Scarlet Lady (20 page)

Again she longed to seek out the truth of what had happened between Vincente and Mary and how they had become estranged. She knew now how easy that was when couples didn't communicate. Imagined affronts and misunderstandings grew in proportions till it was hard to take the first step towards reconciliation. And as a result her mother had run away and left Vincente with a reputation that had damned him.

She started. Leo had doubled back and had caught her pony's bridle.

'I want to talk to you,' he said quietly. 'Would you get down?' Nervously she obeyed. Leo studied her as if he'd never seen her before—perhaps as if he would never see her again. Her breath quickened in agitation. The moment to say goodbye had come, perhaps. 'Shall we sit in the shade?' he suggested, his voice sounding strangely husky.

'Mmm.' It was all she thought she could manage.

Leo sat a little way from her, staring out to sea. He pushed back his heavy silken hair with a quick gesture and she realised that he was tenser than he made out.

'What did you dislike most about our marriage?' he asked with studied casualness. But the hand he put on her arm was hot, as if it burned from a fire inside him.

'Your lifestyle,' she said nervously as the heat set her nerves dancing. 'Castlestowe, the closed world you moved in. It scared me. It never welcomed me.'

'Then for you I will give it up.'

Slowly Ginny turned her head. 'What?' she asked in astonishment. 'It means everything to you.'

He smiled and said lovingly, 'No. Not everything. I am prepared to give it up. I'm hoping you will abandon the thing I hated most—'

'My job?' Her puzzled face clouded. 'But... I want to do a little work each year. Not a lot, but perhaps some magazine-cover work—'

'It's not your job that was the problem,' he said softly. 'It was the fact that I hated being parted from you so much.'

'I would only take the occasional job. We could be together... But what's the point talking about it when you don't love me?' she said shakily. 'I won't be part of your revenge, Leo! I do want to be married. I love you so much. I can't pretend I don't. But you would hurt me every day by not loving me back. I would be nothing other than a convenience, a means to an end.

'You would be master of Beau Rivage. You would want us to have a child—children,' she amended jerkily when she saw the gleam in his eyes. 'A Brandon would own the plantation and your family honour would be satisfied. Where would I be once you'd achieved all that? Divorced? Abandoned for someone
suitable,
who would go back with you to bleak Castlestowe and act as a potential earl's wife should?

'I can't!' she wailed. 'I'd rather stay alone for the rest of my life than put my trust in you and have it flung back in my face! You have an ability to hide your feelings. To deceive. I don't know where I am with you and I can't marry you on such a shaky basis!'

'Ginny...' he began huskily, his tone almost cruelly loving.

'Don't coax me!' she stormed. 'I'm beyond coaxing! You wanted me to be Vincente's daughter! You said that knowing who I was would make a difference—'

'Sure. You'd be my financial and social equal—'

'And I'd be
suitable
then, would I?' she raged.

'Dammit, Ginny,' he said with a laugh. 'Let me finish! It's not that
I'd
care who you were, but that you would see yourself differently. No more believing you are inferior to me and my family! Because that's always been part of the trouble between us. You always
were
my equal!' he said affectionately. 'You didn't have to drive yourself into the ground earning a fortune and immense fame to prove that!'

'But... you only got interested in me again when you scented a chance to grab Beau Rivage!' she accused hysterically.

'Oh, no. I was always interested in you. Fascinated. Riveted. Bound to you, body, soul, mind, heart... Why the hell do you think I came over here, if it wasn't to win you back and protect you from a man my father said was a rogue?'

She covered her ears because it couldn't be true. 'I won't listen to you any more! Don't speak to me!'

Unable to bear looking at him any longer, she scrambled to her feet and turned away, walking a few steps into the tangled vegetation, her hand splayed out on the bark of a mahogany tree. And she breathed heavily, her whole body aching with misery.

'Stand very still,' Leo said suddenly in a strangely cracked voice.

Ginny frowned, began to turn her head, then saw by her outstretched hand the unmistakable head of an enormous snake. A boa constrictor. Only her eyes moved, growing larger and larger as the snake swayed its head with terrifying interest.

'Don't move an inch, my darling.'

As if she could! Panic had frozen her to the spot. Her horrified eyes made out yards of thick, muscled coils moving inexorably along a branch just above her head.

His voice came again. 'It's all right, darling. I'm here. I'll deal with it.'

She could hear Leo slowly, carefully treading on the soft jungle debris. He hated snakes, she thought. What could he do? They paralysed him with a morbid fear. He'd never touch it, would never—

The snake drew back its head. And suddenly she had been knocked to the ground, something sharp scoring down the length of her cheek. At first she thought it was the snake bite, but then she saw that Leo had his hands around the reptile's neck and was frantically trying to unwind the tightening coils from his bare arm.

She screamed, over and over again, slowly rising to her feet.

'You're safe now. Listen to me! I love you!' said Leo fiercely. 'For God's sake, Ginny, believe me! I'll eat this damn thing if it'll convince you! I love you and I always have! Believe me!'

Tears sprang to her eyes. To her astonishment, Leo smiled, then laughed exultantly and tightened his grip on the snake's throat. The coils flexed and loosened. With a grunt of disgust, he flung the boa into the bushes and she heard it softly slithering away.

Then Leo was tugging her to the beach and beneath the shade of a rustling palm. 'You believe me!' he murmured, kissing her.

'Of course I do!' she sobbed in relief. 'You rescued m-me from a s-s-snake when you loathe them..

'I'd walk through fire for you. Oh, my darling,' he cried m alarm, touching her bleeding face. 'How did that happen? Your face! Your beautiful face! I can see some fragments of bark.' He brushed them away. 'A branch must have gone into it. It's deep, Ginny. We've got to get you to the hospital or you'll have a scar...'

'It doesn't matter,' she said with a shuddering sigh. 'It doesn't matter, Leo.' She smiled, kissing him. 'We'll wash it clean soon... But I don't care. My face isn't important any more.'

'It is! Your career—'

'No.
You
are important. You and Vincente.' She touched the livid bands on his arm, the imprints of the boa's scales clearly marked. 'You do love me. And I love you.'

'Yes,' he said passionately, kissing her again and again. 'I love you. With all my heart.'

'Then...will you live with me here?' she begged. 'Can you live with the man your family hates?'

'For you I can do anything, live anywhere, be anything,' he husked. 'I tried to protect you from Vincente because I couldn't bear to think of you being hurt in any way—not because of anything that might reflect on my family. That was an excuse to hide my real feelings.' He grinned lopsidedly. 'I'm crazy about you, Ginny!' he said fervently. 'I always have been, always will be.'

'Oh, Leo!' she sighed happily. 'And... you said that's why you came to St Lucia? Because you wanted me back?'

'Oh, yes. When I talked to Father and was told there was no doubt that you were Vincente's daughter, I wanted to be with you when you found out.' He smiled gently. 'I wanted to hold your hand, to help you cope with your emotions and whatever decision you came to. I thought you loved me—but I wasn't sure. I had to be sure. If I'd made a mistake it would have crucified me, Ginny. You mean so much to me.'

'I understand. I feel like that too. And...what of Castlestowe?' she asked anxiously.

'My estate manager can handle Castlestowe. He's doing that now, after all. I'll check progress every now and then. And I'll want to visit Grandfather, of course.'

'You'd...you'd really give up Castlestowe for me?' she asked, breathless with the idea.

'I'd give up everything for you. And don't imagine I'll pine for it. I know now where my happiness lies: with you. Mind you, it won't be easy living with Vincente. I'll have some adjusting to do.'

'I know,' she said soberly. 'But other than his early affairs—which I don't condone, of course—I don't think he's wicked. I'm sure he's been misunderstood. As you misunderstood my response to you when we made love and you accused me of—of learning from other men...'

'I'm sorry,' he said with regret. 'You seemed so uninhibited. I felt so jealous that I believed what Arabella had told me—that she'd seen lovers going to your room when you were both doing shows abroad—'

'Arabella!' she exclaimed indignantly. 'Leo, could she have circulated those rumours? She stood to benefit if I lost my popularity.'

He nodded, a frown marring his beautiful forehead. 'She certainly kept making sly digs about you. Forgive me,' he said simply.

'Nothing matters but the fact that you love me,' she said earnestly. 'We'll do what we can to clear my name, and Vincente's too—especially concerning that awful fire in which Pascal's child and his first wife died. And then—' she smiled, looking around at the tangled undergrowth '—we'll have our hands full helping Vincente set Rivage to rights. What do you think your father will think of that?'

Leo gave a short laugh. 'He'll have to take on the responsibility of the Castlestowe estate and limit his political ambition. He'll have to make choices, as I have. You can't have everything. There has to be a sacrifice.'

'He'll think you've betrayed him,' she said unhappily.

'No.' He kissed her mouth tenderly. 'Oddly enough, once he knew you were dead set on seeing Vincente he seemed to change his mind. I had a feeling that he was hoping we'd both live at Rivage. I'm not sure why. Perhaps because he wants it in the family, as you suggested. One day we might find out the truth. And one day we might trace your mother and—if she's still alive— hear the whole story.

'Oh, there's one thing, Ginny. I have a condition to make as far as living here is concerned.'

'Name it,' she said quietly. 'Whatever it is, we can talk it through.'

'Sure we can,' he answered, the love in his rich voice making her tremble with delight. His eyes twinkled wickedly. 'I do think we ought to get married, before anyone finds out we're not!'

Ginny giggled. And then she threw back her head and laughed with Leo, their laughter echoing across the silent bay.

'When we first married, I thought I knew what paradise could be,' Leo murmured huskily, kissing her lips with a heartbreaking sweetness. 'You and me living in the castle. I tried to make that come true but you kept dashing around the world. And then when I lost you I realised that I'd been wrong. I didn't need the castle at all. Only you. I worship you, Ginny,' he whispered passionately.

Ginny wound her arms around his neck. 'And I you.' She smiled. 'I wonder if Chas will come here with his family when his wife and baby can travel?' she mused. 'Oh, Leo, I want your baby!' she said with a sudden urgency.

Their lips met, emotion deepening their kiss. And she thought of their children running free on Beau Rivage and sighed with pleasure at the thought that she and Leo would be bringing joy and love and compassion into Vincente's life. She had a father. A husband she loved with all her heart. Friends in Pascal and Mandy. Soon a child would come and her life would be complete.

That was all that mattered. Love of friends, family and someone very, very special. She and Leo. Together, for always.