Marriage on the Rebound

This was the case she would have used for her wedding night. It contained only the kinds of things a new bride would want to have around her on such an important occasion. Soft, delicate, sexy things, to tantalise her new husband with.

Without a word, her lips sucked back hard against her tightly clenched teeth, she reached down and selected a pair of white silky briefs and matching bra. Then she took out the uncrushable silk Jacquard suit in a bold apple-green colour that she had packed to wear after their stop-over in Paris. After that they had been supposed to go on to the Seychelles for a month-long honeymoon. Then she turned, walking away towards the bathroom, her dark head held high.

The door closed behind her and Rafe stood, staring at the closed door for a long time, before turning slowly back to the case. Then, on an act of violence which would have startled Shaan if she’d been there to witness it, he sent the small case flying to the floor with a single, vicious swipe of his hand, glaring down at the tumbled array of feminine items scattered at his feet.

When she came back, though, dressed, her hair contained in a simple knot at her nape, she found the room neat and tidy.

Rafe was standing by the window, looking big and dark and forbidding, with that black scowl on his face. But the moment he saw her he smiled, albeit grimly, and came over to her side.

‘OK?’ he asked.

She nodded, knowing she shouldn’t be allowing this to happen, but somehow unable to find the strength to put up any more opposition.

Rafe was right about one thing—he was the only person she felt she could share the torment with because he had been the one to instigate it in the first place.

‘Leave the talking to me,’ he advised as he turned her towards the bedroom door.

She didn’t answer—couldn’t have if she’d tried—but she nodded. She had to trust in him to be the sane one. It was the only way she could cope right now.

They went to the sitting room.

Her aunt, her face red and swollen with crying, looked nothing like the bright, happy, if over-excited woman Shaan had watched leave for the church earlier today. Gone was the hyacinth-blue dress she had been wearing, and the huge, frivolous hat Shaan and her uncle had teased her about the day she had brought it home and showed them.

She came to her feet as they entered, still so shaken that she needed her husband’s help to do so. And suddenly they looked old and frail, so utterly unable to cope with the horror and emotion of it all.

For nine years of her life these two people had loved and cared for her, taken up the responsibility of Tariq and Mary Saketa’s child after she’d been left orphaned by a dreadful accident. Even though they had been well into their fifties then, and unused to having children around them, they had been good and loving towards her, had given her everything it was in their power to give her, put their own lives on hold for her sake, and been happy to do it.

Seeing Shaan safely married to Piers had meant the end of their commitment to her. And while she had been busy planning her wedding day, these two wonderful people had been just as excitedly planning their dream world cruise like two teenagers set free from parental control at last.

And Rafe was right, she couldn’t spoil that for them as well.

‘Shaan…’ Her aunt’s hoarse and trembling voice brought fresh tears to Shaan’s eyes as she hurried forward to gather her into her arms.

‘I’m all right,’ she assured her, closing her eyes because she couldn’t bear all this. Couldn’t bear their pain along with her own pain. ‘Really I am.’ Over the top over her aunt’s soft grey head, Shaan looked at her uncle. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she whispered, unable to stop herself from saying it.

Rafe moved up beside her, his hand slipping around her waist in an act of grim support. ‘Mr Lester…’

‘I hope your brother has it in him to feel shame for what he’s done today,’ Shaan’s uncle said tightly.

‘With all respect, sir,’ Rafe came back politely, ‘my brother was at liberty to change his mind right until the last moment—just as Shaan was at liberty to change hers also,’ he added succinctly.

‘Oh, my poor child!’ her aunt sobbed, and, using what was left of her depleted banks of energy, Shaan helped her back to the sofa, aware that she was unable to support herself for very much longer.

Rafe let her go, his hand dropping to his side as he stood watching the gentle way Shaan seated both herself and her aunt before gathering the older woman close while she cried softly.

‘Nevertheless, he should be made to face up to his obligations,’ Shaan’s uncle continued, aiming the blunt criticism directly at Rafe. ‘If only in his duty to let my niece down less cruelly than waiting until she was ready to leave for the church before pulling this treachery!’

‘In this case, I’m afraid that kind of duty doesn’t count,’ Rafe replied, his grim gaze not reacting to the outright attack. ‘You see,’ he went on coolly, ‘my brother refused to marry Shaan because he had discovered that she is in love with me.’

Shaan leaned her head back against the soft leather headrest and closed her weary eyes. She had never felt so drained and empty in her whole life.

Rafe drove the car in silence, grim faced and withdrawn now the worst of it was over. Oh, he had been very clever, very alert all the way through the ordeal. He had not allowed her to be spoken to alone, he had not even allowed her uncle to question her on any of Rafe’s tersely delivered statements.

And, oddly, her uncle had seemed to respect the way Rafe had been determined to protect what he was now claiming as his own.

Rafe had just told them in crisp, simple English that he and Shaan had fallen in love on their first meeting, that the two of them had been trying to fight their feelings ever since, and that—as her uncle would expect of her—Shaan had refused to turn back from a marriage she felt already committed to. In the end, out of desperation, Rafe had said, he himself had approached his own brother to plead with him on their behalf only that morning.

That Piers had, of course, backed out of marrying a woman who was in love with his own brother was perhaps only natural under the circumstances, they’d been told. He was sorry for all the heartache and embarrassment they had caused everyone, he’d gone on. But he was not sorry for stopping the wedding from taking place.

Rafe had then calmly told them that he was now going to take Shaan away and marry her himself, quietly, and that, like themselves, they intended leaving the country on a long honeymoon until the fuss died down.

And now they were driving to—she had no idea, nor did she care. She took with her the small consolation of knowing that somehow Rafe had managed to convince her uncle and aunt that everything had been done for the best. That, far from being broken in two by Piers’ desertion, Shaan was actually relieved that she had not gone ahead and married him.

She had left their house knowing that they would be taking their world cruise as planned, in the knowledge that their niece, whom she suspected they were disappointed in, was in safe and loving hands.

But, although Rafe might have saved her from being labelled a jilted bride, he was mistaken if he believed his solution had done anything to assuage her pride, because it hadn’t. For now she knew she looked like the jilter rather than the jilted, and really that was just as bad, just as unacceptable to those people who mattered.

On top of that she still felt used, defiled and rejected. And no lies, no matter how convincingly presented, could ease the terrible sense of loss and inadequacy she was suffering right now.

The car drew to a halt, and she opened her eyes to find herself staring at the Danvers family’s elegant home, set in its own grounds in this prestigious part of London. Without a word to her, he climbed out of the car, looking faintly ridiculous in his formal clothes as he came around to open her door and help her out, leading her in equal silence into a house she had never felt even the slightest bit welcome in.

As they stepped into the hall, a short, dumpy woman with frizzled hair and a harassed face came bustling towards them. ‘Oh, Mr Danvers,’ she gasped out in agitated breathlessness. ‘I’m so glad you’re home. The telephone refuses to stop ringing—’ Sure enough, as if on cue, the phone began pealing out even as the woman spoke. ‘Everyone wants to speak to you, and I just didn’t know what to say to them. They say Mr Piers has jilted his…’

She noticed Shaan then, half-hidden behind Rafe’s frame, and went as red as a beetroot, then as white as a sheet. ‘Oh, dear, I’m so sorry. I…’

Rafe made a gesture of impatience. ‘Pull the bloody plug on that phone, Mrs Clough!’ he commanded gruffly, and turned to stretch an arm around Shaan’s shoulders. He began guiding her up the stairs and along the upper landing into a room which could only be his own private suite judging by the sheer masculine power of the place.

‘Sit down,’ he told her, moving away from her and indicating a brown leather armchair placed beside a huge old oak fireplace. ‘I won’t be long. I just want to change out of these clothes.’

He went, disappearing through another door, leaving her staring numbly at the chair. Her mind had gone blank, reaction setting in to take her off somewhere deep inside herself where no one else could go.

She tried to move and found she couldn’t—couldn’t remember how to make her limbs work. Her face felt stiff and drawn downwards, her shoulders aching from the rod of tension braced across them. Her head was throbbing, her stomach was queasy, and her eyes were burning in their sockets—not tearful, but hot and dry.

She heard the faint sound of gushing water, recognised it as a shower, but that was about all. Time ticked by, the quietness of the room having no effect on her whatsoever. Her hands hung limply at her sides, the fingers feeling oddly heavy. Her mouth drooped downwards too, as though a weight was tugging on each corner.

She continued to stare blankly at the chair.

Rafe came back, coming to an abrupt halt when he saw her. The smell of clean, male soap permeated the air around them while he studied her through narrowed, faintly worried eyes.

‘Shaan.’ he said her name carefully.

She didn’t turn—couldn’t. She heard him, but couldn’t seem to respond. The heaviness had transported itself to her limbs now, dragging down on them, holding her like a huge block of wood pinned securely to the ground. And her head felt heavy, the very top of it feeling as though someone was pressing forever harder down on it, trying to push her into the carpet beneath her feet.

Rafe came over to her, the clean smell of soap strengthening as it came with him. It was a very strange feeling, this paralysing weightiness which was disabling everything but her senses. They still seemed to be working fine: her sense of smell, of hearing, even her sense of touch seemed intact, as he reached out to grasp her chin, lifting her face so he could study it.

She saw him frown, saw the grey eyes darken in concern. She saw that he had showered, his dark hair was lying slick against his head now. She saw he had changed into a pale blue shirt and casual linen trousers that fitted cleanly on his trim waist.

‘Are you going to faint, by any chance?’ he murmured enquiringly.