When she came back, though, dressed, her hair contained in a simple knot at her nape, she found the room neat and tidy.
Rafe was standing by the window, looking big and dark and forbidding, with that black scowl on his face. But the moment he saw her he smiled, albeit grimly, and came over to her side.
‘OK?’ he asked.
She nodded, knowing she shouldn’t be allowing this to happen, but somehow unable to find the strength to put up any more opposition.
Rafe was right about one thing—he was the only person she felt she could share the torment with because he had been the one to instigate it in the first place.
‘Leave the talking to me,’ he advised as he turned her towards the bedroom door.
She didn’t answer—couldn’t have if she’d tried—but she nodded. She had to trust in him to be the sane one. It was the only way she could cope right now.
They went to the sitting room.
Her aunt, her face red and swollen with crying, looked nothing like the bright, happy, if over-excited woman Shaan had watched leave for the church earlier today. Gone was the hyacinth-blue dress she had been wearing, and the huge, frivolous hat Shaan and her uncle had teased her about the day she had brought it home and showed them.
She came to her feet as they entered, still so shaken that she needed her husband’s help to do so. And suddenly they looked old and frail, so utterly unable to cope with the horror and emotion of it all.
For nine years of her life these two people had loved and cared for her, taken up the responsibility of Tariq and Mary Saketa’s child after she’d been left orphaned by a dreadful accident. Even though they had been well into their fifties then, and unused to having children around them, they had been good and loving towards her, had given her everything it was in their power to give her, put their own lives on hold for her sake, and been happy to do it.
Seeing Shaan safely married to Piers had meant the end of their commitment to her. And while she had been busy planning her wedding day, these two wonderful people had been just as excitedly planning their dream world cruise like two teenagers set free from parental control at last.
And Rafe was right, she couldn’t spoil that for them as well.
‘Shaan…’ Her aunt’s hoarse and trembling voice brought fresh tears to Shaan’s eyes as she hurried forward to gather her into her arms.
‘I’m all right,’ she assured her, closing her eyes because she couldn’t bear all this. Couldn’t bear their pain along with her own pain. ‘Really I am.’ Over the top over her aunt’s soft grey head, Shaan looked at her uncle. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she whispered, unable to stop herself from saying it.
Rafe moved up beside her, his hand slipping around her waist in an act of grim support. ‘Mr Lester…’
‘I hope your brother has it in him to feel shame for what he’s done today,’ Shaan’s uncle said tightly.
‘With all respect, sir,’ Rafe came back politely, ‘my brother was at liberty to change his mind right until the last moment—just as Shaan was at liberty to change hers also,’ he added succinctly.
‘Oh, my poor child!’ her aunt sobbed, and, using what was left of her depleted banks of energy, Shaan helped her back to the sofa, aware that she was unable to support herself for very much longer.
Rafe let her go, his hand dropping to his side as he stood watching the gentle way Shaan seated both herself and her aunt before gathering the older woman close while she cried softly.
‘Nevertheless, he should be made to face up to his obligations,’ Shaan’s uncle continued, aiming the blunt criticism directly at Rafe. ‘If only in his duty to let my niece down less cruelly than waiting until she was ready to leave for the church before pulling this treachery!’
‘In this case, I’m afraid that kind of duty doesn’t count,’ Rafe replied, his grim gaze not reacting to the outright attack. ‘You see,’ he went on coolly, ‘my brother refused to marry Shaan because he had discovered that she is in love with me.’
* * *
Shaan leaned her head back against the soft leather headrest and closed her weary eyes. She had never felt so drained and empty in her whole life.
Rafe drove the car in silence, grim faced and withdrawn now the worst of it was over. Oh, he had been very clever, very alert all the way through the ordeal. He had not allowed her to be spoken to alone, he had not even allowed her uncle to question her on any of Rafe’s tersely delivered statements.
And, oddly, her uncle had seemed to respect the way Rafe had been determined to protect what he was now claiming as his own.
Rafe had just told them in crisp, simple English that he and Shaan had fallen in love on their first meeting, that the two of them had been trying to fight their feelings ever since, and that—as her uncle would expect of her—Shaan had refused to turn back from a marriage she felt already committed to. In the end, out of desperation, Rafe had said, he himself had approached his own brother to plead with him on their behalf only that morning.
That Piers had, of course, backed out of marrying a woman who was in love with his own brother was perhaps only natural under the circumstances, they’d been told. He was sorry for all the heartache and embarrassment they had caused everyone, he’d gone on. But he was not sorry for stopping the wedding from taking place.
Rafe had then calmly told them tha
t he was now going to take Shaan away and marry her himself, quietly, and that, like themselves, they intended leaving the country on a long honeymoon until the fuss died down.