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If he had thought that his very first words had created a silence, then it was like nothing when compared to the freezing stillness that had descended now. It was almost as if somehow the air inside the little church had frozen and no one dared move for fear of splintering it into a million irreparable shards. The only sound at all was the slight bang of the door as it fell shut behind the pregnant woman who had fainted and the two women who had helped her outside, probably cursing the fact that they were missing all the drama and the scandal.
‘How can Amber be your wife?’
The crisp, clipped sound of Rafe St Clair’s voice fitted perfectly too. That plum-in-the-mouth tone that always sounded as if the speaker was looking down his nose at the same time.
‘In the same way that she planned to become yours—she married me.’
‘That isn’t true!’
It was Amber’s voice that broke into his, her fearful tones echoing around the high roof of the church as she protested.
‘I didn’t…’
The Englishman looked down at the woman at his side, then back into Guido’s face, and there was the flash of something inexplicable in his blue eyes.
‘You’re not married to him?’
He didn’t seem to expect an answer, which was just as well, as Amber was clearly incapable of managing anything more. But he nodded and turned his attention back to the priest, who was standing uncertainly to one side, obviously not knowing how to react.
‘The marriage will go ahead,’ he instructed. ‘Amber…’
‘Do you want to be arrested for bigamy?’ Guido flung the words at the bride, aiming them right at the huge, wide green eyes that were all he could see behind the concealing veil. Eyes that had once looked into his when she had declared that she loved him, that there was no other man in the world for her. ‘Because that’s what will happen if you go ahead. You cannot marry this man—you are married to me.’
‘It wasn’t legal!’ It was a cry of despair as she saw her chance of marrying into the aristocracy disappear down the drain, Guido thought cynically. ‘It wasn’t even a real marriage!’
The silence that swelled around her words was shocking. It swirled and ebbed, like some terrible sea wave that threatened to take everything with it; swallow everything; drown everything.
Then:
‘Amber!’
Even behind the veil, it was possible to see how Amber’s face had lost every last trace of colour as her would-be groom turned shocked and stunned eyes on her, the tone of total disgust in which he said her name revealing how she had given herself away.
‘I thought you said you didn’t know this man but now…Is it true about this marriage?’
‘And the rest?’ This time the reproach came from a member of the congregation, a tall man whose narrow face and balding head made him an older version of the groom.
‘Were you planning to trap my son into a bigamous marriage?’ The revulsion in that word was plain; as was the black fury, the total rejection of her.
‘I…’
Guido actually felt a twist of pity as he saw how she struggled for an answer; the way that her mouth opened and closed but no sound would come. But then her head went up, her green eyes flashed behind the lace and she fell back on the excuse she had given the first time.
‘It wasn’t a real marriage!’
Fiercely she directed a furious glare down the aisle at Guido. A glare so laser-hot that for a moment he almost believed it should have seared his skin, reduced that delicate veil to ashes as it burned through it.
‘You have to believe me—you wouldn’t think that I’d really marry someone like him?’
Every trace of that unexpected impulse to pity disappeared in a flash, shrivelled in the heat of her scorn, the blaze of her pride. And in its place was left an icy sense of loathing that blazed cold in his heart, turning pity to revulsion in the blink of an eye.
With deliberate slowness, his movements under the most rigid control, he reached into the inner pocket of his jacket and pulled out a folded sheet of white paper. He could feel the entire congregation watching, transfixed, held totally by what he was doing.
A flick of his hand shook open the folds, revealing an official form, a document bearing names and a date—his name—her name—and the date twelve months earlier on which they had been married.
‘Looks real enough to me,’ he drawled silkily, holding it up so that everyone could see. ‘Let me…’
Rafe St Clair took a step forward, snatched the document from his hand, stared at it intently. His face was already pale with anger, but the way he compressed his mouth even more tightly etched further white lines around his nose and lips.
‘Amber Christina Wellesley. Guido Ignazio Corsentino…’
His voice died, the paper crushed in his hand for a second before he flung it into Amber’s face.
‘You liar!’
‘Rafe…’
But her protest was ignored.
‘This wedding is cancelled,’ Rafe declared. ‘I wish you joy of your wife, Corsentino.’
‘Rafe!’ Amber tried again as he turned away. Unable to believe what was happening, the way that her life had been turned inside out, destroyed in the space of a few moments, she reached for his hand, wanting to stop him, make him stay. ‘Rafe, please!’
But even before she had the chance to wrap her fingers around his, he was pulling away, flinging her from him as if he felt contaminated just by her touch. She had never seen his normally gentle-looking face harden into such antipathy. Her friend Rafe had disappeared and in his place was a total stranger.
‘I want nothing to do with you! You disgust me—you little whore!’
‘No!’
To Amber’s astonishment, it was Guido who came to her defence, his voice harsh with fury, stepping forward, coming between her and the other man. She couldn’t see what was on his face, in his eyes, but she saw Rafe’s reaction to it, the way that he flinched, his head lowering, then backed away, moving hurriedly down the aisle. And as he went, his family got up too and followed him out.
The surprising kindness, protected by the last person on earth she might have expected to come to her aid, was the final straw. It took all her strength from her, weakened her legs so that they shook beneath her, unable to support her any longer.
With a low moan of despair she sank down on the steps of the altar and buried her face in her hands. Drained of all energy, she felt too flattened to think, too lost even to cry. She just retreated into the concealing, comforting darkness and hid there, letting her mind go blank until she found the courage to think again.
Vaguely she registered the sound of movements, the shuffle of bodies that she supposed must mean that the people in the congregation—the family and friends who had all come to see her married to Rafe—were now getting up and leaving. Footsteps made their way down the stone flagged aisle, the door creaked on its hinges, banged shut a few times, and then, slowly, gradually, every sound died away and she was left…
Alone?
Had everyone gone? Had every single person in the church walked out and left her here, by herself? Was she alone with her thoughts and nothing else?
Or was there someone there?
Was someone standing there in silence, not saying a word, just watching her? Seeing her in the depths of despair, struggling to cope with the way that her life had been shattered and now lay in tiny pieces around her feet?
Amber didn’t really know which of the two prospects was worse. At this moment, she’d probably choose the latter because she didn’t think she had the strength to cope with anyone. She knew that eventually she was going to have to look up, get up, and try very hard to pick up what little was left of her life. But right now, with her whole body trembling with the aftershocks from the emotional earthquake that had blasted through her, she just wanted a little while longer to stay here like this, to hide, to…
‘Are you going to hide away like that for ever?’
The voice that broke into her protected world echoed her own thoughts so closely that for a moment she almost believed that she had asked the question of herself inside the privacy of her mind. But then reality registered in the fact that the tones in which the question had been asked were unmistakably masculine-and her heart twisted in shock at the realisation that they had also been shaded by a musical, sexy Italian accent.
Guido?
Was he still there? Was he the one who had stayed? Was it possible?
She would have expected that, having marched in here and set her world upside down, he had earned whatever satisfaction he had come for—the revenge he had wanted for the way she had walked out on him and their marriage.
The marriage that hadn’t been a marriage.
The marriage that she had always believed hadn’t been a marriage, but a farce, a deliberate ploy to use her, from start to finish. Which now Guido had openly declared before all these people…
‘Well?’
It was harsher now, pushing at her, poking her mentally, driving her out of her cocoon, so that she dropped her concealing hand, flung her head up, turning on him with as much defiance as she could muster.
‘I’m not hiding!’
‘Looks like it to me,’ Guido drawled mockingly. ‘You have every appearance of a little girl hiding in a corner, away from something nasty—with an “if I do not see it then it isn’t there and maybe if I am really lucky it will just go away” approach to life.’
‘Well, if that’s the case, then it’s not working, is it?’ Amber tossed at him, where he was lounging against the front of the very first pew, narrow hips resting on the polished wood, long legs stretched out at an angle. ‘I’ve opened my eyes and the “something nasty” is very definitely still here.’
‘And has no intention of going away either,’ he finished for her, apparently unmoved by the furious insult that had just bounced off a skin that was thick as a rhinoceros hide.
He even smiled, though it was the smile of a killer snake. That dangerous king cobra was back, just waiting, just wanting her to tempt him to strike.
No—the description of a snake didn’t fit Guido. The dark, lean, dangerous man who was lounging so indolently against the end of the pew was more like a lazily watchful hunting tiger, waiting for just the right moment to pounce.
Oh, dear…
Suddenly even her own thoughts struck Amber as ridiculous. She was getting confused, getting her creatures muddled up. An impossible shudder of laughter bubbled up in her throat.
‘Amber?’
Guido’s voice sounded as if it came from a long, long way away. Had he moved? Was he leaving like all the others?
She should care more. After all, even her own mother had walked out on her, unable to bear the embarrassment of the way that the marriage had been brought to an abrupt halt; the embarrassment of finding that her daughter was already married.
‘Amber, stop it!’
He’d definitely moved this time. His voice came from just above her and she could sense his presence in every cell in her body. Black-booted feet were set firmly on the stone flags just in front of her—she could see them through the strangely clinging veil—and the long black-clad columns of his legs, strong and muscular…
‘Stop what? I just think it’s so—funny!’
Her voice went up and down as if it were on a badly tuned radio, with the reception coming and going crazily.
‘No, it’s not!’
Hard hands clamped around her arms, hauling her to her feet—hauling her up against him so that her breath escaped her in a gasping rush.
‘Yes, it is…Here I was—about to be married—and you turn up like…like three kinds of animal…’
‘Three kinds of animal?’ She’d confused him there. He was frowning down into her face, even his excellent English unable to cope with her fanciful imagination. ‘Amber—stop crying and then we—’
Crying? What was he talking about? She wasn’t crying; she was laughing.
‘I’m not crying…’
She caught the sceptical look he turned on her, his bronze eyes even darker than usual.
‘I’m not!’
‘No?’
Releasing one arm, he touched the back of his free hand to her neck and then slightly above that, to her chin, taking it away and looking hard at it before turning it so that she could see his bent knuckles.
They were wet, glistening with moisture that they had picked up from her skin. From the tears that she hadn’t been aware of shedding and that were now, she realised, streaming silently down her cheeks and flowing onto her neck. That was why her veil felt as if it was crammed against her cheeks, almost glued to her skin.
Unnerved, she brushed at it with a trembling hand but only succeeded in pressing it even closer to her eyelashes.
‘Let me…’ Guido said but she was unable to stop herself from flinching back as he made to lift the fine lace.
‘No…’
‘Dannazione, Amber!’ Guido swore. ‘How can we talk when I can’t even see your face with this thing in the way?’
‘I don’t want to talk—we have nothing to talk about! Today was the day I was supposed to be married to the man I wanted to wed—and you turn up and tell me I’m still married to you. To the man I most don’t want to be married to in the world. To the man I never thought I was married to in the first place!’
‘The man you are married to!’
It was only when she heard him confirm her fears that she finally realised she had to accept it. Even now, she admitted to herself, she had been holding on to a tiny, faint hope that this had all been a terrible mistake—a cruel, bitter game. She knew she had left Guido savagely angry, furious at the way she had walked out on him, and she frankly wasn’t surprised that he wanted revenge for the insults she had tossed at him both verbally and in the letter she’d left behind.
Insults that had been her only hope of getting out of there and actually leaving. Making sure he never came after her; never called her back.
But this…
‘The marriage is legal, then?’
‘Do you doubt it?’
His tone spoke of arrogant disbelief of the fact that anyone should not believe him absolutely. And the way his broad shoulders stiffened, the long spine straightening and his proud head coming up, only reinforced the message of controlled fury in his voice.
‘Do you think I would go to this trouble for a marriage that wasn’t real?’
‘But you said…’
It sure as hell isn’t a real marriage! he’d said. There’s been nothing real about it from the start.
‘I know what I said, Amber, but…porca miseria!’ Guido swore in exasperation so violent that his explosive words echoed around the now empty church. ‘I cannot speak to you like this!’
