Margaret, her face as
frozen as Brianna Jade’s had been yesterday.

‘Mom?’ Brianna Jade said, worried. ‘Are you okay?’

Say something, you have to say something – everyone’s staring at you.

‘Uh, I’m pretty grossed out by Dominic,’ Tamra managed to say. ‘He just told me he put a rotten fish in Edmund’s bed last night as part of some disgusting British
tradition for when men get engaged.’

‘Oh yuk!’ Brianna Jade exclaimed, her lovely eyes widening with shock. ‘That’s
totally
gross – why would anyone do that?’

Lady Margaret was frowning deeply as she looked at Tamra, but she was too intelligent to say a word until she had worked out exactly what was happening.

‘Good morning!’ came a very cheerful, ringing masculine voice from the doorway, and in strode the Earl of Respers, his face lit up like a hundred-watt bulb, his grey eyes glowing as
they lighted on the face of his fiancée. ‘Hello, darling!’

A few swift paces brought him to Brianna Jade’s side, and he bent to plant a passionate kiss on her mouth: she let out a little yelp, a hand rising to her lips, and Edmund looked briefly
embarrassed as he pulled up the chair on her other side and sat down.

‘Sorry,’ he said. He lifted her hand and brought it to his lips as Mrs Hurley sighed fondly by the buffet table. Brianna Jade looked at him in great confusion as he kissed it,
staring deeply into her eyes, then he jumped up, saying: ‘God, I think I’m hungrier than I’ve ever been in my life! I’m absolutely starving!’ He winked at his
fiancée. ‘I can’t think why I’ve worked up such an appetite!’

For a moment, Tamra and Lady Margaret’s eyes met across the table in outright, horrified understanding. Tamra bit her lip so deeply she tasted blood.

‘Oh, good morning!’ trilled Milly, flitting into the dining room on a cloud of Anaïs Anaïs; she had decided that the perfume was so out it was in again, and that it would
give her an extra, trendsetting edge to be the one to bring it back into fashion. ‘How’s everyone doing? Brianna Jade, sweetie, are you feeling better? Such a shame you weren’t
feeling well last night!’ She leant in towards her victim. ‘Maybe you should have taken a nice stroll outside and got some fresh air? That seems to, um, pick you up, doesn’t
it?’

This was a catastrophic misjudgement on Milly’s part. Emboldened by her success at the photo- and videoshoots the day before, she had quite lost sight of the fact that her target was
sitting with her mother and Lady Margaret. Tamra’s head rose slowly to look at Milly, her eyes two dark dead black holes in a pale face, the high blonde ponytail bouncing, the very image of a
psychotic Barbie.

‘Oh
goodness
,’ Lady Margaret breathed, setting down her coffee cup as Tamra rose slowly to her feet, pushing back her chair.

Milly blanched as white as her floaty shirt-dress. Tamra’s expression was as terrifying as if she’d actually been the cougar Dominic called her: all her protective, tiger-mother
instincts for her daughter surged to the fore, propelled by the rush of absolute, burning horror at the realization of what she had done the night before with her daughter’s fiancé.
Her own sense of the terrible betrayal she had committed made her shiver from head to toe as it sank in. She leaned forward, her palms on the table for support.

To Milly, it looked as if Tamra’s fury was caused entirely by her own words, and she flinched back in fear as Tamra hissed at her across the width of the table.

‘
Get. Out
.’

‘I – I—’ Milly stammered. ‘I didn’t mean—’

‘
Oh yes you did
,’ Tamra breathed. ‘I know exactly what you meant! Get out of this house – now, before I throw you out! How
dare
you come in here as a
guest and deliberately try to upset my daughter? You’ve already done enough damage – get out without saying another word, or I’ll tear your face off!’