Duarte's Child

by Lynne Graham

  'By demanding that you prove yourself innocent? Was it a game when you did the same thing to me after seeing Toby kiss me?' Emily asked dulcetly.

  Duarte froze. 'So that is what this is all about...'

  Imprisoned in his arms and as limp as a rag doll, Emily looked up at him. 'And I've been much kinder to you than you were to me in the same circumstances—'

  'Just keep quiet or I'll lose my temper!' Duarte seethed, arms tightening round her slight figure as he strode down the steps and headed back towards the house.

  'I mean, you can't say that I sat you down, stood over you like a hanging judge and frightened you to the extent that you just fell apart at the seams...can you?'

  'Shut up!' he roared.

  'You see, I'm not a bully—'

  'What did you say?'

  'I think you heard me—'

  'Inferno! I am bloody well not a bully!' Duarte raged, jawline rockhard. 'How dare you accuse me of being a bully?'

  'Well, if carting me back indoors without my consent is not bullying, I don't know what is.'

  Duarte jerked to a very abrupt halt. 'I'm looking after you, not bullying you,' he framed, in such a rage he could hardly get the words out.

  'But I don't want to be looked after. I can look after myself and I can walk on my own legs.'

  With hugely exaggerated care, Duarte lowered her to the grass. Only then did she realise that her shoes had been left behind in the folly. Duarte had been well aware of the fact. He gave her a sardonic smile.

  'Thanks,' she said compressing her lips.

  "That night I saw you in Jarrett's arms, I controlled my temper. How many men would have done that?' Duarte demanded rawly.

  'I was very upset and I felt guilty even though I hadn't done anything and you scared me—'

  'I didn't lay a finger on you!' Duarte bit out.

  'No,' Emily agreed unevenly.' 'But I was scared that you might—'

  'When have I ever hurt you?' His bronzed features very pale in the light still cascading from the quinta, Duarte stared at her in fierce reproach.

  'Never. But that night I was scared—and, because I was scared and very upset, I made a hash of explaining myself to you. You didn't listen anyway. You were already convinced that I had betrayed you. Yet what did you see?' she prompted tautly. 'You saw him grab me and kiss me—'

  'I was around long before that,' Duarte cut in grimly. 'I heard him begging you to run away with him and a whole hell of a lot of other juvenile rubbish!'

  'Until Toby spoke, I had no idea that he believed that he was in love with me. I was in shock and I didn't want to hurt him and I didn't know what to say—'

  'So you just stood there and let him kiss you. If that's as good as your story gets, don't waste your breath trying to raise the subject again!'

  'Well, I'm looking forward to seeing how you plan to convince me that you have been one hundred per cent faithful to me for the whole of our marriage,' Emily countered in a slightly strained voice as she picked her way painfully across the gravel fronting the house in her bare feet.

  'I expect you to trust me,' Duarte informed her without the smallest hesitation.

  'I expected you to trust me and look where it got me,' Emily countered without hesitation. 'So please don't expect me to be more generous than you were.'

  On the steps of the house she stopped to brush off the gravel embedded in the stinging soles of her feet. That task achieved, she headed straight for the sweeping staircase.

  'Emily...this is ridiculous,' Duarte breathed wearily. 'When you vanished for eight months, I thought it would serve you right if I did find another woman but I didn't do it!'

  'Prove it,' she said without turning her head.

  'How the hell can I prove it?' he raked at her rigid back. 'Call in character witnesses?'

  Emily was so exhausted after the effort it had taken to stand up to Duarte's towering personality, she was beyond any further thought or action. In any case, since she had long since sent the staff to bed, Duarte was going to have to douse lights and lock up, which was likely to take him quite a while. In the bedroom that she'd never shared with him before, she dug her teddy nightshirt out from under the bed, padded into the bathroom and stripped where she stood. Donning the nightshirt, she freshened up and pulled the clips out of her piled-up hair, letting it fall round her in a wild tangle. On her passage to the bed, she remembered the sapphires she still wore. Setting the earrings and the necklace down on the cabinet, she slid between the sheets and lay there, barely able to keep her heavy eyes open.

  Had she got anywhere with Duarte? Had he seen the point that she'd been trying to make? That he had judged her on superficial evidence? Where had his trust been? Had he ever trusted her? It was not as if she'd ever been a femme fatale, who flirted like mad with other men and gave him cause for concern.

  Duarte strode into the bedroom like a threatening storm ready to rain down thunder and lightning. As his attention settled on the slight bump she made in his bed, some of his high-voltage tension visibly ebbed.

  Emily sighed, tucked her hand under the pillow and turned on her side to go to sleep. 'G'night,' she mumbled sleepily.

  'Right...so now I'm getting the big freeze!'

  She thought about that and sighed again. 'I'm just tired.'

  Ten minutes later, he tugged her across the bed into his arms and she groaned out loud while surreptitiously snuggling back into the hard heat of him. He turned her round to face him, brilliant dark golden eyes still ablaze with vibrant energy.

  'Bliss did have a grandfather clock,' he murmured with the air of a male expecting a burst of applause. 'And no, I have never been in her apartment but I do recall her telling me a long time ago that the only thing her father left her when he died was an ugly, big clock. An appraiser had advised her to keep it as an investment and she had it shipped out here.'

  'Congratulations,' Emily mumbled, eyes dropping closed again.

  'You can't go to sleep now, minha jóia,' Duarte ground out incredulously. 'Did you hear what I said?'

  Talk about it in the morning—'

  'It is the morning and we're flying over to London in precisely six hours' time,' Duarte reminded her with considerable impatience and he shook her shoulder slightly, lifted and dropped her limp hand, striving to rouse her again.

  But nothing short of a fire alarm would have wakened Emily or persuaded her to take the slightest interest in anything other than sleep.

  * * * * *

  'Anyone ever tell you that you sleep like the dead?'

  'You.' Glancing up from the magazine she was pretending to read, Emily noted anxiously that once again. Duarte was staring at her from his seat opposite. He had been doing that ever since she came down to breakfast two hours earlier and yet he had barely spoken to her. The drive to the airport had been similarly filled with unspoken tension and in half an hour the jet would be landing in London.

  'Tell me, do you remember what I said to you last night just before you feel asleep?' Duarte enquired with studied casualness.

  Emily chewed at her lower lip and silently shook her head. It was a lie. She did have a vague recollection of him accusing her of giving him the big freeze but that was not a subject she was particularly keen to reopen, for she was all too well aware that when she had wakened around seven in his arms she had not given him the big freeze. Reddening at that mortifying awareness of her own drastic lack of control, Emily returned to her fake perusal of the magazine and wondered why she'd dreamt about Bliss's grandfather clock during the night. Quite where and how the clock had figured in her dream, she could not recall.

  'You're just so quiet,' Duarte remarked.

  'Last night drained me,' she muttered honestly.

  'You made your point. You more than made your point,' Duarte extended. 'But I assure you that I have never been intimate with Bliss Jarrett.'

  Emily nodded, much as if she was listening to a weather report.

  'At least look at me...' Duarte intoned i
n low-pitched frustration, evidently as aware as she was of the presence of the nanny nursing Jamie at the other end of the cabin.

  Slowly Emily raised her head, aquamarine eyes full of strain.

  She encountered stunning dark golden eyes that made her own instantly sting with tears and hurriedly she dropped her head again.

  'Please don't cry...' Duarte leant forward and grasped her knotted fingers between both his hands. 'I feel enough of a bastard as it is.'

  Emily gulped.

  'I've really screwed up our marriage,' Duarte muttered half under his breath, startling her into looking up again—but there was nothing to be gained but a view of Duarte's gleaming dark springy hair bent over their linked hands. 'I don't want you to argue with me about that.'

  Emily surveyed his bent head in growing wonderment. She had no intention whatsoever of arguing with him on that score. There was a moment of awkward silence while he gave her a chance to argue in his defence. His wide shoulders emanated ferocious tension when the silence remained unbroken.

  'In the future I will do a lot of things differently,' Duarte swore, practically crushing the life out of her fingers, every word emerging stilted and raw with emotion. 'I'm not the most liberated guy around but I can change. Ordering people around just comes very naturally to me...'

  'I know,' Emily whispered. 'It's just I'm not really sure why you're talking like this—'

  Duarte lifted his proud head and his incisive dark golden eyes glittered over the bemused expression on her face. 'I didn't sleep last night. I kept on getting flashbacks of you cowering in a chair in front of me after I caught...saw,'' he adjusted hastily, 'you in Toby Jarrett's arms that night. I don't think you got out a single sentence that I didn't interrupt—'

  'I didn't—but maybe I was a bit tough on you last night because understandably, you were very, very angry with me after what you saw—'

  'Emily, shut up,' Duarte groaned. 'You probably weren't tough enough. I need you to stand up to me—'

  'I don't like confrontations but I'll try.' Emily watched Duarte breathe in very deep and slow. 'You don't need to say anything more. I know why you're saying all these things...'

  'You do?' Duarte looked dubious.

  'You're afraid that I'm planning to get off this plane and take Jamie and refuse ever to come back to Portugal but I wouldn't do that to you again,' Emily assured him heavily.

  'Actually...' Duarte released her hand and flung himself back into his own seat. He surveyed her with bleak dark eyes. 'That wasn't why I was saying those things. For once in my life, you are ahead of me. Believe it or not, I hadn't considered that possibility.'

  'I won't part you from Jamie,' Emily reaffirmed a second time.

  'If you come back to Portugal with me this evening, you can have the dress, the honeymoon and the very moon itself if you ask for it,' Duarte asserted with brooding darkness. 'Whatever you choose to do, I will not issue any threats.'

  Emily was hurt that he had so little faith in her promises. She just could not fathom what was going on inside that darkly handsome head of his. He was like a man suffering from ever-growing shock. His moods were all over the place. He was as tense as a rumbling volcano. He was talking like she had never heard him talk before in his life. Was he really so scared of losing Jamie? Then why wouldn't he be? Without very much thought at all, she had denied him any contact with his son for many months. How could she blame him for doubting her?

  'Duarte...there's a couple of things I'd like to say,' Emily admitted in a rush. 'Please listen, even though you don't believe what I'm telling you...'

  Tm listening...'

  'I never told you that I had become friendly with Bliss because she said that you'd think it was inappropriate and that it might damage her career prospects with you,' Emily related, deliberately not looking at him lest she lose her nerve. 'I met Toby in her apartment and she persuaded me to let him paint me. The portrait was supposed to be a present for you—'

  'I don't really want to hear any more,' Duarte incised in a charged undertone.

  Emily ignored him and started talking even faster so that she could finish. 'When I left the house in the Douro eight months ago, it was only because Bliss phoned me to warn me that she had overheard you speaking to your lawyer and discussing your chances of taking my baby away from me as soon as he was born.'

  The silence simmered like a heatwave about to explode into violence. ,

  Emily mustered her courage and glanced at Duarte. His attention carefully pinned to some point in the middle distance, his bronzed skin was stretched super-taut across his hard bone structure. Pallor was stamped round his set mouth, the pallor a male restraining and containing rage.

  'Is there any more?' he almost whispered.

  'Nothing important.' Shrivelled by his silent, smouldering reaction to her revelations, Emily grabbed up her magazine again, grateful the jet was coming in to land.

  Thirty minutes later, in the crowded concourse inside the airport, Emily turned to say to Duarte, Tm leaving Jamie with you...OK?'

  Her husband emerged from his extreme preoccupation and frowned at her. 'But we're going to see your family together—'

  'I thought you had a business meeting—'

  'I had it rescheduled.'

  Emily interpreted that sudden announcement as confirmation that he did not trust even her out of his sight, never mind Jamie. 'It's just I'd prefer to see my family alone—'

  Tm coming with you,' Duarte informed her in a studiously level tone. 'We'll let Jamie and his nanny go straight to Ash Manor and join them there later.'

  'You're not listening to me. I want to speak to my mother alone. I want to talk to her in private. I don't want company.'

  'When I said I could make changes, I did not mean I could turn into New Age man overnight,' Duarte drawled. 'Your mother will walk all over you and upset you. She always does. If I'm there she stays within certain limits.'

  'I don't want New Age man, Duarte...I just want you to respect my wishes.'

  'Don't say you weren't warned, minha esposa.'

  Odd how he could boss her about with such sublime cool himself but react like a caged lion at the mere prospect of anyone else taking advantage of her easy-going nature. It was a kind of territorial possessiveness, she supposed vaguely. Feeling sympathetic, she allowed him to arrange for a limo to take her to her family home when she could perfectly well have climbed on the train and got there much faster.

  CHAPTER TEN

  'I SUPPOSE you had better come in,' Lorene Davies said grudgingly when she found her daughter on the doorstep of her smart detached home.

  Nervous as a cat, Emily watched her mother's slim, straight back disappear into the kitchen. An attractive blonde woman well into her fifties, she looked a good decade younger. Following her disinterested parent, Emily hovered in the kitchen doorway while Lorene continued to stack her dishwasher with plates. Not much of a welcome after her eight-month absence, Emily thought tautly. But then, had she really expected anything different?

  'Been in touch with your husband recently?' the older woman asked with her first flicker of curiosity. 'He came here looking for you last year and he seemed to blame us for not keeping you here. It was really very embarrassing and, I can tell you, I was very annoyed about it. You've always been a problem, Emily.'

  Emily stiffened, thinking she'd been the quietest, tidiest and most helpful child in the household but had only ever earnt criticism in return for her best efforts.

  'Look, I'm sure you don't want me taking up your time when you're so busy. I won't keep you long,' Emily murmured, her nails digging into the palms of her clenched hands as she willed herself on. Tm only here for one reason. I hope you can give me an honest answer and I promise not to hold it against you—'

  'What on earth are you rambling on about?' Lorene Davies demanded angrily, unaccustomed to her timid daughter addressing her in such a manner. Emily forced her chin up and stood as tall as she could. 'I have a right to know why you d
on't like me—'

  'Don't be ridiculous! Don't like you? What's that supposed to mean?' Her mother said scornfully. 'You have such odd ways, Emily.'

  Emily lost what little colour she had. 'If I'm odd, you made me odd. I need to hear a reason from you and then I'll leave you in peace.'

  Tight-mouthed, Lorene studied her for a long timeless moment of tension. 'All right. Before we moved up here from Cornwall, I had an affair and lived with another man for a while. That man was your real father...'

  'What are you telling me?' Emily mumbled, her skin coming up in gooseflesh.

  'What you said you wanted to know.' Lorene folded her arms, looking defiant and bitter. 'His name was Daniel Stevenson. He owned a big stud farm. Daniel said he was going to marry me when my divorce came through but he changed his mind when I was about seven months pregnant. He told me to go back to my husband and he slung us out—'

  'My father—Peter Davies isn't...my father?' Emily said sickly.

  'No, but when I went back to Peter he said he'd raise you as his child and we moved up here to make a fresh start. That's more or less it.'

  "This Daniel Stevenson...I look like him, don't I?' Emily prompted chokily.

  'You're the image of him,' Lorene confirmed grimly. 'He died about fifteen years ago. A riding accident. I can't say that I grieved when I heard about it. He was a creep. I really loved him but I was only one in a long line of foolish women—'

  'I'm sorry...' Emily saw the core of her mother's hardness in the bitterness in her eyes. Lorene had been hurt, humiliated and abandoned.

  'I'm sorry too,' the older woman muttered wearily. 'Bur I could never feel for you what I felt for your sisters. It wasn't your fault but I still can't look at you without remembering Daniel and I couldn't forgive him for what he did to me.'

  'I can imagine. Thank you for finally telling me,' Emily managed to say and then she turned on her heel and walked straight back out of her childhood home. Her sisters had probably known the truth for years, she thought strickenly, possibly even recalling something of that time when their mother had taken them to live with Daniel Stevenson. Why had she been excluded from the secret?