Emily had backed away several steps. Rigid with stress, she could not stop trembling. ‘What third party? How could there be a third party who witnessed something that never happened?’ she exclaimed in appalled protest. ‘Was it your mother-in-law? I don’t think Victorine would lose much sleep over lying about me.’
‘You wrong her.’ Duarte’s contempt at that suggestion was unconcealed. ‘She may not like you but she was not involved. Nor is your sordid affair common knowledge. Fortunately, that third party I mentioned is not a gossip.’
Emily lifted unsteady hands to her drawn face. It was a warm evening but her skin felt like ice and she dimly registered that she was suffering from the effects of shock. She was devastated to learn that, during their separation eight months earlier, Duarte had been fair enough to think over afresh whether or not she might have been telling the truth about Toby. Then, sadly, he had had his mind made up for him by some hateful person, who had either lied or seriously misinterpreted something they had seen. But who?
But just as suddenly the identity of that mysterious third party no longer seemed of immediate importance to Emily. She had let Toby kiss her and it was little wonder that, having seen that display, Duarte should have no faith whatsoever in her pleas of innocence. ‘Obviously you’re going to think what you want to think…’
Duarte strode forward and reached for her arms to hold her still when she would have spun away. ‘Meu Deus! What I want to think? Do you honestly believe that any man wants to think of his wife in another man’s bed?’ he raked down at her with charged incredulity, his lean, powerful hands biting into her elbows before he thrust her back from him.
Rage and aggression. That’s what she was seeing. Two traits that Emily had once believed that her immensely wealthy, cool and sophisticated husband did not possess. Was he not one of the legendary baroes, a baron of Portuguese industry? Not just a banker alone. Duarte had interests in biotechnology, textiles, timber and cork, not to mention ownership of a world famous vineyard that produced wine to die for. One of the old money elite, it was true, but also innovative, tenacious and ruthless as all hell let out. Not a male with a problem in the realm of self-control.
Duarte thrust splayed brown fingers through his luxuriant black hair and breathed in slow and deep. His stunning eyes were veiled by spiky black lashes almost long enough to hit his superb cheekbones which were now scored with faint colour. ‘If I frightened you, I’m sorry. It is difficult for me even to look at you in this room.’
Her face flamed and she studied the exquisite handmade pastel rug that adorned the polished floor. The night of that dreadfully boring dinner party she had walked out through the French windows on to the terrace with Toby to enjoy the breeze. How could she have forgotten that location? It did not suggest that she was the world’s most sensitive person. He remembered—of course he did. But then she had greater cause to want to forget. Her strained eyes burned with tears and she mumbled, ‘What can I say?’
‘Nothing. The more you say the angrier I become. It is like a chain reaction.’
She couldn’t look at him but there was no escape from her own despairing regret. One brief moment in time, one failure to react as her husband had naturally expected her to react with instantaneous rejection, a fatal hesitation that had cost her everything she had, everything she valued. And what a terrible truth it was that people never really appreciated what they had until it was taken away without any hope of return, Emily acknowledged painfully.
‘I must speak to Victorine. She deserves greater consideration than I granted her on our arrival,’ Duarte drawled with a grim lack of intonation. ‘I lashed out at her then because I could not defend you against the charge of being what she calls a trollop.’
‘You called me a whore…’ Emily squeezed out the word from between compressed lips and swallowed hard.
‘If I apologised, I’m afraid it would not be with sincerity,’ Duarte admitted and the door thudded shut on his departure.
Emily snatched in an uneven breath. Sharing the same house with Duarte promised to be a nightmare, no matter how big the quinta was and no matter how infrequent their meetings. He despised her. He was never ever likely to believe that she had not been intimate with Toby. Indeed, Duarte could hardly stand to be in the same room with her. Yet he had kissed her on the flight—well, not at all the way he used to kiss her, she conceded wretchedly. There had been a dark, almost derisive lack of tenderness in that brief encounter and a cold calculated passion she’d never felt in him before. He’d sought out her weakness and exploited it without pity. Duarte had a streak of cruelty she’d never dreamt he possessed.