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It had started to rain, a thin mist of drops that beaded the windscreen and blurred the world beyond to a watery grey. Frantically trying to remember how to work the windscreen wipers, Rachel eventually located the right lever, only to discover that the blur was caused not by rain but by tears.
The road was bumpy and potholed, and there was nowhere to turn. She pressed her foot harder to the accelerator, trying to make the noise of the engine drown out the sound of the church bells in the distance. They were fainter now, drifting eerily over the dank, drab fields with a ghostly melancholy that was horribly funereal. The hairs rose on the back of her neck. Suddenly everything seemed sinister—loaded with menace. Her heart thudded madly as she glanced again and again in the rearview mirror, expecting to see the headlamps of Carlos’s huge black car getting closer, dazzling, hypnotising, until they engulfed her.
Someone must have seen her go. Someone must have heard. He would have guessed that she had gone with that terrifying instinct he had for sensing her fear and exploiting it until she was helpless to do anything but submit to him…
She could almost feel his hot breath on her neck, and, letting out a whimper of terror, had to look quickly over her shoulder to reassure herself she was imagining it.
Twisting her head back again, she saw that the road in front had narrowed suddenly into a low-sided bridge. She swerved, but did so too sharply, cringing at the sickening sound of metal against stone as the nearside wing glanced off the wall. Numb with horror, she kept going, accelerating off the bridge with a screech of tyres and swinging out onto a straight stretch of road. She should stop, check the damage to the car, but darkness crouched menacingly in the hedges and fields beyond, harbouring all manner of nameless horrors—all of which paled into insignificance at the thought of Carlos gaining on her. She imagined him pulling up alongside her as she stood in the deserted, darkling lane, getting out of the car and coming towards her with that look in his eyes that she would never be able to forget…
A sob tore through her, and she felt herself buckle, as if she’d been punched in the stomach, as the memories bubbled up through the thin crust that had sealed them in, like a mental scab. Her lungs screamed for air. It was all she could do to keep her hands on the wheel and not fall into the yawning chasm of panic that had opened up beneath her.
What you lack, Rachel, is courage.
Orlando’s voice cut through the fog—calm, steady, reassuringly blank. And then suddenly up ahead she saw the shape of a large building, dark against the pewter sky, and twin gateposts reared up on either side of the road. Weeping with relief, she sped towards them as a dim memory of a story she’d read as a child came back to her—where someone had had to race across a bridge to safety before a headless horseman caught them and all was lost.
She screeched through the gates and slewed the car round on the gravel in front of the huge, dark house, praying there was someone home. Someone who could help her—hide her—in case Carlos was making his way through the dark, dripping lanes towards her.
Turning off the ignition, she sank down in the driver’s seat, waiting for her heartbeat to stop reverberating through her entire body and for enough strength to return to her trembling legs to allow her to walk up to that imposing front door. What if there was no answer? She pictured herself knocking, hammering with all her strength as the sound echoed through vast, empty rooms, and all the time the headlights in the distance were growing closer…
And then, as she watched, a soft light spilled out across the gravel as the door opened and a figure appeared. Scrabbling at the door handle with shaking, bloodless fingers, she threw herself out and had to lean against the car for a moment as relief cascaded through her.
A second later relief had turned to anguished recognition.
There in the doorway, like a dark negative image of the angel in the churchyard, stood Orlando Winterton.
Orlando flung open the door and frowned into the gathering darkness. He had heard the sound of tyres skidding on gravel but it took a few seconds for him to bring into focus the very expensive, very damaged silver sports car which looked as if it had been abandoned in front of the house.
Arabella.
She’d phoned last night and announced in that cold, efficient way of hers that she wanted to see him. He couldn’t imagine why: everything in Arabella’s life was glamorous and high-functioning. She had no room for weakness—a fact which she had made perfectly plain at the time of Orlando’s diagnosis. Maybe she’d developed a conscience? he’d thought cynically as he’d slammed the phone down, having told her exactly what she could do.
But she always had liked to have the last word. Orlando’s face was like stone as he stood in the doorway, waiting for her to get out of the car. He wondered what tack she would take this time—mockery or seductiveness? Either way, he was immune. That was one thing he could be grateful for: when you lived in hell already, no one could make it any worse.
The car door opened and a slender figure sprang out, ghostly white in the winter gloom. Orlando felt his head jerk upwards slightly as he desperately sought to bring her into his field of vision.
Not Arabella.
She stood against the car, and even with his failing sight, even in the gathering February dusk, he could see that she was trembling. She was wearing a thin white dress that blew against her long legs, and her bright hair was like a beacon in the blurred centre of his vision. It lit up the darkness. Red for danger.
Red for passion.
The girl from the graveyard.
Slowly he walked down the steps towards her. Frozen by the icy wind that stung her bare arms and whipped her hair across her numb cheeks, Rachel watched him helplessly, suddenly finding that her brain was as frozen as the rest of her, but that something, somewhere deep inside of her just wanted to fling herself into this man’s arms.
In the distance she could still hear the discordant peal of the church bells, and she gave her head a little shake, trying to regain a rational hold on the situation. The trouble was, she wasn’t sure there was one.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, in a voice that was little more than a hoarse croak. ‘I didn’t mean to come here. I didn’t know… The road—I didn’t know where it went—I was just…driving…’
He looked down on her from his great height. His massive shoulders were rigid with tension, but his face gave nothing away. ‘Driving away from your wedding, I take it?’
‘Yes. I couldn’t…do it.’ She spoke very carefully, breathing slowly and deliberately to keep herself together. ‘I waited until the last possible minute to see if something would happen to stop it, but it didn’t…and then…I knew I couldn’t do it. I ran away…because you were right, I…’
She took another steadying breath, but at that moment the church bells stopped abruptly. Silence seemed to fold around them like fog. Rachel felt her hands fly to her mouth, her eyes widening in horror as the implications of that silence sank in.
They knew. They’d found she was missing. And Carlos… Carlos would be…
Frantically she pushed her fingers through her hair, looking wildly about her as terror gripped her once again. Without knowing what she was doing, she wrenched open the car door.
Orlando was beside her in a flash, his arms closing around her waist, pinning her own arms to her sides and stopping her escape. She struggled against him, twisting her shoulders frantically, but his strength was enormous. Effortlessly he held her against him.
‘Let me go! I have to go now! They’ll come after me and—’
‘No!’ His voice was like sandpaper. He swung her round to face him, his hands holding her upper arms again, as they had this morning in the churchyard. ‘You’re not going anywhere in this state. You’re staying here.’
He felt the fight go out of her. She slumped into his hands, so that he was holding her up. Over her head his eyes were fixed on an unseen point in the distance as he gritted his teeth and fought to control the emotions that warred within him—impatience, hostility, exasperation, resentment.
And the prickle of arousal that had fuelled at least some of those.
He felt his mind shut like a steel trap against it. Those feelings had no place in his life now. But it was the scent of her hair that had done it, the weight and warmth of it as she thrashed in his arms that had made him feel momentarily as if he had been punched in the solar plexus.
She raised her head, so he could make out the milk-white curve of her cheek. ‘I couldn’t stay…’ she said dully. ‘It’s too much to ask…I can’t…’
He let her go and took a step away, slamming the car door with unnecessary force. ‘Do you have anywhere else to go?’
‘No.’
‘Well, then,’ he said with biting sarcasm, ‘let’s skip the part where you put up some token resistance, shall we? I think this is one instance where you really don’t have a choice, and it’s not as if I don’t have room.’
Rachel looked up at the house, noticing it properly for the first time. Built of red brick, with a central grey stone porch, its blank windows stretched away from her on both sides, and she could make out a steeply pitched roofline and vast elaborate chimneys against the heavy sky. It was beautiful, but huge and dark and utterly forbidding. Just like its owner.
He had started back towards it, and now looked impatiently over his shoulder.
‘What are you waiting for?’
The acid in his tone stung her raw emotions. ‘I can’t leave the car here…someone might see it… And my things…’ she wailed, aware that she sounded like a hysterical child, but too distressed to care.
He stopped and came wearily back towards her, his hand outstretched. ‘Give me the keys and I’ll get someone to move the car.’
She handed them to him and watched numbly as he went round to the boot and took out her large designer case.
‘You planned your escape well,’ he said wryly.
‘No…I didn’t plan it at all. This was packed yesterday. For tonight…’ Her voice trailed off and he gave her a wintry smile.
‘Your wedding night. Of course.’
He had to consciously turn his thoughts away from imagining what was in there, selected in anticipation of a very different night from the one that now awaited her. Whatever it was, whatever expensive, seductive confections of silk and lace lay folded carefully inside, she’d have no need of them here. The wing where he intended to put her hadn’t been used in a year at least. It was freezing.
It was also as far away from his room as possible.
Following him up a flight of steps and through a hugely high door, Rachel shivered. She felt like Beauty entering the castle of the Beast.
And then she caught sight of her dim reflection in an ornate gilt mirror in the hallway and let out a breath of ironic laughter at the thought.
Beauty? Who was she kidding? Her hair, brushed and tamed by dedicated professionals only a couple of hours ago, had since been swept by both wind and her own frantic fingers, and was now tumbling over her shoulders and around her face, giving her a slightly deranged appearance. Her eyes, expertly made up by a make-up artist, were huge and glittering with unfamiliar shadow in the ashen oval of her face. The dress only added to her appearance of a nineteenth-century waif on her way to the asylum.
Ahead of her, Orlando hesitated in a doorway at the end of the dark hallway, tall, effortlessly elegant, with broad, straight shoulders and that aristocratic upward tilt of his head. She felt a sharp twist somewhere inside her as she glanced up at him.
There was something about him that touched nerves in her that were too sensitive. Too sensual. And that terrified her.
Courage…
‘This way.’
The imposing entrance hall opened onto a smaller hallway from which the stairs rose in a graceful sweep around two walls. He had started to ascend, keeping close to the wall and brushing his fingers against the painted panelling as he went. Mesmerised, she watched, feeling her flesh tingle almost as if it could feel that feathery touch. At the top of the stairs he turned to the right, along a dark corridor. Rachel glanced around her, noticing the silk-shaded wall-lights at intervals on the emerald-green walls, wondering why he didn’t turn them on. At least the gloom inside allowed her to get a good view of what lay outside, and she paused to look out of one of the windows. It overlooked a courtyard whose walls were formed by the house, built in a square around it. The courtyard was divided into quarters by four dark, square flowerbeds in which nothing grew.
He’d gone ahead, and she had to hurry to catch up, guided only by the echo of his footsteps on the polished oak floorboards. Even in her frozen mental state she was stunned by her surroundings. The house was astonishing.
‘In here,’ he said curtly, opening a door. Rachel followed him into a large room dominated by a huge marble fireplace and containing little more than a vast canopied bed upon which he threw her case.
‘You’d better get out of that dress.’
The dusky afternoon threw deep shadows into the edges of the room. Instantly alarmed and on her guard, she let her gaze fly to his face questioningly. His expression was glacial.
Seemingly oblivious to her distress he strode over to the windows and pulled the curtains shut, plunging the room into velvet blackness.
Inside her chest, her heart hammered a frenzied tattoo.
He couldn’t mean…? Was her mother right? Did all men just want to…like Carlos?
She wrapped an arm around a thick wooden bedpost, half clinging to it, half shrinking behind it. Her mouth was dry, her stomach quivering with fear. She felt the air vibrate with his nearness as he passed her in the darkness, heard the soft rustle of his movements, and couldn’t quite smother her small whimper.
Then the bedside light clicked on, bathing the room in a welcoming glow and illuminating for a second the hard angles of his face before he moved purposefully towards the door.
‘I’ll be downstairs.’
She blinked, inhaling sharply in surprise. ‘No—Orlando! Wait!’
He stood still. His broad shoulders filled the doorframe as he waited for her to continue, but her throat seemed suddenly to be full of sand. She looked helplessly at him, feeling her mouth open soundlessly for a second before the words came out in a dry croak.
‘I…I…need help. With the dress.’
She saw him hesitate, then put a hand up to his head. ‘Jeez….’ It was something between an exhalation and a curse. And then he was coming back towards her, his face terrifyingly bleak.
Shaking violently, she turned, offering her back to him and bending her head forward so he could reach the top of the zip. She waited, feeling the goosebumps rise on the back of her neck as she anticipated his touch.
It seemed to take an eternity, during which she felt the tension building inside her like water coming to the boil. At last his long fingers brushed the hair off the nape of her neck and skimmed over the sensitised skin of her shoulders, leaving a shivering trail of sensation in their wake. He found the zip, tugged it halfway down, then stepped away, leaving her clinging to the carved bedpost as he wordlessly left the room.
She closed her eyes, desperately wanting to feel some sense of relief, and had to bite her lip against the wave of desolation and longing that washed over her instead.
She’d thought she’d be afraid of his touch, but that was because she was so used to being frightened she almost expected it. But this was something quite different. Something she’d thought she was incapable of experiencing, which had been unfurling inside her since he’d first held her against him in the churchyard.
With a thud of shock and a rush of liquid heat she realised the sensation that was quickening her pulse and filling her limbs with honeyed warmth was not fear.
It was arousal.
CHAPTER THREE
ORLANDO slammed a couple of peppers down onto the marble slab in the kitchen, took a knife from the block, and then reached to switch on the powerful spotlights that were angled down onto the worktop.
The bright light made him flinch.
He frowned, a muscle flickering in his jaw as he balanced the knife in one hand and held a pepper in the other. For a second he hesitated, steadying himself, before he began slicing with swift, savage strokes.
He had made a deliberate decision to accustom himself to the darkness that was fast closing in on him while he still had some sight left. He used artificial light as little as possible, but the kitchen was one place where he could not yet afford to let his fingers take the place of his eyes. His determination to maintain his independence meant that it was vital for him to be able to do as much as possible for himself—without asking for help or admitting weakness. Cooking had been of no interest to him in his old life—Arabella had seen to all of that with flawless competence—but a lot had changed in a year.
Not having to cook was one thing. Not being able to was quite another.
It was easy, he thought brutally, to lock himself up here alone and kid himself that he was doing OK. Managing. So easy to believe he was the person he’d always been when there was no one here to fool.
The arrival of this girl had made him see how mistaken he was.
Upstairs earlier…when she had asked him to unfasten her dress. That was the moment he had been forced to admit that the Orlando Winterton of a year ago was as dead and gone as his brother.
The old Orlando Winterton had been a master in the art of undressing women. The smooth, effortless removal of every kind of feminine garment was something he had excelled at, like everything else. But upstairs just then he had been assailed by panic as his mind had conjured tormenting images of tiny buttons, delicate hooks, and he had opened his mouth to tell her he couldn’t possibly do it. The words hadn’t come. He’d been afraid to tell her. Unable to deal with sensing her recoil, as Arabella had.
He swore with quiet venom.
So, yes, he might be managing. He might be maintaining some semblance of a normal and independent life. But it wasn’t of any kind normality he recognised.
‘Hi.’
She spoke quietly, but, momentarily distracted, Orlando felt the knife slip slightly and cursed again under his breath.
‘I didn’t hear you come in.’
‘I didn’t want to disturb you.’
Orlando felt anger rising inside him like acrid smoke.
It’s a bit late for that.
Hesitantly she came a little further into the room, and he could see that she had changed into something dark—the same sweater and jeans she had been wearing this morning, maybe? ‘I couldn’t find you. The kitchen was the last place I thought of looking.’
‘Really. Why’s that?’
‘I just thought that with a house like this you must have millions of staff. A chauffeur and a butler and all that—at the very least a cook.’
