by Penny Jordan
Her mother’s shocked, ‘Oh, Fliss …’ had been ringing in her ears as she’d followed.
Later, of course, she had explained what had happened to her mother, and thankfully her mother had believed her, but by that time Vidal had been on his way back to Spain, and the pain she had felt on seeing the contempt and loathing in his eyes as he’d looked at her had turned her crush on him into revulsion and anger.
She had never gone back to school. She and the three girls who had become her closest friends had gone instead to a sixth-form college, thanks to the excellence of their exam results, and Fliss had made a private vow to herself that she would make her mother proud of her. She would never, ever allow another man to look at her as Vidal had done. She had never discussed with anyone just what his misjudgement of her that evening had done to her. It was her private shame. And now Vidal had resurrected that shame.
Downstairs in the library, with its high ceiling and Biblical frescoes, Vidal stood motionless and white-lipped, staring unseeingly into space, oblivious to the grandeur of his surroundings. The bookshelves were laden with leather-covered books, their titles painted on the spines in gold, and the scent of leather and paper pervaded the room.
Vidal knew himself to be a man of strong principle, with deep passions and convictions about his ancestry and his duty to it, and to the people who depended on him. Never before had the strength of those passions boiled over into the fury that Felicity had aroused in him. Never before had he come so close to having his self-control consumed in such intense fires.
If he hadn’t been stopped when those lights had come on.
He would have stopped anyway, he assured himself. But a critical inner voice demanded silkily, Would you? Or would he have continued to be consumed by his own out-of-control emotions until he had had Felicity spread naked on the bed beneath him, as he sought to satisfy the hunger within him he had thought extinguished?
Vidal closed his eyes and then opened them again. He had thought he’d put the past behind him, but Felicity had brought it back to life with a vengeance.
He needed this to be over. He needed to walk away from the past and draw a line under it. He needed to be rid of it—and for that to happen he needed to be rid of Felicity herself.
Vidal’s mouth compressed. As soon as they had seen Felipe’s lawyer, and arrangements had been made for Vidal to buy from Felicity the house her father had left her, he would remove her from his life—permanently.
Upstairs in the bathroom adjoining her bedroom, the door safely locked, Fliss stood motionless and dry-eyed beneath the beating lash of the powerful shower. She was beyond tears, beyond anger—except for the anger that burned inside her against herself—beyond anything other than the knowledge that she could stand beneath the fiercely drumming water for the rest of her life—but no amount of water would ever wash away the stain she herself had stamped—dyed—into her pride via what she had done when she had responded to Vidal’s contemptuous kiss.
Stepping out of the shower, she reached for a towel. Perhaps she should not have come here, after all. But that was what Vidal had wanted, wasn’t it? The letter he had sent as her father’s executor, advising her of the fact that her father had left her his house, had said that there was no need. No need as far as he was concerned, but every need for her, Fliss reminded herself as she towelled her hair dry. Her body was concealed from her own gaze by the thick soft towel she had wrapped around herself, which covered her from her breasts down to her feet. She had no wish to look upon the flesh that had betrayed her. Or was she the one who had betrayed it? Had she had more experience, more lovers, the lifestyle and the men Vidal had accused her of giving herself to—if she had not deliberately refused to allow her sexuality and her sensuality to know the pleasures they were made for—she would surely have been better equipped to deal with what was happening to her now.
She couldn’t possibly really have wanted Vidal. That was impossible.
Her heart started to beat jerkily, so that she had to put her hand over it in an attempt to calm it.
It was impossible, wasn’t it? A woman would have to be bereft of all pride and self-protection to allow herself to feel any kind of desire for a man who had treated her as Vidal had. It was the past that was doing this to her—trapping her, refusing to let her move forward. The past and the unhealed wounds Vidal had inflicted on her there …
It was the sound of her bedroom door rattling that brought Fliss out of the uneasy sleep she had eventually fallen into, after what had felt like hours of lying awake with her body tense and her mind a whirlwind of angry, passionate thoughts. At first the image conjured up inside her head was one of Vidal, his long fingers curled round the door handle. Immediately a surge of sensation burned through her body, igniting an unfamiliar and unwanted sensual ache that shocked her into reality—and shame.
The darkness of the night, with its sensually tempting whispers and torments, was over. It was morning now. Light and sunshine flooded into the room through the windows over which she had forgotten to close the curtains the previous night.
The faint knocking she could still hear on the door was far too hesitant to come from a man like Vidal.
Calling out that she would unlock the door, Fliss got out of bed, glad that she had done so when she discovered a small, nervous-looking young maid standing outside the door and pushing a trolley containing Fliss’s breakfast.
Thanking her, Fliss quickly checked her watch. It was gone eight o’clock already, and her appointment with her late father’s lawyer was at ten. She had no idea where the offices were, or how long it would take to get there. She’d have preferred to go there alone, but of course with Vidal named as her late father’s executor that was impossible.
With the maid gone, Fliss gulped down a few swallows of the deliciously fragrant coffee she had poured for her, and snatched small bites from one of the fresh warm rolls which she had broken open and spread with sharp orange conserve. Her mother had told her about this special orange conserve, beloved of the family, which was made with the oranges from their own groves. Just tasting it reminded her of her mother, and that in turn helped to calm her and steady her resolve.
Half an hour later she was showered and dressed in a clean tee shirt and her plain dark ‘city’ skirt, her hair brushed back off her face and confined in a clip in a way that unwittingly revealed the delicacy of her features and the slender length of her neck. Fliss automatically touched the small heart-shaped gold locket that hung from her neck on its narrow gold chain. It had been a gift from her father to her mother. Her mother had worn it always, and now Fliss wore it in her memory.
A swift curl of mascara and a slick of lipstick and she was ready. And just in time, she reflected as she heard another knock on her bedroom door—a rather more confident one this time. When she opened the bedroom door it was to find Rosa standing outside, her expression as wary and disapproving as it had been the previous evening.
‘You are to go down to the library. I will show you the way,’ she announced in Spanish, her button-shiny, sharp dark eyes assessing Fliss in a way that made Fliss feel her appearance had been found wanting when compared with the elegance no doubt adopted by the kind of women a man like Vidal preferred. Soignée, sophisticated, designer-clad women with that air of cool hauteur and reserve her mother had told her that highborn Spanish women wore like the all-covering muslin robes once worn by the Moors who had preceded them.
So what? She was here to speak with her father’s lawyers, not to dress to impress a man who filled her with dislike and contempt, Fliss reminded herself.
No sound other than that made by their feet on the stairs broke the heavy silence of the house’s dark interior as Rosa escorted her down to the library, opening the door for her and telling her briskly that she was to wait inside for Vidal.
Normally Fliss would have been unable to resist looking at the titles of the books filling the double-height shelves that ran round the whole room, but for some reason she
felt too on edge to do anything other than wish that the coming meeting was safely over.
Safely over? Why should she feel unsafe and on edge? She already knew the contents of her father’s will so far as they concerned her. He had left Fliss the house he himself had inherited from Vidal’s grandmother, on the ducal estate in the Lecrin Valley, along with a small sum of money, whilst the agricultural land that surrounded it had been returned to the main estate.
Was she wrong to feel that there was a message for her in this bequest? Was it just her own longing that made her hope it was the loving touch of a father filled with regret for a relationship never allowed to exist? Was it foolish of her to yearn somehow to find something of what might have been? Some shadowy ghost of regret to warm her heart, waiting for her in the home her father had left her?
Fliss knew that if Vidal were to guess what she was thinking he would destroy her fragile hopes and leave her with nothing to soften the rejection of her childhood years. Which was why he must not know why she had come here, instead of staying in England as he instructed her to do. In the house where her father had lived she might finally find something to ease the pain she had grown up with. After all, her father must have intended something by leaving her his home. An act like that was in its own way an act of love, and she longed so much to have that love.
Not that she couldn’t help wishing the house was somewhere other than so close to Vidal’s family castillo.
As grand as this townhouse was, Fliss knew from her mother that it couldn’t compare with the magnificence of the ducal castillo, in the idyllically beautiful Lecrin Valley to the south of Granada.
Set on the south-westerly slopes of the Sierra Nevada, and running down to the coast with its sub-tropical climate, the valley had been much loved by the Moors, who had spoken of the area as the Valley of Happiness. Her mother’s voice had been soft with emotion when she had told Fliss that in spring the air was filled with the scent of the blossom from the orchards that surrounded the castle.
Olives, almonds, cherries, and wine from the vines that covered many acres of its land were produced in abundance by the ducal estate, and the house owned by her father was, Fliss knew, called House of Almond Blossom because it was set amongst an orchard of those trees.
Was Vidal trying to undermine her in having her brought to this so openly male-orientated room and then left here alone, virtually imprisoned in its austere and unwelcoming maleness? she questioned, her thoughts returning to the present. Why couldn’t Rosa have simply called her down when Vidal himself was ready to leave for the lawyer’s office? Why had she been made to wait here, in this room that spoke so forcefully of male power and male arrogance?
As though her hostile thoughts had somehow conjured him up, the door swung open and Vidal stepped into the room—just as she was in angry, agitated mid-pace, her eyes flashing telltale signs of what she was feeling as she looked towards him.
He was dressed in a pair of narrow black chinos that hugged the litheness of his hips and stretched with the movement of his thighs, drawing her treacherous gaze to the obvious strength and power of the male muscles there. As though having already been accused and found guilty of treachery, and deciding that it now had nothing left to lose, her gaze moved boldly upwards, its awareness of him unhampered by the white shirt covering the physical reality of his torso.
Aghast, Fliss realised that her imagination had joined in the betrayal and was now supplying her with totally unwanted images of what lay beneath that shirt—right down to providing her with a mental picture of every single powerful muscle his flesh cloaked from the memories her senses had stored after her proximity to him last night.
Only when her gaze reached his throat was Fliss finally able to drag it back down to the shiny polished gleam of his shoes as it quailed at the thought of daring to rest on his mouth, or meet the gaze of those topaz-gold eyes.
She felt slightly breathless, and her senses were quivering—with distaste and dislike, Fliss insisted to herself. Not with awareness or—perish the thought—some horrible and unwanted surge of female desire.
Her heart started pounding far too heavily, the sound drumming inside her own head like a warning call. Her lips had started to burn. She desperately wanted to lick them—to cool them down, to impose the feel of her own tongue against them and wipe away the memory of Vidal’s kiss. So much treachery from her own body. Where had it come from, and why? She tried to think of her father and remind herself of why she was here, dredging up the broken strands of her self-control from the whirlpool into which they had been sucked.
Taking a deep breath, she told Vidal, ‘It’s nearly ten o’clock. I seem to remember that last night you warned me against being late for our appointment with the lawyer—but apparently that same rule does not apply to you.’
He was frowning now, obviously disliking the fact that she had dared to question him. His voice was cool and sharp as he answered. ‘As you say, it’s nearly ten o’clock—but since Señor Gonzales has not yet arrived, so far as I am concerned I am ahead of time.’
‘The lawyer is coming here?’ Fliss demanded, ignoring his attack on her. Her face flamed like that of a child caught out in a social solecism, or a faux pas. Of course a man as aristocratic and as arrogant as Vidal would expect lawyers to attend him—not the other way round.
The loud pealing of a bell echoing through the marble-floored hallway beyond the half-open library door silenced any further comment Fliss might have tried to make.
No doubt feeling that he had triumphed over her, Vidal strode away from her. Fliss could hear him greeting and welcoming another man, whose voice she could also now hear.
‘Coffee in the library, please, Rosa,’ Fliss heard Vidal instructing the housekeeper as the two men approached the open doorway.
She had no real reason to feel apprehensive or even nervous, but she did feel both those emotions, Fliss admitted as Vidal waved the small dark-suited man who must be Señor Gonzales into the library ahead of him, and then introduced him to her.
The lawyer gave her an old-fashioned and formal half-bow, before extending his hand to shake hers.
‘Señor Gonzales will go through the terms of your late father’s will in so far as they relate to you. As was explained to you in the letter I sent, as your father’s executor it is part of my role to carry out his wishes.’
As he led them over to the imposing dark wood desk at one side of the room’s marble fireplace, Fliss recognised that note in Vidal’s voice that said there had been no need for her to come to Spain to hear what had already been reported to her via letter, but Fliss refused to be undermined by it. The lawyer, polite though he had been to her, was bound to be on Vidal’s side, she warned herself, and she would have to be on her guard with both of them.
‘My late father has left me his house. I know that,’ Fliss agreed once they were all seated round the desk. She broke off from what she was saying when a maid came in with the coffee, which had to be poured and handed out to them with due formality before they were alone again.
‘Felipe wanted to make amends to you for the fact that he had not been able to acknowledge you formally and publicly whilst he was alive,’ Señor Gonzales said quietly.
Silently Fliss digested his words.
‘Financially—’
‘Financially I have no need of my father’s inheritance,’ Fliss interrupted him quickly.
She was not going to allow Vidal to think even worse of her than he already did and suggest that it was the financial aspect of her inheritance that had brought her here. The truth was that she would far rather have had a personal letter from her father proclaiming his love for her than any amount of money.
‘Thanks to the generosity of one of my English relatives my mother and I never suffered financially from my father’s rejection of us. My mother’s great aunt did not reject us. She thought enough of us to want to help us. She cared when others did not.’
Fliss felt proud to be able to point
out to the two men that it was her mother’s family who had stepped in and saved them from penury—who had cared enough about them to want to do that.
She could feel Vidal watching her, but she wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of looking back at him so that he could show her the contempt he felt for her.
‘Are there any questions you wish to ask now about your late father’s bequest to you before we continue?’ the lawyer invited.
Fliss took a deep steadying breath. Here it was—the opportunity she so desperately wanted to ask the question that she so much wanted answering.
‘There is something.’ She had turned her body slightly in her chair, so that she was facing the lawyer and not Vidal, but she was still conscious of the fact that Vidal was focusing on her. ‘I know that there was a family arrangement that my father would marry a girl who had been picked out for him as his future wife by his grandmother, but according to the letter you sent me he never married.’
‘That is correct,’ Señor Gonzales agreed.
‘What happened? Why didn’t he marry her?’
‘Señor Gonzales is unable to provide you with the answer to that question.’
The harsh, incisive slice of Vidal’s voice lacerated the small silence that had followed her question, causing Fliss to turn round and look at him.
‘However, I can. Your father did not marry Isabella y Fontera because her family withdrew from the match. Though they made some other excuse, it was likely they got wind of the scandal surrounding him. His health had deteriorated, too, so no more matchmaking attempts were made. What were you hoping to hear? That he withdrew from it out of guilt and regret? I’m sorry to disappoint you. Felipe was not the sort of man to go against our grandmother.’
Fliss could feel her nails biting into her palms as she made small angry fists of rejection. The golden gaze pinned her own and held it, making it impossible for her to escape from Vidal’s thorough scrutiny of her. The way he was looking at her made her feel as though he would take possession of her mind and control her very thoughts if she let him. But of course there was no way she was going to do that. Pity indeed the woman he eventually married—because she would be expected to surrender the whole of herself, mind and body, to his control.