Constantine's Revenge

‘Even when he married Diana?’

‘Even when he married Diana!’

Grace moved to deposit her glass on the worktop with a distinct crash. They were getting into dangerous territory. Talk of Diana led inevitably to thoughts of Paula, her stepmother’s daughter.

‘I was really happy that he was getting married again. I thought that…’

But she never completed the sentence. At that moment their private haven was invaded by a bunch of laughing, joking party guests.

‘Come on, party poopers! You can’t stay in here all night! Ivan’s going to cut the cake, and he says that instead of it just being him who gets a wish, we can all have one too!’

Grace could only watch and follow as Constantine was led away into the next room, her friends urging her after him. It was as if a sheet of glass had come down between her and the rest of the people in the room. She could see them, hear their voices and their movements, but the sounds were blurred and incomprehensible so that she felt completely cut off from reality.

A wish. If she had been offered a wish by some fairy godmother only a couple of hours ago—less—she would have said that what she wanted most in the world was to make peace with Constantine. That if she could just come to some sort of accord with him, it would be enough to satisfy her. She had truly believed that if they could come to an understanding where they could be on civilised terms, she could be content.

But they had achieved that truce, those civilised terms, and all that it had taught her was that it was not enough. It could never be enough. She didn’t want peace with Constantine; she didn’t want civilised. She wanted so much more.

‘Happy birthday, dear Ivan…’

All around her Ivan’s guests joined in the traditional singing of ‘Happy Birthday’, and Grace forced herself to open and close her mouth along with them. But no words would form, her tongue seeming to have frozen, her lips as stiff as board.

There was no backing away from it. No avoiding the realisation that had hit her hard, like the splash in her face. The two intervening years might as well have not existed. They had had no effect on the way she was feeling. No effect at all.

‘Grace?’

‘W-what?’

Somehow she dragged her thoughts out of the shocked daze in which they were hidden, forcing her eyes to focus on the man who had come to her side.

Constantine. Hastily she veiled her eyes, hiding her feelings behind her lids, her heart jerking into a rapid, jolting beat at the thought that he might be able to read what was in her mind. The cake-cutting ceremony was over, and the party had moved on, the pulsing music starting up again.

‘Dance with me?’

Say no! Every instinct screamed the warning at her, every nerve instantly thrown into panic mode. Say no—back away—just turn—run! Anything other than expose her already weakened defences to the potent onslaught of his sensual appeal. She already knew how vulnerable she was to the sight, the sound, the scent of him. How her body reacted to just the slightest touch. She couldn’t risk…

‘Yes, okay.’

How had that happened? Just what was she doing? Grace could find no answers for her outraged sense of self-preservation. She was acting on a far deeper, more primitive level, responding purely on instinct, unable to force her mind into any form of rational thought.

So she let Constantine take her hand and draw her towards the part of the room that had been cleared for dancing. And when the music changed just as they started to dance, turning from a rhythmic beat to a slow, seductive number, she made no objection to the way he turned to her and took her into his arms, drawing her close to the warmth and strength of his body.

She fitted into his arms as if she’d been born there. And it felt like coming home. The rest of the room, the noise and all the people around her, blurred into one indecipherable mass. There was no one in the world but herself and this man, whose strength enclosed her, whose heart beat under her cheek, the strong wall of his chest rising and falling with every breath he took.

‘Grace…’ he murmured softly, her name just a sigh against her hair.

‘Don’t talk…’ Grace heard herself whisper back. ‘Just hold me…’

She had no idea whether it was simply one dance that seemed to last for ever, or if there were many such dances, impossible to count, while she was lost in a dreamy haze of sensual delight. She only knew that when at last the music faded into silence and the world around her righted itself again she was no longer in the big main room where the party was centred, but had been subtly manoeuvred out into the hall beyond.

‘Where…?’ she began in confusion.

As her eyes focused again she discovered that she and Constantine were in the shelter of the wide flight of stairs up to the next floor, hidden from everyone.

Immediately the dream world that had enclosed her vanished, evaporating swiftly like a mist before the sun. Reality came rushing back with a speed and force that rocked her on her feet, made her shiver convulsively.

‘What are we doing here? I can’t—’

‘Grace…’ Constantine silenced her by laying strong tanned fingers across her mouth. ‘I want some time alone with you.’

‘You!’

Grace wrenched her head away from the gentle pressure of his hand, grey eyes blazing up into his black ones, seeing the way that the heavy lids came down over them, concealing his feelings from her.

‘You want! You want! Isn’t that always the way with you? What you want comes before everything else. “Dance with me…”’

Deliberately she mimicked his own words of earlier, emphasising the autocratic note, the lack of any ‘please’ that had turned the phrase into a command rather than a request.

“‘I want some time alone with you.”’

‘I got the impression that was what you wanted too.’

‘And how, precisely, did you come to that conclusion?’

Constantine’s proud head bent until his mouth was level with her ear, and his voice was softly husky, his warmth breath caressing her skin as he whispered, “‘Don’t talk… Just hold me.”’

His echoing of her own foolish reaction was uncannily accurate, making her head go back in shock.

Had she really been so stupid? Had she really let her feelings get the better of her? Had she been so weak as to put that pleading note into her voice, the one that Constantine had just reproduced with merciless exactness? How could she have betrayed herself in that way?

‘I—I was enjoying the dance,’ she blustered frantically, desperately trying to cover her tracks. ‘But that doesn’t mean I wanted anything more.’

‘No?’

The lazy lifting of one dark brow questioned the truth of her spluttered declaration.

‘You must forgive me if I don’t believe—’

‘You can believe or not as you want!’ Grace tossed back at him, ignoring the ominous thread of warning that shaded the softly accented voice. ‘I don’t care. I know my own mind, and I don’t want anything more to do with you! As a matter of fact, what I really want right now is to go home.’

‘Then I will take you,’ Constantine returned smoothly.

‘No!’

That was definitely not what she had in mind. Desperately she shook her head, so that her fair hair flew out wildly.

‘I can make my own way home. It’s just a short walk.’

‘You no longer live with your father?’