Marriage on the Rebound

Madeleine! The name was beginning to haunt her, like the face—that sweet, gentle face, with its big blue vulnerable eyes surrounded by a cloud of soft golden hair. Madeleine was the archetypal pocket Venus, the fine porcelain doll. While Shaan—she was the—

‘She’s right for Piers, Shaan!’ Rafe said fiercely, as though her thoughts were so open to him that he could easily make them his own. ‘She always was! They were childhood sweethearts, young lovers before a stupid misunderstanding had Madeleine flying off to live with her mother in America last year…’

‘I told you I didn’t want to hear any of this!’ she cried, trying desperately to struggle against the black cloud threatening to completely overtake her.

‘All right!’ he rasped, sucking in a tense breath, then letting it out again. ‘Listen to this instead,’ he insisted. ‘In three days’ time, your aunt and uncle should be leaving on a three-month long world cruise. Do you think they’ll even consider going now, after what’s happened to you today?’

She stared at him, having forgotten all about her aunt and uncle’s delighted plans to take their dream cruise now the niece they had taken care of so lovingly for the past nine years was leaving the fold, so to speak.

‘They don’t have to worry about me,’ she said shakily. ‘I’ll tell them—’

‘Tell them what?’ he challenged when she fell silent, her mouth moving soundlessly. ‘That you’ll be fine sitting here all on your own for the next three months grieving?’

‘I don’t intend to grieve,’ she denied, stiffening in affront.

‘Good.’ He nodded his dark head in approval. ‘I’m glad to hear you’ve got more spirit than to do that. But would you leave them on their own if something as devastating as this had happened to them? Of course you wouldn’t.’ He answered for her. ‘And if you did manage to convince them to go, do you think they’d enjoy themselves, knowing how they’d left you behind?’

‘I’ll go and stay with Jemma…’

‘Jemma is getting married herself in a few months,’ he reminded her.

‘How did you know that?’ she gasped in shaken amazement.

He shook his head, dismissing that question as insignificant. ‘Let’s just leave it that I do know. To inflict yourself on Jemma now would spoil the excitement for her, because your own ruined wedding day will sit over you all like a thick black cloud.’

‘Which doesn’t mean I need to inflict myself on you instead!’ she cried, hurt by the cruelly blunt way he had made her face that fact.

‘Why not?’ he demanded, grimly determined grey eyes boring straight into her wounded brown ones. ‘If anyone deserves it, then I do. You said yourself that this was all my fault, and I damned well know it!’ he admitted roughly. ‘It was me who called Madeleine to warn her about you and Piers. It was me who advised her to get back here if she still felt anything for my brother. And it was me who encouraged them to see each other at every possible moment I could arrange, to make Piers see what a dreadful mistake he was making by marrying you!’

‘God, I hate you so!’ she choked, turning to fling herself face-down on the bed, her poor body hurting in so many different places that she actually shook with it.

‘Listen to me!’ To her surprise he lay back too, stretching out beside her as though he had every given right to be this close to her, when only yesterday he had shied away from even looking at her! ‘Shaan…’ His hand came out to stroke down the silky wet pelt of her hair, his fingers trembling slightly. ‘I admit it. I feel lousy about it all. Guilty, if you want to call it that. I owe you. Let me help you get through this with at least some dignity.’

‘By offering yourself in your brother’s place?’ She laughed, the sound shrill with near hysteria. ‘How old are you?’ she demanded, turning onto her back to glare bitterly up at him.

He grimaced. ‘Thirty-four.’

‘I am twenty-two years old,’ she informed him. ‘Piers is twenty-four.’

‘All right,’ he bit out, jerking up and away from her. ‘So I’m no bargain when compared to my brother! I’m not asking you to love me instead, just—give me a chance to help you through these next few months while you get over this.’

She didn’t think she would ever get over this.

‘And what will you get out of it?’ She hadn’t spent the last three years of her life working for the Danvers company without learning very early on that their revered chairman didn’t do anything without a damned good reason for doing it!

‘Like you,’ he said, ‘I save the family face.’

‘You’re that concerned with family honour?’ Her sceptical look made his mouth grow tighter.

‘My brother should be whipped out of town for the way he used you, Shaan. It makes the Danvers name dirty.’

Used…She sank back against the pillows, her eyes clouding over darkly. Yes, Piers had used her; all along the line he had used her, with his declarations of undying love and passionate promises.

He hadn’t just used her, he had grossly defiled her. And the only saving grace she could glean for herself out of it all was the knowledge that he hadn’t given in to her pathetic little pleas to make love to her before they married!

‘God, I feel sick!’

Rolling dizzily off the bed, she ran, stumbling, into the bathroom, where she was horribly and humiliatingly sick while Rafe stood there beside her, holding her hair away from her face, grimly taking her weight while she leaned weakly over the bowl.

Here she stood, she flayed herself bitterly, a virgin on her wedding day—with no groom to care one way or another that she had saved herself for him!

The bitterness welled up and sliced through her eyes as she ran the cold tap so she could splash her clammy face with water.

Rafe was wrong about one thing if he thought himself no bargain compared to his brother. He was worth ten of Piers—and that had nothing to do with looks or charm, or even the love still throbbing in her breast for his brother, despite all the hurt he had inflicted on it.

It had to do with this—this deeply inbred sense of responsibility he possessed. The kind which had made him warn his brother’s ex-lover about what Piers intended to do. It had to do with this—this need to put right what one of his own had messed up.

Her life—the family name. Their mutual honour!

‘I won’t marry you, Rafe,’ she said, leaning heavily against the wash basin. ‘Not to save your face or my own face. I won’t degrade myself any further by pandering to just another Danvers method of exploitation.’

‘I’m not trying to exploit you,’ he denied gruffly.

‘Yes you are.’ She lifted her head to stare bleakly at his grim, hard face in the bathroom mirror, then just stood there, staring instead at the empty void which was her own unrecognisable face.

The tears began to burn at the backs of her eyes, and she covered them with her hands, her body beginning to shudder in another bout of weak self-pity.

Rafe’s hands were firm on her shoulders as he turned her into his arms. And she felt his heavy sigh as she struggled against the onset of tears once again.

‘I have nothing left…’ she whispered bleakly. ‘Nothing…’

‘But you will again soon,’ he murmured reassuringly, and suddenly his arms were tightly crushing bands around her. ‘Come away with me now, Shaan,’ he urged her huskily. ‘At the moment, only you, me and Piers know what he actually said in his letter. Only we three know the real reason why there was no wedding today. Even your uncle didn’t really understand—only that Piers had decided not to marry you.

‘We can tell them he found out about us, that you and I had fallen in love. Piers won’t try to deny it. He’ll just be relieved that we’ve found some way of making him come through it smelling cleaner. They’re already speculating down there as to why you wanted me with you rather than anyone else. Let’s go and tell them that you and I are going away together to marry quietly somewhere. Let’s give them something to cling onto, Shaan—a bit of hope!’

‘Everything has been packed,’ she whispered into his shoulder. ‘I h-haven’t got anything to wear.’

‘We can soon remedy that,’ he said, the tension seeping out of him when he recognised her words as a statement of defeat.

His arms tightened on her in a short moment of encouragement, then he was taking her back into the bedroom and over to the stack of suitcases waiting by the door. ‘Which one shall I open?’ he prompted huskily.

Shaan stared down at them. Her trousseau, she thought emptily. The clothes she’d spent weeks gathering together for the express purpose of pleasing Piers.

Pointing to one of the cases, she turned abruptly away, shuddering, because the very idea of wearing anything she had packed in those cases filled her with horror now.

Rafe glanced sharply at her, but didn’t say anything, his face tightening with a new aggression as he picked up the small weekend case and laid it on the bed so he could flick open the catches.

Shaan came to stand beside him, looking into the case with him. Inside lay a variety of female fripperies, from the expected toiletries to a neat pile of brand-new silky underwear, and the tension lying between them began to pulse with a new knowledge.