‘By omission, yes.’ His deep voice confirmed.
‘You deliberately set out to cheat and deceive me.’
His hands tightened fractionally. ‘I wasn’t like that,’ he denied. ‘You were given only half the picture. The rest was—’
Without trying to listen she broke free, somewhere in the recess of her burning mind surprised that he actually allowed her to do it. She limped off towards the door that opened into the beautiful sitting room. Behind her, André followed in grim silence as she crossed the room to the walnut bureau, tried to open it and found it locked.
‘You took the key with you when you left here,’ he quietly informed her.
Key, she thought, and bent to feel around under the bureau’s base, then came back up with a fine-worked gold key stuck to the middle of a piece of sticky tape. It was a spare key, originally taped there by her mother and allowed to remain in its secret place when the beautiful piece of furniture came to Samantha. She had been fifteen years old at the time, and inconsolable with grief. But to touch the smooth walnut wood had been like making contact with her mother. She did the same thing now, gently stroking the wood and immediately feeling that special sensation.
Then tears flooded into her eyes, because she suddenly realised she didn’t have a single thing like this to remind her of her father. Not any more anyway. André had taken it all away from her.
Holding back the tears, she concentrated on fitting the key into the pretty ornate lock and easing back the roll-top lid. It slid into its housing with a smooth familiarity that clutched at her heart.
Inside the bureau were more memories. Precious, special, deeply personal memories slotted neatly into a row of finely worked cubby-holes. Letters, birthday cards, photographs…it was a diary of memorabilia spanning her whole life.
Then there were the other things. Things which didn’t belong in here. But she’d thrown them in and had locked them away just so they were out of her sight.
The flame burned brighter. She had no control over it. It showed her the Bressingham, her father, Raoul, then the Bressingham again, planting faces, buildings, snatched little scenes into her head like picture postcards, before burning each one of them up in a sheet of fire to replace it with another. She saw herself on her wedding day, dressed in white and smiling. Dressed in black at her father’s funeral and inconsolably sad. A hotel foyer virtually reduced to a pile of rubble. André scowling. Raoul smirking. Typed words written on pieces of paper she couldn’t quite focus on well enough to read.
‘You betrayed me,’ she whispered.
‘No, I didn’t,’ André denied.
‘Where’s Raoul?’ she asked next.
‘In Australia.’ He seemed prepared to answer her questions as they came. ‘He’s been there for the last twelve months.’
There was a significant reason why he’d offered up that last piece of information, but Samantha did not have the ability to work out what that reason was right now. She was too busy remembering other things: painful truths with wretched conclusions.
‘He tried to rape me, right here in this house,’ she murmured thickly. ‘And you let him get away with it.’
No reply came back to answer that particular charge, she noticed. And she found she wasn’t really surprised. When André had stopped himself from finishing his sentence this morning it had not been his stepfather he had been about to declare his love for—but his half-brother, Raoul.
Raoul, the younger one, the spoiled one, the mean and shrewd, manipulatively sly one… Though big brother was not above being manipulatively sly himself, she recalled.
The tears attempted to flood again. Lodging them back into her throat, she reached out and with trembling fingers picked up the set of angrily discarded papers. Not once had she looked at André since they’d faced each other across the swimming pool, and she didn’t attempt to do so now as she turned to offer the papers to him.
‘These belong to you,’ she said. ‘Raoul gave them to me.’
Lean brown fingers slowly took them from her. Her heart felt sluggish as she watched those fingers begin flicking through the copied pieces of evidence documenting the events leading up to André Visconte gaining full ownership of the Bressingham Hotel—on the same day that he’d married Samantha Bressingham.
‘Quite a dowry, when you think about it.’ She smiled on a tight piece of self-derision. ‘The Bressingham came really quite cheap for you, didn’t it?’
‘Don’t make judgements when you are not in possession of the full facts,’ he grimly advised.
‘You mean I still have some more ugly memories to look forward to? How nice.’
‘Not all of them are ugly.’
‘They are from where I’m standing,’ she said, and walked away, out of the room and across the hall then up the stairs.
As she travelled along the upper landing she passed by the door to Raoul’s room. Last time she had stepped through that door she had gone to confront him about those papers. Now she was glad the door was locked. She never wanted to cross its threshold ever again.
Shutting herself in the bedroom, she stood for a moment with her face covered by her hands. Her insides were trembling and her flesh was shivering, and her head was aching so badly she wanted to crawl beneath the duvet and go to sleep.
But that was exactly what she had been doing for the last twelve months, she told herself. She had been sleeping to hide away from the ugly truth that she had fallen in love with a man who had deceived and lied to her right from the start.
Their whirlwind courtship and hasty marriage had been a smooth, slick manoeuvre on his part to seal the deal of any hotelier’s dreams of gaining possession of the Bressingham. And why had that been? she asked, slowly sliding her hands away from her face to stare bleakly at this next ugly truth.
Because the Bressingham was special. No one would ever try to dispute that. Old as it was, and tired as it was, it possessed a reputation for old-world grace and charm that had been capturing the hearts of anyone who walked into it for the last one hundred and fifty years.
Mention the Bressingham and people’s eyes lit up, no matter where in the world it was that you mentioned it. It was that well known, that warmly thought of. That special.
It was why Stefan Reece’s eyes had lit up when he’d mentioned the Bressingham. And it was also why he had directed his comments about the hotel directly to Samantha. Family-owned and run, from the day it had opened its doors to its first paying guests. And Samantha was now the last living member of that family.
But none of that silly, soft sentimentality gave the reason why people like André and Stefan Reece would do almost anything to own the Bressingham. No, for them its importance lay in two very simple elements.
Its premier location in a premier city and, quite simply, its name.
To buy the Bressingham name was to buy a dead-cert winner. So if push came to shove, and the daughter had to be bought along with the name, then, what the hell, why not? She was young, she was good-looking, she was great in bed.
‘Oh, God, I hate myself.’ Samantha groaned, and pushed her hands to her face again—only to drag them away almost immediately when a knock came at the door.
Nausea clawed at her stomach. ‘Go to hell,’ she said, and forced herself to move, walking on stiff legs into the bathroom.
She heard him try the door handle as she was shutting herself away, and wasn’t surprised he’d ignored what she’d said. The man was immune to other people’s feelings. Which was why she had locked the bedroom door so he couldn’t come in. In that way, at least, she knew the man. He was no coward when it came to facing problems.
As opposed to herself, she likened sombrely. She had made a wretched vocation out of refusing to face hers!
Almost as if she’d just thrown down a challenge, her mind began to replay that ugly scene from twelve months ago. While she’d been shut away in this same room, taking a shower, Raoul had calmly walked into the bedroom she’d shared with André and
had left the stack of documents on her bed, then gone to his own bedroom to await the outcome.
She’d known why he had done it. Only an hour before he had propositioned her, and she had slapped him down with the coldest little refusal she could use.
The papers had been his retaliation. So she’d read them, with a sickened disgust at how low Raoul had been prepared to go in his quest to cause trouble between her and André. Then she’d walked into Raoul’s room to tell him what he could damned well do with his papers of lies.
But it hadn’t turned out like that. Raoul had been clever; he had known exactly what he’d been doing when he’d lured her into his bedroom that night. Tall like André, dark like André, but younger, more like her own age, and with a mean streak a mile wide that he was oh, so careful never to show André.
‘Oh, come on, Sam,’ he murmured dryly. ‘We all know you’re a hot little thing. Even my macho brother never knows whose bed you’re sleeping in when he’s away.’
‘That’s a lie,’ she said, going white at the poisonous suggestion. Then, ‘Don’t do that!’ she snapped when his hands came up to touch her. She knocked them away and started backing up.
He smiled a lazy smile. ‘But you’re family,’ he murmured tauntingly. ‘And we all know how big brother likes us all to get our even share. It makes him feel good and in control. “You want money, Raoul? Sure you can have money. You want a car? Sure, here’s the cheque. You want to live in my house? Sure, live in my house; make yourself at home, what’s mine is yours.”’
‘Think again if you dare to believe he was including me in that,’ she told him coldly.
‘And why not you?’ he jeered. ‘Those deeds of ownership on the Bressingham tell you exactly where you stand in big brother’s plan of things. You were a very un-hostile takeover, Samantha.’ He spelled it out cruelly. ‘Came with the fixtures and fittings. One feisty wife. Pain-in-the-neck flirt. Install her in family home. Use at will.’
‘God, you’re a nasty piece of work, Raoul.’ She retaliated. ‘I own the Bressingham!’ she declared angrily. ‘It came to me in my father’s will!’
‘Did it?’ He sounded so sure of himself. So absolutely positive that he was right, it started her doubting her own mind right there and then. ‘Did it actually say, “I hereby bequeath my precious daughter the Bressingham Hotel and enough money to return it to the proud place it used to be”?’
He knew it didn’t; she began to shake. Her father’s will had merely stated that everything he possessed would go to her. André had taken care of the rest. And why not? She trusted him with her life, never mind her father’s business affairs. She had been so grief stricken. So lost without the man who had been her mentor and her hero from the day she’d been born. She hadn’t even known he was ill. He’d kept so much from her.
Had that included letting André buy the Bressingham?
Now she could see her own face as it must have looked that night in Raoul’s bedroom. See the slow dawning of a realisation that Raoul could be right take the colour from her face. And if he’d been right about one thing, he could have been be right about the others. Maybe she had come with the deal. Maybe André had married her because her father had insisted that the Bressingham must remain with the Bressingham family.
Beginning to shiver again, she reached out to switch on the shower, then dropped her robe to the floor so she could begin peeling off her wet swimsuit. She didn’t want to remember any more, but her mind decided otherwise. As she stepped beneath the shower’s hot spray, the rest of the dreadful scene began to fill her head.
Raoul trying to touch her, her slapping his hands away, him enjoying the minor skirmish, smiling, taunting her with words and gestures until she could barely breathe as panic began stir. He was big, he was strong; she had been no match for him. What followed had been a horrible experience that had continued as a frantic struggle on Raoul’s bed—when André had walked in on them.
And that is about as far as I want to go with this, she told herself on a sick little shudder. What she really needed to do was get to away from here—right away, she decided, on a sudden upsurge of panic that had her stepping quickly out of the shower. She needed to give herself some time and space to get her head together. Because, right now, she didn’t know who she was, what she was, or even why she was!
André knew when he saw her coming down the stairs that he had a big problem on his hands. He had been standing here in the hall waiting for her, half expecting to see her wearing a cold mask instead of a face. But it was worse than that. She was dressed in stark, mourning black, and was carrying that damned suitcase she had brought with her from the Tremount.
Samantha was about to bury their marriage.
‘Going somewhere?’ he questioned silkily.
She didn’t bother to reply. Neither did she make eye contact as she attempted to walk straight past him as if he wasn’t there.
His hand snaked out, wrenching the suitcase from her. It brought her to a stop on a sharp little gasp. He was very happy to watch the anger flare in her blank green eyes. ‘We need to talk,’ he said.
‘No,’ she refused. ‘I have nothing I want to say to you.’ And she kept on walking—without the suitcase. Head up, body stiff, only that small limp to ruin her cold, stiff exit. It was almost a shame to spoil it, he acknowledged. But he was going to talk, he determined grimly. She was going to talk!
‘Have you ever heard that old saying, if I had my time over, I would play that scene differently?’ He fed the words coolly after her. ‘Well, this is your chance, cara,’ he said. ‘Don’t miss this rare opportunity you’ve been handed by playing the scene the same way again.’
Watching her pull to a stop, he felt the tight sting of triumph. She might hate the very thought of it, but she knew he was right. ‘I can’t talk about it all now,’ she murmured unevenly. ‘I need time to—’
‘Time,’ he grimly cut in, ‘is something you’ve been wasting for twelve long, miserable months.’
‘Okay!’ She spun on him so abruptly that, even though he had been deliberately provoking her into it, he didn’t expect the speed with which she decided to take him on. ‘You want to play the scene a different way?’ she challenged. ‘So let’s play it a different way!’
And if he’d thought her cold a moment ago then she certainly wasn’t now. She was burning with anger, with bitterness and a hatred that tried to sear off his skin.
‘You walked in here that night, took one look at what was going on in that locked room upstairs, and instantly blamed me for it!’
‘It was Raoul’s room!’ he threw back. ‘His bed you were both tangled upon! Look at the evidence, Samantha. How would you have responded if that had been me with another woman in there?’
‘Oh, no.’ She shook her head. ‘You are not going to divert the blame by shifting the argument. You were there. You saw. You drew your conclusion… I needed your help!’ she cried. ‘Instead I was called a whore!’
The truth cut deep; he went white. She was whiter. ‘It was spur of the moment.’ He defended himself. ‘I lost my head.’
She wasn’t impressed. ‘Raoul said you never knew whose bed I was in when you weren’t here,’ she told him tightly. ‘I didn’t believe him. But it was the truth, wasn’t it?’
‘No.’ He denied it, but he couldn’t look her straight in the eye as he did so because, damn himself to hell, he had suspected she might wonder what it would be like to make love with other men.
The downside of marrying a virgin and finding himself landed with a feisty, flirtatious witch for a wife was that he just hadn’t been able to trust her not to fly with her instincts and give those other guys a try.
‘You didn’t have to walk out of here the way you did.’ He heard himself grind out, and immediately acknowledged how weak that argument sounded.
Her eyes flicked green scorn at him. ‘What else did you expect?’ she asked. ‘You threw Raoul out, then you returned to cut me into little pieces before slamming o
ut yourself! I wasn’t hanging around here to see which brother decided to return first and finish what he’d started. So I got out.’ Her voice was shrill. ‘What sane woman wouldn’t?’
‘I went to the Bressingham,’ he explained. ‘Spent the night in your father’s old office getting drunk. Around dawn I had to finally admit that I had made a mess of the whole thing. So I came back here. You’d already packed and gone—so had Raoul.’
‘At which you drew your own conclusions,’ she inserted with a bitter little smile. ‘No wonder it took you a year to stumble over me.’
‘It wasn’t like that.’ He sighed. ‘I—’
‘I don’t want to know.’ Stiffly she turned back to the door.
‘Devon,’ he said, aware that he was clutching at straws now, to keep her here. ‘Why did you choose to go to Devon?’
‘Place of happy childhood memories,’ she mocked without turning. ‘We used to spend our holidays there. Staying at the Tremount Hotel, of all places,’ she added with heavy irony. ‘Which was probably why I felt so comfortable working there… Now you’ve bought it,’ she said, and her voice began to thicken. ‘Carla thinks you are wonderful and everyone is happy.’
‘Except for you,’ he responded gruffly.
‘Yes.’ She nodded. ‘Except for me.’
‘But why not?’ he questioned frowningly. ‘I thought you would understand that I bought it for you.’
She turned her head at that. ‘Like you bought the Bressingham?’ she posed, then smiled a wretchedly bleak smile and turned away again, and this time he could see she intended to leave.
Frustration licked through him. They had resolved absolutely nothing. She hated him. He had no defence. If she left now, it would be over. He was as certain of that as he had ever been about anything.
‘Even a condemned man is allowed his moment to speak on his own behalf, cara…’
As he stood there, waiting to see what she would do, one of her hands fluttered up to touch her right temple. It was a gesture of uncertainty; already he had come to recognise it as such.
The Unforgettable Husband Page 13