Spanish Aristocrat, Forced Bride

by India Grey

  With deceptive nonchalance he leaned against one corner of Juan Carlos’s impressive desk and raised his eyebrows slightly. ‘Women like that?’

  ‘Women with no breeding,’ Juan Carlos said dismissively, taking a mouthful of his drink and giving a grimace that Tristan understood was not directed at the excellent brandy. ‘A model, Tristan! Such a cliché.’ He looked down into his glass, swirling the liquid around for a moment before saying quite conversationally, ‘I take it you are doing this to deliberately undermine me?’

  ‘Just like you undermined me at the meeting this morning?’ Tristan said with quiet contempt. ‘How did you get those men to vote with you—against me—on increasing the interest on the African loans? That money is going to come straight out of that country’s healthcare budget or education, or farming subsidies, as everyone in that meeting knew. How much did you have to pay them for their votes?’

  Juan Carlos moved round to the other side of the desk and sank into the huge leather chair. ‘Not everything comes down to money,’ he said thoughtfully, examining his manicured fingernails. ‘Most things, but not all.’

  ‘Oh, Dios…Sofia.’ Tristan got up from the desk and took a few paces, thrusting his hand through his hair as his mind raced. ‘The deal was to do with me and Sofia, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Would that be such a bad idea? Do you think I married your mother for love?’

  ‘No.’ Tristan’s laugh was edged with bitterness and despair. ‘No, I never thought that.’

  Acid burned at the back of his throat and the darkness that he constantly felt crouched around him encroached a little further. It was something that he was used to—he had lived with it for as long as he could remember, without ever really wanting to look directly at it, or give it a name. Until now. Standing here, in the room that had been the scene of so much suffering, he remembered again Lily’s soft voice, the warmth of her hand on his heart. The emotion you’re most in touch with at the moment is fear…

  He hadn’t wanted to admit she was right. He hadn’t even wanted to consider the possibility.

  But suddenly he knew she had been absolutely spot on. Looking into the empty eyes of his father, so similar to the ones that looked back at him from the mirror every morning, he was afraid.

  For a long time he had accepted that because of the man in front of him he wasn’t able to love. Neurological fact. But for the first time he allowed himself to look right into the blackness and confront what had been lurking there all the time; the fear that where there should have been love, all the cruelty and the coldness of those crucial early years had been hardwired into his brain instead. What if it was there, waiting for an outlet, and when Lily had this child…?

  Dios, oh, Dios, what had he done?

  He had forced her into this out of his innate sense of family honour, but what about her? What about his duty to her and to the baby? He had promised to protect her and keep her safe, but how could he do that if the biggest danger she faced was from him? She made him feel things that scared him. Things that he knew he couldn’t control.

  He had told her that he wasn’t a monster. But what if he was? What if he was just like his father and he didn’t know it yet?

  His fists were tight balls of tension, and he pressed them to his temples as Juan Carlos’s quiet, eminently reasonable voice washed over him.

  ‘It would have been a brilliant match, surely you can see that? A link between our bank and the largest privately owned bank in Greece. Sofia would have been a good wife, and you could have had your sordid little affairs with models on the side.’ He paused and shook his head uncomprehendingly. ‘But instead you married one. It’s a shame, Tristan—I thought you were more in control of your emotions. I thought you were too sensible to get carried away by stupid notions of romance.’

  ‘I didn’t,’ Tristan said icily. ‘You were right first time. Our marriage has nothing to do with emotion or romance. Lily is pregnant, and I’m doing my duty—to her and to our ancient, rotten, noble family.’

  From the other side of the desk he saw something gleam in his father’s cold eyes, and thought it might be triumph. ‘She trapped you into this deliberately,’ said Juan Carlos harshly.

  Walking towards the door, Tristan laughed—a sound as hollow and bleak as his own heart. ‘I think she’s the one who’s been trapped, don’t you? Trapped into a loveless, sterile, dutiful marriage.’

  ‘Hardly,’ said Juan Carlos pompously. ‘You are a Romero—the Marqués de—’

  Tristan opened the door. ‘Exactly,’ he said, with bitter resignation. ‘Who in their right mind would want anything to do with that?’

  ‘You have a lovely home,’ Lily said awkwardly as she stood in the small sitting room in Allegra’s private suite of rooms. It seemed that they had come a long way from the large, crowded place where the reception was being held. This room, with its thick, thick carpets, quilted sofas, acres and acres of swagged silk curtain, was in a different world entirely: still opulent, still expensive, but warm and comfortable to the point of being suffocating. Lily was beginning to feel faint.

  Allegra smiled and took another mouthful of cava. ‘Thank you. I hope that in time you will come to think of it as your home too. None of the children spend much time here any more, but maybe…’ She faltered, and Lily glanced sharply up.

  ‘None of them?’

  ‘Sorry.’ With a little laugh, Allegra shook her head and waved her glass in a sweeping arc. ‘I mean neither of them. Maybe now he is married Tristan will have more time. He’s always so busy, you see…’

  The words faded and she looked around, as if trying to remember why they were there. Lily was wondering the same thing. Allegra Montalvo y Romero de Losada was beautiful, glamorous, generous and welcoming, but she was also extremely drunk. From the fact that this hadn’t been immediately apparent at the reception, Lily realised that it was a state of affairs Allegra was obviously quite used to. She also thought that it probably explained the rather large bruise that was discernible on one of her elegant cheekbones, beneath the pancake make-up.

  ‘I think,’ said Lily carefully, ‘that perhaps I’d better be getting back. Tristan will be wondering where I’ve got to.’

  Would he?

  Once again her mind wandered back to the afternoon. There had been a fervour to his lovemaking that was almost fierce in its intensity. A ripple of profound, private delight shimmered through her as she recalled it…

  ‘Wait! You can’t go until I’ve given you what I brought you up here for,’ Allegra said, sashaying into the bedroom and disappearing into another small room leading off it. Left alone, Lily pressed her palm over the tiny roundness of her bump and silently pleaded with the baby to ease up on the sickness. The waves of nausea were getting closer together now, each one threatening to tip her right over…

  ‘Here!’ Allegra was back, holding a large, flat box out in one hand and her glass in the other. It was full again, Lily noticed with concern. She must have bottles stashed all over the place.

  Allegra set the box on the low table and sat back on one of the feather sofas. ‘Open it.’

  Lily approached the box warily as if it were likely to contain something highly explosive, or liable to scuttle out and sting her. Lifting the tooled leather lid, she felt as if she were in one of those children’s cartoons where the characters opened the treasure chest and their faces were illuminated with the glow of the gold, only now the light coming from the treasure wasn’t a yellow glow, but a shimmering meteor shower of bright rainbows from the collar of ruby and diamonds that lay against the black velvet.

  Allegra was watching her face. ‘You’re a Romero now,’ she said quietly, and suddenly she sounded absolutely sober. ‘A Romero bride, just as I was all those years ago. These are the Romero jewels, so it’s only right that they should be passed on to you.’

  Lily’s hand had automatically flown to her mouth when she’d first seen the diamonds, but she dropped it now and tried to speak. ‘Oh…señora…
.’

  ‘Please, call me Allegra.’

  ‘Allegra, I can’t accept these,’ she protested a little breathlessly. ‘They’re beautiful—more beautiful than anything I’ve ever seen, but so expensive…’

  ‘Priceless.’ Allegra got up, swaying very slightly as she leaned forward and picked up the necklace. ‘But you already have my son, Lily, and although he might not think it he is worth so much more to me than these are. Please, let me put them on.’

  The stones felt very cold against Lily’s bare skin, and Allegra’s long fingernails scraped at her neck as she struggled with the clasp. Lily closed her eyes, fighting back the rising nausea and the feeling that she was being strangled…suffocated…

  ‘There.’ With a triumphant flourish Allegra stood back and, taking Lily by the hand, led her over to a mirror that hung on the wall.

  The collar was wide, seeming to elongate her neck, and the large diamonds glittered with a brilliance that dazzled her. In the centre a single ruby nestled exactly in the hollow at the base of her throat, and it looked like a drop of blood.

  Lily jumped slightly as Allegra’s face appeared beside hers in the mirror, and with a strange, dreamlike expression Allegra removed Lily’s own cheap costume earrings and slipped a pair of ruby droplets in their place.

  ‘I…I don’t know what to say…’ she said, truthfully. She felt a little faint, a little dizzy and it was taking all her energy just to suppress the sickness. Allegra’s fingers bit into her flesh a little too hard as she held Lily in front of the mirror.

  ‘Welcome to the family, Lily,’ she said in a strange, choked voice. ‘I hope that—’

  She didn’t get any further. At that moment the door opened, and Tristan appeared.

  ‘There you are.’

  He stopped, and although his expression didn’t change much there was something about the stillness that suddenly seemed to come over him that made Lily’s heart batter against her ribs. In the light of the silk-shaded lamps he looked very pale.

  And terrifyingly angry.

  Allegra stepped back, away from Lily. ‘Tristan, we were just—’ she began, falteringly and then started again. ‘The Romero jewels belong to Lily now.’

  Tristan didn’t look at her. Not for a second did his eyes leave Lily. They glittered with a dark brilliance like the diamonds.

  ‘Take them off,’ he said in a voice of frosted steel.

  ‘It’s so kind of your mother,’ Lily said breathlessly, but her throat tightened around the words and she got no further. Her heartbeat drummed in her ears, and an icy mist of horror and panic seemed to be closing around her, blurring everything that was familiar and normal and logical.

  ‘Take. Them. Off,’ he snapped. ‘Now.’

  Understanding tore into her head like a cyclone. Her fingers flew to the clasp and shakily fumbled with it. Of course, she thought despairingly, of course. He was telling her she had no right to wear the priceless Romero jewels. Her chest burned with the effort of breathing and acid tears gathered behind her eyes as the clasp opened and the necklace slithered off in a shimmer of brilliance that only real diamonds gave off.

  Their marriage was a sham. Paste and plastic. Not real. The Romero jewels belonged around the neck of a woman Tristan loved, a woman he had willingly taken to be his bride, not the one who had trapped him into it.

  She handed them back to Allegra, opening her mouth to say something, but discovering that she didn’t know what to say. Thank you?

  Sorry?

  In the end she settled instead for a frozen little smile before following Tristan from the room.

  ‘Well, that went well, then.’

  It was a pretty feeble attempt at humour, Lily knew that. She couldn’t blame Tristan for completely ignoring it and keeping his stony face turned towards the blank, dark window of the car. But still it left the problem of the gaping chasm that had opened up between them. The closeness they had shared this afternoon now seemed about a million years ago. Miserably she tried again.

  ‘Tristan, I’m sorry. I didn’t know that she was going to do that, and I wasn’t going to—’

  ‘Forget it.’ His voice stung her like the lash of a whip. He took a deep breath, regaining his formidable self-control again before saying, ‘It’s not your fault.’

  There was a terrible finality in his voice and he kept his face turned away. His profile looked as if it had been carved in ice.

  Not her fault. Of course not. She couldn’t help what she was, or, more importantly, what she wasn’t—aristocratic, well-con-nected, with a string of surnames that would never fit in the strip on the back of a credit card, and a Christmas-card list that included all the crowned heads of Europe.

  And that was what all this was about.

  She had failed to pull it off, this business of being the Romero bride. Her face might have graced some of the most prestigious magazine covers in the world, but it had failed to fit in the Romeros’ exclusive circle. Juan Carlos hadn’t bothered to pretend, and although any fool could see that Tristan had issues with his family, it was also obvious that on some deep and primitive level he was also deeply bonded to them. In my family you get…roots so deep they’re like anchors of concrete, holding you so tightly that you can’t move.

  That was how it was. How he was, and there was nothing anyone could do to change it. The question was, could they somehow find a way to live with it? As the car made its way through the narrow streets of the Barri Gotic she very tentatively reached out and covered his hand with hers.

  ‘Tristan, I know I was wrong to—’

  Very gently he moved his hand away and turned his head to face her. The streetlights shone on the rain-wet, night-black window, lining his face with watery shadows.

  ‘No,’ he said flatly. ‘You weren’t wrong. I was. I was wrong to think this could be more than just a business arrangement, Lily. I was wrong to let you think it was ever going to work.’

  Lily felt the blood drain from her face as his shocking, hurtful words sank in. ‘But what about this afternoon?

  ‘A mistake.’

  ‘No…’ she whimpered. ‘Tristan, no.’

  ‘Yes.’ His voice was low and forceful. ‘I’m thinking of you, Lily; I’m trying to do what’s best for you. We have to keep up this charade in front of everyone else, but I can’t do it all the time in private as well.’ He sighed. ‘From now on, it’s as we discussed at the start. A business arrangement. A marriage in name only.’

  Lily was too shocked to cry. She had gambled, and she had lost. Everything, including her dignity and her heart. All she had left was her baby.

  That night Lily lay on her side of the wide bed that had been the scene of such rapturous lovemaking earlier. She felt as if she were balanced on the edge of some dark and fathomless abyss.

  The next morning Tristan went to the office and Dimitri collected her from the hotel and took her to Tristan’s apartment in the Eixample. Left by herself, she walked slowly around her new home, admiring the pale blond wooden floors, the sleekly efficient kitchen with its stainless steel surfaces and gleaming run of fitted units, the big windows that looked out over the city to the sea in the distance, and thought wistfully of the cluttered house in Primrose Hill.

  She felt very alone. And very certain that, not only had her brief honeymoon ended, but so, effectively, had her marriage.

  CHAPTER TEN

  ‘LILY, my darling!’

  The nicotine-soaked rasp of Lily’s agent in London reached down the telephone line into the quiet of the Barcelona apartment like an echo from another planet.

  ‘Now, don’t hang up, angel—I’m not ringing to pressure you about work, I just want to know how you are. And of course make sure that you’re eating properly and getting plenty of sleep, darling. I’m worried about you.’

  ‘Just like the old days, Maggie,’ said Lily with a smile as she sank down into one of Tristan’s squat, modern sofas and slid a cushion into the small of her back. When Lily and Scarlet had arriv
ed in London as green seventeen-year-olds Maggie Mason had clucked over them like a mother hen, although her motives were largely financial.

  ‘Ah, the old days, when I had to beg clients to cast you because you always looked so shy and serious until you got in front of a camera. That does seem a long time ago. Now you’re all grown up and married to the most eligible man in Europe! How’s it going, darling?’

  ‘Fine.’ Lily heard the slight stiffness in her voice and forced herself to smile. ‘I’m doing everything by the book. Tristan has registered me with the top obstetrician here, so I’m being well looked after.’

  ‘That’s good! Fantastic!’ There was a pause, and Lily could vividly picture Maggie briskly tapping the ash from her cigarette into an ashtray placed precariously on the landslide of paper and magazines on her desk. ‘Well, in that case, darling, how’s everything else? You’re keeping busy? Only you would not believe how inundated I am with requests for you to work. Simply swamped with demands from just about every luxury brand imaginable, all wanting the new Marquesa de Montesa to represent them. Of course I tell them all that it’s impossible—that you’re absolutely off the circuit and far too busy with your gorgeous husband and your glamorous life to work, for heaven’s sake…Am I right?’

  Lily hesitated for a fraction of a second, before saying brightly, ‘Yes, yes, that’s right, very busy,’ but the lie seemed to echo around the emptiness of Tristan’s stark and beautiful apartment. She tried to soften it a little. ‘It’s the baby, really. I mean, I’m sure if you could see me now the only work you’d be offering me would be the back end of a cow in a butter commercial.’

  Unconsciously while she’d been talking she found that she’d pushed up the cashmere jumper of Tristan’s that she was wearing and was gently rubbing the flat of her hand over the neat mound of her bump. At almost six months pregnant she already felt huge, and although she was deeply relieved that the stage of morning sickness had passed she found it constantly surprising how the simplest tasks suddenly seemed overwhelmingly challenging.