The Stand-In Bride Read online

  ‘Never. You kissed me, and now you must take the consequences.’

  ‘You must be the devil,’ she murmured.

  ‘Only me? There’s a devil in you too, Margarita. He taught you how to look at a man with eyes that promise everything, so that he knows what you’re thinking, and what you want him to think.’

  ‘Can you read my mind?’

  ‘From the first moment!’ he said against her lips. ‘Your thoughts are the same as mine-hot, fierce thoughts of the two of us together, naked, enjoying each other and to hell with the world. You know what you want from me-don’t you-don’t you?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said mindlessly, scarcely knowing what words she used, or what they meant.

  ‘And you also know what you would do to urge me on to fulfil your desires. I think you’re very skilled at the caresses that drive a man to madness. Be damned to the devil in you! He put witchcraft in your lips so that kisses are never enough. There’ll be no peace until I have you in my bed.’

  There was no doubt of his intentions. She had walked into a trap with her eyes wide open. He was determined to make her marry him-if not one way, then another. When talk failed, he’d taken direct action, giving her a false sense of security while he lured her to come to him. Now he had her where he wanted her, and she knew she wouldn’t be allowed to leave until she’d said yes, and meant it.

  That would never happen, her mind cried. But her mind drowned in her body’s clamour. Part of her-the only part that counted when she was in his arms-was saying yes wildly, determinedly, impatiently. She tried to feel anger but she couldn’t convince herself. No man had the right to behave like this, but that thought paled beside the knowledge that he was free. She could give her desire full rein and feel no guilt.

  He wasn’t an admirable character. He was a harsh, cynical man who seized what he wanted arrogantly and without pity. But his lips possessed ancient skills of persuasion and coercion, and they could drive her to the edge of madness.

  His hands were working on the fastenings of the beautiful velvet dress, slipping them open, pulling it down with swift, purposeful movements, until he could toss it onto the floor. Her slip followed, then her panties, and now she was tearing at his clothes, as impatient as he, until the moment when they were both naked.

  He pulled her against him, kissing with lips that burned, caressing her with fingers that knew how to touch lightly and be gone, leaving a scorching memory behind. This had been waiting for them both since the night in the garden when she had fended him off and fled. What had she been running away from? The depth of her own response, which even then had alarmed her?

  Now she could yield to that response, explore it to its depths, explore him. She felt him drawing her down onto the couch, pressing her naked body against his.

  She looked into his face, expecting to see him triumphant. But if there was any triumph in him it was confused by other emotions-shock, bewilderment, alarm at losing control, eagerness to discover the unknown. All these feelings were hers, and for a blazing instant she saw them reflected in his eyes as though she were looking into a mirror.

  Then the moment passed as he kissed her again with lips that were hot and fierce as they teased hers, taking her ever closer to the moment of truth. She kissed him back, seeking and demanding as an equal. A strange thing was happening to her. Sebastian had said she would know how to urge him on to fulfil her desires, and now she found that it was mysteriously true. Deep, unfathomable instinct told her about him, what he wanted, what he could give.

  New life streamed through her like wine. For four years her body had lain cold and sullen, bitterly resentful of the passion that had betrayed her to a life of misery. Now it was asserting itself again, reclaiming its rights, and its rights included a man who could discover its secrets by instinct, and play on them for his own pleasure and hers: a man to whom seduction was more than a skill, it was a black art. This man, and no other.

  He’d spoken of ‘the caresses that drive a man to madness’, and now she offered him those caresses without shame, with a kind of glory in her own power, lashing his desire on with her own. When he slipped his knee between her legs, she pulled him over her at once.

  Then he surprised her yet again. Instead of claiming her in fierce triumph, he entered her slowly, almost tenderly, giving her the time she needed to become familiar once more with the sensation of a man inside her. It was such a good feeling. Once she’d sworn never to know it again. Now she wondered how she had endured so long. She threw her head back in a gesture of total sensual abandon, grasping him and driving herself against him.

  Only when he felt that movement and knew that he was welcome, did he allow the last of his control to slip. He knew her now, knew that she was a woman who could match him as a man, returning vigour for vigour, demand for demand in the all-consuming death-in-life of mutual abandon. When the moment came they were at each other’s mercy, carrying each other down the long drop to oblivion, while each clasped the other as the only safety in a vanished world.

  He parted from her, but only by a little. One arm still lay beneath her shoulders, holding her firmly at the same time that he pillowed her head. Sebastian would always be like that, she thought: enticement, the offering of pleasure and perhaps something even sweeter, and behind it, always the hint of ruthlessness.

  It was there in his voice now, saying quietly, ‘We will marry on the sixteenth. You know that we must, don’t you?’

  ‘I don’t know what I know,’ she whispered, ‘except that you’re the last man in the world I ought to marry-if I had any sense.’

  ‘Are you a sensible woman?’

  ‘I try to be.’ She gave a little gasp of laughter. ‘Sometimes it’s hard.’

  ‘And I’m a man of no sense at all,’ he growled. ‘Because if I had, I’d throw you out of my house as a man would throw a fiend who’d come to torment him.’

  She made a slight movement and instantly the arm tightened about her shoulders, drawing her over him again. ‘But all my sense seems to have deserted me,’ he growled. ‘I’m going to keep my fiend here to torment me, in defiance of all sanity.’

  ‘And if she has other ideas?’

  He grinned. ‘She has nothing to say about it.’

  ‘You’re forgetting that I heard you say some pretty damning things about what made a good husband. “Keep her happy in bed and the rest will follow.” But that’s not good enough for me. I want fidelity, and I think you’d find that hard.’

  He eyed her sardonically. ‘It might have been hard with Catalina, but not with you. No other woman, I swear it. Do we have a deal?’

  She smiled. ‘I guess we have a deal.’

  She let her head fall until it rested against his chest. She could hear the soft thunder of his heart and knew that it matched her own. The lines of their bodies fitted well together, and she knew now that together they had a magic that could take them to the brink of ecstasy and beyond. It would be so easy simply to let herself be carried forward by his inevitable momentum.

  But it wasn’t enough. She knew that, even while she prepared to surrender to it. If only her mind would take command, instead of being in thrall to her treacherous senses. It couldn’t, because deep down she didn’t really want it too, but as she lay there, pillowed on his chest, she knew that she’d made a terribly dangerous decision, one that she might regret, but couldn’t go back on.

  Sebastian had predicted no trouble about getting the necessary documents, and sure enough Alfonso visited her next day, saying that he was just about to leave for the airport, and needed her instructions. Maggie explained the confusion over her name, and gave him the dates of her birth and her husband’s death.

  Slightly to her surprise, he shrugged aside any thought that this might cause problems. But of course, Alfonso was thrilled at the developments. He no longer had to endure the sight of Catalina marrying his employer. True, she’d now set her heart on José, but while Sebastian was forbidding that match, Alfonso could hope
. And if Sebastian planned to marry Maggie, Alfonso would make sure that all problems were ironed out.

  There were a million matters to be seen to before her wedding, such a short time away. First Catalina must be told, and Maggie was dreading this job. For surely the girl would now divine the truth about the attraction that had smouldered between herself and Sebastian from the first moment, and feel betrayed?

  But Catalina astonished her by exploding with laughter. ‘You and Sebastian?’ she shrieked. ‘Oh, Maggie! Maggie!’

  ‘I know it must seem a bit sudden-’ she began awkwardly.

  ‘Oh, but I understand. I know everything,’ Catalina gasped.

  ‘You-do?’

  ‘You are doing it for me. OK, perhaps a little bit for yourself, because it’s good for you to have “an establishment” of your own, and you must be thinking of these things.’

  Maggie remembered how Catalina had dismissed Sebastian as ‘old’, and realised that she herself now ranked in the same category: a widow who had to be thinking of her future because time was rushing on. She concealed a smile.

  ‘You are such a good friend,’ Catalina said eagerly. ‘And you will speak to Sebastian about my wedding to José?’

  ‘One thing at a time. Let the dust settle before you say anything about that.’

  ‘But I must marry José,’ Catalina pouted. ‘I love him desperately, passionately.’

  It was a child talking. Catalina still hadn’t discovered true passion, and her only desperation was to have her own way. She proved it the next moment when her face fell and she said, ‘Oh, but now I don’t get to go to New York.’

  Maggie nearly tore her hair. ‘Since that was to be your honeymoon, I should think not.’

  ‘Perhaps I could go anyway, if-’

  ‘Forget it,’ Maggie said wryly. ‘I get New York as a consolation prize for taking Sebastian off your hands.’

  ‘You are right,’ Catalina agreed. ‘You will suffer enough.’

  She plunged eagerly into helping with the wedding, especially the making of a new dress. Together they visited Señora Diego and selected a roll of pale cream satin, which Maggie felt was more suitable to her widowed status than white.

  Señora Diego pulled in all her seamstresses who had it ready for a fitting in a day. The satin had a special weave that made it extremely heavy, trailing slowly as Maggie walked in a way that spoke of grandeur and magnificence, an effect that was greatly increased by the matching lace with which it was heavily trimmed. When Maggie ventured to demur at the spiralling cost, Catalina was scandalised.

  ‘Do you want people to say I helped choose you a dress that wasn’t as nice as my own? And you must also have clothes to wear for your honeymoon, so why don’t you try on something else while I-?’

  ‘Slip round the corner to see José,’ Maggie finished. ‘I’ve got a better idea. While I try on other clothes, you stay right here and give me your opinion.’

  ‘You have no heart,’ Catalina said mournfully.

  Then a crisis blew up on one of Sebastian’s distant estates. Anxious to get it dealt with before the wedding, he announced that he was leaving for a few days.

  ‘Now’s your chance to escape,’ Maggie teased him. ‘A man who was regretting a rash proposal could use this opportunity to vanish into the mists.’

  ‘If it comes to that, this is your chance to escape,’ he observed. ‘Shall I return to find you fled back to England?’

  ‘I’ve given my word.’

  ‘And so have I.’ He brushed a finger against her cheek. ‘I think neither of us is going to seek escape.’

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  S EBASTIAN was due home two days before the wedding. As the time neared, Maggie found she was anticipating him with an urgency that made her blush. She didn’t know whether she loved this man, but she knew that they were bound together by a mysterious power. She’d promised herself that this would never happen again, but she had no regrets. Her feelings could flare into love, perhaps soon. If only…

  If only he would let them.

  For she knew that something was still unsettled between them, would not be settled for a long time-if ever. She had yet to penetrate the dark secret of the man. She knew his pride, and had glimpsed his gentleness. To the world he showed his strength, but she wanted to know his weaknesses. When he let her see them, she would know that he trusted her.

  By the same token, she thought with a little smile, when she showed him her own weakness, she would know that she trusted him.

  On the day he was expected a storm blew up. Rain and lightning lashed the house and hadn’t abated by the evening. At bedtime there was still no sign of Sebastian. Maggie wished she could sleep, but the wind howled and raged with a violence she’d never heard before. She wondered where he was now: probably stopped somewhere for the night rather than risk the remainder of the journey in this weather.

  Suddenly a door banged. It sounded loud, as though it had come from the corridor outside her room. She sat up for a while, listening intently, but now there was only the wind, a low, insistent moan. She felt uneasy sitting like this, waiting for something, not knowing what. Sliding out of bed, she hurried across the floor and opened her door. Outside the wall lamps glowed, casting soft light, filling the corridor with shadows.

  ‘Is anyone there?’ she called.

  ‘Yes,’ came a growl from the darkness.

  Now she could just make him out, walking from the direction of his bedroom. In the light of the wall lamp above him his eyes were no more than dark sockets with something burning in their depths. He came closer and now she could see that he looked as though he hadn’t slept for several nights.

  ‘I’d given you up for today,’ she said.

  He came to stand beside her in her doorway. He was wearing a long bathrobe that revealed his broad chest that rose and fell as though he was under some tremendous strain.

  ‘I hurried back,’ he said. ‘I had the strangest fear that you might have gone away, after all.’ His eyes were haggard, haunted.

  ‘How could you think that, Sebastian? I promised to stay, and I’m a woman of my word.’

  She heard a faint click and realised that Sebastian had closed her bedroom door, shutting out the world.

  ‘Is that the only reason that you’re here, Margarita? From duty?’

  ‘No,’ she whispered.

  ‘Are you sure? I want only what you can give freely. Tell me to go away, and I’ll go.’

  He was lying and they both knew it. No power on earth could have made him leave her bedroom now, just as no power on earth could have made her order him out.

  ‘Tell me to go,’ he repeated.

  For answer she leaned forward and laid her mouth on his. Still keeping her hands at her sides, she turned her head, so that her lips moved against his in soft, inciting movements that made him tremble. Sighing into his mouth, she teased him.

  She knew at once that she’d driven him beyond the point of safety. His control had been hanging by a thread, and now she’d done the thing that snapped it. His arms tightened fiercely about her, lifting her just a few inches as he hurriedly crossed the floor to the bed. They fell on it together. Her nightdress had vanished, she didn’t know where, and somehow he too was naked. His hands seemed to be touching her everywhere, tracing curves and valleys with skilful fingers that teased and incited her, moving fast because he was driven by an impatience that matched her own.

  Tenderness could come later. This was raw, unslaked need, thrilling, imperative, and it had dominated her thoughts since the moment he left. Behind the decorum, the planning, the wedding dress fittings, the demure veil, her being had been secretly concentrated on what was happening here and now, in this bed, in Sebastian’s arms. The way he could make her feel, the things he could make her want: nothing else mattered.

  Her kiss was as devouring as his, her embrace as fiercely demanding. She twined her legs in his, urging him on with all her power. When she tried to speak his name, no words wou
ld come, only a gasp as he entered her and the pleasure mounted fast. She clasped him close, wanting more of him, wanting everything. And when she had everything, she wanted more. Then he gave more, and she gave back, and gave, and gave.

  They were both trembling with the vigour of their mating as they fell apart, but not far apart. They still held on to each other while they recovered.

  ‘You were away too long,’ she said at last.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Yes, I was.’

  Suddenly she gave a little gasp of laughter.

  ‘What is it?’ Sebastian demanded quickly.

  ‘I was just thinking of me, walking up the aisle in a bridal gown,’ she said. ‘It hardly seems appropriate somehow-after tonight, and the other night.’

  ‘The things we know are for us alone.’

  ‘Yes, but you have to admit that it has its funny side.’

  He only scowled, and she realised he couldn’t admit anything of the kind. He was a Spaniard, and Spanish men never understood humour in anything that even remotely touched on sex. She smiled fondly. Sebastian wasn’t going to be easy to be married to.

  But then he surprised her again, by laying his head between her breasts in a way that spoke of trust and tenderness. She put her arms about him, and held him tenderly.

  There would be this too, she thought. Tenderness and the quiet moments when they would grow close in a different way from the wildness of their meetings. And the years would pass, and perhaps they would share love. Or perhaps they would only share something so like love that nobody could tell the difference.

  When his head suddenly grew heavier she knew that he had fallen asleep, and then she slept too.

  In the dawn light he stirred and sat up in bed. ‘I suppose I should go,’ he said reluctantly. ‘We don’t want a scandal.’

  ‘True,’ Maggie murmured, still half-asleep. She felt, rather than saw, him stand, shrug his shirt on and wander over to stand looking out of the window.

  At last she yawned and stretched, sat up in bed, and realised that he was still there, looking down curiously at a small table by the wall, on which lay some papers.