Anne Mather - The Spaniard's Seduction

by The Spaniard's Seduction (lit)

  Enrique didn't touch her. 'I believe you'll regret your im­pulsiveness,' he declared roughly. 'And I am forced to accept that you have a conscience. But that is all.'

  Cassandra shook her head. 'You're wrong.'

  'Am I?' Enrique breathed deeply. 'So what are you saying?

  That what happened between us ten years ago meant some­thing to you?’

  Cassandra hesitated. 'You know it did.'

  'Do I?’ But he had the grace to look away as he added in a low hoarse voice, ‘Yet you went ahead and married my brother.’

  Cassandra nodded. 'Yes.'

  Enrique's face contorted. ‘How could you?'

  Cassandra closed her eyes for a moment. 'I tried to tell him I couldn't marry him,' she insisted dully. ‘I did. But he didn't want to hear it. He said that if I let him down, it would shame him; that it would prove to you and to the rest of his family that I really had only wanted to marry him because of who he was.' She lifted her lids again, to find Enrique, watching her with bleak unforgiving eyes. 'It's the truth. Can't you try and understand how I was feeling? I was nineteen years old, Enrique. I was in a state of shock. You—you'd left. I didn't know what to do.’

  'You must have hated me,' said Enrique harshly, but it wasn't a vindication and she shivered.

  'You don't understand,' she said again. 'Antonio—Antonio loved me. And I cared for him, too. I didn't know I was al­ready carrying the seed of your child. I just wanted to do what was right. I—I swore to myself that I'd make him a good wife, and—and I would have. But then the accident happened. It was an accident, you know? Nothing else. Antonio never knew about us. I suppose I'd hoped he never would. But not in that way. Never in that way.'

  'And if we had met again?' suggested Enrique with bitter emphasis, and she turned away.

  'I—I—I can't answer that,' she said brokenly, and, unable to take any more, she stumbled towards the door.

  She didn't make it. Before she'd gone a dozen yards Enrique caught her. his hands closing about her upper arms from behind and preventing her from going any further. Al­though his hands were slick with sweat, proving how weak he was, and she could feel the unsteadiness in his body, he some­how managed to drag her back against his shaking frame. Then his head dipped to find the vulnerable curve of her neck and she felt the roughness of his jaw against her skin.

  'Lo siento,' he groaned, his lips moving against her flesh. 'I'm sorry. Lo siento mucho.' I'm so sorry. 'Will you forgive me?'

  Cassandra lipped her head back against his shoulder, her arms crossing her body to capture his hands with hers. 'There—there's nothing to forgive.'

  'There is,' he contradicted her huskily, turning her in his arms to cradle her face between his palms. I have been such a fool; such an arrogant fool. I have no right to ask for ex­planations from you when my own behaviour has been so much less than admirable.’

  'Oh, Enrique—'

  Her eyes were shining with unshed tears, but he wouldn't let her reassure him. 'Let me speak,' he said, and she could feel the tremor of his body through his hands. 'I told you that ten years ago I made a terrible mistake. I did. But the mistake was not in making love with you.' His thumbs brushed her cheeks. ‘The mistake was in letting you go.'

  Cassandra stared up at him. 'Enrique...'

  'It is true. That was what I meant when I said I had been paying for it ever since.' His lips twisted. 'Oh, I have tried to deny it. I have tried to forget and move on with my life, but it has not worked. I am still unmarried, and until I read David's letter I believed I would never get the chance to speak to you again.'

  'Enrique...'

  'No, listen to me, querida. I want to tell you how it was when I saw you in Punta del Lobo. Until then. I had held out some hope that you were not the reason why I have resisted all my father's efforts to find me a wife. But when I saw you, when I saw the fire in your eyes—' He took a shuddering breath. 'Dios, Cassandra, you must have known how I felt.'

  'No.' She shook her head. 'All I saw was the shock you got when you saw David.'

  'Ah!' He lowered his head and rested his forehead against hers. ‘That was a shock, si. And a source of some envy on my part.'

  'Envy?'

  'I thought David was Antonio's child,' he reminded her drily. 'I was selfish enough to resent the fact that he wasn't mine.'

  Cassandra lifted her hands to his shoulders. 'He's yours,' she said simply. 'You know that now.'

  ‘Yes, I do.' He paused. 'But when I returned from Cadiz and found you gone—' He turned unsteadily away, as if the emotions his words had generated were too much for him. ‘I am sorry. I have got to sit down...'

  'Oh, Enrique!'

  With sudden understanding, Cassandra put her arm about his waist and guided him to the nearest sofa. Then, when he was seated, she came down beside him, close enough so that her hip and thigh and the whole side of her body was touching his.

  'I am sorry,' he said again, when she lifted a hand to stroke his damp forehead. 'You must think I am useless.'

  'Just suffering from a surfeit of emotion,' she told him gently, leaning closer and depositing a soft kiss on his mouth. 'Oh, Enrique, why didn't you tell me how you felt?'

  'I intended to,' he said, his eyes dark with passion. He was feeling stronger now that he was off his feet, and the arm that came about her shoulders, holding her against his chest, was surprisingly firm. 'But when I got back from Cadiz, you had gone.'

  ‘There are phones,' she reminded him, and he closed his eyes briefly, as if recalling his anguish.

  'There are,' he agreed. 'But I regret to say I am a proud man and I preferred not to humiliate myself again.'

  'Again?'

  'Por supuesto. I could not believe that after speaking to you in the gallery, and when I came to your bedroom, you could have any doubts about the way I felt about you. And when I came back and David told me what you had said—' He shrugged. 'I hardly needed my father to tell me what a fool I was.'

  Cassandra caught her breath. 'He told you that?'

  'As good as.' He sighed. ‘He told me he had tried to per­suade you to stay until the end of your holiday but that you had been determined to leave.'

  'But he didn't.'

  'I know that now.' Enrique grimaced. 'I also realise that that was why he insisted I must attend to his affairs before addressing my own. He was a sick man. I knew I needed to speak with you, but I consoled myself with the thought that you'd be here when I returned. You weren't, and that was when my life fell apart.'

  Cassandra groaned. But he must have relented.'

  'Oh, yes.’ Enrique was sardonic. 'He would never have gone to the trouble of bringing you here if he hadn't felt some responsibility for what had happened.'

  'He said you'd entered one of the pens where a bull was being kept. He made it sound as if you'd gone in there delib­erately.'

  Enrique touched her cheek. 'It was a crazy thing to do.’

  'So why did you do it?'

  'I was not thinking,' he told her heavily. 'My mind was occupied with other things. I do not believe I did it deliber­ately, but it is true that since you went away I have had little interest in anything.'

  'Oh, Enrique!'

  'There,' he said cynically. 'I have laid a guilt trip on you myself. So what are you going to do about it?'

  Cassandra looked at his mouth. She was remembering how sensual his mouth was, how delicious it had felt earner against her skin. 'What do you want me to do about it?' she asked at last, inviting his response, and, with a groan, Enrique sank onto his back against the cushions, taking her with him,

  'I can think of many things,' he said, his accent thickening with emotion, and Cassandra was stunned by the sudden strength of his hand at her nape. His mouth found hers with an urgency that brooked no resistance, and with a little cry she surrendered to the magic of his touch...

  EPILOGUE

  Enrique married Cassandra three weeks later in the small church at Huerta de Tuarega. The whole village turned out
for the wedding of el patron's son, and afterwards there was a fiesta in the village square.

  Despite her happiness, Cassandra couldn't help but compare this wedding with the civil ceremony she and Antonio had shared. This time there had been no question that all the de Montoyas would attend. And, although she doubted Elena de Montoya was overjoyed at the outcome of her husband's in­terference in his elder son's life, she had had to accept that Enrique loved Cassandra, and only she could make him happy.

  Sanchia had attended, too, of course. Along with represen­tatives from all the foremost families in the district, she would have appeared churlish not to do so. Enrique had told Cassandra all about Sanchia: about how quickly she had trans­ferred her attentions to him after Antonio had broken their engagement. He'd also confessed that he and Sanchia had had a passing relationship in recent months. But that as soon as he'd met Cassandra again, he'd had nothing more to do with the other woman.

  'Poor Sanchia,' Cassandra had said one evening, a few days after her return to Spain.

  She and Enrique had spent the day at the palacio, Enrique speaking to his father freely for the first time since his acci­dent, and Cassandra confiding to David that perhaps the hopes he'd had for the future were not so fanciful after all. She'd told him she'd forgiven him for writing to his grandfather. That without his intervention she might never have found hap­piness at last.

  She and Enrique had already talked of getting married, and her son had been in seventh heaven at the thought of having a surrogate father at last. Not that Enrique was a surrogate anything, Cassandra had reflected. But for the present it was kinder to let events proceed at their own pace.

  'Why "poor Sanchia"?' Enrique had demanded, taking great pleasure in watching her brush her hair in front of the mirror in his bedroom at La Hacienda. He'd been lounging on the bed, looking much better than when she'd arrived at La Hacienda. The wound on his thigh still looked ugly, but he had started eating again and there had been a trace of healthy colour in his face.

  'Why do you think?' she'd countered, putting down the brush and turning towards him. In a cream silk negligee that Elena had lent her, she'd looked unknowingly provocative, 'To lose Antonio was bad enough. To lose you as well must be devastating.'

  'If you come here, I will show you exactly how devastat­ing,' he'd told her huskily, stretching out a hand towards her, and Cassandra had gone to him willingly, as captivated by their love as he was.

  The days before the wadding had been a magical time. Al­though Enrique's parents had expected them to return to the palacio, both Enrique and Cassandra had preferred to stay at La Hacienda. Ever afterwards, Cassandra would think of it as a pre-honeymoon, and she had been delighted when Enrique decided that the three of them—including David, of course— would live there after they were married.

  Cassandra made a beautiful bride. Her dress—a medieval sheath with a cowl neckline and long pointed sleeves—gave her a touching vulnerability. Enrique insisted that she still looked like the virgin she had been when he first knew her, and Cassandra had to confess that there had been no other men since the night David was conceived.

  She knew that pleased him. He was still enough of a chau­vinist to be glad that she'd known no other man's touch but his. He would deny it, but he was shamelessly possessive where she was concerned.

  Henry Skyler had not been surprised when Cassandra sent him her notice. He'd been disappointed she wouldn't he returning to The Bookworm, but hardly surprised. He'd hoped she'd come to see him when she and her husband visited London, and had been kind enough to wish her well.

  They were going to the Seychelles for their honeymoon. Enrique said that the islands, set in the Indian ocean, were an ideal place for lovers, and he was determined that they should have at least three weeks to themselves before returning to Tuarega.

  Cassandra's father and sisters attended the wedding, too, although as the sister nearest to her in age was pregnant they had decided not to slay long in Spain. Enrique had expressed his delight at their presence, and had persuaded her father to stay on for several days after the wedding so that David could show him the palacio and introduce him to the bulls. Mr Scott had demurred at first, but for once Julio de Montoya had been on his best behaviour, due no doubt to his son's influence, and he had endorsed the invitation.

  Cassandra was changing for their departure in the bedroom which had been allocated to her at the palacio when her new husband came to find her. He entered the room with a distinct and appealing air of satisfaction, closing the door behind him and leaning back against it with undisguised pleasure.

  In a lacy bra and panties, Cassandra looked very alluring, and Enrique was not immune to the sensual attractions of her body.

  'You look—beautiful,’ he said, advancing towards her across the room. He was still wearing the formal morning suit he had worn for their wedding only hours before, but he shed his jacket on the way, unbuttoning his waistcoat with eager lingers. 'Come here.'

  'We can't,' she protested, even as her lips responded to the sensuous brush of his. 'Enrique, we don't have time...'

  'We wilt always have time for this,' he insisted huskily, loosening her bra and filling his hands with her breasts. Then, his mouth muffled against her soft flesh, 'Do you want me to stop?'

  'Oh, God—no,' she groaned, giving in completely. With his hands cupping her bottom, letting her feel what the pressure of her body was doing to his, she could think of nothing but him. 'But—what if someone comes to find us?'

  'We are married,' he reminded her gently. 'We have a son. I do not think anyone can object if I want to make love to my wife.'