‘I’m warning you, Madeline,’ he said huskily as he lifted his grim gaze back to her. ‘Stop right there before this gets entirely out of hand.’
Too furious to listen, too humiliated to care, and in the unusual position of being out of control of a situation, she couldn’t stop the bitter words tumbling from her trembling lips. ‘And I’m warning you,’ she breathed. The sobs already racking her distraught frame, she delivered an ultimatum which really should have put an end to it all. ‘You walk out of here now, and I shall have your replacement here before you even reach home!’
‘Is that so?’ he drawled, and suddenly she was afraid of him, cringing back against the pillows, thinking he was going to murder her by the look she saw glin
ting in those hard grey eyes. But all he did was bend and pick up the ring, then stand there twisting it thoughtfully between finger and thumb before glancing back at her. ‘You know where to find me—and this, Madeline, when you’re ready to apologise.’ And he pocketed the ring and turned away.
‘I mean it—I mean it!’ she screamed at his retreating back.
‘So do I,’ she heard him mutter grimly as he disappeared from view.
As threatened, too proud to back down, and just too stupid to recognise when she was beaten, within the hour Madeline had the house full of friends, throwing herself into the gaiety of the party with an inflamed defiance spurring her on.
Perhaps, by morning, the bitter flames would have burned themselves out. Perhaps, if she’d been allowed to work off the terrible devils gnawing inside her, then she could have gone cap in hand to Dominic and begged forgiveness. But things didn’t turn out that way. Instead, it was Dominic who took the initiative to return that night, Dominic who walked in to find the Gilburn house in the throes of a party even Madeline’s long-suffering family would have been shocked by.
The front door was off the latch so Dominic only had to walk in, enter the dimly lit drawing-room where the reek of cigarette smoke and alcohol told its own story. He only had to flick on the overhead light and see a dozen or so bewildered faces turn his way, see Madeline stretched out on the sofa with the young man she had been dating before Dominic, her face flushed, her soft mouth swollen from another man’s kisses, the incriminating shirt riding high on her silken thighs. His oddly blank gaze remained fixed on her for a long nerve-crackling moment, then he simply turned around and walked right out of the house again.
She rushed after him, knowing with a cold feeling that struck deep into the core of her that this time she had sunk beyond redemption with this last defiance. She caught him at his car, and it was there, in the quiet darkness of the night, with the width of the black Ferrari between them, that Dominic delivered the utter and complete slaying of her character. He did it without pause for breath, or by raising his voice beyond a harsh whisper. And she received it all without offering a single word in her own defence.
She had no defence. She had realised that even as she’d run desperately after him. She knew it as she stood there staring at his cold, contemptuous face and listened to the words spilling out from his hard, ruthless lips.
By the time her family returned home, they found her so sunk in misery that it took some urgent sleuthing to find out what had happened.
Conscience alone would not allow her to leave things there. She tried to ring him, only to be told he had gone away again and wasn’t expected back until the night of the country club ball.
Within days, everyone in the area knew how Madeline Gilburn had been caught red-handed by Dominic Stanton in the arms of another man. The scandal was sensational. She didn’t dare go out of the house because of the accusing looks she received. In everyone’s eyes she had, of course, run true to form and behaved appallingly. And she suspected that most were pleased to have their worst expectations about her confirmed.
‘Wait until the ball; he’ll be ready to listen then,’ those who cared about her advised. ‘He loves you, Madeline. Dominic will come around eventually.’
So she spent the following week living for the night of the ball, knowing Dominic would have to be there since his parents had taken on the task of organising it all this year.
Perhaps if Vicky had been home and able to talk some sense into her then she would not have walked herself right into her own public crucifixion. But Vicky was away at university—a thing Madeline had turned down when she fell in love with Dominic. So Vicky was blithely unaware of the utter mess her best friend had made of her romance with her brother.
The night of the ball arrived, and Edward Gilburn worriedly watched his daughter as she came down the stairs towards him, dressed like a princess in a ballgown of the palest lime silk. Its fitted heart-shaped bodice curved the sensual swell of her breasts and nipped in to her narrow waist. And the full-length skirt was just a fine billow of layer upon layer of fine silk chiffon. She had left her hair down so it fell in glistening waves around her shoulders. She looked beautiful, frighteningly fragile, with no amount of make-up managing to hide the ravages of the last week. The only part of her seeming to be alive were her eyes, which glowed wide and dark in her pale face.
They arrived at the club to find they were one of the last to do so. And the first thing she saw was Dominic dancing with a beautiful blonde creature dressed in blood-red velvet.
Jealousy ripped through her. Nina’s hand closing tightly on her own icy cold one made her aware of the avid looks she was receiving. The air was as tight as a drum, everyone expecting a spectacular Madeline Gilburn scene, maliciously hoping she would run true to form and challenge Dominic right there in the ballroom.
‘It’s all right,’ she murmured to Nina at her worried glance. ‘I’m not going to do anything.’
And, to be fair, she didn’t. Ignoring the tension which eddied around with her, she mingled with the crowd, chatted lightly, smiled a lot, and made a point of going to say hello to Dominic’s parents, who were equally determined to pretend nothing untoward had happened. They welcomed her with hugs and kisses as they always did, and she stood beside them for several minutes talking about God knew what—she had an idea that even the Stantons didn’t know what passed between them.
Slowly the room began to relax, and she continued to circulate with all the light-hearted innocence of an unexploded bomb. All the time, her consciousness was fixed on Dominic—where he was, what he was doing—her heart beating hectically, her lungs aching with the effort it took to drag air past her constricted throat.
She was therefore limp with relief when after a dreadful hour of him completely ignoring her presence he came over to her and coolly drew her on to the dance-floor.
She went in his arms without a single word, mouth dry, eyes over-bright, skin tingling where his hands rested upon her.
‘I am dancing with you only because my father requested I do it to avoid more scandal,’ he informed her bluntly as he swung her away. ‘So don’t read anything into this which is not there.’
‘I love you, Dominic,’ she whispered huskily.
‘You don’t know the first meaning of the word!’ he jeered. ‘It’s over between us, Madeline,’ he informed her coldly, ‘so just be a good girl for once in your wretched life, and don’t cause a scene—for our families’ sake if not for our own.’
‘Won’t you at least let me say I’m sorry?’ she pleaded with him, terrified at the look of granite-hard coldness on his face. ‘I think I went a little mad the other night, I—’
‘I don’t wish to know,’ he cut in. ‘I find your juvenile antics wearying to say the least. Stick to your own kind from now on, Madeline, is my advice to you. Leave the big boys alone and go and play with the young ones like the one you were offering yourself to the other night. They may fumble and have little finesse, but they’ll give you the quick kind of thrill that’s all you seem to need before moving on to the next experience, the next new kick!’