Bridal Bargains: The Tycoon's Bride / The Purchased Wife / The Price Of A Bride. Michelle Reid

an obedient nod, Althea hurried away, and Claire was ordered to come and sit down in the chair set beside the old woman.

      ‘Now,’ Andreas’s grandmother said once Claire was seated, ‘you will explain to me, please, while Althea is away, what you have done to upset my grandson. He was here an hour or two ago,’ she informed Claire, ‘and he was bad-tempered and restless. Have you two argued?’

      No, Claire thought ruefully, we just kissed each other senseless. Then I pushed him away and he went off in a huff! ‘I haven’t even seen him since I left here with him yesterday.’ She avoided the straight answer.

      ‘You mentioned his first wife to him; that is what you did,’ the old woman decided.

      Claire immediately stiffened. ‘I did not,’ she denied.

      Those amber eyes that had so much life left in them while the body they belonged to was wasting away fixed on her narrowly, looking at her as if they had the ability to see right through the blueness of her eyes to the brain that worked behind them.

      ‘Then take my advice, young woman,’ she said eventually. ‘If you care anything for Andreas, then never mention her to him, do you hear?’

      Yes, I hear, Claire thought, inwardly shocked by the amount of passion the old lady had fed into her words. But I don’t understand.

      And she was not offered enlightenment—except … ‘He needs no more heartache dishing out to him—especially by a nubile young English girl with independent ways and legs that reach up to her armpits! Ah!’ she then exclaimed in pleasure as Althea came back into the room. ‘This is what I want to show you!’

      And the other subject was dropped, leaving Claire sitting there wondering bleakly just how deeply Andreas had loved his first wife for even his grandmother to worry about the fragile state of his emotions.

      But—nubile? she then repeated to herself with a grin. Such an old-fashioned word! Yet, coming as it had from this hypercritical old woman, she found it rather a compliment.

      ‘Why the grin?’ the sharp tongue demanded. ‘You don’t like my dress? You think it is funny?’

      Dress—what dress? Claire frowned, clicking her eyes into focus on what Althea was carefully holding up so the long skirt didn’t touch the ground.

      ‘Oh!’ she cried out as she jumped to her feet. ‘How absolutely lovely!’

      ‘You like it,’ the old woman sighed in satisfaction—then instantly went back to being stern. ‘It was my wedding dress. Now it is yours.’

      ‘Oh, but I can’t—’

      Even as Claire turned to gasp out her protest, the old lady was talking over her. ‘Of course you can!’ she snapped. ‘It is my wish! So try it on—try it on and let us see how little different my young figure was to yours at your age!’

      She sounded so animated—alive and excited—that Claire didn’t have the heart to protest a second time. But as she looked back at the long, soft lines of the beautiful dress she felt like a dreadful fraud.

      A deceiver of a vulnerable old woman.

      But, by the time she emerged from behind the tall screen, having had Althea help her out of her clothes and into the dress, she was already head over heels in love with the dress.

      Made of an intricately worked handmade lace worn over the finest silk under-dress, it skimmed her slender body as if it had been made for it. The neckline scooped gently over her breasts. The long fitted sleeves fastened by tiny pearl buttons that ran from wrist to elbow—one of which had to remain unfastened because of her cumbersome plaster-cast. The skirt was a little short, finishing just above her ankle, but even that didn’t seem to matter.

      It was the nineteen twenties at its most poetic. It was simply exquisite.

      And just to see that sheen of tearful joy enter those tired eyes made wearing it a pleasure.

      The old lady sighed, then ran on in hushed Greek that didn’t need translating for Claire to understand that she was overwhelmed by what she was seeing.

      Herself maybe? Claire pondered. Was this old woman who was so very close to the end of her life suddenly seeing herself when she was at the beginning?

      ‘You will do—you will do,’ the old lady murmured huskily. Then she said, with a return of her old sharpness, ‘Nubile, eh? Was I not nubile also?’ she declared triumphantly.

      And Claire couldn’t help laughing even though she was still feeling like a terrible fraud.

      ‘You will wear it next week when you marry my grandson and he will bless the day he found you because that dress is lucky,’ she promised, having no idea that Claire had switched off from the moment she’d mentioned marriage next week, which was news to her. ‘I had fifty years of happiness with my husband before the cancer took him. You will have the same luck. You mark my word, child. That dress is lucky …’

      ‘But this whole thing is getting out of control, Andreas!’

      Claire was pleading with him across the width of his study desk, having come to search him out the moment she had been dismissed from his grandmother.

      ‘She wants me to wear her own wedding dress!’

      ‘You don’t like it?’ Sleek eyebrows arched in haughty enquiry.

      ‘Like it?’ Claire repeated incredulously. ‘It’s old, it’s handmade, it’s utterly unique and it’s exquisite!’ she sighed. ‘But she loves that dress, Andreas!’ she told him painfully. ‘And she loves you! Yet here we are intending to dupe her any which way you want to look at it!’

      The only response she got to that was the slow lowering of lazy lashes then the same slow lifting of them again. But then, he was the ice man today, Claire noted impatiently. Yesterday hadn’t happened. He had clearly dismissed it from his mind.

      ‘Do something!’ she snapped in sheer frustration.

      ‘What would you like me to do?’ he asked quietly. ‘Go and tell her that this is all nothing but a lie?’

      ‘No,’ she sighed, hating him for his smooth simplicity! ‘I just feel—’ She sighed again, and turned her back on him so she could slump wearily against the desk. ‘I hate liars,’ she said. ‘Yet here I am, lying to everybody I speak to.’

      ‘Is she happy?’

      Claire dipped her head to stare at her shoes. ‘Yes,’ she said.

      ‘Did the dress fit you as it must have fitted her more than seventy years ago?’

      ‘Yes,’ she said again, seeing the joy in that old woman’s face when she’d seen herself as she would have looked all those years ago.

      To her consternation he gave a soft laugh. ‘She told me it would.’ He explained the reason for the laugh. ‘Last night, after having met you, she laid a wager with me that if the dress fitted you then I must buy it from her for you to wear on our wedding day. Oh, don’t misunderstand,’ he said quickly as Claire turned to stare at him. ‘She is a shrewd old thing, and she loves a good wager. The dress is a museum piece and practically priceless. She knows this. She means to fleece me, and will enjoy doing so.’

      And thereby keep the weak lifeblood flowing through her veins that little bit longer while they haggle, Claire concluded, beginning to see again what her guilty conscience had blinded her to—the fact that this man was willing to do anything to keep his grandmother alive.

      Today it was a wedding dress. Tomorrow it would be something else. Then there was a wedding to plan and a great-grandchild to meet and …

      Without really knowing she was doing it, she began planning and plotting herself. ‘She wants the wedding to take place next week.’ She frowned. ‘Perhaps, if I insist that we put it off until my plaster-cast comes off, it will—’

      But