Her headache was preventing her from sleeping, but the storm and her headache would both be gone by morning, she told herself.
But she was wrong. The storm was about to break and wreak havoc.
CHAPTER NINE
LEANDRO SWORE AS he struggled to knot his tie with fingers that were as useful as a set of thumbs. All bridegrooms felt tense on their wedding day, he told himself. Hell, he should know. This was his second attempt at marriage, after all. But he had been a lot younger when he’d married Nicole: greener and much less cynical. He had believed he was in love with her, which proved what a gullible idiot he’d been at twenty-four.
Over a decade later he had no illusions that love was a fool’s game he had no intention of playing.
His brief trip to Paris to visit Henry had been painful when the time had come to say goodbye.
‘You’ll come and see me in Australia, won’t you, Leandro? Mum says you will be welcome to stay at our new house,’ Henry had said with heartbreaking innocence. ‘My real father has promised that he and I will learn to surf, and as you can already surf we could go to the beach together—the three of us.’
‘Hey, buddy, you’re going to have such a good time with your father.’
Leandro pictured Henry, all skinny legs and huge eyes, and drew a ragged breath that hurt his chest. He would always be there for Henry, but the boy now had a father who was finally showing an interest in him.
On his early-morning flight back from Paris Leandro had reminded himself that soon Marnie would give birth to his baby, and before that he would make her his wife. This time nothing and no one would take his child from him.
Finally satisfied with his tie, he picked up his jacket and opened his bedroom door when he heard a knock.
‘I’m sorry to disturb you, Leandro,’ his housekeeper, Betty, said. ‘But there’s a man here asking to see you.’
‘Did he give a name?’
‘Jake Clarke. He says he’s Marnie’s brother. I explained that she isn’t here, and that you’re busy, but...’ Betty trailed off as Leandro strode along the hallway.
‘Where is he?’
‘I showed him into the sitting room.’
The man who stood up from the sofa was even scruffier than he had looked on the CCTV film. ‘Mr Clarke.’ Leandro kept his tone unemotional, but the hand by his side clenched into a fist that he was seriously tempted to connect with Marnie’s brother’s jaw.
‘I’m looking for Marnie.’ Jake’s face was gaunt, and he pushed his unkempt hair out of eyes that were dark and haunted. ‘The woman who let me in said that my sister isn’t here. I need to see her.’ He swallowed convulsively. ‘I need to return these to her.’
He opened his rucksack and tipped a pile of jewellery onto the coffee table. Leandro immediately recognised the sapphire necklace that had been his mother’s favourite.
‘Marnie was so sweet when she insisted on giving me the pearl necklace that had belonged to our grandmother—which makes what I did even worse,’ Jake said hoarsely. ‘I stole jewellery that I guess were gifts from you to Marnie. When I saw all those velvet boxes in the safe I went a little crazy. I told myself that the jewellery was probably insured. I’d watched her open the safe and I remembered the code.’
Jake groaned.
‘My God, what kind of man steals from his own sister? You look disgusted—and I’m disgusted with myself. I’ve carried the jewellery around for weeks. I knew I had to return it. Every single piece is there,’ he told Leandro, ‘as well as my grandmother’s pearls. I want Marnie to have them back.’
‘Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t report you to the police,’ Leandro said harshly.
‘I assumed you already had. You have every right to call them now and have me arrested. It’s what I deserve. You have no idea how much I despise myself.’
Leandro had a fairly good idea of how Jake was feeling. His own feelings of self-hatred swirled like acrid poison in his gut. Dio, the truth had hit him like a hammer blow. Marnie was completely innocent. While they had been in Florence he had begun to doubt that she had stolen the jewellery, but now Jake had confirmed that she’d had nothing to do with the theft.
Deep in his heart he hadn’t needed confirmation, Leandro acknowledged grimly. He had known that Marnie was not guilty of any of the terrible accusations he had thrown at her. But he had ruthlessly taken advantage of her memory loss to trick her into marrying him because he had told himself that he deserved to have his child.
Deserved. He almost laughed out loud at his arrogance. What he ‘deserved’ was to rot in hell.
He glanced at her brother. ‘Marnie wouldn’t want you to go back to prison. Get out of here and go and sort your life out.’
After Jake had gone, Leandro poured himself a whisky and noticed with savage contempt that his hand was shaking. He wiped beads of sweat from his brow, yet inside he felt frozen. Everything was slipping out of his control and he didn’t know what to do.
How could he go ahead with the wedding and marry Marnie knowing that it was a lie—all a lie? She believed that he loved her—and she loved him. He knew she did because she was intrinsically honest, and she wouldn’t have agreed to marry him unless she loved him.
He took a gulp of the whisky and dragged in a deep breath while he tried to collect his thoughts. Marnie didn’t remember the accusations he had made against her, and her memory had not shown any real signs of returning. He was almost home and dry.
Once she was his wife he would take absolute care of her. He was rich and she would want for nothing. It occurred to him that Marnie wanted very little. She wasn’t materialistic. But, goddammit, they could have a good marriage—he knew he could make her happy. And nothing altered the fact that he wanted his child.
He told himself that the stinging sensation at the back of his throat must be from the whisky. He needed this baby to ease the ache in his heart. And perhaps, whispered a little voice in his head, he needed Marnie too.
* * *
‘Has Leandro arrived yet?’ Marnie looked at the clock for the hundredth time. ‘The wedding ceremony is booked for two o’clock and it’s five to. He’s cutting it very fine.’
‘He’s probably caught in traffic. Your uncle heard on the radio that roadworks are causing major disruption in west London. I’m sure he’ll be here any minute,’ Aunt Susan tried to reassure her. ‘You look beautiful, my dear. Your dress is exquisite, and no one would guess you are nearly six months pregnant.’
Marnie glanced at her reflection in the mirror and conceded that her dress was a fairytale gown and her hair and make-up did look good, thanks to the stylist who had arrived at her suite at eight in the morning to help her get ready.
But the headache which had begun in the middle of the night was still pounding, and it hadn’t helped that the stylist had spent an hour tugging and pulling her hair into an elaborate up-do. Another hour had been spent having her face made up and her nails painted a pretty shade of rose pink. Now Marnie’s headache was excruciating, and she felt nauseous and dizzy.
Aunt Susan was standing by the window. ‘That must be Leandro getting out of his car. At least the man is wearing a corsage, so I assume he’s the bridegroom. I’m looking forward to finally meeting your elusive husband-to-be at the wedding.’ Her smile faded when she noticed Marnie’s drawn face. ‘You’re very pale. Are you feeling unwell?’
‘Just pre-wedding nerves.’
Marnie could not explain to herself why she felt so on edge. She loved Leandro, she reminded herself. He had been a faultlessly attentive fiancé for the whole month they had spent at his villa in Florence, he’d arranged to have their wedding at this stunning venue and tomorrow they would fly to the Seychelles for a ten-day honeymoon at a five-star resort.
Everything was wonderful. It was just a nuisance that her head fel
t as if it was going to explode.
* * *
Leandro was met by his half-sister on the front steps of the hotel.
‘Where have you been?’ Stephanie demanded after she had greeted him in her inimitable French style by kissing him twice on both his cheeks. ‘I was starting to panic that you would be late.’
‘The traffic was murder.’
Leandro did not reveal that he had spent so long arguing with his conscience about whether to go ahead with the wedding that his chauffeur had had to break the speed limit on the way to the hotel.
He raked his hair back from his brow with an unsteady hand. ‘I’m here with two minutes to spare. Let’s get inside. There’s going to be one hell of a storm.’
* * *
Marnie jumped when there was a knock on the door of the honeymoon suite and Uncle Brian walked in.
He gave her a cheery smile. ‘Ready, lass?’
‘I think so.’
Her heart was thumping as she picked up her bridal bouquet of white roses and followed her uncle out of the room. Together with her aunt they walked along the corridor to the head of a sweeping staircase that led down to the wedding room on the floor below. Over the top of the banister rail Marnie glimpsed their guests, sitting down on white chairs decorated with pink ribbons, waiting for the ceremony to start.
Uncle Brian squeezed her ice-cold hand and chatted to her in an attempt to ease her nerves. ‘It’s lucky you didn’t decide to have the wedding in a marquee. Listen to that rain. The storm is worse than the one we had last night.’
The pain in her head was unbearable. Lightning flashed outside the window and it felt as though it had burned her eyes. Gritting her teeth, Marnie held on tightly to her uncle’s arm and put her foot on the first stair. Looking down, she could see a blur of faces. Then her vision cleared and she saw Leandro, more handsome than ever in a light grey suit, navy blue shirt and grey silk tie.
The woman standing beside him seemed vaguely familiar. She was tall and slender and had a mass of dark brown hair. Of course...the woman was Leandro’s half-sister—Stephanie. Marnie remembered there had been a photo of the beautiful French model at the Villa Collina. But where had she seen a different photo of Stephanie?
A wisp of a memory came into her mind and she saw a newspaper photo of Leandro and his half-sister. But when she had seen the photo she hadn’t known that Stephanie was Leandro’s half-sister.
The sudden thunderclap was deafeningly loud, and it shook the glass in the windows. Images flashed into Marnie’s mind like a series of snapshots—neon bright and starkly revealing.
She had been on a train, and when she had seen the picture of Leandro and a beautiful woman in a newspaper she had felt sick with jealousy that the woman was Leandro’s lover. It didn’t make sense. Why hadn’t she known that the woman was his half-sister? Why had she mistrusted him if they had been in a happy relationship as he had told her?
‘Oh...’ Marnie lifted her hand to her head, as if she could somehow stop the waves of pain that kept coming—bang, bang—like gunshots being fired into her skull. Every explosion of white light revealed another picture—and uncovered another memory.
‘Marnie, are you all right, cara?’ Leandro’s voice was sharply urgent as he moved towards the bottom of the staircase and looked up at her. ‘What’s wrong? Do you feel faint?’
What’s wrong?
Oh, God, was she going mad? The memories bombarding her brain couldn’t be true...they were too awful...but she knew they were true, and the pain in her heart was even more terrible than the pain in her head.
She let go of her uncle’s arm and walked down a few stairs so that she stood at eye level with Leandro. It felt strange not to be looking up at him. And how she had looked up to him, she thought bitterly. She had put him on a pedestal and allowed him to treat her very badly.
‘You can stop the pretence of being a caring fiancé. I’ve regained my memory, Leandro, and I remember everything.’
She did not imagine that he paled.
‘Marnie...’
He reached out his hand towards her but she jerked away from him before he could touch her. Below her in the wedding room she was aware of the shocked expressions on their guests’ faces. The tense silence was only broken by the ferocious lashing of the rain against the windows.
‘You refused to believe the baby was yours and insisted on a prenatal paternity test,’ she said, her voice shaking with emotion.
Behind her she heard Aunt Susan gasp.
Leandro’s face was taut and strained. ‘I know I am the father. I have had the result of the test.’
‘Is that supposed to make me feel better?’ Marnie’s throat ached, but she could not cry yet. She would not let him see her fall apart. She had suffered enough humiliation at Leandro’s hands to last her a lifetime. ‘You accused me of stealing the jewellery that had belonged to your mother.’
Leandro’s lips were bloodless. ‘I know you didn’t break into the safe. I know it was your brother. Jake returned the jewellery this morning.’
‘So all this time you’ve believed I was a thief?’ She swallowed a sob. ‘After my accident why did you pretend that we were already engaged and let me believe that we had begun to plan our wedding?’
She felt the baby inside her move, and gave a raw laugh as understanding dawned.
‘Of course—you wanted your child. I remember now. You told me that if the DNA test proved it was your baby you would want to be involved. But you wanted more than to share custody of our child—didn’t you?’
Trembling with the pain in her head and the pain of her breaking heart, she forced herself to go on.
‘You offered me money to hand our child over to you. My God, Leandro, you were willing to buy my baby. That’s monstrous.’
Outside the rain had lessened, and inside the wedding room a stunned silence held everyone in its thrall. Leandro looked as if he had been carved from granite and his skin seemed stretched tightly over his hard-boned features.
‘Let me try to explain.’
Marnie shook her head and Leandro saw the horrified disgust in her eyes. He made another jerky movement towards her. His jaw clenched when she shrank from him.
‘Whatever happened in the past, we were happy in Florence,’ he said urgently. ‘You remember I made you happy.’
That was when Marnie realised the extent of his cruelty, and nothing could have prepared her for the agony of feeling as though he had stabbed her through her heart.
‘Was it all fake? When you held my hand as you showed me your favourite places in Florence? When you picked an orange from the tree in the garden and peeled it for my breakfast every morning?’ Her voice broke. ‘When you looked into my eyes and let me think you loved me? Was it all a lie? Every time you made love to me, did you have to force yourself to touch me in order to trick me into marrying you? Not because you wanted me for your wife, but so that you would have a legal claim to our child.’
He hesitated—and his silence spoke volumes.
‘I’m right, aren’t I?’ Marnie’s knees sagged and she almost collapsed, but pride held her upright, and when Leandro put his arms out as if he would catch her, sheer, incandescent rage swept over her.
‘Cara...’
‘No!’
If he touched her she knew she would succumb—because she loved him still. And that was the worst thing of all—the realisation that she was a pathetic fool like her mother had been, to love a man who did not love her.
A moan escaped from her lips—a terrible, keening sob that revealed her utter devastation.
‘For God’s sake, Marnie,’ Leandro said roughly. He knew he would be haunted by that agonised cry for ever.
She swayed on her feet and he was afraid for her safety.
‘At least let me help
you down the stairs, and when you are calmer we’ll talk.’ Panic cramped in his gut when she shook her head wildly. ‘We can work this out.’
‘Get away from me.’ Appalled by her weak longing for him to take her in his arms—after all he had done—she lifted the hand in which she was holding her wedding bouquet and lashed out at him.
He inhaled sharply as a thorn that had been left on a rose stem sliced across his face.
Breathing hard, Marnie stared at the line of blood that sprang up on his cheek and watched white rose petals from the broken flowers float to the floor like a ghastly mimicry of confetti.
‘You once told me that I would never be your wife,’ she said in a low, tightly controlled voice that was somehow more intense than if she had ranted and raved. ‘You’re absolutely right. I never will be. I will never forgive you, and nothing you could do or say would persuade me to marry you. I never want to see you again.’
‘Maybe you don’t, but we are going to have a child,’ Leandro reminded her.
As if she needed reminding of the reason why he had been prepared to dupe her into marrying him, she thought bitterly.
‘I am going to have a child, but you won’t be involved.’ She shot the words at him like bullets from a gun. ‘I meant what I said. I never want to see you again. And if you try to find me, if you hound me and my child, I will go to court and tell a judge that you offered me money to sell you the baby, and that when I refused you took advantage of my amnesia and tried to trick me into marrying you.’
She thought of how her mother had cried for days, for weeks, after her father had left and the memory stoked her fury. She would not waste her life crying over Leandro, she vowed fiercely. He did not deserve her love and she deserved much more than to be the convenient bride of a man who did not love her.
‘You’re becoming hysterical. I understand why you are angry, but for the baby’s sake you have to get yourself under control.’
Trapped by Vialli's Vows Page 12