Spanish Aristocrat, Forced Bride

by India Grey

  ‘God, I’ve missed you,’ Scarlet was saying. ‘You can’t imagine how much I’ve missed you.’ In spite of the diamonds that glittered at her throat and her very sophisticated swept-up hairstyle, she suddenly looked very uncertain, and Lily was reminded of when they were teenagers, worrying about whether anyone would ever kiss them. ‘Just because I’m getting married, things between us won’t change, will they? We’ll still be best friends? Still tell each other everything?’

  Lily hesitated, swallowing back the guilt that choked her. ‘Of course.’

  Sliding her arm free of Lily’s, Scarlet grabbed a couple of glasses of champagne from the tray of a hovering waitress. She thrust one into Lily’s hand and clinked her own against the rim. ‘Here’s to us…to friendship that nothing can shake.’

  A hot tide of nausea instantly erupted inside Lily’s stomach as her newly heightened senses picked up the sweet-sharp scent of alcohol and rebelled against it. God, why hadn’t she brought a ready supply of ginger biscuits to keep the sickness at bay? She felt the sweat break out on her upper lip as her throat tightened convulsively.

  ‘Lily? Are you all right? What’s wrong?’

  Mutely Lily shook her head. In front of her Scarlet’s face was a blur of concern and regret sliced through her. For the first time since she was ten years old she was keeping something from her best friend and it didn’t feel right. But how could she possibly break the news that she was pregnant when she hadn’t even told Scarlet about what had happened that night?

  So much had happened so quickly, she thought wearily. She hadn’t told Scarlet about Tristan simply because she hadn’t had a chance. She’d gone straight to Africa the day after the costume ball, and when she’d returned it had been to find Scarlet starry-eyed and utterly preoccupied with her engagement to Tom Montague. He’d proposed, she told Lily dreamily, at the culmination of the firework display at the party.

  Somehow Lily hadn’t felt it was tactful to mention what she had been doing at that precise moment…

  ‘I didn’t think you looked well,’ Scarlet was saying now as she put her arm around Lily’s shoulders and guided her towards the door. ‘In fact, you haven’t been yourself since you got back from Africa. I think it’s more than just being affected by the stuff you saw there. You need to see a doctor and get some blood tests done or something.’

  ‘I have,’ Lily muttered weakly. They had reached the wide stone stairs in the entrance hall and as they slowly began to descend the cool air from the open doors to the courtyard touched her face and dispersed the suffocating feeling of nausea a little. She took a deep breath, realising that she couldn’t really put off telling Scarlet any longer, but not quite knowing how to say it. Pausing to lean against the balustrade at the foot of the stairs, she turned her face towards the doorway and felt the chill September breeze lift her hair.

  Scarlet shot her a worried look. ‘And? What did he say?’

  ‘Nothing. I mean, I’m not ill.’ She faltered, unable to meet Scarlet’s eye and looking over her shoulder as she began hesitantly, ‘The thing is, I’m—’

  She stopped, her mouth open. The crimson walls of the great room billowed and swayed and the vaulted ceiling seemed to rush towards her as someone came in through the huge doors from the blue evening outside. For a moment she thought it was her mind playing tricks on her, conjuring up the image of the tall, effortlessly elegant figure, the perfect, impassive face, in the same way that someone lost in the desert might imagine a verdant oasis in the distance. But then he looked up and she was plunged straight into the pools of his eyes.

  This was no mirage.

  Frowning, Scarlet turned her head in the direction of Lily’s gaze. ‘Oh, Tristan’s here. Tom’ll be pleased,’ she said vaguely before turning her attention back to Lily. ‘So, what did the doctor say it was, then? The old “too much travel, too much work” thing again? Lily?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’ Lily’s voice had dried up to a husk of a whisper. Tristan was coming towards them, one hand loosely thrust into the pocket of his trousers. Every beautiful inch of him, every relaxed, graceful movement declared his utter self-assurance and complete ease, while she felt as if her insides were slowly being fed through a paper shredder. She wondered whether she might actually be about to pass out cold. The idea of blissful oblivion was remarkably appealing.

  ‘Congratulations, Scarlet.’ Tristan spoke gravely as he bent to kiss each of Scarlet’s cheeks. ‘Tom is a very lucky man. You look radiant tonight.’

  There had been times in the past eight weeks when Lily had managed to convince herself that her mind was exaggerating the power of Tristan Romero de Losada Montalvo’s attraction. During the blank hours of those sleepless nights the memory of his cool, moonlit perfection had taken on an almost mythical quality, mingling as she slid into restless, fragmented sleep with the story he had told her about the moon goddess and Endymion, until she could no longer distinguish reality from fantasy, dreams from memories.

  But she had exaggerated nothing, and the beauty of his chiselled angel’s face shocked her afresh. She flattened herself back against the stone balustrade, both dreading and burning for the moment when he would turn his attention to her, certain that the secret she carried within her body was written all over her face.

  ‘Tristan!’

  Tom’s triumphant shout echoed from above, and Lily felt a mixture of frustration and relief as the spell of anticipation was broken. A second later Tom was clattering down the stairs towards them, a lopsided grin on his face. ‘You’re hardly over the threshold and already you’re kissing my fiancée. Have you no respect for the sanctity of marriage?’

  Tristan raised his hands in an elegant gesture of helplessness. ‘Haven’t I always said that you can’t hold a woman with a piece of paper?’

  ‘Unless she wants to be held,’ laughed Scarlet slightly awkwardly as Tom put his arm around her shoulders and pulled her to him. He dropped a kiss on her cheek.

  ‘Sorry to drag her away, but there are about five hundred distant relations of mine up there demanding to meet her, so you have to release her—just for the time being.’ He started to move off, pulling Scarlet back up the stairs with him. Keeping her eyes fixed on the stone-flagged floor, Lily felt panic rising like flood water up from the soles of her feet at the prospect of being left alone with Tristan. ‘We’ll catch up later once the hordes have been satisfied!’ Tom called back from halfway up the stairs, then added with an airy wave of his hand, ‘Sorry, you two have met, haven’t you? At the summer ball?’

  Her heart was thudding wildly. He could probably hear it. God, he could probably see it. Heat bloomed in her cheeks as she steeled herself to look into his face. The face of the man who was going to be the father of her child.

  His expression was cool, distant, polite. And when he spoke the tone of his voice perfectly matched it.

  ‘Have we?’

  CHAPTER FIVE

  THERE were people who enjoyed deliberately inflicting pain,

  as Tristan Romero de Losada Montalvo knew only too well.

  He was not one of them.

  However, when it came to women he was firmly of the belief that it was necessary to be cruel to be kind, and he had absolutely no intention of allowing Lily Alexander to think that there would be any kind of repeat of what had happened on that hot night in the summer. Or giving her any hint of how much the memory of it had troubled him afterwards.

  He watched hurt cloud her slanting, silvery eyes and tensed himself against a sudden rush of unfamiliar guilt. He had expected anger, indignation, a slap in the face—all of which he deserved, and had received from many women similarly slighted in the past. Lily Alexander’s quiet dignity unsettled him.

  ‘Yes, we have,’ she said softly, almost apologetically. ‘I was the girl with…with the dove.’

  Instantly her words transported him back to the tower in the dusk and he felt as if the air had been forced from his lungs as he recalled the gentle murmur of her voice, th
e compassion that shone in her eyes. And the effect it had had on him.

  One-nil to Lily Alexander.

  He nodded slowly. ‘Of course.’ His lips twitched into a faint, reluctant smile. ‘Selene. The girl with the dove.’

  Her eyes flew to meet his, and, seeing the cautious hope that flared there, he cursed himself. The golden rules of engagement were keep it emotionless, impersonal and keep it as a one-off. He had broken the first one in the tower, and the consequences of that had been difficult enough to deal with. He certainly wasn’t going to break either of the others.

  He looked away.

  ‘Yes,’ she whispered. ‘I wonder what happened to it?’

  Tristan paused. The next morning when he’d gone up to the dovecote at the top of the tower there had been no sign of the injured dove, which probably meant it had been taken by some predator in the night. But he wasn’t entirely heartless.

  Not entirely.

  ‘It recovered and flew away, I think,’ he said before taking a step backwards and half turning towards the stairs. ‘Anyway, it’s nice to see you again,’ he said with blank courtesy, taking a step backwards and half turning towards the stairs, ‘but now, if you’ll excuse me, I should…’

  For the brief moments that Tristan’s gaze had held hers and a thousand wordless images had risen up between them, Lily was aware of the blood rushing to her face, her chest tightening and the breath catching in her throat.

  It wasn’t a good combination with morning sickness. As Tristan turned away she struggled to take air into her starved lungs as a swirling tide of nausea threatened to drag her under. Groping for the stone balustrade, she felt her legs buckle, and before she could grasp at anything for support the world had gone black and she was falling.

  He caught her. Of course he caught her. It would have been too much to hope for that she could just faint quietly, in private, without her humiliation being witnessed by the man who had made it perfectly plain he wanted nothing to do with her. Held tightly against the strong wall of his chest, tugged by powerful currents of sickness and dizziness, she wanted to protest, but knew that the slightest movement on her part could tip her over the edge. And the thought of throwing up all over Tristan Romero’s impeccable dinner jacket was enough to make her submit quietly.

  He carried her easily, as if she really had the kind of petite build that she and Scarlet used to wish for. Cool air caressed her face, filling her lungs and sending oxygen tingling back into her bloodstream, so that she dared to risk opening her eyes again.

  They were outside, walking alongside the wall of the castle. Her face was inches from the hard line of Tristan’s jaw, so she could clearly see the tautness in its set, the cleft in his chin, his full, finely shaped mouth. She took a deep breath in, and just the scent of his skin was enough to make her feel faint with longing again. Her body went rigid as she fought to escape his iron hold, desperate to put some distance between her treacherous, needy body and his hard, strong one.

  ‘I’m fine now…I’m so sorry…Please, put me down.’

  ‘Wait.’

  The word was a low snarl, and instantly Lily let the fight go out of her as humiliation and despair ebbed back. She had imagined this meeting a thousand times, planned how she would be perfectly reasonable, perfectly controlled and in command of her emotions as she told him the facts and reassured him that she expected nothing from him. No demands, no histrionics, no apologies.

  And definitely no fainting.

  They rounded a corner and found themselves at the side of the castle that faced the gardens, which lay in a sweeping arc before them. There was a scrolled iron bench set in the shelter of the castle wall; Tristan put Lily down on it, and stood back, looming over her.

  She couldn’t look at him, not trusting herself to keep the truth from showing on her face. Below, the lake was a disc of black, with the tower in its centre looking dark and forbidding. She couldn’t look at that either.

  ‘Better now?’

  ‘Yes. I’m sorry.’ Suddenly she was glad that she was sitting down. Adrenaline burned through her, making her feel shaky and spacey as the moment when she would have to tell him rushed towards her with the terrifying inevitability of an express train. She bit her lip and said hesitantly, ‘In a funny kind of way it’s worked out rather well.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  His voice was icy. She could feel goosebumps prickling her bare arms. ‘I wanted the chance to talk to you…alone.’

  His face darkened, hardened, and he sighed and turned away. ‘I thought I explained. I thought you understood that the night we shared—’

  ‘I did. I do.’ She cut him off, speaking with soft determination, but her heart felt as if it might burst. Oh, God…this is it. ‘But I thought you had a right to know. I’m pregnant.’

  For a moment he didn’t move. Then he took a couple of steps forward, away from her, and Lily caught a fleeting glimpse of his hands, balled tightly into fists, before he thrust them into the pockets of his trousers.

  It was cold. She was aware of the chilly iron scrollwork of the bench biting into her flesh through the thin silk of her dress, but she was powerless to move.

  I’m sorry. The words formed on her lips, so that she could almost taste them, sweet and tempting. But she refused to speak them. She was used to saying what other people wanted to hear and the habit was hard to break, but the truth was she wasn’t sorry. She was glad.

  Her own parenting, by a mother who was barely out of her teens, barely able to cope, had been haphazard and inadequate, but it had only fuelled Lily’s need to nurture. Her dolls had always been carefully dressed in pyjamas, lovingly tucked into their shoebox beds and read to, even when she had not. For as long as she could remember, the need to love and to nurture had been there inside her, beating alongside her heart, echoing through the empty spaces in her life and in her body. She hadn’t wanted to listen to it until that moment in Dr Lee’s office when he’d told her the news. The news that should have horrified her, but had actually filled her with a profound, primitive joy.

  She wanted this baby. More than she’d wanted anything, ever before.

  Slowly Tristan turned round. The expression on his face was like a January dawn in Siberia—dark, bleak, and utterly forbidding.

  ‘Congratulations,’ he said, very softly. ‘To you, and to the father.’

  ‘What?’ With a gasp of incredulity she leapt to her feet. ‘No! You don’t understand. I—’

  He turned away from her again, looking out over the garden as he cut through her heated protest. ‘I have to warn you to think very carefully about what you’re just about to say, Lily.’

  His voice was quiet, but there was an edge to it that was like sharpened steel against her throat. Lily felt the sweat cool to ice water on the back of her neck, and clenched her teeth against their sudden chattering, dropping back down onto the bench as her knees gave way beneath her.

  ‘You can’t intimidate me.’

  To her surprise Tristan laughed; a hollow, humourless laugh, tinged with despair. ‘You really don’t understand at all, do you? I’m not trying to intimidate you. I’m trying to save you. I’m trying to give you a chance. To give you the freedom to make your own choices, because—’ He broke off suddenly. Dragging a hand through his hair, he sat down wearily beside her and dropped his face into his hands for a moment. When he lifted it again the dead expression in his eyes turned her insides to ice. ‘Because the second that you say this child is mine, all that will be taken away from you.’

  Lily clasped her hands together in her lap, twisting and kneading at her own numb fingers as panic made the words tumble from her mouth. ‘I don’t want anything from you, Tristan. I don’t want your money, or any kind of recognition or admission of responsibility. I was on the pill, but I was ill when I was in Africa, so it’s my fault, I accept that completely, but I thought you ought to know that the baby is yours.’

  ‘Who else knows?’

  ‘N-no one.’ Despite t
he mildness of the evening she was shivering violently now. ‘I haven’t told anyone. Not even Scarlet yet, but I can’t hide it for much longer.’

  ‘You’re going ahead with it?’

  ‘Yes!’ A white-hot spark of anger glowed in the dark void of her mind at the casual brutality of the question. ‘Yes, I bloody well am!’

  Nothing penetrated his terrible, glacial calm. ‘And you intend to name me as the father? On the birth certificate?’

  ‘Of course!’ Her chattering teeth were so firmly clamped together that she spoke almost without moving her lips, her voice a low, furious rasp. ‘I won’t have my child growing up without a name. An identity.’

  ‘No?’ He leaned back on the bench, lifting his head and inhaling deeply before turning towards her. His eyes were cold and measuring. ‘How much would it take to make you reconsider, Lily? I’m only going to say this once, so I advise you to think before answering.’

  ‘You want to pay me off?’ Lily gasped, torn between laughter and the urge to do something violent. ‘You want to bribe me to keep you out of your own child’s life? My God, Tristan, you cold, cold, bastard! Never. No way!’

  His eyes narrowed, but they stayed fixed on hers. ‘You’re quite sure? Even if it was for your own good?’

  She shook her head determinedly as strength and assurance ebbed back into her frozen body. She was on firmer ground here. ‘I’m not interested in what’s good for me now, Tristan. All I care about is my baby. I want it to know who it is, to have a history. An identity. Roots.’

  Things that she’d never had.

  In one lithe movement he stood up. The gentle evening seemed to darken as his broad shoulders blocked out the cloud-marbled sky. Slipping her feet from their high-heeled shoes, Lily tucked them up on the bench and wrapped her arms around her knees, hugging herself for warmth and subconsciously closing herself around the tiny, tentative life inside her.