A Touch of Notoriety

by Carole Mortimer

  ‘No! No,’ she repeated more calmly as she looked across at Raphael with pleading tear-wet eyes. ‘I—I want to hear it all now. I need to know. Please, Raphael,’ she added gruffly.

  He drew in a sharp breath, wishing that he weren’t the one having to tell Beth these things. That she wasn’t going to remember, to associate him with having imparted this knowledge, and hate him for it ever afterwards.

  He had become used to Beth’s outspokenness, her feistiness, and her anger, but her aversion to being anywhere near him was something else completely. ‘Would you rather wait until Cesar and Grace arrive to learn all of the details?’

  ‘Cesar and Grace are coming here?’ She groaned her dismay.

  ‘They will be.’ Raphael nodded confirmation. ‘Cesar instructed me to inform him the moment I received conclusive proof as to Elizabeth Lawrence’s demise,’ he amended gruffly; after all, until a few minutes ago Beth had believed she was Elizabeth Lawrence, and so to her talking of Elizabeth Lawrence’s death was the equivalent of talking of her own death.

  ‘But you really haven’t told him yet?’ Beth pushed.

  ‘I have said not.’

  ‘And if I asked you to delay doing so for another day or so?’ she prompted evenly.

  Raphael looked at her through narrowed lids. ‘And why would I want to do that?’

  She drew in a ragged breath, her gaze a deep and steady brown as she looked across at him. ‘Because I asked you to.’

  ‘That does not tell me why, Beth,’ he murmured softly.

  She breathed deeply. ‘Because I want you to take me to the churchyard at the village of Stopley tomorrow, so that I can see Elizabeth’s grave for myself, and place some flowers there in remembrance of her. I want— Raphael, I need to say goodbye to her, before I can even think of saying hello to Gabriela Navarro.’

  ‘Beth—’

  ‘This is important to me, Raphael!’

  Yes, he could see by the glitter of tears in Beth’s eyes, and the brave determination of her expression, that this was very important to her.

  Important enough for Raphael to ignore Cesar’s instructions and do as Beth asked?

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  ‘IT’S SUCH A little grave…’ Beth murmured huskily as she straightened to stand beside Raphael in the peaceful silence of the churchyard, having just placed the small bouquet of yellow roses she had brought with her on top of the grave that bore the indisputable inscription on the headstone: ‘Elizabeth Carla Lawrence, aged two years, beloved daughter of James and Carla Lawrence. Rest in Peace our Angel.’

  Beautiful sentiments, but the small person in that grave certainly wasn’t Beth, who for most of her life had believed she was Elizabeth Carla Lawrence.

  The real Elizabeth Lawrence had lived the two brief years of her life in the small village of Stopley that Beth and Raphael had driven through just a few minutes ago on their way to the grey-stone church and its surrounding graveyard at the furthest end of the village. Beth was grateful that Raphael had opted to drive the two of them to Stopley himself in one of the less ostentatious Navarro vehicles. It was a village Beth had had no knowledge of until yesterday, let alone had ever lived in, as a young child or at any other time.

  She had barely slept at all the previous night, insisting on going in to work this morning. She hadn’t told Raphael why she had insisted, but she had spent part of the morning speaking to Graham Selkirk, her immediate boss, explaining the situation as much as she felt able to without involving the Navarro family, before requesting a month’s leave of absence. Even if she hadn’t confided the fact to Raphael yet, their visit to Stopley that afternoon was only the start of the process of her accepting, once and for all, that she really was Gabriela Navarro. Graham Selkirk would have been perfectly within his rights to deny Beth’s request for leave, and so giving her no choice but to give immediate notice. Instead he had told her to take as long as she needed to sort out her family problem, and that her job would be waiting for her when she came back, if she still wanted it.

  That last comment had given Beth the sneaking suspicion that Cesar’s interference might have had something to do with Graham’s easy acquiescence to her request. Cesar probably hadn’t bought the company, yet, but no doubt he’d had a quiet word with whoever did own it! But she was too upset, too tense, from her sleepless night, and the thought of her planned visit to Stopley later that afternoon, and the ensuing consequences of that visit, to bother questioning Graham on the subject. What was the point, when all of the evidence now pointed to her being Gabriela Navarro? And Cesar had already made it more than clear that he did not approve of his sister Gabriela working in an English publishing house, that her place was in Argentina, with her family…

  * * *

  Raphael had no idea what answer to make in reply to Beth’s husky comment. It was indeed a tiny grave. And six feet beneath that top layer of grass were the remains of two-year-old Elizabeth Carla Lawrence. The daughter of James and Carla Lawrence.

  ‘You never did finish telling me how you think they managed all this.’ Beth spoke again quietly. Raphael had no doubts that she was referring to the Lawrences, and that she was questioning how they had replaced their own dead daughter with the child of another couple, Carlos and Esther Navarro, who had mourned for their own child for the past twenty-one years.

  ‘We have managed to piece together the information that the Lawrences visited Carla’s family in Buenos Aires a month after Elizabeth died.’ He spoke evenly, dressed in one of his dark and formal three-piece suits, a dark grey tie knotted neatly at the throat of his white shirt. ‘The same month that Gabriela was taken. They travelled alone on their way to Argentina, but when they flew back to England a month later their two-year-old daughter Elizabeth accompanied them.’

  Beth’s eyes were like two dark bruises as she turned to look up at him, appearing very pale and slender, even ethereal, with her blond hair loose about her shoulders and wearing a pair of fitted brown trousers with a brown figure-hugging sweater. ‘Is it really that easy to abduct someone else’s child?’

  ‘No, it is not,’ Raphael assured her softly. ‘All we can assume is that Elizabeth’s name had not yet been removed from her mother’s passport. As you know, the Navarros had not publicly announced that their daughter had been abducted, for fear it might jeopardise her being returned to them, and as such the airport authorities would have had no reason to suspect that the golden-haired two-year-old little girl with the Lawrences was not their own child.’

  She nodded woodenly. ‘But what about when they returned to Stopley? Surely someone must have noticed that they had a little girl with them who closely resembled Elizabeth but couldn’t possibly be her?’

  ‘The Lawrences did not return to Stopley.’ Raphael grimaced. ‘The neighbours Rodney spoke to yesterday said that James Lawrence returned only briefly, in order to pack up the contents of their house. He told them that Carla did not feel she could return to the home where they had lived with Elizabeth, that they were moving to—’

  ‘Kent,’ Beth supplied softly.

  ‘Yes,’ Raphael confirmed huskily, knowing that was the county in which Beth had supposedly spent the first five years of her life.

  ‘And so Elizabeth Lawrence lived and then died.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Beth drew in a long and steadying breath. ‘Then I really am Gabriela Navarro. Or Brela, as Cesar called his little sister. Strange the two names, Brela and Beth, should be so similar,’ she added flatly.

  ‘Yes.’

  She looked up at Raphael quizzically. ‘You seem to have got stuck in a groove.’

  In truth Raphael was full of admiration for the way in which Beth was responding to learning, once and for all, that she really wasn’t Elizabeth Lawrence. That she never had been. Apart from her pallor, and that bruised look to her eyes, Beth—Brela—was remaining remarkably calm, considering her whole life had just been turned on its head.

  His first instinct was to take her into h
is arms, and offer her the comfort she so desperately needed, but there was a distance to her now, a barrier encircling her, that didn’t encourage anyone to so much as touch her, let alone try to comfort her. ‘Have you seen enough?’ he prompted abruptly instead.

  She made no effort to walk away as she turned back to look down at the gravestone. ‘Do you think my—the Lawrences, ever came back here? To visit their real daughter’s grave, I mean?’

  ‘Perhaps.’ Raphael shrugged. ‘There is no way of knowing one way or the other.’

  Beth grimaced. ‘I don’t like to think of her—to imagine Elizabeth, being left here all alone, year after year—’

  ‘Beth—’

  ‘It’s all right, Raphael.’ She turned to give him a strained smile. ‘You don’t need to worry, I’m not going to break down in floods of tears. I haven’t returned your silk handkerchief from last time yet!’

  Raphael had no idea how to go about dealing with this calm and coolly collected—this unreachable—Beth. ‘I have plenty of other handkerchiefs,’ he assured her gruffly.

  She gave a firm shake of her head. ‘I’m not going to cry.’

  ‘Then perhaps you should.’

  ‘Why?’ Her eyes flashed up at him darkly and her hands were clenched at her sides. ‘Don’t feel sorry for me, Raphael. I didn’t even know the real Elizabeth Lawrence.’

  ‘You are upset.’

  ‘Of course I’m upset!’ Beth confirmed fiercely. ‘Wouldn’t you be upset, if you had just visited your own graveside?’

  Raphael drew in a hissing breath at the stark reality of that statement; Beth had, effectively, just done exactly that. The fact that she was dealing with this situation as calmly as she was, with a dignity far beyond her years, only increased his admiration for her; a dangerous admiration, considering his completely physical response to this particular woman.

  ‘Yes.’ He nodded. ‘We should go, Beth.’ He reached out to clasp her arm, with the intention of escorting her from the churchyard.

  She flinched away from his touch. ‘But I’m not Beth any more, am I? I’m Gabriela.’

  Raphael looked down at her searchingly as his hand dropped slowly back to his side, noting the flush that had now entered her cheeks, and the unnatural brightness to those beautiful dark eyes. ‘I am sure that the Navarros will continue to call you Beth, if that is what you prefer.’

  ‘I would prefer that none of this nightmare had ever happened,’ she dismissed tautly. ‘But that obviously isn’t going to happen. And what would be the point of asking them to call me Beth, when she no longer exists?’

  ‘Of course you exist—’

  ‘No-I-don’t.’

  He flinched at the fierce evenness of her tone. ‘You—’

  ‘Time to go, Raphael.’ She turned away abruptly, not waiting to see if he accompanied her as she walked swiftly through the graveyard to where they had left the car parked by the side of the road.

  Raphael followed her slowly, for once in his life unsure as to what to do or say next…

  * * *

  The effort to hold back the tears burned the back of Beth’s throat as she sat in the car beside Raphael while he drove them away from the village of Stopley—away from Elizabeth Lawrence’s tiny grave.

  She so wanted—needed—to cry. Wanted to scream and shout, too, as she shed those tears of pain and loss. The pain and loss she felt for the death of Elizabeth Lawrence, that two-year-old baby back there in the graveyard, as well as her own.

  And if she felt this way after seeing Elizabeth Lawrence’s grave, how much more deeply Esther and Carlos Navarro must have suffered after the disappearance of their own beloved daughter, never knowing what had become of her, or whether she was alive or dead. An uncertainty that had finally driven the couple into living apart, Esther returning to her native America, while Carlos remained in Argentina, when they could no longer even look at each other without thinking of the baby daughter they had lost.

  As for Cesar…Beth knew from Grace that he had lived all of his adult life with the guilt of his baby sister’s disappearance hovering like a dark shadow over his heart. Gabriela had been taken from her pushchair in the park during the few minutes she had been left unattended while their nanny helped him untangle his kite from some bushes.

  The biggest tragedy of all perhaps was that while Beth could sympathise with all of the Navarros’ pain, she couldn’t just step back in Gabriela’s designer shoes and become the daughter they had lost. Any more than she could just turn on a switch and feel an outpouring of familial love for all of them. She might be Gabriela Navarro—she had no choice now but to accept that was who she really was—but she wasn’t and doubted she ever could be the Gabriela Navarro her ‘family’ so longed for, and wanted her to be…

  Maybe, with time, she might come to care for them all—although the arrogant Cesar was going to be something of a challenge!—but she very much doubted it was ever going to be enough, that she was ever going to become Gabriela enough to satisfy the hunger for the daughter, the sister, the Navarro family had suffered under for the past twenty-one years.

  Grace’s marriage to Cesar would help, of course, but only in as much as Grace would also become a part of the family to whom Beth really belonged. It wasn’t going to help with Beth’s own feelings of emotional detachment where the Navarro family were concerned. Esther and Carlos were nice people, and she liked them both a lot as Grace’s future in-laws, but she felt nothing else for them. No sudden recognition of them being her real parents. Nor did she have any earth-shattering memories of the older brother she had reputedly adored and who had so obviously also adored her. It was—

  ‘Would you care to stop somewhere for an early dinner?’

  Beth turned to look blankly at Raphael for several seconds before his words managed to permeate the bleak fog of her own thoughts, a glance at her wristwatch showing it was almost seven o’clock in the evening. Meaning she must have stood at Elizabeth Lawrence’s graveside for almost two hours. No wonder Raphael had suggested it was time for them to leave!

  And she didn’t really want to return to Cesar’s Hampshire estate just yet, knowing that Raphael would then feel obliged to telephone the Navarro family and tell them about their visit to Stopley and Elizabeth Lawrence’s grave.

  Not that she was in the least hungry, either—in fact, Beth felt slightly sick!—but she was more than willing to pretend to eat an early dinner if it meant a delay in returning to Hampshire and Raphael’s phone call to Cesar. A glass of wine, or two, would be more than welcome, too. ‘Does that mean that Kevin Maddox still hasn’t managed to employ a cook for the estate?’ she attempted to tease.

  ‘I have no idea,’ Raphael dismissed tightly. ‘I just thought that you might prefer it if we did not return there just yet.’

  And, as usual, he had thought correctly. Strange how well Raphael had come to know her in such a short time.

  ‘An early dinner sounds lovely, thank you,’ she accepted huskily.

  ‘I’ll stop at the next suitable place I see.’ Raphael nodded grimly, having been well aware of the tumult of thoughts that had been going through Beth’s beautiful head since they left Stopley. Strained as his relationship was with his own father, Raphael had always known exactly who he was and what was expected of him, and couldn’t even begin to relate to the confusion of emotions Beth must be feeling right now. Sadness at the death of the real two-year-old Elizabeth Lawrence, and the added trauma of having to accept what Beth had tried so hard to deny: that she really was the missing Gabriela Navarro, daughter of Esther and Carlos Navarro, and sister of Cesar Navarro.

  Although she seemed to put that confusion firmly to the back of her mind as Raphael opened the car door for her a few minutes later outside the olde worlde country inn he had chosen to stop at. ‘Nice.’ She smiled her approval as she straightened beside him.

  Raphael was more aware of Beth’s disturbing presence beside him than he was the charm or otherwise of the country inn. Her hair sm
elt of the tartness of lemons, and although her face was still unnaturally pale it was also ethereally beautiful, and her slender and sensuous curves were shown to advantage in the brown fitted sweater and trousers.

  She turned to look up at him when she received no reply to her comment, her breath catching in her throat as she obviously saw that awareness burning in Raphael’s eyes as he found himself unable to look away from her. ‘Would you please kiss me, Raphael?’ she invited huskily as she took a step closer to him.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Honestly?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Her eyes darkened. ‘Because I want—need to know I exist, Raphael. To know that I’m still me!’

  It was a plea that Raphael was unable to deny as he felt those soft and warm curves pressing against him, his gaze continuing to hold Beth’s as his head slowly lowered and he captured those full and sensuous lips beneath his own, before his arms moved about her waist and he moulded those soft pliable curves against his much harder ones.

  It had been his intention to kiss her gently, to offer her the comfort rather than passion, but those intentions evaporated at the first taste of Beth’s lips, Raphael giving a low groan of his own need as the kiss deepened, his tongue sweeping into the heat of her mouth as the hardness of his arousal fitted snugly against the heated well between Beth’s thighs—

  ‘Maybe the two of you should get a room?’ an indulgently teasing voice suggested lightly.

  Raphael pulled back sharply to look down at Beth searchingly for several seconds before he turned to face the middle-aged man standing behind them. ‘I apologise.’ He bowed stiffly as he grasped Beth’s arm and moved her slightly aside from where they were blocking the doorway.

  ‘No problem,’ the older man assured him dismissively. ‘I might have been tempted to do the same with such a pretty young lady.’

  He gave them a smiling nod before entering the inn.

  ‘Well, that was…a little embarrassing,’ Beth dismissed ruefully, her gaze avoiding meeting Raphael’s as she turned and briskly followed the other man inside the intimacy of the inn.