Michelle Reid Collection. Michelle Reid
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halting something else that felt absolutely perfect.
By the time they retired outside the sun had set and the garden was ablaze with twinkling lights. Luiz drew her into his arms on the makeshift dance floor as a small set of musicians began playing a waltz. It was the closest they had been except for the clasped hands since they had married, and the knowledge of that sparked between them. Electric, tantalising, utterly mesmerising.
His mouth brushed her cheek, then stayed there. ‘You look so beautiful today. Walking towards me in the church, you made my heart ache,’ he murmured huskily.
When she tilted her head back so she could look at him, her eyes had stars in them. But she paled a little when she remembered how she had been feeling earlier, and—more importantly—why she had felt like that. ‘I’ve been talking to my father,’ she murmured huskily. ‘He told me what really happened seven years ago. I—’
The man holding her suddenly changed into an entirely different person. Seeing it happen stopped her words, and she watched his hardened eyes flick around the garden in angry search.
‘Luiz—’
‘No,’ he cut in. ‘I am angry with him for breaking his word to me and telling you all of this. I am angry with you for bringing it up tonight of all nights!’
‘But you didn’t take a single penny from him!’ It had to be said! ‘You left me asleep in bed each night and went down to play cards with him to stop him gambling with anyone else. You knew how I worried about him—so you took it upon yourself to keep him out of danger! I owe so much to you for that, Luiz!’
His face was white, his lips thin, his teeth clenched behind them. ‘You owe me nothing,’ he rasped.
‘I owe you an apology,’ she said thickly, beginning to tremble in his arms as the full cup of her guilt came pouring out. ‘I was in love with you. I should have known you wouldn’t do something so crass as to fleece my own father! But I believed him instead of you—when I knew what a liar he was! I don’t blame you if you never forgive me for that!’
‘Drop it, Caroline, before I get angry,’ he warned.
But he was already angry. ‘You let him win thousands from you—the same thousands of pounds he then told me you had won from him! It’s no wonder he was so eager to play you again last week,’ she said bitterly. ‘He truly believed he was in for another easy killing!’
He flinched as if she’d struck him hard. ‘I didn’t mean it like that!’ she groaned, lifting her hand to lay it in apology against his taut cheek. ‘Luiz—’
‘No,’ he said. ‘We will not discuss this. Not now, not ever. Do you understand?’ And he took hold of her hand to remove it, then stepped right back, turned and walked away!
It was fortunate that the music had come to a stop just then. Luiz’s knack for perfect timing, she supposed.
His uncle Fidel took his place. And after that Caroline didn’t see him as she was whirled around in the arms of one relative or another. When she did eventually escape the dance floor to go and look for him it was pitch dark beyond the fairylights, while the castle itself was pooled in lamplight.
She couldn’t find him amongst the people in the garden, so she went looking for him inside. She was just crossing the great hall when a waiter came up to her. ‘Excuse me, la condesa.’ He bowed politely. ‘But el conde send me with a message.’
Oh, the relief. ‘Where is he?’ she asked urgently.
‘He say to meet him at the car, just beyond the boundary wall, if you please.’
At the car? What now? she wondered as she moved out of the house again and down the driveway to where all the cars had been left parked outside the castle’s boundary. Was she about to be hijacked again and hauled off somewhere else?
Well, if Luiz thought that was going to be a punishment, then he was in for a surprise, she thought, with a smile that took the anxiety from her lips as excitement for the game began to curl through her.
The car was just a dark bulk among many cars, but she picked it out soon enough because it was the only one with its engine running, and she caught a glimpse of Luiz’s dark shape behind the wheel just before she opened the passenger door and slipped inside.
‘This is all excitingly clandestine, Luiz,’ she teased, busily tucking her dress and veil inside before she could close the door. ‘But not really necessary any more.’ The door closed, the engine gunned, then shot them forwards. ‘See,’ she said, turning to wave her ringed hand at him. ‘I am…’
Words died, and so did her heart, just before it dropped with a sickening thump to her stomach. As she made a lurch for the door handle the central locking system clicked smoothly into place and Felipe turned a lazy grin on her.
‘Droit du seigneur,’ he drawled. ‘It is tradition…’
CHAPTER ELEVEN
HER first instinct was to begin looking wildly about her, to see if anyone had seen them speed away. But there was no one else on this side of the wall to witness their departure, and as Felipe accelerated up the road towards the village her mind was already hearing the smooth, quiet run of the car’s powerful engine.
‘This is stupid, Felipe,’ she said, trying to keep the need to panic under control. ‘I don’t see what you aim to gain by it.’
‘Satisfaction,’ he replied, and turned an abrupt right. Instead of taking the road through the village he began driving at speed between the narrow rows of fruit trees. It was a hair-raising experience, one that had Caroline clinging to the door handle, her body flinching each time a tree branch scraped across the car.
Another abrupt turn and they were skirting the side of the valley on a dusty track she hadn’t even known was there. Within what seemed like only seconds they had skirted round the village and were climbing through the terraces. With her heart pumping so fast with adrenaline that her hands were trembling, Caroline reached for the seat belt and fastened it around her.
‘You’re mad,’ she breathed.
Felipe just shrugged, spun the car round one of the acute bends in the narrow road and for a few brief moments brought the whole valley into view. She could see the castle, pooled in light and standing out against its dramatic black backdrop. She could even see the people dancing on the makeshift dance floor, or just standing around in groups, talking. Her heart began to throb, her throat to thicken as she tried to pick out Luiz’s distinctive figure—before Felipe was swinging them sharply in the other direction.
By the next abrupt turn the castle was far below them, and it was a shock to realise how high they had already climbed. Another couple of these sharp bends and they would reach the cut, the place where the road became a treacherous pass through the mountains.
She didn’t want to go there with Felipe. She didn’t want this madman driving her at this mad speed on that awful part of the road where the edge dropped sheer down hundreds of feet into the ravines below.
‘Stop the car, Felipe,’ she commanded shakily. ‘A joke is a joke, and if it makes you feel better, I’ll admit it—I’m frightened. But now I would like you to stop so I can get out.’
‘And walk back?’ he mocked. ‘In that dress and in those spindly heels?’
‘Yes, if necessary.’ She didn’t care so long as he let her out of here.
They suddenly swung around yet another sharp bend. Tyres screamed and spun. Caroline hung on for dear life and almost cried out when all she could see in front of her was what looked like a wall of pitch black.
Her heart leapt into her throat and remained there until she realised they weren’t about to drive off the end of the mountain but were in actual fact heading straight for it.
‘I will have been missed by now.’ In sheer desperation