by Lynne Graham
As for Bliss, well, Emily believed that she'd already worked out the most likely scenario on that score. Duarte was probably going to admit to her that he had slept with Bliss during the difficult months that he had been searching for his wife and child. She was going to have to deal with that and she didn't know how she would. But that explanation made sense as to why Duarte should have insisted on not talking about Bliss for a few weeks didn't it? Duarte had decided that if he had risked telling her the truth first, their marriage had no hope of surviving.
An impatient knock sounded on the door. 'Emily...?'
She smiled, suppressing the pained regret roused by her most recent thoughts. She opened the door a chink. 'Close your eyes...'
'No. I want to see you,' Duarte overruled. 'I've waited long enough.' She opened the door wide and let him look.
His brilliant eyes shimmered over her. 'You look amazing. I was a selfish bastard two years ago—'
'I don't think you meant to be,' Emily told him forgivingly.
"That's right, Emily. Encourage me to be like that again.'
'What time do we have to be at the church for the blessing?' she prompted.
.'We've got plenty of time—'
'Why won't you tell me what time?'
'I have a couple of people waiting downstairs and we need to deal with them first.' Duarte banded an arm to her spine as they reached the first landing.
'What people?'
'Had I had the option, I would've staged this weeks ago but I couldn't track the guy down. He was hiking round South America.'
'Who are you talking about?' Emily frowned.
Dropping his hand to her waist, Duarte ushered her towards the salon. 'Toby Jarrett.'
'Toby?' Emily gasped in pure horror. 'I don't want to see him again!'
However, a bigger shock awaited her within the salon. Not Toby, whom she was expecting, but Bliss. Bliss turned from the window with a saccharine smile that froze when she registered in visible bewilderment that Emily was wearing a wedding dress.
'We won't keep you long, Bliss,' Duarte drawled. To save us all a long trawl through murky waters, you could just confess to being a scheming, vindictive woman.'
Bliss blinked and stared at Duarte. 'I beg your pardon?'
'You weaselled your way into a fake friendship with my wife so that you could cause trouble. You never ever told me when Emily called the office and tried to speak to me. You also forgot to fill in my diary for the dinner parties—'
'I don't believe I'm hearing these terrible accusations,' Bliss said in a mortified tone of reproach.
Emerging from her own shock that Duarte should even have made such very accurate accusations, Emily's head turned as the door that connected with the dining room pushed open and framed Toby Jarrett. Emily's face reddened fiercely. Tall and fair and lanky, Toby moved deeper into the room.
'What are you doing here?' Bliss demanded sharply.
Tm here to call your bluff,' Toby sighed, his frank open features grim. 'You offered me several thousand pounds to try and seduce Duarte's wife last year. I was broke but even I wasn't that low. I was quite happy to settle for the portrait commission—'
'He's telling outright lies!' Bliss snapped. 'Surely you don't believe this rubbish, Duarte?'
'Why should Toby lie?' Emily murmured tightly, focusing on the blonde with shaken eyes of revulsion after what the younger man had revealed. 'What has he got to gain from lying now?'
Duarte studied his executive assistant with chilling cool. 'I cannot blame Emily for trusting you when I made the mistake. You're sacked, Bliss—and, by the way, if you keep on telling people that I slept with you, I will take you to court for slander—'
'And how are you ever going to prove that you didn't?' Bliss slammed back at him and she gave Emily a cold look of triumph. 'You're never going to know for sure, are you?'
'I think the fact that you pulled the same stunt with your last employer would go a long way to vindicating me,' Duarte remarked very quietly.
Stilling at that response, Bliss turned white and then she stared at her cousin in furious condemnation. 'Toby?'
'Sorry--—but when you came out to Lisbon to work on the strength of a fake reference issued by one of my father's friends, you promised that you were making a fresh start.'
'You did something like this before?' Emily demanded of Bliss
'Her last boss was married, too. She told a couple of people in confidence that they were lovers and got the rumour mill going,' Toby explained ruefully. 'Then she tried to blackmail him by threatening to lie to his wife as well. But he went to the police. Bliss got off with a police caution but only because she managed to convince a doctor that she had had a nervous breakdown.'
'Were you planning to blackmail Duarte too?' Emily asked ,the blonde in horror.
Bliss seemed oddly diminished in stature but her eyes were as hard as ever. Without troubling to respond—indeed, accepting that her every malicious act had been exposed—she just walked out of the room.
'I think she was hoping to marry Duarte,' Toby told Emily gently. 'But to achieve that, she had to get you out of the picture. She went mad with rage when Duarte remarried—'
Duarte looked shaken by mat information.
'I'm sorry I was 'such a jerk last year, Emily.' Toby shrugged awkwardly and hovered in front of her where she could no longer avoid looking at him. 'But to know you is to love you and I'm a hopeless romantic. There you were, the neglected wife—'
'She's not neglected any more,' Duarte slotted in faster than the speed of light. 'And you told me that you fall in love very easily—'
'I suppose that's true. Blame the artistic temperament.' Toby grinned at both of them, quite untouched by the smallest shade of embarrassment.
'I just wish you'd come clean with me about what Bliss was up to,' Emily censured helplessly.
'He wanted you for himself. Why would he have told you the truth about his cousin?' Duarte remarked flatly.
'I was ready to talk about Bliss after you and Duarte separated because that did make me feel bad, as it was pretty obvious that you weren't remotely interested in me. But you wouldn't talk to me when I trekked out to the Douro to try and sort things out,' Toby reminded Emily.
'And then I beat you up to make you stay away from her,' Duarte conceded in the thwarted undertone of someone trying to regret an action but not succeeding that well. 'You did try to get me to listen to you but I wasn't prepared to give you a hearing.'
'And after that,' Toby said with a feeling shudder, 'I was totally out of charity with you and too scared to try and talk to Emily again.'
Duarte thanked Toby for lending him his support and in doing so, ushered the younger man to the door where he urged him to enjoy his flight back to Peru.
'You're darned right I will—in your jet!' Laughing, Toby strolled out looking as if he hadn't a care in the world.
Emily watched Toby depart and felt very much like taking him by the collar and shaking him. He had caused so much trouble but it had really washed right back off him again. Easy come, easy go, that was Toby. Yet, in spite of that, Toby had made the effort to try and set her straight about Bliss. It was just unfortunate that she had refused to speak to him.
'I'm grateful that Jarrett was willing to provide the backup for exposing Bliss.' Duarte shot her stilled figure a veiled glance. 'I was afraid that, without his support, you would remain suspicious.'
Emily coloured and spun away, afraid that what she was thinking would show in her face and rub salt in the wound. Duarte was so proud. Yet he had tracked down Toby and asked him for his help. She cringed inwardly at what that approach must have cost Duarte in terms of pride.
'When did you realise that Bliss was lying?' she asked uncomfortably, in one way feeling guilty that she had forced him to such lengths but in another feeling hopelessly upstaged. She had demanded proof and, no matter what the cost to himself, Duarte had supplied her with proof of Bliss's true nature. It might have taken him
three weeks to track down Toby but Duarte had not called off the search. Nor had he hesitated to confess that he had been equally taken in by the other woman. Emily was extremely disconcerted by his behaviour.
'The grandfather clock...I did tell you that I had a vague recollection of Bliss once telling me about the clock—'
'No, you didn't,' she argued.
Duarte awarded her a wry smile and reminded her of how tired she had been at the end of that party three weeks earlier. 'You didn't take in what I had told you. As soon as I recalled the clock reference, I appreciated that if Bliss could lie about that, she was most probably lying about everything—'
'So why didn't you tell me that, the next morning?' Emily demanded.
'I still had no proof to offer that I hadn't had an affair with her,' Duarte pointed out. 'And, to be frank, I had shot myself in the foot, trying to make you jealous of her—'
'Say that again...' Emily was frowning at him, struggling to understand that sudden confession.
Duarte moved expressive and fluid hands! 'I—'
'Tell me that bit again about trying to make me jealous,' Emily cut in a second time. 'I just want to be sure that you actually said that—'
Duarte was very taut. "That conversation we had in the car after you had come to the city apartment. You had been talking about divorce again. I was angry with you. It was the impulse of a moment to exaggerate the less formal terms of my relationship with Bliss—'
'To...make...me...jealous,' Emily echoed afresh as if she was having a great deal of trouble coming to terms with that concept. 'You mean, you lied—'
Duarte winced at the bluntness of that term. 'At that stage, I didn't think it would do you any harm to wonder exactly what I might have been doing while you were staying lost in England for months on end—'
Emily folded her arms and stared at him with accusing aquamarine eyes. 'I don't believe I'm hearing this—'
'At that stage I was still suffering from the conviction that I was making a very generous gesture in trying to put our marriage back together again—'
'So you told me what was most likely to undermine it? You let me think you had got so close to Bliss—?'
'Meu Deus... I lived to regret my impulse, didn't I?' Duarte countered with feeling fervour. 'All I did after you went missing was work and search for you—but to confess that seemed weak!'
Emily pivoted away from him to hide a sudden helpless smile. He'd wanted to make her jealous. He had not had a clue what a nest of intrigue he was naively stirring with his behaviour. His pride had been hurting. He had been foolish but in a manner that now struck her as quite ridiculously sweet. Where was the man whom she'd once believed was so utterly indifferent to her feelings? It occurred to her that that man had never existed.
Bliss had found a fertile playground in the emotional distance between Duarte and his new wife and Emily's own shy insecurity had been the other woman's greatest aid. The blonde's first tentative efforts to cause trouble would have been swiftly concluded had Emily ever turned round and asked her husband why he never returned her phone calls.
'I have never found Bliss attractive. I was always aware of her cold nature but I did not require anything warmer from an employee whom, even now, I must concede was an exceptionally efficient assistant,' Duarte asserted heavily.
'When I began telling you on the flight to London about the other things she had done, you were furious with her, not with me...' Emily registered, turning back to look at him again, relishing that reference to Bliss as being bold.
'Of course I was furious—but more with myself, even than Bliss, minha jóia' Duarte admitted with bleak, dark eyes of regret. 'I was bitterly angry that you had been manipulated to that extent and that I had exposed you to her malice. If I had treated you as I should have treated you, Bliss would have been powerless.'
'Yes. Just one more thing,' Emily framed with curiosity. "The first day I came back. At the airport, you stayed with Bliss to talk to her...what about?'
'I took exception to the way in which she looked at you and spoke to you,' Duarte admitted without hesitation.
'You were telling her off.' Emily tried very hard not to laugh but for a few seconds, it was a fight she thought she would lose. She swallowed hard. She thought back to some of the things he'd said to her that same day and compared it to the speed with which he had turned on Bliss to rebuke her for what he had evidently seen as a lack of respect; she could only be amused.
'I assure you that I never ever discussed either you or our marriage with Bliss. Our more relaxed working relationship did not embrace any true confessions. I do not discuss private matters with anyone—'
'I know...' Emily conceded, fully convinced. 'Until recently, not even with me.'
'Right...OK, I walked right into that one,' Duarte agreed, but dark colour had risen to outline his high cheekbones.
'I just want you to appreciate that not telling me the truth about Izabel was taking confidentiality a giant step too far,' Emily murmured gently.
Duarte snatched in a sustaining breath and squared his broad shoulders. 'I believed you would think a great deal less of me if you knew what a mess my first marriage had been.'
Distressed by that patently honest admission, Emily closed the distance between them and reached for one lean brown hand. 'It wouldn't have been like that. I would have understood you much better—'
Duarte gazed down into her hugely sympathetic aquamarine eyes and murmured with brilliant golden eyes that had a rueful tinge, 'I should admit that I also rather enjoyed being treated like an omnipotent god.'
Emily blinked in disconcertion.
'It enabled me to feel in control...and I'm not in control at all!' Duarte groaned out loud with startling abruptness as he glanced at his watch and registered the time. 'We're running late for the church!'
Emily sighed. 'Look, you don't have to go through with this simply to please me. When it comes down to brass tacks; stuff like this dress and the church blessing, well...I'd much rather not have them if you really don't want them.'
'Of course I want them, minha esposa...' Tightening his hold on her fingers, Duarte hurried her out to the waiting limousine with quite indecent speed. 'This blessing will signify a new beginning to our marriage and a proper commitment on my part to make you happy—'
'You mean you never had any intention of making me happy two years ago?' Emily muttered painfully.
Duarte tucked her and her skirts into the car with careful hands and sank down beside her. 'Then the only thought in my head was making me happy.'
'Oh...' Only somewhat soothed by that contradiction, Emily decided that she would have to think that confession over in greater depth. 'You're saying you were totally selfish...'
Duarte vented a reluctant laugh and closed his hand over hers again. 'I was striving to evade using exactly those words.'
The limousine drew to a halt mere minutes later outside the little village church. As Emily stepped out of the car, she was taken aback to find Victorine moving forward to present her with a beautiful bouquet of flowers and proffer stilted but evidently genuine good wishes. Emily smiled with true pleasure and thanked the older woman.
"That was so sweet of her, Duarte,' Emily enthused as her husband led her into the church, which was filled to overflowing with more flowers and lit only by candles. 'Oh, this is really lovely...'
The blessing was simple but sincere. Emily listened to every word with the happy and grateful sense that indeed she and Duarte had already found their new beginning. Her eyes damp with unashamed tears of emotion, she was startled when Duarte closed his arms round her and kissed her breathless in the shadowy darkness of the tiny church porch.
Emerging from that unexpectedly passionate clinch, Emily was flushed and in need of being guided back to the car.
'I want you to know that I have rearranged my work schedule and delegated a good deal of the business that formerly took me abroad,' Duarte informed her, studying her with intent dark gol
den eyes. 'This is the optimum right moment for you to make further demands, querida.'
Emily's mind was a terrible blank. She was in awe of this male so determined not to fall into the mistakes of the past again. Indeed, she felt just a little like a new project being enthusiastically: attacked and could not help but worry about the effect of what so many sacrifices would be on him in the future. Would his first fine flush of courageous effort wear off and leave him feeling that life with her was just one big pain?
'You really don't need to do any more to please me. I'm not going anywhere. I'm not going to leap on the first plane back to England when we have some stupid row,' Emily assured him carefully. 'You can stop worrying.'
'I also want to admit that I totally overreacted over Toby Jarrett because, from my point of view, there was some horrible truths in what he said about my not deserving you,' Duarte ground out like a male set on an unstoppable course to tell all whether he wanted to or not. 'It was bad enough seeing him kiss you but it was worse thinking that I drove you into his arms!'
'Oh, dear...' Emily glanced at his darkly handsome profile as they walked back into the quinta, registering his pronounced tension with dismay.
'In fact, the weeks you were in the Douro were not exactly the best weeks of my life,' Duarte framed with charged difficulty, striding straight past the assembled household staff apparently without seeing them and carrying her with him towards the stairs. 'You see, you were still in Portugal. I had seen off Toby, dealt with him. You were still within reach...'
'Hold it a minute...' .Emily urged weakly and hurried back a few steps to accept the flowers that the housekeeper was proffering and thank the older woman and their staff for the kind chorus of best wishes being offered.
Darting back to Duarte's side, breathless with her arms full of flowers, Emily prompted him helpfully, 'You were saying that while I was still within Portugal you thought of me as being still within reach...?'
Lean, powerful face rigid with tension, Duarte frowned and carried on up the stairs with Emily scurrying in his wake. 'Duarte?'
'When you vanished I was on the brink of coming to see you and asking you to come home,' Duarte completed in a charged admission.