Vengeful Seduction (Mills & Boon Vintage 90s Modern)

by Williams Cathy

  Her ticket was for one of the prime seats and the place was packed. The play had received rave reviews throughout its run and there didn’t appear to be a single free seat. She found herself between a refined, grey-haired woman on her left and a prosperous, overweight businessman on her right.

  There was only a cast of five in the play, which relied heavily on content and not at all on stage effects, and the acting was brilliant. She found herself wishing that she had seen more of Abigail’s work, but the nearest theatre to where she lived was a tiny venue, manfully upkept, but really only patronised by the town’s ardent dramatic society, several school plays, and pantomimes at Christmas.

  And Abigail was a star way out of that league. She had a natural way of acting that enticed you into her make-believe world and held you there for the duration.

  By the time the intermission came around, everyone was on edge, wondering what would happen in the second half.

  Rather than beat a path to the theatre bar to get herself an orange juice, she stayed put, reading through the programme in front of her and smiling at the lavish praise quoted about her friend by the critics. Who would have thought it? she wondered. At ten, holding hands in the playground and giggling over all the things that occupied the minds of ten-year-old girls, who would ever have imagined that their lives would have turned out this way?

  She snapped shut the programme. There was no point in going over her past relentlessly. She would never be able to dodge what had happened, but it was within her hands to mould the future.

  She only wished that she could make her mind listen to this piece of wisdom instead of shoving images of Lorenzo down her throat all the time.

  It was a relief when the bell sounded for the end of the interval and she could lose herself in the second half of the play.

  By the time the play had wound its way to its conclusion, the audience had worked itself up to an emotional response. There was a standing ovation as the cast walked on to the stage and held hands, bowing to the appreciative crowd. Bouquets of flowers were brought on for Abigail, the only female lead in the play, and one of the actors said, with mock dismay, ‘Where’s mine?’ which had everyone laughing.

  She was preparing to pick her bag up when she heard Abigail’s voice, ringing out as the applause died down.

  ‘And now, I should like to break with tradition and do something absolutely unheard-of!’

  There was a rustle of curiosity and then silence fell over the vast, packed hall. Nothing captured an audience more than the unexpected, and this was something totally unexpected. Isobel found that she was holding her breath. She suspected that quite a few in the audience were doing the same thing as well.

  ‘I should like,’ Abigail continued, ‘with the kind permission of my fellow actors and yourselves, to ask my dearest friend Isobel to step down on to the stage here with me!’

  Isobel’s eyes widened in shock and she thought, Oh, God, but she had to walk down. She felt her legs teetering precariously as she moved past the rows of seats, all eyes fixed on her, and as she cleared the sea of onlookers Abigail smiled down at her and said, looking up, ‘And, of course, I should also like to call Lorenzo Cicolla on to the stage as well.’

  At which point Isobel felt as though everything happening was part of some wild, improbable dream. She didn’t dare raise her eyes, but as she was ushered on to the stage through the side and took her place next to Abigail, she saw Lorenzo making his way up.

  Abigail held her hand then, when Lorenzo was on stage, she announced, with disarming charm, ‘To my two good friends, who have known me since childhood and who were always destined for each other. They have been through a few setbacks but they are here now, together, and together they must stay!’

  There was tumultuous cheering. It rang from every quarter of the hall, rebounding on the walls and making Isobel feel light-headed.

  She hardly knew when her fingers entwined with Lorenzo’s. She looked up into that beloved, handsome, dark face and someone from the crowd roared out, ‘Propose to the girl!’

  ‘Lorenzo…’ Isobel said, and there was a hush.

  ‘Isobel.’ His light eyes met hers and she felt her body trembling. ‘Will you marry me?’

  CHAPTER TEN

  ‘WE HAVE to get out of here,’ Lorenzo said. ‘We have to talk.’

  They were backstage, swirled off among the cast and the various assortment of people—in this case vastly outnumbering the members of the cast—who were heartily congratulating themselves on their performances.

  Abigail walked over to them, her face flushed with success, and with a small, satisfied smile on her lips.

  ‘I hope you didn’t mind my impromptu behaviour,’ she said, grinning and not looking too worried.

  Isobel had moved away from Lorenzo. She still felt as though she was caught up in some elaborate dream, and was therefore finding it easy to disregard what had sounded like a proposal of marriage half an hour ago.

  Dream or no dream, there was no way that he had meant a word of it anyway.

  Standing in front of a crowd of hundreds, what else could he do? In fact, thinking about it, she rather blamed Abigail after all.

  ‘You’re an incorrigible romantic, Abby,’ she said, not looking at Lorenzo, but very much aware of him standing next to her in his dark suit, impeccably handsome and very unnerving.

  ‘I try my best,’ Abigail replied, with a modest, thoughtful nod. ‘I guess you two would like to have some time together?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes,’ Lorenzo murmured, at the very same time that Isobel shook her head and murmured,

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, what’s it to be?’ She looked at both of them with what Isobel considered a rather poor show of looking innocently bemused. ‘Yes? No? Maybe? We’ll mull it over and get back to you?’

  The director sidled up behind her, beaming with triumph, and Isobel could see that her friend was itching to get away and do a post mortem on her performance with him, so she said wearily, ‘All right,’ still not looking at Lorenzo.

  ‘I know a small restaurant quite near,’ he said softly, so close to her that she bristled with awareness. ‘Go away, Abigail,’ he said with a slow smile, ‘and in case I don’t get around to telling you this, you’re the most conniving female I’ve ever met in my life.’ He was smiling though. Isobel could hear it in his voice.

  He pulled her towards the exit and as soon as they were outside, with the cold air stinging her face, she turned to him and said, looking down, ‘I know what marriage is for you. I know you didn’t mean it.’ Her voice sounded stiff and nervous, which she thought was a pretty good indication of how she was feeling.

  ‘Oh, you know, do you?’ he mocked, with just enough of a teasing drawl for her to risk a glance at him from under her lashes.

  ‘Well, what else could you do? With the crowd after you for a…a…’ She spluttered into silence.

  ‘Later,’ he said. ‘This isn’t the place for any kind of conversation. Come on.’ He linked her arm through his and they walked in silence until they came to a small Italian restaurant, where the manager took one look at Lorenzo, smelled the power and wealth which he radiated, and ushered them to a discreet table in the corner of the room.

  There was a small vase of carnations on the table and Lorenzo moved them.

  ‘I want to see you when I say what I have to say, Isobel,’ he murmured, which instantly made the coil in her stomach harden.

  ‘I had no idea that she would pull a stunt like that,’ Isobel mumbled. ‘How did she know where to find you?’

  ‘Savoy,’ he said succinctly, staring at her intently until she felt her colour begin to rise. ‘When I saw her on Broadway I took her out for a meal a couple of days later and I told her that the Savoy was the only place I stayed when I was in London. I never knew that the information would rebound on me.’

  There was a warmth about him that was beginning to make her head spin, and it was a relief when the waiter came to take th
eir order.

  With typical Italian exuberance, everything they wanted was ‘just beautiful’ or ‘a wonderful choice’.

  ‘Was your mother all right about my hasty departure?’ Lorenzo asked, and Isobel twiddled with the stem of her wine-glass.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you? Were you all right?’

  ‘Why on earth shouldn’t I have been?’

  ‘Because, my darling, we hardly parted on amicable terms.’

  My darling. Had he called her ‘my darling’? Without sarcasm?

  ‘This is hopeless,’ he said abruptly, standing up. The manager, in a flurry of alarm, flew over to their table and made a great fuss over this unexpected situation.

  ‘There is something wrong?’ he asked anxiously. ‘You do not find my place agreeable?’

  ‘Perfectly agreeable,’ Lorenzo assured him, delving into his wallet and extracting a wad of notes. ‘I’m sure the food would have been exquisite, but we find that we’re in no mood to eat.’ He looked at her through his lashes and Isobel mumbled confused agreement, getting to her feet and wondering what was going on.

  They left the restaurant, took a taxi, and arrived at the Savoy in what seemed a breathlessly short space of time.

  ‘Why are we here?’ she asked in a high-pitched voice.

  ‘To talk.’ He shot her an innocent look. ‘I can’t talk to you in between mouthfuls of chicken cacciatore.’

  He walked inside the hotel with Isobel following in his wake and, even though she knew where he was taking her, she still balked when they arrived at his bedroom and he unlocked the door and pushed it open.

  ‘Why do we need to talk in a bedroom?’ Her voice now resembled a squeak.

  How could you do this to me, Abigail? she wailed to herself.

  ‘Keep quiet,’ he ordered, shutting the door behind them and tossing the keys on to the table in the middle of the room. ‘Sit down. Have a drink and listen to what I’ve got to say.’

  He poured them both a glass of whisky and soda, which was a drink she never indulged in, but which she now gratefully swallowed because her nerves were in serious danger of seizing up completely.

  ‘Not your favourite drink, I know,’ he said, sitting next to her.

  ‘You remember,’ she whispered.

  ‘Of course I do. I remember,’ he said on a sigh, ‘everything about you, Isobel. How could I forget when you’ve been in my mind for so long?’

  She didn’t look at him. She hung her head and he brushed the curtain of black hair away so that he could see her profile. She felt the feathery touch of his fingers and shivered.

  ‘Look at me,’ he said, and she turned her head so that they were facing each other on the sofa. ‘I spent four years with thoughts of you eating away inside me,’ he continued, and there was nothing teasing in his light eyes. They were deadly serious, inward-thinking. ‘I went to Chicago and every success, every pot of gold I found at the end of every rainbow, was marred by my bitter memories of you.’

  ‘I did what I did——!’ Isobel began, and he placed his finger over her lips.

  ‘Shh.’ He brushed her hair back from her face and his hand remained there, his fingers curled into her hair, as though he couldn’t bring himself to take it away. ‘You have no idea how much I loved you when you threw that bombshell at me,’ he murmured, which pierced her heart.

  All those years ago, of course she had known that he had loved her, but to hear him say it now made her want to sob.

  ‘You were my sun, Isobel. I adored you. I always knew that you could have had anyone. The whole eligible male population of that damned town fancied themselves in love with you!’ He grinned ruefully, and she could tell that he was thinking back. ‘When you told me that you were going to marry Jeremy, I suspected that there was a reason, but I guess it was easy to believe when he announced that he was more suitable for you. And when you didn’t deny it…’

  ‘How could I?’

  ‘I see that now, but I didn’t then,’ Lorenzo said in that deep, caressing voice that did strange things to her nervous system. ‘All I saw were two people who shared the same background, and myself, a dangerous interloper, who had had the audacity to fall in love with the wrong girl. You have never been vain, Isobel, but what was said about you would have made your head spin. You always had that incredible effect on the opposite sex, without even really seeming to realise it. It was almost as if you cast a spell wherever you walked. I could have killed him when he took you away from me—killed you both! Instead I went away.’

  She didn’t want to interrupt. Lorenzo was travelling down his own bitter lane of memories and she knew that he had to say it all.

  She wanted to hear, too. She wanted to hear everything, with no bits missing, even though in her heart of hearts she knew where this confession was leading.

  He had once loved her, he said. She had once been his sun, he said. But that was a long time ago. Now all that fierce, youthful energy had died. Wasn’t that why he could speak to her so calmly? It was easy to speak with calm to someone when indifference was all that you felt for them.

  ‘At that point I suppose I nurtured vague thoughts of returning one day, returning with all the money and power that Jeremy had said you needed.’

  ‘So you did.’

  ‘So I did,’ he answered steadily, ‘although circumstances were rather different from what I originally had in mind. But then life’s like that, isn’t it? One minute your route’s stretching out in front of you, straight and clear, and the next minute it’s dissolved into a network of paths and trails, and you haven’t got a clue where the hell you’re heading.’

  He was still stroking her hair, and she wished that he wouldn’t. It disorientated her. She wanted to be calm like him, to be able to tell him about her past in the same controlled voice, as though it was something to look back on with forgiveness, as though it no longer had the power to hurt.

  ‘I was shocked when I heard about that car accident.’

  ‘But you saw your chance to settle debts with me.’

  ‘I knew that I had to return. I never once stopped to question it.’

  They looked at each other. The room seemed terribly silent. He had switched on one of the table-lamps and there were a lot of half-shadows, pools of darkness.

  ‘I thought,’ he continued slowly, ‘that I could bury the past once and for all, but when I saw you in that office all the old anger came rushing back. I looked at that exquisite, angelic face of yours and all I could see was you on your wedding-day. I wanted you then as I’ve never wanted anyone or anything in my whole life. I hadn’t planned to force you into marriage, but when I looked at you I knew that I had to have you, that you had to be mine.’

  ‘Hate is a powerful emotion, Lorenzo,’ she mumbled, blinking back an embarrassing attack of tears.

  ‘Hate?’ He gave her an incredulous stare and her heart skipped a beat. ‘I don’t hate you, Isobel. Is that what you think?’

  ‘Not now, perhaps.’ She felt utterly miserable. ‘Indifference now, perhaps.’

  ‘How could I ever be indifferent to you?’ He leaned forward and cupped her face in his hands. Strong, powerful hands that evoked a million memories for her.

  Her heart was definitely doing wild things now. Soaring and swooping and flying high above the clouds. She held her breath and felt as if she was walking on the edge of a precipice.

  ‘I’m in love with you, woman,’ he said in an odd voice. ‘I never stopped being in love with you. I wanted to. Dammit, I wanted to more than anything else in the world. I came back to put you into perspective but the only thing I succeeded in doing was falling even deeper in love with you all over again. But I couldn’t block out the past. I had to know and, in between loving you, I wanted to damn well throttle you into telling me why you had married him.’

  ‘Lorenzo!’ She looked at him with shining eyes. ‘You love me.’

  She reached out tentatively and stroked his face and he groaned, bending to kiss her. H
is lips were hungry and searching and she clung to him, kissing him back.

  ‘When I discovered the reason for your marriage, I saw red,’ he muttered against her neck and she cradled his head in her hands. ‘All I could think was: she didn’t trust me enough. I came up here to London, but it’s been a nightmare. At first I couldn’t think straight, then I began to see the position you had found yourself in. I began to understand why you had acted the way you did. Oh, my darling…!’ His voice was hoarse.

  ‘I was imprisoned for four years,’ Isobel said softly. ‘All that time, the only things that kept me going were thoughts of you and my parents. I accepted marriage to Jeremy because I had no choice, but I didn’t like it.’

  ‘Didn’t your parents guess?’

  ‘I think they probably guessed,’ Isobel said. ‘They knew that there was something not quite right, but what could they do? Whenever they mentioned it, I backed away. I couldn’t afford for either of them to suspect anything. I had done it for them, because I loved them so much, and I never regretted it. But how I regretted you. I built a future in my head, the future we should have had.’

  ‘It must have made you terribly bitter towards him,’ Lorenzo said gently, and she sighed.

  ‘To start with. No, I suppose I was very bitter for the long course of my marriage to Jeremy, but the human being isn’t capable of sustained anger. After a while, you begin to adapt the only way you can and I suppose, towards the end, I felt sorry for him, even though I knew that he had used me—used us both, in a way.’

  ‘Poor darling Isobel.’ He kissed her again, slowly and tenderly, pushing her back against the sofa. Her pulses began to quicken and she moaned as he stroked her waist through the fine material of her dress.

  When he lifted her off the sofa and carried her towards the bedroom it was, she knew, the moment she had been waiting all those years for. The moment when he would touch her, without anger or unwanted desire, but with love.