They barely spoke at all. At least not about anything important. And because he had vowed that he wouldn’t touch her until he believed he had the right, all other forms of communication were closed to them too.
‘Your mother wants everything to be perfect.’
‘I know.’
Luis’s sigh was low, despondent, and his bronze eyes clouded as he stared at the floor.
‘She’s putting her heart and soul into this wedding because it will be the only one,’ he said, unknowingly reviving memories of the way the duke had spoken earlier. ‘She always dreamed of planning Diego’s wedding too.’
‘That must be hard for all of you.’
Something had put an edge into her voice, drawing his frowning gaze to her face, but she simply returned his look with a blank one of her own as she continued.
‘I know how you felt about your brother. It must have been a terrible day for you all when he died.’
‘I thought my father would never recover.’
Luis raked his free hand through the black silk of his hair, the shiny black strands catching the sunlight as they fell back over his high forehead.
‘Since then I’ve felt I’ve had to be both sons for him.’
‘He’s looked better recently. Brighter and happier.’
‘He sees the hope of a future and that gives him something to keep going for. You’ve done that for him.’
‘Not just me—it’s both of us together. And the wedding.’
She flexed shoulders that were tight with tension and closed her eyes briefly against the sting of tears. She would have given the world not to believe what Catalina had told her, but with every word that Luis spoke the dread grew darker, her fears stronger that the Spanish woman had spoken nothing but the truth.
‘You’re not enjoying it?’ Luis had misinterpreted the reasons for her low spirits. ‘I would have thought that for any woman the chance to have a wedding dress specially designed by a Paris couturier, a wedding in a cathedral, would be like a dream come true.’
The dream come true, Isabelle reflected sadly, would be to know that the man she was marrying loved her as much as she loved him. With that, the simplest, most inexpensive wedding would be perfect, and without it all the money in the world couldn’t provide compensation for what was missing.
‘For some people, perhaps,’ she said slowly, keeping her eyes lowered so as not to have to look into his darkly devastating face. ‘But if you want to know the truth, then I much preferred our first wedding in that little chapel in York.’
‘Walking to the church in the rain?’ Frank disbelief rang in Luis’s voice, stilling the restless movement of Isabelle’s hand on the arm of her chair.
‘It was only a little shower. Not even a drizzle really.’
And she had been so happy that she hadn’t noticed the weather at all. The sky might have been dull and grey but in her heart there had been nothing but sunshine and her feet had felt as if they weren’t touching the ground, as if she were floating down the damp pavements towards her destiny.
‘And I was so thrilled when I found that dress in a boutique sale. What?’ she asked in some surprise when his head came up, bronze eyes fixed on her face.
‘I was just remembering how wonderful you looked in it,’ Luis told her, his voice rough as if it came from a painfully dry throat. ‘So beautiful, so fresh and innocent.’
Even when he had thought he hated her, he had never been able to erase from his mind the memory of that moment when he had turned and seen her walking down the aisle of the tiny chapel, wearing the simple white cotton dress, carrying a single rose by way of a bouquet. Her golden hair had gleamed in a soft halo around her glowing face, her lips had been curved into a smile of pure delight, and her eyes had never looked so brilliant, shining a wonderful, emerald green.
‘Your Paris designer is going to have to work hard to do any better.’
‘I don’t think he’ll do better—it’ll just be different. In the same way that this reception for five hundred will be so different from…’
‘From the picnic by the river?’ Luis supplied when, overcome by memory, she couldn’t supply the words. ‘That was something else.’
‘At—at least the sun had come out by then.’
The darkness in his eyes was tying her nerves into tight, painful knots. Looking into his handsome face now, she was suddenly taken back to that day, remembering the happiness, the hope for the future, she had felt then.
‘I couldn’t believe my luck,’ Luis went on, his voice growing even deeper on each word. ‘I kept looking across at you and thinking— She’s my wife. That’s my wife.’