Spanish Aristocrat, Forced Bride

His words stopped her in her tracks and she pulled away to look into his face. In the half-light his deep-set eyes were shadowed, making it impossible to read the expression in them. Her gaze travelled slowly over his face. The moonlight turned his skin to marble, and accentuated the sculpted perfection of his cheekbones, the deep cleft in his chin.

She shook her head, momentarily struck dumb by his beauty, trying to find the words.

‘No,’ she said eventually, reaching out and stroking her hand down his face in a mixture of tenderness and reverence. ‘But I trust you. I’ll do what you say. If we have to stop this here…’

Her hand was on his chest now. Lily was aware of the steady, strong beat of his heart beneath her palm.

‘No.’ He barely moved his lips as he said the word. ‘There’s no need to stop. It’s safe.’

Exhilaration leapt inside her, instantly detonating tiny explosions of desire along the winding pathways of her central nervous system. A low gasp of relief and longing was torn from her lips in the moment before Tristan took possession of them, and then her head was filled with nothing but the musky scent of his skin, the champagne taste of his mouth. His hands gripped her pelvis, pulling her onto him, while her fingers tore at his muscular shoulders.

He entered her with a powerful thrust that made her want to scream out with joy. She was taut and trembling with ecstasy, so stupefied with desire that she was unable to think, only to feel. Bliss flooded every cell of her body, making her pliant and helpless, but Tristan’s arms were tight around her. Gently he laid her down in the cool sheets, kissing her breast, her throat, finally coming back to her parted, panting lips as the rhythm of their bodies gathered pace and her legs twined helplessly around his hips.

Lily’s final, triumphant cry of release shattered the still blue evening at exactly the same time as the finale of fireworks exploded beyond the lake. They lay together, their breathing fast and laboured as the sweat dried on their bodies and pink and gold stars cartwheeled through the blue infinity above.

It had rained in the night.

Getting up from the crumpled bed Lily had gone to the window and looked out onto a cool world of silver and green. The rain had fallen in sheets, turning the glassy surface of the lake misty.

As she looked out of the window of the Jeep as it rattled over the arid African plane just a little over twenty-four hours later it was almost impossible to believe that she hadn’t dreamed it. Hadn’t dreamed that cool lushness; hadn’t dreamed turning away, crossing the floor back to the bed where Tristan lay, his arm thrown across the place where she’d been lying.

Hadn’t dreamt the expression of torment on his face.

And as she’d watched him he’d cried out, a harsh, bitter shout of anger, or of pain, and without thinking Lily had slipped back beneath the sheets beside him, cradling his beautiful head against her, stroking him, murmuring soothing, meaningless, instinctive sounds into his hair until the room had reassembled itself in the grey light of dawn and she had felt the tension leave his body.

Then she had got quietly out of bed and put on her silk dress and slipped silently out the door and down the stairs. He hadn’t reminded her about the Heathrow terminal, as he’d so jokingly promised. He hadn’t woken up to say goodbye.

The Jeep stopped at the camp. The heat was already almost beyond endurance, the air thick with the dust thrown up by their convoy of vehicles. Getting stiffly out, Lily wondered whether she was strong enough to face what lay ahead.

She bent her head, closing her eyes for a second and running her tongue over dry lips.

But she had found the strength to walk away from the tower yesterday morning.

If she could do that, she could do anything.

CHAPTER FOUR

London, six weeks later.

‘CONGRATULATIONS, Miss Alexander.’

Lily looked uncomprehendingly into the smiling face of the doctor. She had come here expecting an explanation for why she had felt so awful since picking up a stomach bug on her trip to Africa just over a month ago, but Dr Lee looked as if he was about to tell her she’d won the lottery, not contracted some nasty tropical disease.

She frowned. ‘You have the test results back?’

‘I have indeed. I can now confirm that you don’t have malaria, yellow fever, hepatitis…’ he let each sheet of flimsy yellow lab paper drift down onto the desk between them as he went through the sheaf of test results ‘…typhoid, rabies or diptheria.’

Lily’s heart sank.

It wasn’t that she wanted a nasty tropical disease, but at least if she knew what was causing the constant, bone-deep fatigue, the metallic tang in her mouth that made everything taste like iron filings, then maybe she could do something about it. Take something to make it go away, so she could start sleeping at night instead of lying awake, hot and breathless, fighting the drag of nausea in the back of her throat and trying not to think of that other night. Of Tristan Romero.

She shook her head, trying to concentrate. That was another thing that was almost impossible these days, but with huge effort she dragged her mind back from its now-familiar refuge in a twilit tower, a moon-bleached bed…

She had to put that behind her. Forget.

‘I’m sorry, I don’t understand. If all the tests have come back negative, then what—?’

‘Ah, not quite all the tests show a negative result. There was one that has come back with a resounding positive.’ Dr Lee folded his hands together on the desk and beamed at her. ‘You’re pregnant, Miss Alexander. Congratulations.’

The walls seemed to rush towards her, blocking out the bright September sunshine outside, compacting the air in Dr Lee’s very elegant consulting room so that it was too thick to breathe. Lily felt the blood fall away from her head, leaving a roaring, echoing emptiness, which was filled a few seconds later by the distant sound of Dr Lee’s voice. She was aware of his hand on the back of her head.

‘That’s it…just keep your head down like that, there’s a good girl. This sort of reaction isn’t uncommon…Your hormones…Nothing to worry about. Just give it a moment and you’ll soon feel right as rain…’

Rain.

The memory of the lake at Stowell in the misty pre-dawn light rose up from the darkness inside her head; the rain falling in shining, silvery sheets on a landscape of pearly greyness. She remembered the musical sound of it, a timeless, soothing lullaby as she had held Tristan, stroking the tension from his sleeping body, while all the time, unknown, unseen, this…secret miracle had been unfurling within her own flesh.

‘There. Better now?’

She sat up, inhaling deeply, and nodded. ‘Yes. Sorry. The shock…’

Dr Lee’s face was compassionate, concerned. ‘It wasn’t planned?’

‘N-no,’ she stammered. ‘I don’t understand. I’m on the pill.’

‘Ah. Well, the contraceptive pill is pretty good, but nothing gives a one-hundred-per-cent guarantee, I’m afraid. The sickness bug you picked up in Africa could have impaired the pill’s effectiveness, if that was quite soon after…’ He cleared his throat and left the sentence tactfully unfinished.

Mutely Lily nodded.

‘In that case it would tell me that it’s still very early days,’ he said gently. ‘There are many options open to you, you know.’

Lily got clumsily to her feet and held onto the back of the chair for support as the meaning of his words penetrated her numb brain.

Options.

‘Think about it,’ Dr Lee said with professional neutrality. ‘Talk it over with your partner, and let me know what you decide.’

She shook her head. ‘I don’t have a partner. He’s not…He wouldn’t…’ She stopped, her mouth open as she tried to articulate the degree of Tristan Romero’s absence from her life without making herself sound like a cheap tart. I barely know him…I don’t have his number and he made it perfectly clear that he wouldn’t want to hear from me again…It was meant to be sex without strings. A one-night stand.

Oh, God, maybe she was a cheap tart. She remembered the hunger with which she’d pushed him back on the moonlit bed and taken him in her mouth; remembered the despair that had sliced through her like forked lightning when he’d said they shouldn’t go any further, that he had no contraception, and the desperation with which she had assured him it was safe.

‘This is nothing to do with him.’ Her knuckles were white as she gripped the back of the chair. ‘It’s not his fault, or his responsibility.’

Dr Lee’s eyebrows rose. ‘Miss Alexander—’

‘It’s mine. My fault, my responsibility. My baby.’ The words sounded strange and unfamiliar, but as she spoke them the same peculiar, illogical sense of peace that she had felt that night in the tower, in Tristan’s arms, came back to her, shivering through her whole body like a delicate meteor shower. She lifted her chin, meeting the concerned gaze of the doctor with a determined smile. ‘It’s my baby. And I’m keeping it.’

‘A call for you, Señor Romero.’