The Stand-In Bride

CHAPTER SEVEN

MAGGIE 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 fleeting 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.

‘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.’