The Spaniard's Blackmailed Bride

Oh, she was thinking all right. Panicked thoughts with no beginning and no end and no hope. And, between them all, the clock struck again.

Would it kill her to marry him? Maybe not, but there was no doubt it would definitely kill her mother to leave Blaxlea, her childhood home and the seat of her mother’s family for generations.

And would she ever forgive Briar for rejecting the financial lifeline that Diablo was now offering?

The clock struck again and she looked up in panic. Had she missed one? How much time was left? There was too much to consider.

Why, oh, why, did it all have to come down to her? Oh Nat, she pleaded, what should I do? But she knew without question that if her big brother had survived the crash that had cut short his life, he wouldn’t hesitate to help. He’d do whatever it took to help his parents out, even if it meant sacrificing his own career and his own future into the deal. So why did the thought of sacrificing her own chances seem so abhorrent? After all, all she had to do was to marry Diablo.

Marriage…

The clock sounded again, straining her nerves to breaking-point. It was almost time.

Marriage sounded so final. But then hadn’t she always planned on getting married one day? Indeed, she’d been groomed from the day she was born for being a society wife with a rich husband…Would it really matter if it was to Diablo? And it didn’t have to be for ever. He’d get sick of her before too long—she’d make sure of it—and then he’d have to agree to divorce her. How long would it take—one year? Two? She’d make sure there were no children to suffer in the fallout. And then she’d have her life back. It wouldn’t kill her. Marrying Diablo didn’t have to be a life sentence.

All too soon it was just an echo that rolled around the room. The clock had rung out for the last time. The witching hour was here—the time when bad things crawled out of the night and ruled supreme. Diablo, the Spanish devil, was nothing if not faithful to the old legends.

She looked across at her father, who sat there looking like the beaten man he was. He looked up at her as if he’d realised too that this was it, his eyes bearing a rare spark of defiance. ‘Don’t do it,’ he urged in a gruff entreaty as he rose to his feet, some measure of his fighting spirit renewed. ‘This is my fault—all of it. You shouldn’t have to pay for my mistakes. We’ll make it through somehow.’

She smiled and mouthed a silent thank you.

‘Well?’ demanded the Spanish devil, drawing closer, obviously impatient to seal the deal. ‘What have you decided?’

‘That I hate you,’ she snapped. ‘With all my heart and soul.’

He lifted a hand to her face quickly and she recoiled, but his touch, when it came, was surprisingly gentle as he ran the backs of his fingers along the line of her jaw. She shuddered at the sizzle of flesh against flesh as his eyes bored into hers, rendering her breathless, unable to move. ‘Hate is such a useless waste of passion.’ He sighed and turned away and she dragged in air hungrily.

‘But so be it. Under the circumstances,’ he stated coldly, ‘I want you all packed and out of here by the end of the week.’

‘No!’

He spun around. ‘What do you mean, “no”? My terms were clear.’

‘It means we won’t be leaving.’

‘Briar,’ her father implored, ‘don’t do it. You can’t—’

Diablo held up one hand that silenced her father in a heartbeat as he scrutinised her face, the barest hint of a smile returning as the dark vacuum of his bottomless eyes sucked in hers. ‘Tell me,’ he insisted.

She took a deep breath and prayed for strength. Because she needed strength if she was going to do this. And she had no choice but to do this.

For my mother, she told herself, for my family.

‘I’ll do it,’ she whispered, feeling like a swimmer out of her depth, going down for the third and final time.

‘I’ll marry you.’

CHAPTER THREE

‘WHAT’S taking you so long?’ asked Carolyn Davenport, bustling with excitement as she swept into Briar’s room, holding her turquoise gown’s ample skirts up high and trailing a silky layered train in her wake. ‘It’s just fabulous downstairs,’ she announced. ‘Everyone’s here. Even with the short notice, I think the whole of Sydney society has turned out.’

Only out of morbid curiosity, thought Briar cynically as she applied the finishing touches to her make-up. No matter what story Diablo’s spin doctors had concocted to release to the press, there wasn’t a chance anyone believed theirs was a love match.

Anyone, that was, apart from her mother.

Carolyn Davenport had taken the news of the impending nuptials like the true society doyenne she was, swinging into mother-of-the-bride mode as if she was born to it. Any hint that she’d known about a link between her daughter’s rushed marriage and the fact that now suddenly they had servants again, with the funds to pay for them and much more besides, like her brand new Lisa Ho gown, for example, seemed to have been conveniently deleted from her memory. Her mother seemed all too ready to believe in the whole sorry fairy tale.

‘Fairy tale romance’, my eye, Briar thought, reflecting on the latest headline as she snapped the blusher compact closed. But even the business pages hadn’t been immune to the press bombardment.

‘Marriage Merger’ had been their angle—‘a blending of new money with old, the brash success of the young entrepreneur merged with the proven track record of the establishment’.

How the papers would lap it up if she came clean with her own version of the headline—‘Blackmail Bride—sold to save her family from financial ruin’. But that story would never come out, no matter how true.

‘You could do with more colour than that,’ her mother protested, as Briar dropped the blusher back into a drawer. ‘You look so pale tonight—I knew we should have got your make-up done professionally. Are you feeling nervous?’

‘Not really.’ Feeling sick, more like it. Briar looked briefly back in the mirror to check—even against the white silk of her simple toga-inspired gown she looked pale—but then, what make-up was going to be a match for her mood? There was only so much you could do with powder and paint.

‘Never mind,’ her mother said, when it was clear her daughter was going to make no attempt to redress the issue. ‘I’m sure a glass of champagne will soon put some colour in your cheeks.’

Briar’s stomach clamped down in rebellion. Champagne was the last thing she needed. After all, tonight was hardly a celebration.

‘Come on, then,’ her mother urged. ‘Diablo’s waiting for you downstairs. Just wait till you see him; he looks so dashing tonight.’

‘That’s nice,’ she responded absently, slipping her feet into heels. Who cared what he looked like? He could be the most handsome man in the world, but it would still be the devil in disguise waiting for her. And frankly, he could just keep on waiting. Just because she’d agreed to marry him didn’t mean that she’d be dancing to his tune any time soon.

She’d done a lot of thinking over the last two weeks and she’d worked out her own musical score for this marriage. Diablo craved respectability and an entrée to Sydney society. He didn’t care about her and he almost certainly didn’t even like her. Given that the feeling was mutual, it shouldn’t take much to convince him that the best way to make this marriage work was for them both to lead separate lives. At least until he tired of her and agreed to a divorce. That way life might be bearable. She could put up with a year or two of inconvenience if she knew that at the other side of it she’d be free.

‘Oh, hasn’t Carlos done such a wonderful job with your hair?’ her mother exclaimed with delight. ‘It suits that gown perfectly. Although I still don’t understand why you wanted to wear that old thing. It is a special occasion, after all.’

Not that special. And this ‘old thing’ was barely twelve months old and only worn once as it was. But still, she turned and smiled at her mother’s never-ending enthusiasm. Someone had to be enthusiastic about this wedding and who better than her mother? Already she looked so much better than she had just two short weeks ago when this crazy marriage plan had been unleashed, her features less drawn, her frown vanquished. It wasn’t just that their financial situation had taken a turn for the better, she knew, but because her mother genuinely seemed to want this marriage to work out.

‘I’m just saving my splurge for the big event,’ she told her, with a passion she didn’t feel, taking her mother’s arm and pulling her in close. ‘Come on, let’s go meet these guests.’

The champagne flowed so freely it seemed the huge ballroom was awash with it. Champagne, old money and the celebrity A-List blended together in the Blaxlea ballroom, which fairly gleamed since the team of cleaners Diablo had organised to go over the place had done their bit. Huge arrangements of flowers were doubled in the enormous mirrors, their colours reflected in the crystal chandeliers, while a full wall of feature windows welcomed in the diamond lights of Sydney Harbour at night.

It was some place all right and it could have been his outright—indeed it had been, for just one night. But he was happy with his deal—they could keep the title to the house. Tonight he would gain himself something much more important than just bricks and mortar and a few hundred feet of prime Sydney Harbour frontage. Tonight he’d cement his place and his future with the society that had resisted him for so long.

Already he could sense the change in the way he was perceived, by the constant string of congratulations he’d received from people who would have crossed the street to avoid him in the past, as he stood alongside Cameron Davenport waiting for the ladies to appear. In marrying Briar there was no way they could ignore his hold on the Sydney property industry any more. Now he had the Davenport seal of approval. Now there would be no stopping him.

How fortunate that a man so unskilled in the ways of his business should have had such a suitable daughter. For there was no one he’d rather cement his future with than Briar Davenport. She would make the perfect wife. The bonus was she would also make a pleasant bed-warmer. Siring children with her would be no hardship.

There was a stir amongst the crowd before everyone hushed and his eyes drifted upwards to where the two women stood at the top of the stairs, the older woman in plumage peacock-bold, the daughter so deathly pale as to render any other mere mortal invisible.

But not Briar. Her skin might be pale but her eyes shone like dream stones, amber and intense. And the dress might be colourless but it could not disguise the exquisitely feminine form beneath. A tiny waist that only accentuated the lushness of her breasts and hips, and legs that went forever and then some.

Briar. Like the rose that grew wild, spreading branches rambling, soon she would be clambering all over him. Already he could feel those long limbs wrapped around him, clinging to him, supported by him. Already he could hear her crying out, begging him for release. His body stirred in anticipation as the women slowly descended the wide staircase.

Oh, no, siring children with her would be no hardship at all.