Duarte's Child Page 15

  For an instant she hovered on the outside step, struggling to get a hold on the shock consuming her. Duarte, where are you when I need you? The craving for Duarte was so strong she could've cried. Was she really going to tell him that sad little story? The unfaithful wife and the womaniser? Duarte with his incredibly respectable family tree and aristocratic background?

  The front door behind her opened again. 'Would you like to come back in?' Lorene asked awkwardly.

  "Thanks for the offer but no,' Emily muttered in harried surprise land without looking back she hurried back out to the limousine parked and screened by the high hedge.

  Hurried steps sounded behind her. A hand briefly touched her arm. 'Emily, I'm sorry...' Lorene Davies suddenly sobbed.

  In any other mood, Emily would have been astonished by that display of emotion in her direction but just then she could not deal with it and all she wanted was to escape. As she flew through the garden gate and back on to the pavement, the rear passenger door of the limousine opened and Duarte stepped fluidly out in front of her.

  'What are you doing here?' she gasped chokily.

  He scanned her pasty, white face and opened his arms and she threw herself against him with a strangled sob. She'd never been so glad to see anybody. It felt so good to be held. Nothing else seemed to matter. Nothing seemed to hurt so much. He lowered her into the car and nudged her along the seat to climb in beside her.

  'How did you g-get here?' she stammered in bewilderment.

  'Cab. I suspected that you were planning to confront your mother and I thought I should be within reach just in case it didn't pan out the way you wanted it to.'

  She wiped her streaming eyes with the tissue he supplied. 'It didn't. I asked her why she didn't like me and I thought..I thought maybe she would deny it. Or say I had been an extra child she'd never wanted 'cos my sisters are so much older...or that I was a bad pregnancy or a very difficult baby—'

  As the limo moved off, Duarte pulled her back against him and curved his arms lightly round her. 'And instead?'

  'It turned out I'm the family's dirty secret—'

  'Stop exaggerating,' Duarte urged, smoothing her tousled hair back from her damp brow. 'Come on...'

  'Mum had an affair with a real creep and he was my father—'

  'I suspected something of that nature,' Duarte confided quietly.

  Emily tensed and tipped her head up to squint up at him in the most awkward way. 'You...suspected!'

  'You don't resemble any one of your relatives, minha joia. That in itself could have been simple genetics but, taken in tandem with the manner in which they treated you, it did make me wonder.'

  Looked at from upside down, Duarte really did have the most incredible long lashes, Emily conceded absently. She sighed. 'I feel like I've just lost my whole life...like I'm not the person I thought I was—'

  'You're Emily Monteiro,' Duarte reminded her instantaneously. 'We'll do some research on your true father if you like. A few details that did not relate to him being a "real creep" might help you come to terms with this.'

  'My mother got so upset after telling me...but when she started telling me she was so hard about it.'

  'She's probably been dying to get it off her chest for years but I'm sure she didn't get much of a kick out of confessing when it came to the point. Especially as, knowing you, you probably said thanks in your politest voice before tottering away.'

  'Pretty much... How do you know that?'

  'If you could thank me after I demanded a separation, you could certainly thank your mother for hurting you.'

  Emily was so shaken by that statement that she pulled away from him and turned round to face him levelly. 'Did I say thanks that night after you had said you wanted a separation?'

  Duarte nodded in confirmation. 'I took it to mean that you had decided that you did want to be with Toby Jarrett—'

  'Oh, no...you misunderstood!' Aquamarine eyes aghast, Emily shook her head, 'How could you think that?'

  'Emily... what I saw and heard that night was a major, not minor shock to my system and you weren't the only one of us saying things you hadn't thought through.'

  'Oh... What did you want me to say?'

  Duarte gave her an almost wry smile that tugged at her heartstrings for a reason she could not define. 'You were supposed to get down on bended knees and plead for a second chance. Instead you went upstairs and started packing.'

  Emily shut her eyes and slumped back against the seat. Duarte had just told her something she would rather not have known, for it; tore her apart. She might have got all that nonsense about Toby cleared up there and then and they might never have separated at all!

  'Why, is it that you seem to be such a predictable woman and yet I you never ever give me the response I expect?' Duarte demanded in rampant frustration.

  'Sorry...'

  'Forget it.' I'll go back to my bad old ways. Easy as falling off a log,' Duarte assured her smooth as silk. 'We're going to embark on our honeymoon at Ash Manor. Agreed, it's not the Caribbean but the Caribbean does not have good associations for me—'

  Duarte had her attention now. 'Honeymoon?' she par-rotted.

  'Bliss and Toby are off the conversational agenda for the moment,' Duarte decreed, warming visibly to the bad old ways of command.'

  'How can they be?'

  'I'm logical, minha jóia. No controversial discussions equals no arguments. We can have a church blessing in Portugal and you can trot down the aisle in a rainbow of clashing colours—'

  Emily fumbled to find her voice. 'Are you sending me up with all this?'

  'Trying to take your mind off your newly discovered family connections.'

  'You don't need to go that far—'

  Duarte quirked a sardonic black brow. 'I admit that giving you the moon, if you ask for it, is likely to prove a problem—'

  'But why...why would you do all this for me?'

  'I want to stay married, querida. Much as I would like to can't chain you, to the marital bed or force you to live with me. Basically, I'm endeavouring to launch a rescue bid on our marriage.' Duarte rested his spectacular dark eyes on her shuttered and still tear-stained face. 'If, at any point, you feel moved to offer even an ounce of enthusiasm for that venture, feel free to speak up.'

  Emily tore her gaze from the undeniable enchantment of his and thought of how much she loved him, even when he was being unspeakably smart at her expense. "This is all about Jamie...can't you just admit that?'

  Duarte settled himself fluidly back into the far corner of the limo and scorched her with his golden eyes in challenge. 'Is that what you want?'

  'Yes!'

  'OK...it's about Jamie. I won't tax your patience with all the pros and cons of a child having two parents.'

  Given the honesty she had believed she craved, Emily felt dreadful. He was willing to do anything to keep their marriage afloat for Jamie's benefit. 'I appreciate your honesty,' she said woodenly.

  'Happy now?' Duarte prompted with what she considered to be sheer cruelty.

  'Ecstatic...' she mumbled.

  It was so strange to be back at Ash Manor as Duarte's wife. Those few days after their wedding, two years earlier, she'd still not felt like his wife. Duarte disappeared into the library to make some phone calls and she went off in search of Jamie. He greeted her with a little shout of pleasure and held out his arms to be lifted.

  'Because you're a Monteiro, I'm going to stay one too,' she told her son mournfully but she could not stay down for long in his company.

  Duarte loved his son. Duarte had experienced instant love and acceptance where his child was concerned. What did she get in comparison? She got the name, the wealth and now she was going to have the stupid dress and the stupid honeymoon rammed down her throat, whether she wanted them or not! On the other hand, whatever else Duarte was doing, he was not pining for Bliss, was he?

  Why did she always want what she couldn't have? Duarte valued their marriage and that should be enough f
or her now. She'd grown up a lot—she'd stopped living in cloud cuckoo and hoping he might suddenly fall passionately in love with her. But at the same time, she should also be making demands. He was never likely to be more approachable or more willing to listen to her again.

  She took Jamie out for a walk in his pram. It was a high coach affair purchased in Lisbon and totally impractical for country conditions. But while she bounced the pram down a grassy laneway beneath the trees, she was considering the demands she felt she ought to make. Having returned to the house and passed her sleeping son over to his nanny, she went into the drawing room land found writing paper and a pen. Then she wrote and she wrote and she wrote.

  Duarte was still on the phone when she entered the library. He gave her a slow smile, brilliant eyes roaming over her tense pink face, skimming lower, lingering in provocative places as though he was touching her. He filled her with an awareness that was so strong she was embarrassed by her own susceptibility.

  'I want you...' he murmured huskily as he tossed the phone aside and reached for her.

  'I think you should read this first...' Emily slid her demand sheets across the polished surface of his desk.

  'What's this, minha jóia?'

  'My blueprint for the rescue bid,' she told him tautly.

  Duarte' laughed with vibrant; amusement, tugged her down onto his lap and started to read. Then he gently and firmly lifted her off him again. 'I work no more than eight hours a day, the only exception being an emergency? That's not possible—'

  'You could try it.'

  'If I go abroad, you come too?'

  'You could try going less often—'

  '"For every day you spend away from me, I will spend a day away from you,' Duarte read out loud in disbelief. 'That's blackmail. We would never see each other!'

  'I need a life too—'

  'Do homemes a praça, da mulheres a casa,' Duarte quoted that well-known Portuguese proverb with gravity. Men out and about, women at home.

  "The rescue bid is off—'

  He paled. 'OK. You win but have you ever heard of the art of compromise?'

  'I did nothing but compromise the first time around and I was miserable and lonely.'

  Looking grim, Duarte made it on to the second sheet and then he smiled at her with that sudden flashing charisma that could make her heart sing. 'Truthfully—you don't really want me out of your sight for longer than eight hours at a time?'

  'If you want to think that, that's fine by me.'

  His smile vanished. He skimmed through all the minor requests, even chuckled a few tunes and then, without any warning, he suddenly slung the last sheet aside and sprang upright. 'You don't want any more children with me? What kind of a condition is that?'

  He looked so hurt, so full of reproach and incomprehension.

  'You made me feel that I had to give you a baby when we first married and the truth is, I felt too young and I wasn't ready to be a mother then,' Emily admitted awkwardly.

  'I never ever demanded that you give me a baby—'

  'No but you took if for granted that I would.'

  'If that is how you feel...didn't you want him?' Duarte shot at her in sudden emotive appeal.

  'I adore Jamie but if ever I have another baby, it has to be because I want another baby.'

  'All I can say is that I believed you felt the same way as me about having a family...'

  She saw the sincerity in his eyes as he made that claim and felt terrible.

  'Obviously I won't make the same mistake again,' Duarte, drawled flatly. 'No wonder you were so miserable when you were pregnant—'

  Emily's eyes shimmered. 'I was unhappy because after I became pregnant you just...well, I mean, you never touched me again—'

  'Did you expect me to disregard the doctor's advice?' Duarte demanded in astonishment.

  'What advice?' Emily frowned.

  'Emily, you were present when the doctor advised us to desist from marital relations for the first few months!'

  'I never heard him say that...' She sank down in the chair behind her. Thinking back, she remembered that during the first antenatal examination she had had, she had refused to have Duarte present and the nurse had translated the doctor's comments because the older man had not spoken English. When Duarte had been called back in the nurse had gone out and the doctor had talked at length to them both, but Emily hadn't paid much heed for she had trusted Duarte to translate anything of any further importance.

  'You honestly didn't know?' Duarte raked an impatient hand through his black hair and stared at her. 'If you didn't understand, why didn't you ask me to explain afterwards, if not at the time?'

  'I couldn't wait to get out of there! The whole time the doctor was examining me he was telling me off for being so thin and underweight and he was upsetting me. You never even mentioned it to me,' she condemned in turn.

  "What was there to mention? Who wants to discuss a blanket ban on sex?'

  'I misjudged you. I'm sorry. I wouldn't have locked the bedroom door if I'd known we were supposed to be desisting, or whatever he called it,' she lamented, feeling foolish. 'I felt so rejected.'

  'I wasn't exactly celebrating either.' Reaching down, Duarte tugged her upright, his lean, strong face taut. 'We were like strangers when we first got married. I believed I could take a wife and that we could be content without being very close—'

  'You chose the wrong woman—'

  . 'I deserved a gold-digger.' He gazed down at her with rueful, dark-as-midnight eyes. 'I made you very unhappy.'

  'I need closeness...'

  Tm working on it—but I'm really good at the physical end of the scale...' Duarte cupped her cheekbones, spread his fingers and drew her mouth under his with a hot, hungry urgency that nonetheless contained a vein of tenderness she had never felt from him before.

  And suddenly she was kissing him back with the most desperate surging need powering through her, her slim body quivering at every contact with his. Breathing raggedly, he lifted his head. 'Let's go to bed—'

  'It's barely tea time—'

  'Let's go to bed—'

  'What about Jamie's bath?'

  'Our son has a nanny, and I can't wait and neither can you,' Duarte assured her with mesmeric intensity, shifting against her to acquaint her with his bold arousal, cupping her hips in the same sinfully erotic way to pull her up to him.

  They got to the bedroom without meeting anyone, which had been Emily's only fear. Duarte brought her down on the bed fully clothed and came down on top of her and kissed her breathless. The need in her was so intense she was raw with it, shaken by her own desire. She just wanted him so much and his passion more than matched hers. He was wild for her and the more she recognised that, the more she threw off her inhibitions. She raked her nails down his back at the height of fulfilment and looked in stricken dismay at the marks she had left on his beautiful back in the aftermath.

  Duarte just laughed and hugged her to him with easy strength. 'You just used me, minha esposa. As a vent for a very upsetting day. I'm not complaining but if I ever call back home at lunchtime and grab you off your feet and pin you flat to the nearest horizontal surface, you have to promise to be equally understanding.'

  As Emily could not picture him dragging himself from the bank at lunchtime, she just pressed a kiss to a muscular brown shoulder and drifted off to sleep, satiated and secure.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  EMILY spun slowly round in front of the cheval mirror, admiring herself from every angle.

  It was the wedding dress of her dreams. Romantic, filmy, the colour of champagne and the most superb fit. Her tiny waist was accentuated which had the miraculous effect of lending her the illusion of a fuller swell in the bosom department. Not that it mattered to anyone but her, for Duarte seemed to have a genuine passion for her just as she was.

  Humming under her breath, she feasted her eyes upon herself. He would love the dress. She knew he was bracing himself for the clashing rainbow of colours beca
use he was not to know that dear Bliss had convinced her that that was what most flattered her. But it had only taken one glimpse of herself clad in palest blue for Emily to see the light.

  They had spent three weeks at Ash Manor, returning to Portugal only the night before. Three of the happiest weeks of her life. There was a kind of magic in the air between them. No doubt that was her romanticising his erotic and intense absorption in making love to her at every possible opportunity but they had had a lot of fun out of bed too. With Jamie. Out riding together. And all the time she'd been learning that she had spent a long time married to and living with a male she had never really got to know. But then, Duarte had not really wanted her to get to know him then.

  'I thought you would be the kind of wife whom I would always find in the stables with the horses,' he had confided only the week before. 'Instead you were always out socialising and shopping and, when you were at home, you threw constant dinner parties. It reminded me of life with Izabel. I hated it.'

  Instead of pleasing him with her efforts to fit the role she had assumed he wanted her to occupy, she had actually been pushing him away. The more she discovered, the more she loved him for what he was really telling her was that they were much better matched than she could ever have believed. He liked to entertain friends and family at home but he very much preferred to keep business connections out of their home.

  He gave her flowers every day and laughed at the way her arrangements turned out. He gave her true affection that did not always lead to passion. He gave her everything but his heart. And she had pretty much given up on his heart! As she finally came to understand just how much; Izabel had hurt him, she knew why he had had the reserve and that desire to control. His heart had brick walls round it except where Jamie was concerned and if she ever told him that all that was wrong with him was his gigantic unconfessed fear of being hurt again he would never, ever forgive her.

  After all, she'd already hurt him with Toby, hadn't she? She had dwindled into a poor little victim instead of forcing him to recognise that she was telling the truth.