And the Bride Wore Black

by Helen Brooks

  The probing tongue reached deeper now with each return to her mouth, tasting the sweetness within greedily before leaving to burn a fiery trail over her upturned face and throat, his hands moving over her body with sure knowledge of how to please as he brought forth little whimpers of exquisite pain. She had never felt like this in her life, as though a blazing inferno was eating her up, but even as the storm of passion carried her along she knew it was a calculated exercise on his part, and despair at her vulnerability gnawed at her pride.

  ‘There, now.’ As he raised his head she lay for a moment stunned in his arms before opening dazed blue eyes as he rose slowly to his feet. ‘Before you give out your orders to me again just think long and hard, would you, about who wants what?’ The honey-brown eyes raked her flushed face mockingly as he walked towards the door. ‘I’m not some sort of animal waiting to leap on you and have my wicked way, angel-face. If I had wanted you it wouldn’t have been rape, would it?’ He turned at the door and surveyed her once again as she sat up hastily, smoothing her hair with shaking, numb fingers. ‘I happen to feel it would be necessary for you to want me as much as I want you before anything would happen, and I don’t mean just in the physical sense.’ The eyes were razor-sharp now. ‘When you come to me it will be because you want to, heart, mind and body.’

  ‘Never.’ The whisper was faint, but he heard it, and the handsome face hardened.

  ‘Never is a long time, little girl.’

  As the door closed behind him Fabia sat in front of the hot, leaping flames, feeling icy cold right through, her thoughts spinning in a whirling circle of confusion. She had known he could be ruthless but the cold-blooded determination he had displayed in setting out to prove to her that she was defenceless against him had unnerved her more than she had thought possible.

  ‘I don’t understand you, Alexander Cade,’ she murmured into the empty room after long, slow minutes had ticked by in the stillness broken only by the crackle of the burning coal. She wanted to think he had been trying to humiliate her, crush her; that would fall into line with what she thought of him, and yet...

  Her mind ground to a halt. He could have had her tonight, they both knew that, and he hadn’t. It hadn’t been because he didn’t want to either; the hard firm body pressed so close to hers had revealed his thrusting desire too clearly for that. Did she believe him when he said that he wanted her to want him in the way he had described, and, if so, why? Why not be content with her body and leave it at that? She brushed her hand across her eyes and saw it was wet with tears, and yet she hadn’t been aware she was weeping. She didn’t understand him!

  Much later, as she lay in the warm softness of her bed, her eyes seeking the darkness for an answer to her despair, bitter memories of Robin’s cruelty crept unbidden into the confusion. She had trusted him implicitly, and was he really any different from Alex in what he wanted? Alex had already said that the main reason for her being here was because he wanted no entanglements, no romantic involvement to complicate his busy life once the Christmas season was over. Why was she even considering trusting him? Once she had served her purpose he would return to Susan and her kind without a backward glance.

  Susan... She pictured the brunette’s long, glossy dark hair and deep green eyes with their thick black lashes and shivered despite the warmth of the covers. And there were the children too. Alex clearly adored them and Susan knew it.

  She turned over in the bed, bringing the pillow down on her head as though it could shut out the thoughts that were tormenting her. It was hopeless, absolutely hopeless.

  * * *

  She rose early the next morning before the rest of the household was awake, taking a long leisurely shower before washing her hair and drying it slowly, brushing its sleek richness into shining golden waves. Somehow she needed to look her best the next time she saw him. She applied light, careful make-up before donning tight, figure-hugging trousers in a soft cream wool and a big baggy fluffy jumper of the same shade. It was a casual outfit but one she knew complemented her colouring perfectly, and she needed all the help she could get today. Later, at the party... She forced her mind away from Susan with dogged determination.

  Alex appeared briefly at breakfast, his face tight and restrained, and then closed himself in his study with terse instructions that he wasn’t to be disturbed. ‘Is everything all right, Miss Fabia?’ Mary asked anxiously as she bustled in with fresh coffee mid-morning as Fabia sat idly looking through a stack of magazines in the main drawing-room.

  ‘I suppose so, Mary,’ Fabia said as lightly as she could, ‘but to be honest I’m bored out of my mind without something to do. Alex is busy and Isabella is still sleeping and I’m just not used to doing nothing.’ She smiled wryly at the little housekeeper. ‘I’d never make one of the idle rich, would I?’

  ‘I don’t know about that, Miss Fabia, but you could do the flowers for the party tonight if you really do want something to do. Jenny is rushed off her feet with the amount of cooking there’s still to do and I’m tied up with a million and one last-minute details. It’d really be a help if you wouldn’t mind.’

  ‘Would it?’ Fabia smiled delightedly. ‘I’d love to. Lead me to them.’ Anything to keep her mind from the destructive circle it seemed intent on following, she thought gratefully.

  By mid-afternoon all the preparations were complete and with Isabella installed in the drawing-room ready to greet the first guests Fabia hurried upstairs to change. She hadn’t seen Alex since morning. He had ordered sandwiches and coffee in the study at lunchtime and she understood he had paid a brief visit to his grandmother’s room before lunch, but apart from that he was incommunicado.

  It was as she was finishing putting the last touches to her make-up that the light knock sounded at the door, and, thinking it was Mary or Christine with a message from Isabella, she called a cheerful ‘come in’ as she turned round on the tiny dressing-table stool.

  ‘I wanted a word with you before we go downstairs.’ Alex stood in the doorway, devastatingly handsome in an off-white lounge suit with pale blue shirt and tie, his long hair slicked back and his golden-brown eyes glinting strangely.

  ‘Oh...’ She stared at him mesmerised as he walked towards her, stopping a foot or so away and leaning against the wall as he took in her slender shape in the dark wine cocktail dress she had decided to wear for the evening’s gaiety. She had twisted her hair into a casual knot on the top of her head, leaving several silky floating strands of hair wisping about her neck, the diamond pendant lying in the hollow of her throat like a piercingly beautiful teardrop.

  ‘I think an apology is in order.’ For a crazy moment she thought he was asking that she apologise to him, and then he cleared his throat slowly and spoke again. ‘I’m sorry for acting in such a...cavalier way last night, Fabia. It was unforgivable and it won’t happen again. I thought when I brought you here that you would understand—’ He stopped abruptly. ‘That you would see—’ He stopped again and swore softly. ‘Suffice it to say I won’t be troubling you with my unwelcome intentions again. OK?’

  It wasn’t, but she couldn’t explain to him what she didn’t understand herself, and she merely nodded slowly as he inclined his head towards her and strode from the room, shutting the door firmly behind him. She took a long deep breath before turning slowly on the delicate little stool and looking at her reflection in the long, ornate mirror. That was that, then. She had sensed that he had reached some sort of decision. Maybe he would ask her to leave early tomorrow, but then how could he explain such action to Isabella? She shut her eyes for a moment and swayed back and forwards with her arms tight around her waist as a shaft of pure agony pierced her heart. She didn’t want to leave him. The thought shocked her with its fierceness and she opened bruised blue eyes to stare reproachfully at the pale, slim girl in the mirror. ‘Don’t be so pathetic,’ she said softly. ‘You go down there now and you act like you’ve never acted before. None of this is real, it never was.’

  As the
guests began to arrive she was aware, as she stood by Isabella’s side, that she was waiting for just one beautiful face in the throng that was slowly filling the huge house. She saw the children before she saw Susan, Gemma looking like a little angel in a frothy party dress of white velvet and Jeremy trying to act the man in a small cream suit with a little red dicky-bow. They looked delightful...and they were, she thought miserably. How someone like Susan came to have such warm, natural children she would never know. The answer to that was revealed later as she watched Susan’s parents attend to their grandchildren’s needs while Susan floated about in an elegant swirl of dark green silk, looking as though she had spent all day getting ready—which she probably had, Fabia thought tightly.

  ‘Their father adored them,’ Isabella said softly in her ear at one point early into the party as she watched the children standing dutifully by the side of their grandparents, their small hands clasped in those of the grown-ups. ‘They were the only bright spots in the poor man’s life once he’d taken Susan on,’ she carried on quietly. ‘She made poor William’s life hell.’

  ‘Did she?’ Fabia looked sharply at the old lady, who smiled at her understandingly.

  ‘Anything in trousers, my dear,’ Isabella said blithely, unaware of how incongruous the term sounded on her lips. ‘Poor William was sent to an early grave.’

  ‘She called him poor William,’ Fabia said thoughtfully, making up her mind in that instant that she was going to stand no nonsense from Susan tonight. Or any other time, if it came to it!

  ‘Crocodile tears, my dear,’ the old lady said firmly. ‘The girl’s bad all through.’ Fabia glanced at the tiny figure affectionately. Like a true Italian Isabella loved and hated with equal passion; there was nothing lukewarm about her emotions even at her great age.

  Within minutes Alex appeared at her side and remained close by for the next hour or two although Fabia got the distinct impression that it was more to further Isabella’s pipe-dreams than any wish to be near to her. She couldn’t quite place what was missing in that cool gold gaze, but something had gone and she felt the loss.

  It was when they were called into the huge dining-room for the buffet tea that she heard the middle-aged couple in front of her discussing Susan, and once Alex’s name had been mentioned she was powerless to walk away although she knew instinctively that she wouldn’t like what she was about to hear.

  ‘Such sweet children, after all, and dear Alex appears to love them dearly,’ the overdressed matron on the right was gushing enthusiastically, her mauve-tinted hair clashing horribly with the shocking-pink dress she had squeezed her ample figure into.

  ‘Oh, I know...’ The other woman was more conserva-tively dressed but equally vehement in her love of gossip. ‘It would be so nice for Susan to be married again and the little ones to have a daddy, wouldn’t it?’ She smiled a slow smile. ‘After all,’ she whispered in a loud hiss, ‘it’s plain they’ve been more than friends for years. Susan is never off the doorstep when Alex is home.’

  ‘Oh, my dear, you know the story of course,’ the ‘pink’ lady said in tones that stated clearly she knew her friend didn’t and that she was going to enjoy immensely the telling of it. ‘About Alex and Susan, I mean?’

  ‘No...?’ The other woman leant forward eagerly, her eyes bright.

  ‘Well, I have it on good authority that before Susan met William she was, well, you know, with Alex. They were going to be married, so the story goes, and then the next minute she ups and takes poor William instead. No one could understand it at the time but now it looks as though it could all turn out all right in the end, doesn’t it?’

  ‘But how long ago—?’

  Fabia turned abruptly and left the two women to their prattling, noticing as she did so that the focus of their tittle-tattle had joined Susan’s parents, lifting a child on to each knee as he smiled at something Susan’s father was saying. As she expected Susan homed in like a nuclear missile, face aglow with triumph as she glanced up and saw Fabia watching the cosy little scene.

  The evening deteriorated rapidly from that point. When Isabella retired to bed shortly after everyone had finished eating, Susan became a veritable octopus, arms wrapped round some part of Alex’s anatomy at every opportunity. Fabia had noticed that the lovely brunette was a little wary of Isabella, probably having felt the lash of her tongue on more than one occasion, she surmised, but with the old lady gone she let her natural boldness have free rein, although Alex seemed quite oblivious to the pathetic display which began to make Fabia feel slightly sick.

  She endured the travesty of a party for another hour or so and then as the clock struck eleven discreetly slipped away from the drawing-room where the main body of people had gathered, escaping to her room as quickly as she could and heaving a long sigh of relief as she shut the door behind her.

  She wanted to scream and shout and lie down and drum her heels on the floor to banish the pain that was threatening to tear her in two, but in the end she did none of those things. Instead she ran a hot bath and soaked for a good hour in the warm comfort of the silky water before slipping into bed just after midnight, immensely relieved now she had had time to think that she hadn’t given way to her natural feminine impulse to enter into a kind of contest and had emerged from the evening with self-respect intact.

  She didn’t know what time it was that Alex woke her, but was suddenly aware of being harshly pulled out of sleep by a hard, furious hand shaking her shoulder at the same time as his clipped voice sounded in her ear. ‘Wake up, young lady! You’ve got some explaining to do.’

  ‘What...?’ She jolted upright, her heart pounding, coming to as she took in her surroundings and saw Alex bent over her, his dark face breathing fire. ‘What on earth do you want and what time is it?’

  ‘What time is it?’ He repeated her words in cold mockery as he stood upright, his eyes searing over her creamy full breasts, revealed clearly through the whisper-thin nightie she was wearing. ‘If you had been where you should be, next to me in full view of all my guests, you would know what damn time it was! Why did you disappear like that?’

  ‘Why did I...?’ She spluttered out of words as sheer unadulterated rage took her over, her anger making her quite unaware of the seductive figure she made as she sat amid the tumbled covers with her hair streaming across her shoulders and her violet eyes huge in her flushed face. ‘You dare to ask me that!’ She knelt up in her rage, her hand going out to strike the handsome face above her, but he caught her wrist in an iron grip as his eyes narrowed.

  ‘No, you don’t, angel-face.’ His grip tightened as she struggled until she gasped with pain. ‘And I repeat my question. Why did you leave the party like that without even telling me you were going? If nothing else it was the height of rudeness.’

  She stared at him angrily without speaking. If he thought she was going to object verbally to him making a fool of himself with Susan he had another think coming. He could do what he liked with whom he liked but she was blowed if she was going to sit and watch like some pathetic little bimbo grateful for crumbs from the great man’s table.

  ‘Well?’ As his gaze lowered to her body she suddenly became aware of just how little she had on at the same time as she realised his breathing had thickened. ‘Are you going to answer me?’

  She pulled the duvet up round her breasts with her free hand, glaring at him ferociously. ‘You’re the one who controls an empire,’ she spat furiously. ‘You figure it out.’

  He held her glance tightly, speaking quietly now through clenched teeth. ‘You drive me to the limit, woman,’ he said thickly. ‘Right at this moment I want to take you until you’re crying out for more, until the things I do to you drive you crazy with desire and there is no one in your world except me.’

  ‘I’d hate you,’ she said bitterly, trying to wrestle her wrist free, and then froze as he laughed softly, his eyes glittering in the dim light.

  ‘You do anyway.’ His gaze lowered again to her body, the duvet
having slipped in her frantic struggles, and suddenly his arm swept round her waist as he pulled her close, his body falling against her on the softness of the bed.

  She wanted to fight him and in those first few seconds she did, silently and with all her might, and then she became aware of the hard muscular thighs pressed close to hers and the trembling that caught hold of her limbs drove all the strength from her body.

  He hadn’t kissed her until that point but now his lips fastened on hers and she felt as though every nerve-ending in her body had been sensitised into one glorious whole. As his hands stroked down her body, ruthlessly determined at first and then, as he sensed her compliance, dizzyingly, erotically soothing, she knew she was lost. She was enthralled by the sensations he invoked so easily, entranced by the sheer heady excitement that he wanted her, wanted her so badly that he was groaning her name against her hot flesh. She hadn’t expected it to feel so right.

  She knew, as his body shuddered against her, that he was holding himself in an iron restraint as he coaxed her desire still further, and the more she responded, the more she gave of herself, the more unhurried and restrained he seemed to be, kissing her face, her throat, her breasts with soft, sensual, undemanding kisses that, even as they reassured, fired her to strain against him in an agony of need.

  ‘Do you understand now, Fabia?’ he whispered softly as he stroked her with long, sensitive movements that caused an exquisite pleasure to pulse in time with her heartbeat. ‘It could be so good, I can make you want me as much as I want you. All you have to do is let me...’ She could barely hear him, her senses disorientated and lost in an explosion of feeling, and as she sighed mindlessly his voice became more insistent.