Emily sighed. ‘Look, you don’t have to go through with this simply to please me. When it comes down to brass tacks, stuff like this dress and the church blessing, well…I’d much rather not have them if you really don’t want them.’
‘Of course I want them, minha esposa…’ Tightening his hold on her fingers, Duarte hurried her out to the waiting limousine with quite indecent speed. ‘This blessing will signify a new beginning to our marriage and a proper commitment on my part to make you happy—’
‘You mean you never had any intention of making me happy two years ago?’ Emily muttered painfully.
Duarte tucked her and her skirts into the car with careful hands and sank down beside her. ‘Then the only thought in my head was making me happy.’
‘Oh…’ Only somewhat soothed by that contradiction, Emily decided that she would have to think that confession over in greater depth. ‘You’re saying you were totally selfish…’
Duarte vented a reluctant laugh and closed his hand over hers again. ‘I was striving to evade using exactly those words.’
The limousine drew to a halt mere minutes later outside the little village church. As Emily stepped out of the car, she was taken aback to find Victorine moving forward to present her with a beautiful bouquet of flowers and proffer stilted but evidently genuine good wishes. Emily smiled with true pleasure and thanked the older woman.
‘That was so sweet of her, Duarte,’ Emily enthused as her husband led her into the church, which was filled to overflowing with more flowers and lit only by candles. ‘Oh, this is really lovely…’
The blessing was simple but sincere. Emily listened to every word with the happy and grateful sense that indeed she and Duarte had already found their new beginning. Her eyes damp with unashamed tears of emotion, she was startled when Duarte closed his arms round her and kissed her breathless in the shadowy darkness of the tiny church porch.
Emerging from that unexpectedly passionate clinch, Emily was flushed and in need of being guided back to the car.
‘I want you to know that I have rearranged my work schedule and delegated a good deal of the business that formerly took me abroad,’ Duarte informed her, studying her with intent dark golden eyes. ‘This is the optimum right moment for you to make further demands, querida.’
Emily’s mind was a terrible blank. She was in awe of this male so determined not to fall into the mistakes of the past again. Indeed, she felt just a little like a new project being enthusiastically attacked and could not help but worry about the effect of what so many sacrifices would be on him in the future. Would his first fine flush of courageous effort wear off and leave him feeling that life with her was just one big pain?
‘You really don’t need to do any more to please me. I’m not going anywhere. I’m not going to leap on the first plane back to England when we have some stupid row,’ Emily assured him carefully. ‘You can stop worrying.’
‘I also want to admit that I totally overreacted over Toby Jarrett because, from my point of view, there was some horrible truths in what he said about my not deserving you,’ Duarte ground out like a male set on an unstoppable course to tell all whether he wanted to or not. ‘It was bad enough seeing him kiss you but it was worse thinking that I drove you into his arms!’
‘Oh, dear…’ Emily glanced at his darkly handsome profile as they walked back into the quinta, registering his pronounced tension with dismay.
‘In fact, the weeks you were in the Douro were not exactly the best weeks of my life,’ Duarte framed with charged difficulty, striding straight past the assembled household staff apparently without seeing them and carrying her with him towards the stairs. ‘You see, you were still in Portugal. I had seen off Toby, dealt with him. You were still within reach…’
‘Hold it a minute…’ Emily urged weakly and hurried back a few steps to accept the flowers that the housekeeper was proffering and thank the older woman and their staff for the kind chorus of best wishes being offered.
Darting back to Duarte’s side, breathless with her arms full of flowers, Emily prompted him helpfully, ‘You were saying that while I was still within Portugal you thought of me as being still within reach…?’
Lean, powerful face rigid with tension, Duarte frowned and carried on up the stairs with Emily scurrying in his wake. ‘Duarte?’
‘When you vanished I was on the brink of coming to see you and asking you to come home,’ Duarte completed in a charged admission.
‘Please don’t tell me any more…’ Emily urged in a wobbly voice as tears clogged her throat. ‘It’s only going to make me hate myself for running away even more than I already do—’