CHAPTER TEN
A VIRGIN—HOW COULD she have been a virgin? Jay stared grimly into the darkness whilst Keira slept at his side. It angered and disturbed him that all his preconceptions about her had been so very wrong, and that as a virgin she had been so far from his original assessment of her. It angered him that his judgement of her had been so glaringly wrong. He felt betrayed by his own inability to assess her correctly, and further angered by the belief that she would now have expectations and ambitions that he had no intention of fulfilling. Had he known the truth about her he would have warned her off, making sure that they did not have sex. By concealing her true sexual experience from him, or rather her lack of it, she had allowed him to go on believing what he had, putting him in an untenable situation. Deliberately?
Twenty-something virgins had by definition to have a pretty heavy agenda going on. Either they had sexual hang-ups or problems—which patently she most certainly did not—or there was another reason. And the only logical reason Jay could think of was that Keira had remained a virgin because she expected to exchange her virginity for commitment. That was never going to happen. He had no intention of making a commitment to any woman—ever. During the years of their estrangement his father had let him know many times via his courtiers that he wanted to make plans to arrange a suitable marriage for him, but in that both he and Rao had withstood their parent, refusing to submit to a marriage of tradition and royal necessity.
Rao would, of course, ultimately have to marry, and his wife would have to be someone worthy of being his Maharani. For himself, Jay knew that it would be expected if he did marry that he too would marry a suitable bride. But he had no intention of marrying—not anyone, not ever. So Keira had wasted her virginity on him and he would have to tell her so. There must not be any more errors of judgement or aspiration.
Slowly, like wisps of fine cloud, memories of the night drifted back to him. Keira whispering his name to him, thanking him for her pleasure, her eyes huge with emotion.
Emotion. Jay’s mouth compressed. What had happened between them had nothing to do with emotion—at least not on his part—and the sooner he told her that the better. Both for her sake as well as his own. The last thing he wanted was to have her start building some ridiculous fantasy out of what had quite simply been a single night of sex—and one that he had no intention of repeating. He would have to speak to her before the situation got even more out of hand than it was already.
* * *
Keira had been awake for some time, lying in bed and marvelling at the difference between the woman she had been and the woman she was now. Her body glowed still with the aftermath of her pleasure. Their pleasure, she reminded herself. Jay would know now that he had been wrong about her, and that what she felt for him was unique, something she had never shared with anyone else. She was still on a physical and emotional high from last night, in a blissed-out state where the world felt like a fairytale come true and she its heroine princess. And all because of Jay.
Jay! Where was he? What would he say to her? What would she say to him? Her heart was thumping unsteadily. Already she missed him. Already she ached for him and wanted to be with him. Already the effect of the night’s sexual intimacy had changed her and their relationship, and her heart was speeding on wings into a magical world where everything and anything was possible.
It was Jay himself who brought her back down to earth, arriving with a tray of tea and an expression that had her giddy heart’s headlong race brought to an abrupt halt.
Something was wrong. Something was more than wrong. Jay was looking autocratic and distant. He was fully dressed. He didn’t come to her, or even sit down on the bed beside her, instead he walked over to the window and then turned to face her so that its light fell on her face but obscured his.
‘I owe you an apology. And I’m afraid it will have to be accompanied by a warning.’
He was speaking to her as though he was addressing a business meeting, Keira recognised, his whole manner cool and distant. Her heart was pounding again—but not this time with elation. Instead what she felt was dread.
‘I want to be frank with you, Keira. Had I known you were a virgin I would never have had sex with you. Were you a girl of eighteen or so, I would add here that I understand you might have had rosy romantic delusions about men falling passionately in love with sweet innocent virgins, and throwing their heart and an offer of marriage at their feet having taken that virginity. But you are not eighteen. You are twenty-seven. Women of twenty-seven do not remain virgins by accident or out of some romantic delusion. To have chosen virginity when yours is such a sensual and passionate nature can’t have been easy.’
Keira’s mouth had gone dry. She might not have been expecting quite the eighteen-year-old’s scenario he had described with such sparing and cruel accuracy, but to be addressed as Jay was addressing her now was a horrible shock and very hurtful.
‘My assumption has to be that you chose virginity because you saw it as, shall we say, a good business decision—an insurance policy that would mature with handsome dividends when it was offered to your chosen recipient: your exclusivity sexually, both past and future, in exchange for the right kind of marriage. I do not doubt that there are men, wealthy men, who are willing to make such a barter in return for the security that comes from knowing that their wife is indeed a model of virtue. However, I am not one of those men. To be blunt, I have no intention of making a commitment to any woman ever, either inside marriage or outside it, and had you told me the truth about yourself first, I would have suggested that you retained your virginity to bestow on someone else. Sexually, what we shared last night was very enjoyable, but that was all it was for me. A fleeting enjoyment which is now over and will be quickly forgotten. I am sorry if my words offend or upset you, but it is better that you know the truth. It would be cruel of me indeed to allow you to hope for something I have no intention of giving you or anyone else.’
Keira felt each word like a blow to her heart and her pride. He was both wrong about her and right. She had not set out to use her virginity to force him into a commitment, but she had given it up to him because she herself had made an emotional commitment to him. He must never know that, though. Not now. For her pride’s sake she had to salvage what she could of the situation and her self-respect.
It did not help that she was lying naked under the bedclothes whilst he was fully dressed. Didn’t it tell her all she really needed to know about him that even now, when he was humiliating her, he had taken for himself every advantage there was to be had in order to give himself more power than her. He was dressed; she wasn’t. He had the light behind him; she had it on her. He had had time to plan and rehearse what he intended to say; she had not. Well, luckily for her, living with her great-aunt had taught her a great deal about how to defend herself when she was the weaker party.
She pulled the bedclothes securely around her body and sat up.
‘I appreciate what you’re saying,’ she told him, trying to keep her voice as cool and focused as his had been, ‘but I must tell you that once again you’ve reached a conclusion about me that isn’t correct.’
There was a telling silence during which Keira waited, praying that he wouldn’t tell her outright that he didn’t believe her.
His assessing, ‘Meaning?’ had her exhaling unsteadily.
‘Meaning that, yes, I had chosen to remain a virgin, but the reason I did so had nothing whatsoever to do with any desire on my part to get married. Far from it.’
He had moved slightly, but she still could not see his face.
‘You remained a virgin because you don’t want to get married? Forgive me, but I have to say that I don’t...’
Any minute now he was going to start asking questions she could not answer. She had to head him off with something plausible.
‘I wanted a career and my own independence, and as a teenager it seemed to me that as soon as a girl fell in love she stopped wanting those things. So I vowed not to fall in love. It was far too dangerous. Remaining a virgin was a by-product of my decision not to fall in love.’
She gave what she hoped was a convincingly careless small shrug.
‘Obviously as I’ve grown older I’ve been able to recognise that it is possible to have sex and remain emotionally independent, and I had begun to wonder what I might be missing because of a decision made when I was very immature.’
‘And you’ve been looking round for someone to experience sex with? Is that what you’re trying to say?’
Keira actually managed to laugh.
‘I hadn’t got as far as that, and if I had done there would have been the embarrassment of my virginity to deal with. I’m old enough to understand that what happened between us was something that neither of us expected to happen and that both of us would probably have preferred not to have happened.’
There had been the clear ring of truth in her voice when she had spoken about her vow not to fall in love and her fear of doing so, Jay acknowledged. He had already misjudged her once. His pride didn’t want him doing so a second time. It made sense for him to accept what she was saying, but at the same time he still intended to reinforce his own message to her by putting things on a strictly business footing.
‘It might be best in the circumstances if we terminated our contract,’ Keira told him. She couldn’t afford to break it herself, but she was hoping desperately now that he would terminate it. How on earth was she going to be able to work for him now feeling as she did about him? Feeling as she did about him? What did that mean?
‘I do not wish to terminate our contract,’ Jay was telling her sharply. ‘It would be too costly and disruptive to find another interior designer at this stage. That is in part why I am speaking with you as I am. I don’t want there to be any misunderstandings—any hopes or aspirations, shall we say, that cannot be met.’
Keira permitted herself a small, bitter inward smile as she imagined what he would think if he knew the truth about her.
‘All my hopes and aspirations are focused on my business.’
‘As mine are on mine,’ Jay responded.
* * *
Jay had gone. She was on her own, but even now Keira did not dare to give way to her emotions—just as she had never dared to do so when she had lived with her great-aunt.
To allow anyone to see her pain was to risk having it used against her, to hurt her even more. She had learned that lesson very young. But the pain she had experienced then was nothing compared to what she must somehow find a way to live through now.
The unthinkable, the unbearable, the most cruel of all cruelties had infiltrated her defences and overpowered her. She had fallen in love with Jay. But he must never know that. She would die before she would humiliate herself by letting him see what a fool she had been.
Last night she had broken the most important promise she had ever made to herself. Now she must face the consequences, she told herself bleakly.