The Stand-In Bride Page 9

  ‘It wasn’t like that. It was a chapter of accidents, and-’

  ‘To think that I brought you into this house!’ he brooded, not seeming to hear her.

  ‘And I didn’t want to come,’ she reminded him. ‘But you were so set on having your own way that you mowed me down, as you do everyone. You brought me here as your fiancée’s chaperone, and I hadn’t been under your roof two days before you tried to seduce me.’

  ‘Don’t talk like an ignorant girl, because you’re not one. You’re a woman of the world who’d only take a man to her bed as an equal.’

  ‘But I didn’t take you to my bed. And how glad I am now that I didn’t. To you it’s nothing but a kind of power game and, I told you before, you’ll never have power over me.’

  ‘No, you prefer the power to be on your side,’ he said, his eyes glinting with a strange light. ‘You demonstrated that very effectively tonight.’

  ‘How can I make you believe that it wasn’t some kind of conspiracy?’ she demanded.

  ‘Don’t try. It was all just a little bit too convenient to be an accident.’

  Maggie sighed. ‘Believe what you like, Sebastian. You will anyway. Let’s just make an end of this.’

  ‘And how do you suggest we do that?’

  ‘I’d have thought it was obvious. It’s time for me to go. You must be longing to see the last of me.’

  He stared at her. ‘Do you really think you’re going to simply walk out of here without putting right the injury you’ve done me?’

  ‘How can I do that? If you think I’m going to bully Catalina into marrying you-’

  He made a gesture of impatience. ‘Of course not. Our marriage is impossible now. But there’s still the inconvenient matter of the cathedral, the archbishop and several hundred guests, all arranged for ten days’ time.’

  ‘You’ll have to cancel them. People will understand.’

  ‘Oh, yes, they’ll understand-and they’ll laugh themselves sick.’

  ‘Well, what else can you do? It’s happened now.’

  ‘Don’t be stupid, Margarita. The answer must be as obvious to you as it is to me. I have arranged to be married on the sixteenth, and that’s what I mean to do. Anything else would simply give the town more cause for derision.’

  ‘But you haven’t got a bride,’ she said incredulously, wondering if she was dealing with a deaf man. ‘What are you going to do? Call in one of your conquests to make up the numbers? Will any woman do?’

  The strange light was there in his eyes again. ‘Not any woman,’ he said. ‘You.’

  She stared at him. Then something caught in her throat and she forced herself to give a brief, choking laugh.

  ‘I’m not laughing,’ he said quietly.

  ‘You’re right. It’s the unfunniest joke I’ve ever heard.’

  ‘I was never further from making jokes in my life. You don’t understand Spanish honour. Perhaps your race has no honour, but here it’s a deadly serious matter. The one who does the injury is the one who makes reparation. You have injured me, and it is you, and nobody else, who must make it right.’

  ‘I think you must have gone mad,’ she said coldly.

  He nodded. ‘Maybe that’s it. My brain is whirling with so many terrible thoughts that perhaps I’ve gone mad. But beware my madness, Margarita, because it will brook no opposition. A madman isn’t civilised. A madman will do whatever he has to in order to gain his end.’

  ‘Then he’d better listen to some common sense,’ she flashed. ‘It’s not me who’s forgotten that this is Spain, but you-this is one of the most bureaucratic countries in the world. First we would have to apply to the authorities for permission, and that can take a month-’

  ‘I have friends who will see that it doesn’t.’

  ‘Oh, yes, your friends in high places. Will they also get my birth certificate from England, and translate it into Spanish, and my husband’s death certificate?’

  ‘That will be Alfonso’s job.’

  ‘It’s impossible in the time.’

  ‘He’ll leave for England first thing tomorrow morning.’

  ‘And so will I.’

  He laid a hand on her arm. ‘No,’ he said, so quietly that she almost didn’t hear. ‘You will stay here, because in ten days’ time, we are going to be married.’

  She began to sense the force of his will. He spoke softly because his steely inflexibility left no need for noise. Sebastian had said what he wanted, and that was what he would have. Meeting his eyes, it was almost possible to believe that she would meekly do his will.

  Almost. But she too had a core of strength deep within that would tolerate no surrender. It asserted itself now, making her throw him off.

  ‘We are not going to be married,’ she said clearly. ‘I’m sorry for what’s happened to you, but I think you brought it on yourself. We’ll never agree on this, and the sooner I’m gone the better. I’ll say goodbye now, because I’m going very early tomorrow, and we won’t see each other again.’

  She half expected him to stop her, but he only stood in silence as she walked out of the room.

  ‘Are you really going to leave me?’ Catalina asked mournfully as she watched Maggie packing.

  ‘Now, you stop that! You’ve got your own way tonight, so don’t ask me to feel sorry for you.’

  ‘How have I got my own way? Sebastian says he won’t let me marry José.’

  ‘What did you expect him to say, after the way you dumped him?’ Maggie demanded. After having urged Catalina to just this course, she now found herself exasperated at the girl’s youthful egotism.

  ‘You wanted me to dump him.’

  ‘Not in front of nearly six hundred people. Why couldn’t you have spoken to him quietly?’

  ‘I lost my nerve. Anyway, I never meant to be found like that.’

  No, Catalina would never mean anything, Maggie realised. Despite her fire and charm, she wasn’t a strong character. She would let things drift until they reached a crisis, but she wouldn’t voluntarily confront the crisis.

  ‘I suppose I needn’t ask where you went while I was having dress fittings?’ Maggie added.

  ‘I went to visit José. We loved each other from the moment you introduced us-’

  ‘All right, there’s no need to rub it in that I played a part in this. I suppose he really came up to Sol y Nieve to see you?’

  ‘Oh, yes, only then Sebastian was there, and we had to snatch a few moments of love under his nose.’

  ‘If you don’t stop seeing yourself as the heroine of a tragic romance, I shall get cross. Sebastian isn’t an ogre, even if he acts like one sometimes. You’re eighteen, legally of age. He can hardly stop you getting married.’

  ‘He controls my fortune until I’m twenty-one,’ Catalina said tragically.

  ‘Well, if José’s so worried about your fortune, you’re better off without him,’ Maggie said, speaking more sharply than Catalina had ever heard her before.

  She had never felt so little charity towards the girl, who seemed to have no understanding of the earthquake she’d caused in Sebastian’s life. Despite his outrageous accusations and demands Maggie felt he was entitled to more sympathy than he was getting. He was certainly right about one thing. The world would laugh itself silly at his public humiliation.

  Her packing was finished now. In a few hours she would be free of this place, its emotions and tensions that threatened to tear her apart. She switched off the light and stepped out onto the balcony. Down below she could see the lights, and their reflections in the water. After the turbulence of the evening, the place was silent and deserted.

  No, not quite deserted. The man who sat by the water was so still that at first Maggie didn’t see him. He might have been made of stone, like the birds who flanked the pool. Once she’d discerned his outline she could see him clearly under the lights, a man who had lost his bride, honour, dignity and reputation in one night.

  That was nonsense, she told herself. Other men had bee
n jilted before without making a major tragedy of it. He didn’t even love Catalina, and much of it was his own fault.

  But they were rationalisations, and they had no power to quell her twinge of sympathy. His attempt to coerce her into marriage had been disgraceful, but she should allow for the feelings of a man at the end of his tether. Impulsively Maggie left her room and went downstairs.

  The ruins of the party were all around. She found two clean glasses, filled them with wine and went quietly out to the courtyard, moving so quietly that he didn’t hear her. For a moment she caught a glimpse of his face and what she saw made her catch her breath. All the arrogance had been stripped from it, leaving behind only a kind of desolation. It was as though he’d retreated into his own inner world, and found nobody there but himself.

  And that was true, she thought. He had power, but no warmth. Respect, but no love. Now, perhaps, he didn’t even have respect.

  He glanced up and saw her, giving her a slight frown of surprise. She held out a glass and he took it. ‘Thank you,’ he said with a touch of wryness. ‘How did you know that I needed this?’

  ‘I guessed.’ She smiled to let him know that all was forgiven.

  ‘Have you got one? Yes? Then what do we drink to? Your last evening?’

  ‘It’s for the best.’

  ‘If you say so.’

  ‘Well, you must admit, it was a mad idea.’

  ‘It seemed to have some merit at the time.’

  ‘It was the voice of desperation,’ she informed him. ‘But Don Sebastian de Santiago only listens to the voice of reason.’

  ‘Are you making fun of me?’ he asked in a strained voice.

  She laid a hand on his shoulder. ‘No, I wouldn’t do that.’

  ‘Of course, I should have listened to you in the first place. I admit it. Do you think it makes it any easier to know that I set myself up for this?’

  ‘No. It makes it far, far harder to bear,’ she said gently.

  Suddenly they were in darkness. The lamps around the water had gone out. Sebastian gave a grunt.

  ‘They’re on a time-switch. I’d forgotten. Let’s go inside. You can go on talking reason to me. Maybe I’ll even come to believe it.’

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  M AGGIE had never been inside Sebastian’s study before tonight, and her first visit had been too crowded with incident to leave her time to observe anything. Now she saw that it was decorated in the same style as the rest of the building, but with dark, masculine colours. Although functional, it was beautiful. One wall was taken up by a huge, oriental rug, and a counterpane that exactly matched it lay over a large couch in the corner. Maggie remembered Catalina saying that sometimes Sebastian worked in this room all night, pausing to catnap briefly before returning to his desk.

  On one wall hung two large portraits of men with sharp eyes and beaky noses. They were sufficiently like Sebastian for Maggie to guess that this was his father and grandfather.

  He took a bottle of wine and two clean glasses from a cupboard, handing one to her. ‘Tonight I wish I could get very drunk,’ he said grimly. ‘I won’t, but the thought is tempting.’

  ‘Why won’t you?’

  He shrugged. ‘I never do.’

  ‘Perhaps you should,’ she said sympathetically. ‘Stop being so much in control all the time. Drown your sorrows tonight, pass out on that couch and wake up with a hangover that will make you forget your other troubles. It might help you get it in proportion.’

  He gave a faint smile. ‘You almost make me want to try. But I long ago resolved never to drink more than my capacity. My father’s brother was a drunkard. People laughed at him and imposed on him. He was the family fool and I-oh, God!-I swore that would never happen to me. And yet now-now!’ His voice was suddenly savage. ‘It was a really good night’s entertainment, wasn’t it? There was the groom, throwing open his home, showing off his bride to the neighbourhood, introducing her to friend and foe alike-because there were as many enemies as friends there tonight-so proud, just asking to be cast down and turned into a complete idiot. Oh, yes, let’s all have a good laugh at that!’

  He rose and went to stand in front of the two portraits.

  ‘If anyone had treated my father so, he would have made them sorry they were born,’ he said bitterly. ‘If they’d done it to my grandfather, he would have killed them. But me, I have to behave as a modern man. I can only writhe at my shame.’

  He turned to look back at her, watching him. ‘You don’t understand what I’m talking about, do you?’

  ‘A little. My grandfather came from these parts. There’s enough of him in me to know that this has to be felt deeply. But murder-’

  ‘It was never considered murder when a man avenged his honour. That’s what your cold English blood fails to understand, because you no longer know how to take the tie between men and women seriously. Off with the old, on with the new. People change their minds all the time. Find a new girl next week. That’s how you think in your country of mists and fogs.

  ‘But here, we know better. We know that the union of a man and a woman is the centre of life, and all else springs from it.’

  ‘But if the choice was mistaken in the first place,’ Maggie argued, ‘isn’t it better to pass on and make a new choice, rather than suffer for ever? You’re wrong when you say I don’t understand. But the choice must be good, so that the foundations are strong.’

  He gave a grunt. ‘You have a clever way with words. You can always make me doubt my own wisdom.’

  ‘Which makes me a woman to avoid,’ she said lightly, and he flung her a suspicious glance. ‘Don’t brood about it, Sebastian. It’ll be a nine-day wonder. Then they’ll find something else to talk about.’

  He drained his glass, and she took it from him to set down. Somehow her fingers became entwined with his. He looked at their clasped hands for a moment. ‘They’ll never quite forget to laugh at me,’ he murmured. ‘I’m too good a target.’

  It was true. And he wouldn’t be able to cope, because nobody had ever dared to laugh at him before. Maggie felt a wave of pity for him. She had told herself that it was his own fault, but faced with his bleak self-knowledge she suddenly felt as though she had seen a lion brought low by jackals.

  He gave her a crooked smile. ‘Why don’t you help me, Margarita? Rescue me with some of that English humour I’ve heard so much about.’

  ‘I don’t think English humour would be much use in this situation.’

  ‘Can’t you teach me to laugh at myself?’

  ‘Could anyone do that?’ she asked gently.

  ‘I don’t really have a sense of humour at all, do I?’

  ‘I’ve thought sometimes that there was one fighting to get out, but it isn’t a large part of you, no. And tonight-well-you’d have to be a saint.’

  ‘I’m no saint, just a man who wants to lash out at those who hurt him, and use force to make the world do his will. But the world turns out to be one silly little girl, and a boy with a pretty face.’

  ‘And you can’t murder them,’ she said gently. ‘It would be overreacting.’

  He managed a half-smile. ‘When English humour doesn’t work, English common sense. What dull lives you must live in that island.’

  ‘Sebastian-do you really think I made this happen on purpose?’

  ‘No. You’d never stoop so low. I shouldn’t have spoken as I did, but I was crazy with anger.’ He met her eyes. ‘Forgive me.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘And shall we part friends?’

  ‘Friends.’

  He looked down to where their fingers were still entwined. Lifting her hand, he laid his lips against the back of it, and then his cheek. Something in the defeated droop of his head hurt her.

  ‘Sebastian,’ she whispered. ‘Please don’t mind so much.’

  ‘Of course not. It isn’t sensible to mind, is it? Tell me, Margarita, what do you mind about?’

  She was silent so long that he glanced up, and a fl
eeting look he saw in her face made him catch his breath. She became aware of him and he realised that a door had closed in her.

  ‘I don’t mind about anything very much,’ she said softly. ‘Not any more.’

  ‘God help you if that’s true!’ he said at once.

  ‘God help me if it isn’t. It’s dangerous to mind.’

  ‘There’s something in your eyes at this moment that I’ve briefly glimpsed there before.’ He drew a swift breath. ‘If you leave now, I’ll never know your mystery.’

  ‘There’s no mystery, Sebastian. Just a girl who took a wrong turning when she was too young and ignorant to know better, and then found that there was no way back.’

  ‘I refuse to believe that you ever did anything bad.’

  ‘I was worse than bad. I was stupid. That’s the real crime, and all the worst punishments are reserved for it.’

  ‘I know,’ he said simply. ‘I found out tonight, remember?’

  He rested his cheek against her hand once more. Her heart aching for him, Maggie rested her own cheek against his black head. This was what she would remember about him-not his imperiousness but his vulnerability. When he looked up she drew a breath at the sight of his eyes, more naked and defenceless than she had ever seen them. Thinking only to comfort him, she laid her mouth against his.

  At first he didn’t seem certain how to respond. His lips moved slightly, then stilled, waiting for her. A sweet warmth pervaded her. It felt good to kiss him freely, without anger or guilt. It felt right, just as it felt right to stroke his face with her fingertips, and then to relax against him when he reached out to hold her.

  His arms had never felt so gentle as he cradled her head against his shoulder, but his lips passed swiftly from tenderness to purpose, as though the feel of her own was a touchlight. His mouth moved over hers again and again, each time a little more intent, while her pulse quickened and she felt her control begin to slip. This was not what she had meant to happen-or was it?

  She made one last effort. ‘Sebastian-let me go,’ she murmured hazily.