by Lynne Graham
She scrutinised the fine platinum band encircling her ring finger. Put there by Angelo, sealed by a cold kiss on her brow, the sort of a salute you gave to a child. You’ve been behaving like one all day, a little voice said drily. Insecurity made her nervous and abrasive.
Hedley Court looked spectacular in the crisp winter sunlight. Although it was late afternoon, the temperature had stayed below freezing all day and a white frost still iced the lawns and gilded the clipped yews. As Angelo assisted her out of the car, a cold wind made her shiver. He whipped off his jacket like a cavalier and draped it round her slight shoulders.
‘Don’t be silly,’ she hissed. ‘A puff of wind isn’t likely to blow me away.’
‘I wish we could have gone somewhere warmer for a few weeks.’ Angelo pressed her across the gravel towards the front door.
Kelda stared blindly at the beautiful frontage of the Court with its mullioned windows. A trip abroad had been quite out of the question so late in her pregnancy. Her emerald eyes were overbright. She was mentally enumerating all the frills that had been shorn from her wedding day. A gown would have looked ridiculous and she was supposed to be taking things very easy, so a lot of guests and a reception had been ruled out on that count as well. Frankly, she suspected that Angelo had been grateful for an excuse to avoid a standard society wedding adorned by an enormously pregnant bride.
Without warning, Angelo bent and swept her off her feet.
‘Put me down!’ she shrieked in mortification, aware that she was no lightweight, waiting to hear him grunt with surprised effort.
‘This is one tradition we can fulfil,’ Angelo told her, carrying her across the threshold into a giant reception hall walled with linenfold panelling.
‘It’s beautiful!’ Kelda craned her head back for a better view of the minstrels’ gallery. ‘When did you buy it?’
‘My great-great-grandmother married into the original Hedley family—’
Kelda reddened. She was reminded that, unlike her, Angelo had a blue-blooded family tree. Angelo didn’t have to buy his historic house in the country. He had probably inherited it.
‘I remember coming here as a child.’ He set her down gently at the top of the stone stairs. ‘The Court eventually came to my mother. A great-uncle of mine lived here until his death a couple of years ago.’ He showed her into a beautifully furnished bedroom. ‘You should lie down for a while before dinner. You can meet the staff then. They appear to have beat a tactful retreat for our arrival.’
And then he was gone. It was a very feminine bedroom. Through a door she discovered a dressing-room that led into a marvellously sybaritic bathroom. She was checking through the empty wardrobes when her cases arrived and, with them, the housekeeper, Mrs Moss, who had clearly had no intention of waiting until dinner to meet Angelo’s new bride.
When Kelda eventually lay down it was almost six. She was desperately tired but all she could think about was the absence of any male clothing in the wardrobes. This was not a room which Angelo intended to share with her.
Angelo made polite pleasant conversation over dinner until she wanted to scream. It was as if a glass wall divided him from her. She needed to smash it. Fingering her glass of mineral water, she cast him a glance from beneath her long feathery lashes.
‘Which one were you going to settle on?’ she asked softly.
Angelo elevated an ebony brow. ‘Which what?’
‘Adele or Felicity or Caroline or Fiona,’ Kelda specified. ‘Which one made the highest score?’
Lashes as long and thicker than her own dropped low over gleaming dark eyes. ‘I find that rather a loaded question.’
‘But a natural one to ask. After all,’ Kelda breathed sweetly, ‘you’ve spent the past six months auditioning potential brides, and I was never on the list even to begin with. Naturally I’m curious.’
Angelo leant back in his chair, his strikingly handsome features dispassionate and infuriatingly uninformative. The silence gathered strength and Kelda refused to be intimidated by it.
‘Adele had the best pedigree—’
‘Only animals have pedigree.’
Kelda smiled with scorn. ‘You were clearly shopping for a pedigree, Angelo. Every one of them was upper class and rich. None of them had had previous marriages. One worked in a museum. One worked in an art gallery. And one helped Mummy with her favourite children’s charity—’
‘Kelda—’ he murmured warningly.
‘Fiona was the only one with third-level education and a real career. Presumably she would have been too bright and too independent for the role. On the other hand, she was the most stunning-looking,’ Kelda continued in the same chatty tone, ignoring the hardening line of his expressive mouth. ‘Did you make love to all of them or none of them? And how does it feel to have decided exactly what you want in a wife and then have to come down to real basics and settle on one from a council estate?’
‘Without your assistance tonight, I don’t think I ever would have realised how desperately insecure you are,’ Angelo drawled.
She froze as though he had slapped her.
‘Does sniping at me make you feel any better?’ he asked drily.
He hadn’t answered her questions. She threw up her head in open challenge. ‘As a matter of fact, it does!’
‘I think you should go to bed.’ Angelo rose gracefully from his chair. ‘This conversation ends here.’
She sprang upright, her cheeks flaming. ‘You haven’t answered me!’
‘And I’m not likely to...in the mood that you are in now.’
He walked out of the dining-room. She followed him to the door. ‘We’ve only been married for eight hours and I’m bored stiff!’ she flung.
He swung back, cast her a glittering, hard smile. ‘I would hate to be the only one suffering.’
That hurt. That hurt much more than she could have believed. She cried herself to sleep. What had she wanted? What had she expected? Reassurance, tenderness, affection. Only a man in love would give her those responses. And Angelo didn’t love her. It was their wedding-night, and because sex was out of the question he didn’t bother coming near her at all. Eight hours and already she was wondering if she had made the greatest mistake of her life.
He apologised over breakfast. Very smoothly. In fact, he had a positive spring in his step and he smiled several times over nothing in particular. He told her that he would be back for dinner, reminded her yet again that he could be reached at all times by his mobile phone, and strode out to the helicopter that had arrived to pick him up.
He was less stiff over dinner that evening. For some reason, he was in an utterly charming mood. He suggested outrageous names for the baby, informed her that he was taking time off to accompany her to all her check-ups and dragged her upstairs to view the room he had decided would best suit as a nursery. They argued amicably about that. She went to bed that night, frantically wondering what had brought about his altered mood and hoping that it would last.
It did. Over the next three weeks, Angelo took part in every aspect of preparing for a new baby. He looked at the wallpaper books, wandered through nursery furniture displays and was quite touchingly astounded at the tiny size of newborn clothing.
Four days after that, Kelda went into labour. She did not initially appreciate that the increasing ache in her back was anything to worry about. By the time that she did, it was too late to give Angelo sufficient warning to get back from Glasgow, where he was involved with an international conference.
She gave birth at the local cottage hospital and not the fancy clinic Angelo had expected her to use. Her labour only lasted two hours and she was delighted, only slightly miffed when she heard the middle-aged midwife say something about ‘good childbearing hips'! Angelo arrived long after the excitement was over.
‘Don’t you think you could have given me more warning?’ he drawled from the threshold of her room.
‘I didn’t get much warning either.’ She sat up, flushed and tired
but consumed with pride. ‘Look at her,’ she demanded.
Angelo was very pale. He tiptoed over to the side of the cot and peered in. Their daughter chose that moment to squall. ‘Terrific lungs,’ he murmured, searching the tiny infuriated face. ‘My hair, your nose...’
Her heart sunk. Was he searching for Rossetti genes? Was there still a shadow of doubt? Almost defensively, Kelda reached for her baby. ‘She’s got your eyes.’
‘I suppose you didn’t call me in time because you didn’t really want me here,’ Angelo asserted without a flicker of expression.
‘There wasn’t time!’
But she could see that he didn’t believe her. And, if she was honest, she wouldn’t have wanted him in the delivery-room. In the current state of their relationship, she would have shrunk from sharing something that intimate.
Was he disappointed that she wasn’t a boy? He sank down on the edge of the bed and reached for a tiny hand, awkwardly traced a little froglike leg. He studied their child intently and wiped quite unselfconsciously at his dampened eyes. ‘May I hold her?’
When he replaced her in the cot, he stared back at Kelda, fierce emotion unhidden in his golden gaze. ‘No matter what happens between us in the future...thank you for her.’
Kelda had to bow her head to hide her tears. She had somehow expected him to put his arms around her, maybe even kiss her, but he didn’t touch her at all. The only female in the room that Angelo couldn’t keep his hands off weighed less than seven pounds, and if she cried she got instant attention. Kelda had never experienced a more savage sense of rejection.
CHAPTER TEN
‘ALICE, my darling, you have it made!’ Gina exclaimed, taking in the full glory of the nursery suite with astonished eyes. ‘Is there anything you haven’t bought this child yet, Kelda? A solid gold toothbrush in waiting for the first tooth?’
‘Ask Angelo,’ Kelda suggested rather tightly, returning her daughter to her four-poster cot. ‘The world’s biggest shopper at Hamley’s.’
‘And you’re complaining? Some men don’t want anything to do with their kids—’
‘Nobody will ever angle that accusation at Angelo.’
‘Do I sense a sour note in paradise?’
Kelda straightened with a fixed smile. ‘No. Maybe I’m just a little tired.’
Gina giggled. ‘Burning the candle at both ends?’ she teased. ‘New baby and a new marriage hardly out of the honeymoon phase. No wonder you’ve got shadows!’
Kelda forced a laugh. She wasn’t tempted to weep on a friendly shoulder. The truth was so hideously humiliating. Alice was seven weeks old and their marriage hadn’t even been consummated. Angelo had his bedroom; she had hers. No floorboards creaked in the middle of the night. Angelo clearly had his sights set on an annulment, rather than a divorce.
‘If I didn’t have Russ, I’d be green with envy!’ Gina sighed helplessly. ‘He’s gorgeous, super-rich and crazy about Alice.’
Alice was all they shared. Alice was all they talked about in any depth. If Kelda hadn’t adored her daughter with equal intensity, she would have been enduring agonies of jealousy. As it was, she felt disturbingly used. Angelo had wanted his child to carry his name. Angelo had wanted to ensure that he had maximum rights over that same child and those rights were only granted by the institution of marriage.
Angelo had persuaded her into marriage for very good reasons. But they all related to Alice. Kelda might have found it possible to forgive him for that to some extent had he not pretended that he wanted her equally. She felt sick inside when she recalled how much that belief had encouraged her to hope that they could have a real marriage. She had been so mortifyingly certain that Angelo found her ragingly desirable...until she married him. Now, she knew different.
And it was time she did something about it, she acknowledged unhappily. Time she took charge of her own future again. She had tried marriage to Angelo and she didn’t like it. That was all she had ever promised to do. She did not need Angelo to survive. Ella Donaldson had called last month and had intimated that Kelda could virtually dictate terms for a new contract should she wish to enter the modelling world again.
Angelo was very entertaining over dinner. Russ and Gina were most impressed. Kelda’s temper rose steadily throughout the meal. When she dined with Angelo alone, he was polite and distant. As soon as her friends had departed, Angelo strode off to the library which he used as an office. Five minutes later, Kelda decided to invade his privacy.
Angelo was not deep in work as she had expected. He was standing by the fireplace with a large whiskey in his hand, his darkly handsome features shadowed and taut.
‘We need to talk,’ Kelda said tightly, suppressing the sizzling leap of awareness which always consumed her near Angelo. In the past two months she had learnt to be ashamed of that sexual frisson.
He offered her a drink which she declined.
Kelda breathed in deeply. Pride demanded that she make the first move to the break. ‘I think we should go for an annulment as soon as possible.’
‘I beg your pardon?’ Angelo said very quietly, narrowed dark eyes nailed to her with perceptible force.
Kelda wandered over to the window, her body tensing in response to the thickening atmosphere. ‘Look, this isn’t working for either of us,’ she pointed out in a driven rush. ‘I’ll move out—’
‘You take Alice from this house over my dead body,’ Angelo spelt out dangerously softly.
‘You can see as much of her as you like. I’ll be going back to work anyway,’ Kelda told him.
‘Really?’
She flushed. ‘Why the hell shouldn’t I if I want to?’
‘Country life too quiet for you?’
She was tempted to tell him that it was the nights. ‘We don’t have a real marriage,’ she muttered jerkily.
‘I can change that any time you care to ask.’
Kelda flinched from his sarcasm. ‘I want an annulment and you can’t stop me from getting one!’ she stated, and walked hurriedly back out of the room and upstairs.
There it was done. He hadn’t said much. Then Angelo liked to call his own shots. She had stolen his thunder. Doubtless he had planned for this farce to continue for a few more months. Dear lord, she conceded painfully, she had been so appallingly blind and trusting and stupid...and with Angelo of all people! Angelo was notorious for his calculating, brilliant moves on the international money market.
When he had first mentioned marriage, he had been honest. He had suggested a fake marriage to keep the family happy and give their child his name. A fake marriage and a convincing breakdown followed by separation and divorce. And how had she reacted? She had made it furiously clear that she would not even consider such a hypocritical deception. So Angelo had reinvented his case for marriage in terms calculated to win her acceptance.
She had fallen like a ton of bricks for that line because she loved him, and up until Alice’s birth Angelo had played along. But from that same day, he had changed. Damp-eyed, Kelda slid into the cool embrace of her bed. Her thoughts were in frantic turmoil. Had Angelo actually believed that eventually she would get bored with motherhood and walk away, leaving Alice behind with him? Was that his ultimate goal?
He would acquire Alice, go for an annulment and then remarry someone more suitable. It was Machiavellian...it was Angelo. Since Alice’s birth, he had been trying to freeze her out. All his emotional warmth was fully concentrated on their daughter. He had left Kelda out in the cold. As the door opened, she lifted her head and her emerald eyes opened to their fullest extent.
‘Whatever we end up with, it won’t be an annulment,’ Angelo drawled silkily, glittering dark eyes raking her startled face.
He was wearing a black silk robe and nothing else. In one hand he had an uncorked bottle of champagne, two glasses in the other. Blinking bemusedly, Kelda simply stared as he deftly filled the glasses. He had settled one into her hand before she found her tongue again.
‘What do you thin
k you’re doing in here?’
Angelo cast off the robe without a shade of inhibition. For a split-second her gaze was involuntarily welded to the lean, dark magnificence of his powerful physique. Hot colour drenched her complexion as he pushed back the sheet and slid gracefully into bed beside her.
‘Angelo...’
He brushed his glass against hers. ‘Say goodbye to months of sexual abstinence,’ he murmured. ‘If this is what you want, I am more than willing to oblige.’
‘What I want?’ She gave a sudden gasp of shock as he quite deliberately angled his glass over one pouting breast almost completely bared by the slipping sheet and let champagne drip over her heated flesh. ‘A-Angelo!’ Her own glass dropped from her nerveless fingers and fell soundlessly on the floor.
‘I would hate to think your boredom might extend to what I intend to do to you in bed,’ Angelo breathed, hauling the sheet down with a determined hand and tipping her roughly back against the pillows.
‘Stop it! I don’t want this!’ she cried, so shocked she had trouble framing the words.
‘You’ve been gasping for it for weeks. You think I don’t know that? Do you fondly imagine that I can’t tell when a woman wants me?’
‘You swine!’ she launched, beside herself with rage and disbelief.
He bent his dark head and found the lush dampness of her nipple and her whole body jerked in electrified excitement. Her hands squeezed into fists as she fought the raw overload on her senses. It had been so long and she wanted him so badly. She could feel herself quaking on the edge of that wildness he had roused in her before. It was terrifyingly intense.
He followed the sweet trail of the champagne down over her quivering stomach and she made a sudden grab at his hair. ‘No!’
But his hands were on her thighs and he had already discovered just how weak she really was. She was tender and damp.
‘Evidently I wasn’t the only one seething with silent lust over dinner,’ Angelo murmured huskily, letting the tip of his tongue track the clenched muscles on her inner thigh until she trembled and shook and completely forgot that she was supposed to be fighting him off.
