by Helen Brooks
She paced back and forwards, ignoring the sound of Isabella’s bell overhead, until John appeared in the doorway, his severe face soft in his distress. ‘I’m sorry, but Miss Isabella wonders what’s keeping you,’ he said apologetically as he glanced at her tear-washed face. ‘Shall I tell her you’ll be up shortly?’
‘I can’t, John, not yet.’ She couldn’t endure more small talk when her heart was being slashed into tiny pieces. ‘Tell her I’m having a bath or a rest or something.’
‘What possessed him to go out in this?’ John murmured anxiously, forgetting his stiffness in the face of another crisis in less than twenty-four hours. ‘The dog might have come home by itself. Did MacKay go with him?’
‘Is that the man called Mike?’ Fabia asked quietly and when the old man nodded she nodded herself in answer.
‘Well, he couldn’t have a better man with him for conditions like these,’ John said comfortingly. ‘Knows the area round here like the back of his hand. Mr Alexander will be all right, Miss Fabia, don’t worry.’
Don’t worry! As the old man disappeared upstairs she had the mad impulse to run out into the snow and keep running until she found him. For the first time she felt she knew exactly how the big cats felt at the zoo when they prowled round a tiny confining cage, growling with frustrated rage and helplessness.
When she heard the faint sound of a dog barking in the distance she experienced such a feeling of relief that for a moment everything swam in a dark hazy mist, and then as she lifted her head towards the sound her blood froze. There was just one dog barking. What if Minor had found his way home by himself and the others were lost out there?
She raced into the hall, pulling on her coat as she went and not stopping to slip her feet into boots. Her light shoes were soaked within seconds as she stood at the top of the snow-covered steps and then, as a large bulky figure in thick coat and wellingtons appeared round a corner in the drive with a dog bounding at his side, the feeling of indescribable relief was replaced by hot blinding rage such as she had never known before. She flew down the steps and across the lawns towards him, stumbling in the two feet of snow that had covered everything in a thick white blanket, but righting herself as her fury drove her forwards.
‘You stupid, stupid man!’ she cried over the few yards separating them as she neared his side. ‘How could you have been so incredibly stupid? You could have died out there! Everyone’s been worried to death!’
‘You didn’t tell my grandmother, did you?’ His face was a dull grey colour and he was walking as though each step would be his last, but she was too enraged with painful relief to notice.
‘No, I didn’t tell her.’ She reached his side as she spoke and beat on his chest angrily. ‘But what about me?’ she asked with each blow. ‘How could you do this to me?’
He stared at her silently as she continued in her tirade, hot tears stinging the numbed coldness of her face as she ranted and raved her grief.
‘Come here.’ As he lifted her up into his arms she clung on to him as though she would never let him go, collapsing against his wet body with a little inarticulate cry of relief.
‘I thought you were dead, Alex, I thought you were dead.’ As he carried her towards the house he looked down into her face with a strange smile hovering on his lips.
‘Would you have minded?’ There was no mockery in his voice, just a deep hard question that she answered immediately.
‘I’d have died too.’
He stopped again in the middle of the snow-covered lawns as more lights flashed on in the house when Mary and the others realised he was home. ‘What does that mean? Explain.’ As she buried her head against the roughness of his coat his voice was threaded with wonder as he spoke again. ‘I love you, Fabia. I’ve loved you from the very minute I saw you in the middle of that room amid a crowd of awful people who paled into insignificance beside you. I couldn’t believe it when you turned out to be a Mary-Lou.’ He hugged her to him as he started walking again. ‘And when I found out what sort of a trick you’d played on me I knew you were the only woman I’d ever love. So beautiful, so defiant, so touchingly fierce.’
‘You didn’t mind?’ She stared up into his face.
‘I minded like hell,’ he said grimly. ‘But it was too late then. The die had been cast, the Cade curse had struck again. You were the one I’d been waiting for all my life and you loathed the very ground I walked on!’
‘Not really,’ she whispered against his chest. ‘I was fighting myself as much as you.’
‘Well, you went the full ten rounds, angel-face,’ he said wryly as he reached the bottom of the steps. ‘Is there anything there for me?’ He stopped again and looked down into her face. ‘Tell me, I want to hear it. I want to know this is not a dream, that it’s real. Tell me, Fabia.’
‘I love you, Alex.’ As she spoke the last black thread of bitterness was loosened and her heart broke out into the glorious light.
‘You love me?’ He clasped her to him again. ‘That was worth turning into a block of ice to hear. I thought I was going to have a hell of a fight on my hands before I’d hear you say that but I wasn’t going to give up. Weeks, months, years—I’d have waited. Not patiently, maybe, but I’d have waited.’
‘There are things you’ve got to know, Alex.’ As he put her down inside the hall he looked at her for a long moment and then touched her face gently.
‘Nothing would make any difference to the way I feel about you but let me get out of these wet things and then we’ll talk.’
‘Minor?’ She looked down at Major with a little start of guilt. ‘You didn’t find him? Oh, Alex—’
‘We found him.’ As Mary and John appeared in the hall, faces wreathed in smiles, he took the dry clothes from John’s hands with a little gesture of thanks. ‘He’d managed to fall down one of the pot-holes that damn wood is littered with and break his leg besides getting his other paw stuck in some tree roots. There was no way he could have freed himself. We took him to the vet’s in the next village before we came back; that’s where he is now. I tried to phone but the lines are down.’
She stood, just feasting her eyes on him as he spoke, and as he returned the look John and Mary glanced at each other and then retraced their steps, leaving the two of them alone.
‘Come in here.’ As he pulled her into his sitting-room she felt his shaking through the hand holding hers and pushed him towards the roaring fire with a little cry.
‘Get your things off, Alex.’
‘Music to my ears.’ He smiled wickedly at her blushes as he stripped down to nothing, donning his dry clothes with mocking reluctance and then drawing her into his arms as they sat in front of the fire. Mary had placed a flask of hot coffee liberally laced with brandy by his chair and Fabia made him drink two cupfuls before she would relax on his lap, snuggling against him as she did so.
He kissed her until she was breathless but as their ca-resses grew more feverish she pushed him away slightly, putting her finger on his lips as she did so. ‘I want to tell you something, to make you understand why I’m like I am.’
He listened silently while she told him about Robin, leaving nothing out, and his face was dark with rage when she finished. ‘I’d give the world for five minutes alone with him,’ he said grimly.
‘It’s over now,’ she said with an overwhelming sense of relief that she really was free at last, free to love again, free to live again. ‘I just wish I’d never met him, that’s all.’
‘The past is past,’ he said gently. ‘I don’t care about it as long as you love me now. Any other men—’
‘There haven’t been any others,’ she said quietly. ‘You will be the first, Alex, the first and the last.’
‘Oh, my love...’ As he gathered her close the look on his face made her want to cry again, but within a few minutes weeping was the last thing on her mind...
* * *
‘Kiss the bride, sir! We want a nice friendly wedding, now, don’t we!’ As titters o
f laughter greeted the photographer’s quip Alex leant towards her, moving the soft white silk of her veil aside as he bent to whisper in her ear.
‘What happened to the little lady who informed me she was going to wear black on her wedding-day?’
She smiled wickedly, content and gloriously fulfilled on this her special day, and as she caught Isabella’s eye in the background she lifted up her dress to reveal a saucy black garter on the top of one slim, beautifully shaped leg. ‘I was going to keep this till later, but if you insist...’
He laughed delightedly, his eyes devouring her as she stood beside him, exquisite in her wedding finery, and as the photographer called again he gathered her up into his arms, holding her aloft in triumphant victory before claiming her lips as the camera flashed.
ISBN: 978-1-4592-8529-3
And the Bride Wore Black
Copyright © 1993 by Helen Brooks
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Table of Contents
TITLE PAGE
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
COPYRIGHT