Scarlet Lady

Relief flooded through her when she heard the shower running in their en suite bathroom. Thinking of nothing else but convincing him, she went straight to the cabinet, opened the door and walked inside.

‘Leo! Listen to me!’ she begged, water plastering her hair to her scalp.

‘What the—? You’re fully clothed, Ginny! Get out!’ he said with an irritable frown.

But she held him, her arms wrapped around his waist. And instantly he became aroused. Relief burst into her mind. She had a chance. ‘Don’t turn me away, Leo,’ she said softly, lifting her face to his. ‘I can’t imagine life without you—’

‘You’re already living it without me,’ he muttered, wrenching her arms away and flinging open the shower door.

She stood there, saturated, dazed. Don’t give up hope. Try again, she told herself. Try again. Stripping off her jacket as she spoke, she said, ‘Everything is good except for the problem of my work and Castlestowe.. We can discuss our differences and compromise. Change things—’

‘One thing’s changed. You’ve become a spectacular lay,’ he said crudely. ‘But I don’t want a tramp for a wife or for the mother of my child.’

‘I’m not a tramp,’ she insisted quietly.

‘The stones—’

‘Are only stories. They’re not true,’ she cried desperately, easing off her soaking skirt.

‘I’ve heard the details.’ His eyes flashed. ‘Confirmed by several people—’

“They’re repeating the same lie that someone’s circulated!’ she cried, beginning to fear that her protestations would be in vain. ‘I can’t prove my fidelity, Leo! But surely you must give me the benefit of the doubt?’

The lines around his aristocratic mouth were deep with pain. “How can I when you so brilliantly display a sexual expertise you never had before? When you respond to me with such devastating sensuality that I—? Oh, Ginny!’ He threw his head back in a gesture of helplessness. ‘I stood up for you. I looked everyone straight in the eye at my club when they whispered behind my back. But now I’m sure I’m a cuckold. And I sure as hell won’t stand for that!’ he snapped. ‘I want a divorce. I must remarry. Time is running out—my grandfather is ninety. I would like him to see that I have an heir to the earldom before he dies.’

‘Leo! Is that more important than our marriage?’ she faltered, naked now and grabbing a thick towelling robe and slipping into it.

‘Having a child is an important part of marriage for me,’ he growled. ‘It always has been. That—and having a loyal wife.’

Ginny’s anguished eyes watched him stride to the mahogany linen press. French. Priceless. Louis the something, she remembered, and inherited with a castle full of French furniture after one of the earls had married into the French aristocracy in the eighteenth century. France and Scotland had always been linked in the past. She thought of the castle, sitting on the windswept crag, all turrets and drawbridges, narrow windows and vast, draughty halls, and shivered.

It was an inheritance she didn’t understand and didn’t want to be part of. It had been a mistake for them to marry. She’d been naive to imagine that their marriage could be ordinary. Leo had expectations she couldn’t meet however much she loved him.

‘I love you,’ she said quietly, sadly.

He froze, his arm halted in the action of reaching for a clean shirt. It was a moment before he moved or spoke again. ‘I’m not sure you do,’ he said shortly, slipping his arms into the shirt and not looking at her. ‘Love has little to do with it, anyway. We’re incompatible and that’s that.’ He picked up the cuff-links that she knew had been given to his father by a minor royal and finally met her eyes. As he dressed, she thought mournfully, he looked more and more the perfect gentleman with every impeccable garment he put on.

‘I have a duty to continue the family line,’ he continued. ‘To see the Brandon name die out after nearly a thousand uninterrupted years would be unthinkable. I had hoped to father children by a woman I loved but it seems I’m to be denied that.’

Ginny’s eyes widened. ‘Are you intending to make a marriage of convenience?’ she cried.

His eyes stared sightlessly ahead and he was still for several seconds before he answered. ‘Do I have any option? Love was always a risk for both of us. We didn’t know much about it from our parents, did we? And now all I have left is Castlestowe and a dynastic marriage some time in the future.’

She couldn’t believe her ears. He’d marry, make love to a woman and father children all for the sake of a wretched blood-line... ‘No! I won’t give you up to anyone else!’ she seethed.

‘No?’ He wouldn’t look at her and his face was grim, his mouth working as if he was grinding his teeth. We’ll see about that.’ With a look of sheer determination on his face, he picked up a pair of linen trousers and stalked into his dressing room, locking the door behind him.

Two years and a few months or so later Ginny was secretly divorced.

Leo had convinced her that he had washed his hands of her only eight hours after the incident in the shower.

She’d been tucked up on the big window-seat in a guest bedroom, horrible racking sobs tearing at her body, when she’d heard a racket in their bedroom. Laughter—squeals of it, and Leo’s chuckle. She’d been stunned for a moment, then had stormed in, to find him and Arabella, naked in the huge four-poster bed, romping like eager children. Their bedroom. Their bed. Even now, after two interminable, depressing years, it made her ball her fists in fury.

At the time the shock had driven her out, screaming hysterically, fleeing to the nearest room and locking herself in. And she’d cried rivers of tears till exhaustion had brought sleep where she lay, poignantly, cruelly, on the bed in the nursery where there would be no child of hers now. The irony hadn’t been lost on her in the morning when she’d woken.

In a surprising act of generosity, Leo had agreed to keep their divorce a secret from everyone but his family and Chas for a while. It had meant that she wasn’t hassled by the Press. The lawyers had been paid well to ensure their secrecy and the divorce had been handled in a small market town where the sleepy court reporter had failed to recognise the woman called Virginia Brandon as Ginny McKenzie.

But then she’d been wearing a Paisley headscarf, an old trench coat and enormous spectacles. And Leo had turned up in a checked cap and an anorak. They’d nodded coldly and hadn’t even laughed at one another’s strange attire. Laughter hadn’t been something she’d expected to feature much in her life for a while. Her life had been shattered and the only thing she’d felt was cold—a stillness of her body as if the warm blood in her veins had turned to a trickle of ice. And she’d wondered if she’d ever be warm again.

The divorce had been alarmingly quick and straightforward. The lawyers had assured the judge that neither of them wanted or needed maintenance and that was that. Her marriage was at an end.

Despite closing down her emotions after the divorce, despite working every waking hour so that she could forget Leo and maintain her position in the modelling hierarchy and pay back her debt, she’d still felt raw inside. Every day she’d ached for Leo and wished that they could be together because her heart was breaking in the most painful way—slowly dying from disuse.

But she’d never shown those feelings to anyone. Look where it had got her when she’d flung her heart and soul into loving her husband! Ex-husband, she’d continually corrected herself, gritting her teeth with the pain of a chapter in her life that was now ended.

And how much had the humiliation of being rejected damaged her self-confidence? It had taken her a long time to smooth over the nerves she’d felt when facing the public. Hours of almost maniacal preparation, so that her face had been a perfect mask and every gesture had been rehearsed.

Only then had she been able to bear to confront everyone, knowing that they were whispering, gossiping, wondering about the ‘perfect lady’ who’d turned out to be a tigress in a variety of beds. Head held high, she’d coolly met their eyes with a challenge and they’d always looked away first.

But she’d become lonely, trusting no one but Chas, who rarely left her side and had become father and brother and friend to her. And now she was truly alone because even Chas didn’t quite know what was in her heart: an ache for the man she couldn’t have because they couldn’t live together, their lives having veered away from each other too dramatically ever to meet and link again:

Emerging from Heathrow with Chas and turning the key in her coupé parked in the long-term car park, Ginny suddenly wanted privacy. Divorced, theoretically free but forever a prisoner of Leo’s magnetism, she smiled faintly at Chas.

‘I’d like to drive myself. Just this once. Would you take a taxi?’

And, driving through the streets of London to her flat in Chelsea, she grimly steeled every bone in her body and held back the tears that had threatened from the moment her solicitor had telephoned her while she was in Paris to say that her decree absolute had come through.

Suddenly she had wanted to be home—and alone with her memories. She’d cancelled everything in her diary, saying that she felt ill. It was the first time she’d ducked her obligations.

Her marriage was dead and buried. Might as well face up to that, she thought. Her lip quivered and she bit it for daring to betray her.

‘Oh!’ she mumbled unhappily, driving into the mews and bumping over the cobbles to the far end. ‘I hate him! I hate him!’ And she wished it weren’t a lie.

There came the slam of a taxi door and Chas appeared by her window. ‘Want a shoulder?’ he offered casually.

Ginny shook her head, too upset to speak. She reached out her hand to temper the refusal and withdrew it after Chas’s brief pat. ‘I’m doing a Garbo,’ she said huskily. ‘Come in. But I’d like to be alone. I feel I’ve come to the end of an era. I need to plan the next.’ She managed a smile but it was feeble.

‘Sure. You must be tired. You’ve been going like the clappers. Glad you’re taking a break. I’ll keep everyone at bay.’

Thankful for his tact, Ginny flicked the remote control to open the doors and drove into the garage, leaving all her things in the car to collect later. On entering the flat, she absently picked up the mail on the mat and wandered into the kitchen to make some tea, shrugging off the elegant Ralph Lauren jacket in the soft shade of blue that...

She frowned. That Leo had loved. He would like this, she thought mournfully, indulging in self-pity for a few seconds. The flowing palazzo pants caressed her thighs, hinting at her slenderness, her flat, taut stomach. The sand-coloured camisole drifted elegantly over her breasts to the cinched-in waist. There was no one to appreciate the way she looked now.

She briskly put a stop to this line of thought and got out the tea-things. The healing brew, she thought wryly. When she really needed healing arms around her.

If only she’d been brought up by her real parents! she sighed, curling up in an old comfy chair while the kettle boiled. If so, there might have been a friendly cuddle for her now.

Ginny sighed wistfully. It was so sad that her own mother had been unable to care for her. Her mother had developed a serious phobia about cleanliness which had meant that when Ginny was born her mother had become hysterical at all the mess a baby brought. Or so the McKenzies, her adoptive parents, had told her. They would never reveal her mother’s whereabouts and Ginny was wary of discovering that her mother cared nothing for her.