Society Weddings

by Sharon Kendrick

  But there was no escape. Even as he stared out at the darkened sky, he could still see her slender, feminine body in the pretty floral-print dress reflected in the glass before him.

  ‘And perhaps it might relax me. I was too nervous to drink very much at dinner.’

  ‘Or eat very much.’

  He’d hardly touched his food himself, moving it about on his plate in a pretence at interest in it. But all his attention had been focused on the woman sitting opposite, her blonde hair gleaming in the flickering light of the candles, her soft voice answering his parents’ questions with careful politeness.

  ‘You were every bit as bad as me.’

  He hadn’t expected that and it brought him swinging round in shock, amber eyes flying straight to her face.

  ‘You noticed?’

  ‘Oh, I noticed. You messed about, but put very little in your mouth.’

  Her laugh was slightly shaky, no real warmth in it.

  ‘I don’t know what your parents must have thought of the two of us. I just hope they don’t think there was something wrong with the food and sack the cook.’

  ‘Don’t worry, the chef’s job is safe. They’ll think we’re both so completely lovesick that we’ve lost our appetites. And they’ll expect you to have been nervous, so they’ll understand.’

  ‘I wasn’t nervous! I never felt unsure with your mother and father. They couldn’t have been kinder and they made me feel right at home from the start. That was the problem.’

  ‘What problem?’

  ‘Isn’t it obvious? They’re lovely people; I don’t like deceiving them. In fact, now that I’ve met them, I hate it even more.’

  ‘Is this your way of trying to say you want out of this?’

  Luis moved forward, picked up his own drink, trying to look as if the answer to his question didn’t matter a damn to him.

  ‘Not at all. If anything, now that I’ve met your father, I want to go through with it even more. He’s a lovely person, I took to him straight away and I’m so sorry that he’s ill.’

  ‘He likes you too.’

  ‘And that’s what makes this pretence so difficult. I just wish we could do this without deceiving him—and without all the fuss.’

  The sudden shake in her voice, the way she sipped hastily at her drink, gave her away.

  ‘You’re scared?’

  Her eyes looked like dark green ponds, deep and shadowed, as she glanced up at him.

  ‘Aren’t you? No, I suppose not. You must be used to all this—a wedding in the cathedral, pictures for the press. Do we really have to have a reception for all the village?’

  ‘It isn’t what I thought was ahead of me, remember. I always thought this would be Diego’s role in life. That as the eldest son and heir, he’d be the one going through the ceremonial wedding. But, yes, I’m afraid we do have to put up with it. They’ll expect it. It comes with the territory—marrying into a branch of the royal family, however small and obscure. Though in our case, it’s more like a twig.’

  The tiny, half-hearted smile that flashed on and off her face left him in little doubt how she was feeling. Inwardly he cursed his mother’s over-enthusiasm for the wedding plans that had had her launching into them as soon as they had sat down for dinner. But then Dona Elvira had been looking forward to this moment for years. And she had no idea of the secret undercurrents running through the situation. The delicious cold gazpacho soup had barely been served before she had started a discussion on dresses and flowers and bridesmaids.

  ‘Hey, it’s not that bad.’

  ‘Isn’t it?’

  She swung away from him, headed for the small settee beside the huge stone fireplace. The fact that she sat staring fixedly into the empty hearth told its own story, and Luis saw that her teeth were worrying at her bottom lip.

  ‘Isabella—don’t.’

  He came to sit beside her, lifted an arm to put it round her shoulders, then changed his mind. A moment later he changed it back again and let his arm fall, his hand closing over the fine bones of her arm.

  ‘You’ll be fine. And I’ll be there with you.’

  That brought her head round sharply, her expression startled.

  ‘Will you?’

  ‘Where the hell else would I be? After all, it’s my wedding too. And perhaps this will help make you feel better.’

  Isabelle could only stare numbly as Luis pulled a box from his pocket and took out a spectacular diamond ring. She didn’t resist as he took her hand and pushed the ring onto the appropriate finger where it fitted perfectly.

  ‘How—how did you know my size?’

  His mouth took on a cynical twist.

  ‘I remembered it. I have bought you a ring before, remember?’

  How could she forget when the ring in question hung on a slender chain around her neck, nestling safe inside an identical but much larger one. The ring she had placed on his finger on their wedding day. The ring he had thrown at her in such a fury on the day he had walked out of her life.

  ‘I always promised you a proper engagement ring. We were in such a hurry to get married that you never had one before.’

  ‘And this is very definitely a proper engagement ring.’

  And then, when she was totally emotionally unready to do so, she recalled his comment at the door of the castle. ‘You know only too well how to make me happy, mi angel,’ he had said. ‘And if you’re good, I’ll prove it to you tonight.’ And with a sickening lurch of her heart she knew why he was here.

  ‘So when do I start reimbursing you for this? Because I presume you expect me to earn it with some sort of payment in kind.’

  Her question earned her a glare of angry reproof, one that made her shift uncomfortably on the brocade couch.

  ‘It comes with no conditions attached,’ he growled angrily. ‘I gave it to you because my parents would know something was amiss if I didn’t. They would expect my fiancée to be wearing a ring—I have provided one. Our story would not ring true otherwise.’

  It was controlled, so emotionless that it stabbed at her vulnerable heart. It was impossible not to contrast his behaviour now with the ardent, impulsive proposal of marriage he had made just over two years before.

  ‘But our story isn’t true, is it, Luis? I don’t see why we can’t just tell them—’

  The look on his face, the dark anger that blazed in his eyes, stopped her dead.

  ‘Tell them what, mi angel? Do you really want me to explain to my parents why we split up in the first place? Shall I tell them that you were found in bed with another man only a few weeks after we were married?’

  ‘I told you—!’

  ‘I know what you told me, but forgive me…’ Luis laced the words with an acid that turned them into the exact opposite of any genuine attempt at an apology ‘…I prefer to believe the evidence of my own eyes.’

  ‘The evidence you were supposed to believe! It was a setup!’

  Luis’s dark frown dried her mouth, stilled her impetuous tongue.

  ‘Was Rob Michaels in your bed?’ he questioned harshly, every bit the counsel for the prosecution.

  ‘Yes.’

  It was barely a whisper but there was nothing she could say except the truth. She had woken up to find Rob in her bed, but she had had no idea how he had got there. Her memory of the night before had been decidedly hazy as the result of a very bad cold and some medication she had taken. And before she had had a chance to demand to know what he’d been doing there, the whole world had blown up in her face.

  She shuddered miserably as her mind replayed snatches from that terrible night. The sound of a key in the lock. The door swinging open. The light snapping on.

  And there, framed in the doorway, with a face as black as a thundercloud, bronze eyes molten in fury—Luis. Her husband.

  ‘And why is lying to my parents so very hard? After all, you have lied to me about much more important things.’

  ‘I never…’

  Her face was pale, he
r green eyes huge above colourless cheeks. He had the fight of his life with himself not to take her in his arms and tell her it was all right, that it didn’t matter.

  He forced himself to continue.

  ‘Did you not swear to me that you loved me more than life itself? That you could never imagine yourself with anyone else, loving anyone else…’

  His voice lowered, became a deadly, vindictive hiss.

  ‘Sleeping with anyone else.’

  It was crueller than any slap in the face. All the more so because it had been delivered in such a quiet, controlled voice. But then she looked into his eyes and to her shock it was not anger or cruelty that she saw there, but the soul-deep pain of betrayal.

  ‘I’ve told you…’

  ‘I know what you’ve told me. But until you can come up with something better than, “It was a set-up,” I’m sorry, but I cannot believe you.’

  The last thing he sounded was sorry, Isabelle reflected miserably. Instead his tone was icily cold, laced with a bitter control she couldn’t see her way past. Unable to bear the way that the same dark feeling showed in his gaze, she pressed her hands to her face for a moment, covering her own eyes with them.

  ‘I had a heavy cold,’ she said from behind her concealing fingers, putting all the conviction she could muster into the words, willing him to believe them. ‘Catalina gave me something for it and I went to bed early. The next thing I knew was when I woke up when you came into the room.’

  ‘A room that was locked from the inside. I had to go down to Reception and get the master key.’

  ‘Rob must have locked it.’

  ‘And how did he get inside in the first place?’

  ‘I don’t know!’

  Isabelle snatched her hands away from her face, flinging them out in a wild gesture to emphasise her words.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  It wasn’t enough. She could read it in his dark, shuttered face, the way his eyes were hooded under half-closed lids. He didn’t believe her. And really, deep down, she knew she couldn’t blame him.

  Would she have believed him if the positions had been reversed? If she had been the one coming home late from a long trip to London to see her brother and she had walked in on Luis, naked, in bed with someone else—with Catalina, for example. Would he have been able to convince her that it was all perfectly innocent? That he had fallen asleep alone and woken up to find the other woman in his bed?

  It sounded impossible and totally unbelievable. And she knew that she would have reacted just as he had done. That she would have walked away in a black fury of pain and betrayal and never looked back.

  ‘Luis, we’d had a row…’

  ‘I know what had happened. You do not have to remind me. We argued and so—so what? You punished me by sleeping with the first man who asked?’

  ‘You can’t believe that!’

  No, Luis admitted privately, she was right, damn it! He couldn’t believe it. He hadn’t then and he couldn’t now. If anyone had asked him, he would have sworn on his life that Isabelle loved him. That she would always be faithful. That was why finding her with Michaels had hit him so hard that he had thought he would go crazy, do something totally unforgivable, if he hadn’t got out of there at once.

  ‘It was what you threatened to do,’ he said dully. ‘And Rob Michaels had been sniffing around you for weeks.’

  Isabelle winced away from his words, and the pain she could hear behind them, wishing she could deny the truth, but knowing that she could not.

  ‘It was an empty threat. I never meant it. Certainly not like that. I was angry—hurt. It was my birthday, Luis.’

  Her tone pleaded for understanding.

  ‘My first birthday with you and you spent it away from me.’

  ‘I had no choice; you knew that. My father was only in London for that day. I had to see him to try to bridge some of the distance that had come between us. I had no other opportunity.’

  She understood that now, Isabelle admitted to herself, but then, barely twenty-one, and still in the throes of the first obsessive, possessive love for her new husband, she had been unwilling to share him with anyone, even his family. She had insisted he stay with her—or at least take her with him. And when he had refused she had lost her temper.

  ‘All right, go!’ she had flung at him, blind to the danger signs of his tightly set mouth, the tension in his hard jaw, the muscle that had flickered just above it. ‘Go if you want, and leave me on my own! But don’t expect me to stay on my own! If you won’t be with me on my birthday, I’ll find someone else who will.’

  It had been a hollow threat, bad-tempered, childish and petulant, and she had never dreamed that it might rebound on her so appallingly, until it had been too late.

  ‘I can see that now, Luis,’ she admitted miserably. ‘And I was very stupid, very selfish—but that’s all I was. Please don’t hate me for being stupid.’

  ‘I don’t.’

  He didn’t hate her.

  Dios, didn’t she know that he could never hate her? That was the reason she could get to him so badly. The reason why he’d had to come to England when he’d got that letter. He’d tried to convince himself that he never wanted to see her again, but the truth was that he had never felt anything so terrible as the fear that he might lose her for good. And he’d endured that fear twice now.

  ‘Why do you think you are here? I forgave you—’

  ‘Forgave!’

  Isabelle couldn’t believe what she was hearing and her distress was a savage wound in her heart as she faced the way her hopes had been lifted, only to be dashed right down in the next second. She could hardly bear to look into his face, to see the way he had stiffened, the golden eyes narrowing, his jaw setting hard and tight.

  How could he have taken her so close to the future she had dreamed of and then snatched it away again? She felt as if she had been given a glimpse of heaven, only to have the door slammed right in her face.

  ‘I didn’t want forgiveness for something I didn’t do! I wanted trust! The sort of trust that doesn’t need proof—that believes in me completely and totally. And if you can’t give me that, then our marriage has no future and we might just as well forget the whole thing!’

  That got through to him. It slashed straight through everything else he had been feeling, stabbed straight to the heart. And in that moment he knew that, two years before, he had made the worst, most appalling mistake of his life.

  There had always been something he had kept coming back to, something he hadn’t been able to quite put his finger on, and it had disturbed him, nagged at him throughout the past two years. Now he knew he wouldn’t be able to rest until he’d cleared the whole matter up. And if he had been wrong, then he’d spend the rest of his life making it up to Isabelle.

  ‘I don’t want to forget it,’ he muttered harshly.

  Isabelle didn’t know how to take that.

  ‘Oh, Luis, mi marido, mi amor…’

  ‘No!’

  He couldn’t bear those words. Not now. Not when he feared that he had wronged her so badly.

  Pushing himself to his feet, he swung halfway across the room, needing to put a physical distance between them that matched the emotional one he had let grow because of his stupid hurt pride.

  ‘Don’t call me that. Not now.’

  Isabelle knew her mistake as soon as the words had left her lips, and desperately, hopelessly, wished them back, knowing there was no chance of salvation.

  Beside her she had felt Luis’s hard length tense, freezing in shock, and then, agonisingly, the immediate, inevitable swift withdrawal, the movement away that spelled out his rejection, tearing her heart in two.

  ‘Luis, mi marido, mi amor…’ The first few words of Spanish he had taught her. The most important words, he had said. If she never learned any other phrases, then these would do. They would say all she ever needed to say to keep him happy.

  But one night she had used those words and known they would
never have the same effect again. That even if she handed her heart to him at the same time, he would never, ever believe that she loved him.

  They had been the last words she had shouted after him on that dreadful night when he had arrived back unexpectedly and found her and Rob, in bed together. She had tried to explain but he had turned from her as he was doing now, his eyes dark with rejection. And so she had screamed the only words she had thought might bring him back.

  But they had had as little effect as they were having now. His face had closed up, steel shutters seeming to slam shut behind his eyes, cutting him off from her completely. And he had walked out of her life—for good, it had seemed.

  The words swung round and round in Luis’s head, gaining a new and terrible bitterness with every repetition.

  My husband, my love… Once he had longed to hear her say them as often as she could. He would have sworn that he would never grow tired of them. That he could never hear anything that would have made him happier.

  Until one bitter dawn when he had heard her shout them after him down a long, shadowy hotel corridor as he’d walked away from the terrible sight of her and her lover in bed together.

  He hadn’t been able to bear to stay a second longer then. He had had to get away—fast—just as he had to now. If he stayed, then he would surely give himself away completely, by letting her know just how he was feeling. And the truth was that he was such a mess, such a knot of tangled emotions deep inside, that he didn’t know what to say to her.

  ‘L-Luis…’ Isabelle tried, but her voice failed her completely, shrivelling into nothing as he turned back to her and she saw the tightness of every muscle in his face, the blank, opaque eyes.

  ‘Perdón,’ he said stiffly. ‘Forgive me, but I cannot…’

  My husband, my love. But if he had loved her enough he would have stayed. He would have listened. He would have trusted.

  He had done no such thing. He had failed her. And now he would have to live with his conscience for having wronged her so badly.