The Platinum Collection: Claiming His Innocent. Lynne Graham
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at the packed pews of the little flower-bedecked church of Charlbury St Helens, which lay only a hundred yards away from her parents’ home. Lack of space in the nave had meant restricting the number of guests able to see the ceremony. When she caught a glimpse of Cesario standing so tall, dark and straight at the altar, she found it hard to get oxygen into her lungs. And then suddenly and without any warning at all, and in a spirit of sharp regret, she found that she was wishing that her wedding were for real, an occasion where two people in love shared their vows for a shared and productive future. The unemotional exchange of needs that she had agreed with Cesario was on another plane entirely and just then she felt incredibly lonely. A surge of over-emotional tears stung the backs of her eyes.
‘Your bride looks gorgeous,’ Stefano remarked admiringly at his cousin’s elbow.
And Cesario stopped playing it cool and turned to get his own view. He felt the word didn’t stretch anywhere far enough to do justice to the vision of Jessica in the full-skirted sparkling gown with a corset bodice that moulded her slim curves and defined her tiny waist. So stunning was she with her light grey eyes shining, her soft mouth unusually tremulous and full and her heavy mass of hair falling below the tiara that he barely registered the aggravation of her arriving at the altar on the arm of the man who had let thieves into his house.
Jess met Cesario’s brilliant dark eyes and experienced a sizzling sensation in her pelvis that was unnervingly similar to an electric shock. Breathing rapidly, she averted her attention from him and concentrated studiously on the middle-aged priest’s opening preamble. The ceremony was short and familiar, similar to a number of friends’ weddings she’d attended in recent years, but she still could not quite accept that this time she was the bride. Her hand shook a little when Cesario first grasped it and she stopped breathing altogether when he slid the slim band of gold onto her wedding finger. His handsome mouth brushed her cheek in a light salutation and then they walked down the aisle, guests beaming at them as though they had done something terribly clever. She remembered to smile for the benefit of the congregation, which, aside of her mother, had no idea that she was not a normal, happy bride.
‘You look amazing in that dress, mia bella,’ Cesario commented during the drive back to Halston Hall where the reception was being held.
‘And I picked it all by myself.’ Jess could not resist letting him know. ‘The stylist wanted me to wear something plainer and more formal.’
‘You made the right choice.’
Relaxing a little, Jess sighed. ‘With all this fuss going on around us, it’s hard to remember that it’s all fake.’
Cesario frowned. ‘It is not fake,’ he contradicted.
Fake, fake, fake! she wanted to shout at him in defiant disagreement, but, suspecting such a response would annoy him, she managed to resist the impulse.
‘We are now husband and wife and we will live as such.’ Cesario delivered his different opinion in a tone of powerful conviction.
But Jess was stubborn and hard to impress and she wrinkled her nose. ‘A temporary marriage could never feel real,’ she said quietly, thinking of the very long, wordy legal contract she’d had to sign a couple of weeks earlier before the marriage could go ahead.
This prenuptial contract had made it very clear that the marriage was more of a commercial arrangement than anything else. The terms of the eventual divorce had been laid out with equal clarity with regard to income, property and the custody and care of any child born to them. No woman who’d had to sign such a detailed document could have cherished any romantic illusions about the nature of the marriage she was about to enter.
Cesario set his white even teeth together. ‘Talk of that variety is premature. We don’t know as yet when our marriage will end. That’s not the aspect you should be concentrating on right now.’
But Jess was no more eager to think about the mechanics of getting pregnant. What if it simply didn’t happen? What a nightmare that would be! For a start, it was the only reason he was marrying her and, from her own point of view, it was the only feature that made the whole agreement supportable. She wouldn’t think about her wedding night, instead she would think about the baby she was desperate to hold in her arms. Only she discovered as she stood in line to greet their guests in the Great Hall of the Elizabethan house that she could not wipe Cesario’s starring role in that future development from her mind and her nervous tension began to mount again.
The exhausting day continued and, having had little practice as a social butterfly, Jess found it a strain to laugh and talk and smile continuously with strangers, many of whom were undoubtedly curious to see what was so special about her that she had managed to get a male of Cesario’s reputation to the altar. If only they’d had access to the truth, she thought wryly, standing behind a door in a quiet corner when she finally managed to escape the crush for a few minutes. At least the meal, the speeches and the first dance were over, she reflected ruefully, grateful that the spotlight of attention was no longer on the bride and groom quite so much. She gulped down a glass of champagne in the hope that the alcohol would help her to feel a little more relaxed and light-hearted, for Cesario had already suggested twice that she ‘loosen up’. Her natural shyness and reserve seemed to be a disadvantage around him.
‘I can’t believe that Alice is being so two-faced,’ Jess heard a female voice state with perceptible scorn. ‘I don’t believe for a moment that she is really pleased that Cesario has finally found a wife.’
‘Oh, neither do I,’ agreed another. ‘After all, Alice was once utterly crazy about Cesario and she only married Stefano because he adores her.’
‘I can understand why she did it, though. She’d been with Cesario for two years, there was no sign of him making a commitment and she wasn’t getting any younger. Don’t forget she’s a few years older than he is and she didn’t waste any time in having children with Stefano.’
‘I heard that Cesario was devastated when she walked out on him for his cousin.’
The other woman laughed in disbelief. ‘Can you imagine Cesario being devastated over a woman? If he’d cared about Alice that much he’d have married her when he had the chance.’
‘Most men would consider a woman like Alice a keeper.’
‘As you can see by his choice of bride, though, Cesario is not most men,’ her companion said scornfully. ‘Granted she’s got the looks, but nobody had ever heard of her before the invitations arrived.’
‘Why would we have heard of her? She looks after his horses!’
Jess moved away from the doorway in haste before she could be seen. Looks after his horses indeed, she thought in exasperation, recalling her long years of study and training for her career in veterinary medicine. She had no reason, though, to disbelieve what she had innocently overheard and she was taken aback to learn that Alice and Cesario had once been lovers. An affair that Cesario allowed to last for two years must have been serious, although the beautiful blonde had somehow ended up married to his cousin instead. Even more surprisingly, that development did not appear to have damaged the friendship between the two men.
‘Have a drink,’ her mother urged, pressing a champagne glass into her daughter’s nerveless hand. ‘You hardly ate anything of the wedding breakfast and you are as white as a ghost.’
‘I’m fine,’ Jess asserted automatically, her eyes anxiously scanning the knots of people in search of Cesario’s tall dark head.
Ironically he was on the dance floor with Alice, the two of them so busy talking that they were circling very slowly. Stefano was watching his wife and his cousin from the top table, a troubled expression etching lines to his face
‘What’s wrong?’ Sharon Martin prompted, reading her daughter’s tension easily.
Jess continued to watch Cesario and Alice while sharing what she had overheard.
‘I knew it—I told you how hard it is to keep your emotions out of things.’