Exotic Affairs: The Mistress Bride\The Spanish Husband\The Bellini Bride (31 page)

‘But you didn’t take a single penny from him!’ It had to be said! ‘You left me asleep in bed each night and went down to play cards with him to stop him gambling with anyone else. You knew how I worried about him—so you took it upon yourself to keep him out of danger! I
owe
so much to you for that, Luiz!’

His face was white, his lips thin, his teeth clenched behind them. ‘You owe me nothing,’ he rasped.

‘I owe you an apology,’ she said thickly, beginning to tremble in his arms as the full cup of her guilt came pouring out. ‘I was in love with you. I should have known you wouldn’t do something so crass as to fleece my own father! But I believed him instead of you—when I
knew
what a liar he was! I don’t blame you if you
never
forgive me for that!’

‘Drop it, Caroline, before I get angry,’ he warned.

But he was already angry. ‘You let him win thousands from you—the same thousands of pounds he then told me you had won from him! It’s no wonder he was so eager to play you again last week,’ she said bitterly. ‘He truly believed he was in for another easy killing!’

He flinched as if she’d struck him hard. ‘I didn’t mean it like that!’ she groaned, lifting her hand to lay it in apology against his taut cheek. ‘Luiz—’

‘No,’ he said. ‘We will not discuss this. Not now, not ever. Do you understand?’ And he took hold of her hand to remove it, then stepped right back, turned and walked away!

It was fortunate that the music had come to a stop just then. Luiz’s knack for perfect timing, she supposed.

His uncle Fidel took his place. And after that Caroline didn’t see him as she was whirled around in the arms of one relative or another. When she did eventually escape the dance floor to go and look for him it was pitch dark beyond the fairylights, while the castle itself was pooled in lamplight.

She couldn’t find him amongst the people in the garden, so she went looking for him inside. She was just crossing the great hall when a waiter came up to her. ‘Excuse me,
la condesa
.’ He bowed politely. ‘But
el conde
send me with a message.’

Oh, the relief. ‘Where is he?’ she asked urgently.

‘He say to meet him at the car, just beyond the boundary wall, if you please.’

At the car? What now? she wondered as she moved out of the house again and down the driveway to where all the cars had been left parked outside the castle’s boundary. Was she about to be hijacked again and hauled off somewhere else?

Well, if Luiz thought that was going to be a punishment, then he was in for a surprise, she thought, with a smile
that took the anxiety from her lips as excitement for the game began to curl through her.

The car was just a dark bulk among many cars, but she picked it out soon enough because it was the only one with its engine running, and she caught a glimpse of Luiz’s dark shape behind the wheel just before she opened the passenger door and slipped inside.

‘This is all excitingly clandestine, Luiz,’ she teased, busily tucking her dress and veil inside before she could close the door. ‘But not really necessary any more.’ The door closed, the engine gunned, then shot them forwards. ‘See,’ she said, turning to wave her ringed hand at him. ‘I am…’

Words died, and so did her heart, just before it dropped with a sickening thump to her stomach. As she made a lurch for the door handle the central locking system clicked smoothly into place and Felipe turned a lazy grin on her.

‘Droit du seigneur,’ he drawled. ‘It is tradition…’

H
ER
first instinct was to begin looking wildly about her, to see if anyone had seen them speed away. But there was no one else on this side of the wall to witness their departure, and as Felipe accelerated up the road towards the village her mind was already hearing the smooth, quiet run of the car’s powerful engine.

‘This is stupid, Felipe,’ she said, trying to keep the need to panic under control. ‘
I
don’t see what you aim to gain by it.’

‘Satisfaction,’ he replied, and turned an abrupt right. Instead of taking the road through the village he began driving at speed between the narrow rows of fruit trees. It was a hair-raising experience, one that had Caroline clinging to the door handle, her body flinching each time a tree branch scraped across the car.

Another abrupt turn and they were skirting the side of the valley on a dusty track she hadn’t even known was there. Within what seemed like only seconds they had skirted round the village and were climbing through the terraces. With her heart pumping so fast with adrenaline that her hands were trembling, Caroline reached for the seat belt and fastened it around her.

‘You’re mad,’ she breathed.

Felipe just shrugged, spun the car round one of the acute bends in the narrow road and for a few brief moments brought the whole valley into view. She could see the castle, pooled in light and standing out against its dramatic black backdrop. She could even see the people dancing on the makeshift dance floor, or just standing around in
groups, talking. Her heart began to throb, her throat to thicken as she tried to pick out Luiz’s distinctive figure—before Felipe was swinging them sharply in the other direction.

By the next abrupt turn the castle was far below them, and it was a shock to realise how high they had already climbed. Another couple of these sharp bends and they would reach the cut, the place where the road became a treacherous pass through the mountains.

She didn’t want to go there with Felipe. She didn’t want this madman driving her at this mad speed on that awful part of the road where the edge dropped sheer down hundreds of feet into the ravines below.

‘Stop the car, Felipe,’ she commanded shakily. ‘A joke is a joke, and if it makes you feel better, I’ll admit it—I’m frightened. But now I would like you to stop so I can get out.’

‘And walk back?’ he mocked. ‘In that dress and in those spindly heels?’

‘Yes, if necessary.’ She didn’t care so long as he let her out of here.

They suddenly swung around yet another sharp bend. Tyres screamed and spun. Caroline hung on for dear life and almost cried out when all she could see in front of her was what looked like a wall of pitch black.

Her heart leapt into her throat and remained there until she realised they weren’t about to drive off the end of the mountain but were in actual fact heading straight for it.

‘I will have been missed by now.’ In sheer desperation she tried another tack. ‘Luiz’s car will have been missed. He will be coming after us as we speak. Do you think he won’t have noticed the car lights as we’ve climbed? Drop me off now, Felipe and you will have a chance to get away! Keep going and he will catch up to us and kill you, I swear it!’

‘Starting to panic a bit, aren’t you?’ He grinned—and swung them round yet another acute turn in the road.

He did it so carelessly that it actually threw her hard against his shoulder. By the time she had righted herself again she was looking at stars glinting between two towering black walls, and realised in horror that they had now reached the mountain pass.

‘Felipe!’
she cried out shrilly. ‘Stop this—stop it!’

But he wasn’t going to stop anything. Not the car, not his wild and reckless driving, not the stupidity that was making him behave like this.

‘It might be an interesting form of revenge to see Luiz’s face when he finds you way down there in the ravine amongst the tangled wreckage of his very own car,’ he murmured tauntingly.

Then he laughed as Caroline’s face went white.

‘But I am not quite that hungry,’ he said. ‘My original plan suits my idea of revenge a lot better.’

‘I don’t know w-what you’re talking about,’ she stammered, through tense teeth that were beginning to chatter.

‘Yes, you do,’ he argued. ‘You are from the right stock to know all about ancient tribal rites. If you just think of me as the rightful owner of what we have just left behind, then the whole experience could be quite exciting—a bride on her wedding night who finds herself sleeping with the lord of the castle, rather than the peasant she married herself to.’

‘Luiz is not the peasant around here,’ Caroline tossed back. ‘And if you think I would let any other man but Luiz touch me, you are sadly mistaken.’

‘So you are pretending to be in love with the bastard,’ he drawled, eyeing her curiously. ‘Why? Does it make it easier to let him touch you when you can close your eyes and see
el conde
instead of a New York thug?’

‘I don’t need to pretend. I
do
love Luiz,’ she declared.

‘And will you keep your eyes on the road?’ she choked out when he took them swerving round a deep curve in the road with scant regard for what might be on the other side of it.

‘Stop worrying,’ he said. ‘I’ve been driving this road since I was a teenager. I know every twist and rut in it from here to Cordoba.’

Caroline could only hope and pray that was true! One of her hands had fixed itself to the car door handle; the other was clutching the strap of her seat belt. Felipe took in her taut posture—and recklessly swung the car round yet another curve.

She closed her eyes, unable to watch any more.

‘You married him because he offered to pay off your father’s debts if you did.’ He calmly returned to the other subject. ‘It had nothing to do with love.’

‘I married Luiz because I can’t bear to be without him,’ Caroline countered through tightly gritted teeth.

‘Liar,’ he jeered. ‘You were bought! Bought with his money. Bought with his name. Bought by the bastard of Don Carlos Vazquez,’ he spat out scathingly. ‘And you are prepared to lie in his bed and close your sweet English eyes to his low beginnings, his prostitute
mamá
and the questionable way he earned his millions. Because it is better to close your eyes and pretend he is Don Luiz Vazquez
el conde
rather than the crook that stole from his own family!’

‘Luiz didn’t steal from you.’

‘He stole my title!’ he rasped. ‘He stole my money and my home! He stole what was my God-given right from birth!’

His fist hit the steering wheel in sheer anger. Caroline flinched, and began praying fervently that they made it round the next bend.

‘But I will steal one thing back from him before I leave
here for ever,’ Felipe continued thinly. ‘I will steal his wedding night,’ he vowed. ‘And my reward will be in knowing that
he
will know every time he looks at you that it was me who had his beautiful wife first!’

‘Luiz and I have been lovers for years!’ She laughed at the sheer idiocy of what he was saying. ‘You can’t steal what he has already had!’

‘His wedding night, I can,’ he insisted grimly.

This was crazy.
He
was crazy! ‘You stole from
him
, Felipe!’ Caroline contended shrilly. ‘It was not the other way around! You aren’t even his half-brother! Your mother is a cheat and a liar, and she tricked her own sister out of Don Carlos’s life so that she could take her place! She set up a situation and used it ruthlessly to her own ends. She twisted everything around so that it appeared that Luiz’s mother had been sleeping with
her
married lover! Then your mother stepped neatly into the breach left by her sister—having first made sure that Serena had safely disappeared to America with her unborn child!’

‘That is a lie!’ he barked. The car swerved precariously. Caroline’s heart leapt to her throat and stayed there while she clung on for dear life.

Don’t argue with him! she told herself frantically. Ignore him and just let him get you down this wretched mountain in one whole piece!

But she couldn’t seem to stop the words from coming. They burst forth from the cold dark place she had been keeping them hidden ever since she had read the full horrible truth about the Vazquez family.

‘A few months later your mother married Don Carlos—with
her
lover’s child already spawned in her belly. That child was you, Felipe,’ she persisted, quoting almost verbatim Luiz’s father’s own wretched words. ‘Your real father was Don Carlos’s best friend. His
married
friend!’ she declared. ‘And the moment you opened your eyes on
the morning you were born he saw his best friend looking back at him and knew—
knew
he had been tricked and used and betrayed by your mother to secure her own future at the expense of her sister’s! Since that same day Luiz has always been his father’s heir and you have never been led to think otherwise!’

‘How the hell do you know all of this?’ Felipe rasped, beginning, for the first time, to sound choked by his own wretched lies.

‘From Don Carlos himself,’ she said. ‘He kept detailed diaries of everything that happened, including the years he spent looking for Serena and his true son
and
the fact that he never kept any of this secret from you.’

‘I hated the bastard,’ Felipe gritted. ‘He spent thirty-four years of my life mourning a son he never knew while I was right there, waiting to be loved if he could only see it!’

‘He was wrong to treat you like that,’ Caroline acknowledged. ‘But two wrongs don’t make a right, Felipe! And what you are doing here now is wrong—can’t you see that?’

She hoped she was getting through to him. She hoped that she could make him see sense, maybe even turn them around and take her back again!

But he suddenly growled out the kind of curse that said a monster had taken over his soul right now, and with a lurch he threw them round another corner, sending the headlamps scanning out across a terrible nothingness that locked a silent scream into Caroline’s throat.

They hit a deep rut in the road. The scream found full voice as Felipe began to struggle with the wheel. He was cursing and cursing, and she was screaming, and the car was careering all over the place.

They were going to die; she was sure of it! They were going to tumble off the edge of the cliff and never be
found! Sheer terror made her grab hold of the handbrake. Sheer terror made her yank it on hard. On a squeal of hot rubber the car gave a lurch, then began skidding sideways while she sat there and watched in open-eyed horror as they slid closer and closer to the edge of the ravine.

Then they hit something solid—a rock on the edge? She didn’t know, but they began lurching back the way they had come. Then, just when she thought the car was going to stop safely, it hit something else, made a terrible groan and toppled very gently onto its side.

Shocked and dizzyingly disorientated, Caroline sat for a few moments, not actually remembering where she was. Then her head began to hurt, and it all came flooding sickeningly back as she lifted her fingers to gently touch the sore area by her temple, realising that she must have hit her head and been knocked out for a while.

Most definitely frightened of what she might find, she turned to look at Felipe. He was at the very least unconscious, sitting hunched over the steering wheel and slightly below her because of the drunken angle of the car.

Carefully, fearfully almost, she reached out and touched her fingers to his neck. She could feel living warmth there and a shimmer of a pulse. ‘Oh, thank God,’ she breathed out shakily. She closed her eyes and said it again. ‘Thank God.’

What now? Where are we? How badly placed are we regarding the ravine? What do I do?

It was then she realised that the car headlights were still burning. With the greatest of care she tried edging herself forward so she could peer out of the car windscreen. It was a miracle it hadn’t shattered, she supposed. Beyond it she could just make out in the lights good solid road and the ravine edge, way over to her right.

They must have keeled over into a ditch near the mountain, she realised. And it was such a relief to know it that
she relaxed back in the seat with a sigh and took a few moments to let her heart-rate steady before she attempted to get out.

Felipe had locked the doors, she remembered. But surely there was something somewhere she could pull or push to make them unlock again? With shaky fingers scrambling over pitch black metal and leather, she managed to find something on the door that felt as if it would pull up, tugged it and heard the lock spring free.

Next she had to release the seat belt. Then came the tricky bit, opening the car door and keeping it open while she attempted to scramble out. Her dress snagged on something; she heard it rip and lost her shoes in the struggle. But eventually she landed in a heap on the hard road, then just sat slumped there while she got her breath back.

It was all so quiet, so eerie. She shivered, then suddenly couldn’t stop shivering—though she didn’t think it was because it was that cold up here.

Shock, she presumed. I’m probably shocked. And who wouldn’t be after the ordeal I’ve just had?

The last thought brought a smile to her lips. The smile made her feel better, and she scrambled up on her bare feet and began to take careful stock of the situation.

Felipe obviously needed help; that was her first consideration. But help was either ten miles or so down the mountain or five miles or so back the way they had come. Not much of a choice, really, she mused helplessly. Staying put seemed to make better sense. Someone should have missed her by now, surely?

Never mind merely
someone
, she then scolded herself. Luiz should have missed her!

It was then that she heard it. It was nothing more at the moment than a very distant growl. But it was a car engine, she recognised, fading in and out as it wound round the mountain.

In sheer relief she simply sank to the ground by the drunken car, folded her now aching head onto her knees and wrapped them in her trembling arms.