Vengeful Bride

Emma chewed her lip. Her mouth tasted of the dusky pink lip-gloss she’d applied after her shower, aiming at a little more poise and sophistication. She’d wanted to be cool and chic, more than a match for this man’s dangerous masculine charm. But, catching sight of herself in the huge gilt-edged mirror above the bright log fire opposite the bar, she saw with a sinking heart that her neat chignon was collapsing slightly on top, tendrils of glossy dark chestnut cascading from the silver clip.

Her cheeks looked flushed, her grey eyes, slightly myopic, looking enormous in the small oval of her face. The opulence of their setting didn’t help. All around there were poised and confident women, wearing priceless designer dresses and flirting elegantly with suave and wealthy men. And there she was, looking as flushed and uncertain as a shy sixth-former on her first dinner date.

‘So for the past fortnight you’ve been beavering away in the attics, poring over old papers?’

‘More or less, yes. Mrs Shields and Jamie have kept me well supplied with food and drinks. And Jamie has helped with any heavy lifting…’

‘Jamie’s a good lad,’ Dominick agreed coolly. ‘I’m surprised he hasn’t done more with his life than odd jobs around the estate for my father.’

‘There’s nothing wrong with choosing a practical career, if that’s what you want,’ she countered quickly. ‘My father was bored rigid by office work. He loved being out of doors. He didn’t mind the low pay. He had his freedom…’

‘Are your parents still alive?’

‘No. They’re both dead.’ She saw his enquiring expression, and felt compelled to expand.

‘My parents were separated. I lived with my mother until she was killed in a road accident five years ago. Then I went to live with my father. He developed bronchial pneumonia. He died last year.’

‘That must have been hard for you. Do you have any other relatives?’ Dominick’s tone was a lazy, casual drawl. But his gaze was searching, disturbing her with its concentration.

Emma shook her head. The irony of this conversation was almost too much to contend with.

‘So at the tender age of twenty-two there’s just you? No one else at all?’

‘You make me sound like a…a poor little orphaned child, or something!’

‘Isn’t that exactly what you are? Except that I can see you’re an adult.’ Dominick gave a slight smile. ‘A very composed young adult, with a lot of suppressed emotion simmering under the surface. Would it help if I apologised for embarrassing you in the Jacuzzi, Miss Stuart?’

The heat coursed up into her neck and cheeks, and she clenched her hands furiously in her lap.

‘There’s no need to apologise for that. It was my fault. It was I who…who slipped—but it might help if you apologised for kissing me afterwards!’

His gaze had narrowed, the gleam of amusement more discernible.

‘Miss Stuart…may I call you Emma?’

‘I…I suppose you can. You are my…my boss!’

‘All right. Emma. I apologise. It was an impulse, and I’m sorry if it upset you. Now will you relax?’ He was mocking her, she knew. And yet there was something powerfully compelling about his curt instruction. Relax? If she relaxed too much, she’d be too vulnerable. Confusion rocked her forcefully. She felt like a ship adrift in cross-currents.

‘I…’ She found she was holding her breath. Abruptly, she expelled it. She managed a slight, wary smile. ‘I am relaxed. Perfectly relaxed.’

The dark blue gaze held hers, then he gave a short laugh.

‘You are? This is progress. Tell me how the research is coming on.’

This, at least, represented relatively safe waters. She outlined her progress so far. She told him about the incriminating evidence of the heartbreaking letter to the sixteenth-century Sir George Fleetwood from what appeared to be his children’s governess.

‘He was a wicked womaniser,’ Dominick agreed, without a flicker of reflected shame, ‘but he had some redeeming aspects. I believe he used to risk his life by hiding recusant priests from imprisonment or execution…’

‘Did he?’

Dominick nodded, his lips twisting. ‘So the legend has it. There are two secret hiding places, small compartments, in the south-west turret,’ he added calmly, ‘between the newel staircase and a space in the floor of the top turret room. They were discovered in the nineteenth century…’

‘Really?’ Emma, complicated resentments forgotten, felt her eyes glowing with anticipation.

‘They were revealed during some renovation work, complete with palliasse bed, folding leather altar, and a few rather less pleasant relics…’

Emma gripped her hands together excitedly. ‘Can I see them?’

He inclined his hand, his eyes wry.

‘Of course. Although the bones were given a decent Christian burial, I believe.’

‘Bones?’ Her grey eyes widened in horror. She suppressed a shudder. ‘You don’t mean someone actually died there, trapped?’

‘It’s all conjecture. But I imagine so, yes. Perhaps the system had a flaw—someone had to remember you were in there after the persecutors had gone.’

‘How ghastly…’

‘Mmm. Of course, the tales of ghostly screams floating from the south-west turret are total fabrication,’ Dominick went on nonchalantly, ‘just as the stories of grey shapes on the attic landing are figments of over-active imaginations…’

‘You’re making this up!’ She was half frowning, half laughing.

Dominick’s dark face was deadpan.

‘Yes. But at least it made you laugh. You’re a very…intense young lady, Emma…’

‘Dominick!’ The female voice was light and amused, and Emma swivelled round to see a girl with straight blonde hair and bright red lipstick advancing on them. ‘Dominick, sweetheart! What a lovely surprise!’

‘Vanessa.’ Dominick had risen easily to his feet, but his dark face was blandly expressionless as the girl stretched up to kiss his cheek. ‘What are you doing in Warwickshire?’

‘Hoping to bump into you, darling, what else?’ the girl teased huskily, switching an emerald-green gaze on to Emma and lifting an eyebrow enquiringly. ‘I hope I’m not interrupting anything?’

‘This is Emma Stuart,’ Dominick said smoothly. ‘She’s working for me at the manor, sorting through Fleetwood’s records. Emma, this is Vanessa Buckingham. An old friend and neighbour, and a fellow lawyer.’

Emma shook hands, noting the girl’s elegantly slim figure in a clinging black crêpe skirt and halter-neck top.

Vanessa had laughed at Dominick’s introduction.

‘Mmm. While Dominick makes the headlines with his evil cross-examination techniques in the High Court, I have to content myself with being in-house lawyer for a department store…’

Since the department store she named was famous world-wide, the self-deprecation carried little weight, Emma decided. Vanessa Buckingham was obviously a very high-powered lawyer indeed…

‘I’m here with Hugo and Jan,’ Vanessa was saying to Dominick. The girl’s green eyes were caressing him with blatant hunger. Emma hooked her foot round the leg of her stool, and fiddled with her glass. A strange feeling seemed to be gripping her, making her feel slightly sick.

Here, she reminded herself firmly, was an example of the kind of woman Dominick normally spent his time with. Glamorous, clearly upper-class, from his own background, someone who moved in the same circles, socially and professionally. Mentally retreating from the situation, she tried to concentrate on the work she’d been doing today, to focus her mind on the real reason for being here.

‘Why don’t you join us?’ Dominick was suggesting smoothly to Vanessa Buckingham. ‘I’ll tell Giuseppe we’d like a table for six.’

Emma felt her stomach clench. What was the matter with her? She should welcome this diversion with relief, shouldn’t she? All she had to do was sit out the meal, making the minimum of contributions to the conversation. The heat was off…

But relief wasn’t what she felt at all. Now, watching Dominick’s dark face, laughing at something the blonde girl had said, and listening to their conversation about the rarefied legal world in London, she suddenly felt gauche, boring, provincial.

Worst of all, the sick sensation growing in her solar plexus was definitely an unexpected and wholly inappropriate thrust of jealousy…

CHAPTER THREE

EMMA sat in silence in the car on the way back to the manor. The powerful headlights swept past dark hedgerows and inky black woods. She stared at the arcs of light, and tried to make her mind go blank. Anything to avoid thinking about the evening she’d just spent at the country club. In fact, anything to avoid thinking at all…

The evening had not been a success. At least, not for Emma. She’d held her own reasonably well, she thought. Given a passably witty explanation of her job as an archivist, when graciously invited to explain her presence. But when she’d calmly stated that her father had been gamekeeper at Fleetwood Manor when she was a child, there’d been a wry exchange of glances between Dominick’s three friends. Vanessa, Hugo and Jan had exuded that exclusive, cliquey rapport that came with shared childhoods, shared schooling, shared backgrounds.

And her own confidence, shaky at best, had dissolved in the knowledge that Dominick had jumped at the chance to liven up his evening by inviting them to his table.

But Dominick had seemed preoccupied throughout the meal. The seafood with its delicate sauce had been superb. And the pheasant, rich and aromatic, served with fine-cut sautéd potatoes, and perfectly cooked broccoli, mange-tout and carrots, had been mouthwatering. But she’d felt rather too on edge to relax fully and enjoy the country club’s excellent cuisine. Infuriatingly, she’d found she was drawn, constantly, to look at Dominick as he leaned back in his chair, long brown fingers idly twisting the stem of his wine glass, shuttered gaze surveying the gathered company with cool disinterest. He’d kept his contributions to the conversation brief and sparingly to the point. His dark blue eyes, shadowed in the candlelight at their table, had been unreadable.

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