‘Of course there was more!’
From the black depths of her memories came the unwanted and unwelcome recollection of the night when they had made love. She could hear his voice, rich with dark satisfaction, when he had held her close.
‘Now you know exactly why I want you back.’
Oh, yes, she knew all right.
She had let herself dream of a chance of starting again, of building a future together. But what would that future be based on?
Sex. That was all. She’d even been deceiving herself when she’d let herself call it making love. She knew different now. That deeply satisfied tone had told its own story. It had been rich with dark triumph, smug with the confidence of the conqueror. Luis had wanted her back to please his father, but once he had seen her he had wanted her for himself too. He had admitted as much. And she knew that what he wanted her for was sex.
He didn’t want her as a wife, except in his bed. All he wanted was a warm, responsive body on which to satisfy his own desires, sate his lust. His heart was not involved in any part of this at all.
And she, poor, blind, besotted fool, had been every bit as responsive as he could have wished. She had given him exactly what he wanted. Exactly the sort of wife he had been looking for.
‘Isabella…’
Luis was coming towards her. Hastily she backed away, holding up a hand to stop him.
‘What does it matter why I wanted you back? You are back—and it’s the future that matters from now on. The future we make together.’
He was going to kiss her; she could see it in his eyes. To take her in his arms and kiss all the anger, the defiance out of her. And if he did so then she would be lost. She would never be able to resist him.
‘Don’t touch me!’
Cold and hard, it stopped him dead, and she forced herself to meet the burn of his amber gaze.
‘I don’t want you near me. Is that understood?’
He didn’t move a muscle. Perhaps something flickered in the depths of his eyes, but that was all.
‘Perfectly.’ It matched her tone, ice for ice.
‘I don’t want to talk about this—or anything—any more. I’m going to bed now—alone.’
If he had fought her, she didn’t know what she would have done. But he made no move at all. Just stood and watched her as, with her blonde head held high, her back stiffly straight, she stalked past him and headed up the stairs.
She made it to her bedroom without breaking down. But when she sank down on her bed the tears would not hold back any longer. Too weak, too despairing to care, she gave into them and simply let them fall.
One large drop fell onto her hands as they lay on her lap and
she wiped it away, her gaze going automatically to the beautiful ring that Luis had given her on her first night in the castle.
He might as well have stamped his brand on her skin, she thought bitterly, as burden her with this expensive proof of his possession. It was almost more than she could bear to think that the perfect diamond that gleamed so brilliantly might only be nothing more than a deception, a pretence, making a mockery of everything it stood for. Deep in her heart she knew that she would have welcomed something a quarter the size and a tenth as expensive if only it had come with the certainty of Luis’s love she had once known.
But now it seemed that that love—and even the hope of it—was lost for ever.
CHAPTER SEVEN
ISABELLE stared at her reflection in the mirror and wondered just how she was going to get through tonight. Somehow she had to go downstairs to the main ballroom of the castle and greet the hundreds of guests who had gathered there, ready for tomorrow’s ceremony. She would have to be polite and friendly, and make small talk, but most of all she would have to smile.
And smiling was the last thing she felt like doing.
It was impossible not to contrast the way she was feeling now with the excitement that had fizzed through every cell in her body on the night before what she now thought of as her ‘real’ wedding, two years before, in York. Then she hadn’t been able to keep still, but had fidgeted from one task to another, too restless to settle to anything.
And as for smiling… Then her mouth had been stretched in one huge, permanent grin, and her eyes had sparkled in sheer joy and delight.
‘Try!’ she muttered now, directing the words furiously at her reflection. ‘Try and smile! You look like you’re going to a funeral, not a wedding party!’