‘You betrayed me,’ she whispered.
‘No, I didn’t,’ André denied.
‘Where’s Raoul?’ she asked next.
‘In Australia.’ He seemed prepared to answer her questions as they came. ‘He’s been there for the last twelve months.’
There was a significant reason why he’d offered up that last piece of information, but Samantha did not have the ability to work out what that reason was right now. She was too busy remembering other things: painful truths with wretched conclusions.
‘He tried to rape me, right here in this house,’ she murmured thickly. ‘And you let him get away with it.’
No reply came back to answer that particular charge, she noticed. And she found she wasn’t really surprised. When André had stopped himself from finishing his sentence this morning it had not been his stepfather he had been about to declare his love for—but his half-brother, Raoul.
Raoul, the younger one, the spoiled one, the mean and shrewd, manipulatively sly one… Though big brother was not above being manipulatively sly himself, she recalled.
The tears attempted to flood again. Lodging them back into her throat, she reached out and with trembling fingers picked up the set of angrily discarded papers. Not once had she looked at André since they’d faced each other across the swimming pool, and she didn’t attempt to do so now as she turned to offer the papers to him.
‘These belong to you,’ she said. ‘Raoul gave them to me.’
Lean brown fingers slowly took them from her. Her heart felt sluggish as she watched those fingers begin flicking through the copied pieces of evidence documenting the events leading up to André Visconte gaining full ownership of the Bressingham Hotel—on the same day that he’d married Samantha Bressingham.
‘Quite a dowry, when you think about it.’ She smiled on a tight piece of self-derision. ‘The Bressingham came really quite cheap for you, didn’t it?’
‘Don’t make judgements when you are not in possession of the full facts,’ he grimly advised.
‘You mean I still have some more ugly memories to look forward to? How nice.’
‘Not all of them are ugly.’
‘They are from where I’m standing,’ she said, and walked away, out of the room and across the hall then up the stairs.
As she travelled along the upper landing she passed by the door to Raoul’s room. Last time she had stepped through that door she had gone to confront him about those papers. Now she was glad the door was locked. She never wanted to cross its threshold ever again.
Shutting herself in the bedroom, she stood for a moment with her face covered by her hands. Her insides were trembling and her flesh was shivering, and her head was aching so badly she wanted to crawl beneath the duvet and go to sleep.
But that was exactly what she had been doing for the last twelve months, she told herself. She had been sleeping to hide away from the ugly truth that she had fallen in love with a man who had deceived and lied to her right from the start.
Their whirlwind courtship and hasty marriage had been a smooth, slick manoeuvre on his part to seal the deal of any hotelier’s dreams of gaining possession of the Bressingham. And why had that been? she asked, slowly sliding her hands away from her face to stare bleakly at this next ugly truth.
Because the Bressingham was special. No one would ever try to dispute that. Old as it was, and tired as it was, it possessed a reputation for old-world grace and charm that had been capturing the hearts of anyone who walked into it for the last one hundred and fifty years.
Mention the Bressingham and people’s eyes lit up, no matter where in the world it was that you mentioned it. It was that well known, that warmly thought of. That special.
It was why Stefan Reece’s eyes had lit up when he’d mentioned the Bressingham. And it was also why he had directed his comments about the hotel directly to Samantha. Family-owned and run, from the day it had opened its doors to its first paying guests. And Samantha was now the last living member of that family.
But none of that silly, soft sentimentality gave the reason why people like André and Stefan Reece would do almost anything to own the Bressingham. No, for them its importance lay in two very simple elements.
Its premier location in a premier city and, quite simply, its name.
To buy the Bressingham name was to buy a dead-cert winner. So if push came to shove, and the daughter had to be bought along with the name, then, what the hell, why not? She was young, she was good-looking, she was great in bed.
‘Oh, God, I hate myself.’ Samantha groaned, and pushed her hands to her face again—only to drag them away almost immediately when a knock came at the door.
Nausea clawed at her stomach. ‘Go to hell,’ she said, and forced herself to move, walking on stiff legs into the bathroom.
She heard him try the door handle as she was shutting herself away, and wasn’t surprised he’d ignored what she’d said. The man was immune to other people’s feelings. Which was why she had locked the bedroom door so he couldn’t come in. In that way, at least, she knew the man. He was no coward when it came to facing problems.
As opposed to herself, she likened sombrely. She had made a wretched vocation out of refusing to face hers!