Bond of Hatred

More and more, she was having to acknowledge that on yet another point she had misjudged Alex. He did fully intend to be a father to Nicky. He did genuinely seem to love his nephew. In short, Alex was in possession of a whole set of more appealing characteristics than he would ever trouble to show to his unwanted wife.

Sarah groaned, realising that she had left the book she was reading downstairs. Alex would still be with Nicky.

But Alex, she soon discovered, wasn’t with Nicky. She was descending the main staircase when she heard Vivien’s voice, shrill and furious, leaking through the ajar door of the library.

‘...none of my business when you have a wife and a child to consider? If you think that I am about to stand by while you humiliate that girl, Alex—’

‘You talk of something of which you know nothing,’ Alex responded with icicles freezing from every syllable.

‘Your father was always discreet...he never embarrassed me in public—’

‘Something more than can have been said for you where he was concerned,’ Alex whipped back.

‘I’m sorry...’ Vivien’s voice sounded choked. ‘I’m sorry that you can remember that.’

Frozen on the staircase, Sarah strained her ears but couldn’t catch what Alex said next. It was too quiet. What the heck was Vivien doing interfering? No doubt in a well-meaning spirit, wanting all to be hunky-dory in her stepson’s marriage, but didn’t she realise how bitterly Alex would resent it?

Sarah went back upstairs without her book. What was Alex doing to humiliate her? Did she really want to know? Why should she care? It was none of her business what he got up to outside the château... But as sternly as she told herself that came the stark disagreement of her own feelings.

Alex had changed the rules of their marriage. Alex had made their relationship personal and intimate and whether she liked it or not Sarah could no longer think of him enjoying his much vaunted freedom without feeling her stomach cramp with nausea. Gone were the heady days when she’d gaily written off the idea of Alex’s sleeping around as being nothing to do with her. In fact, right now, it felt like a very big central issue in her life and common sense and practicality put no curb on that unwelcome reality.

Night after night, Alex came home and went straight back out again and Sarah didn’t know where he went or what he did when he got there. Nor would she have asked, after what he had hurled at her on the wedding night. Charming as Sarah had found Vivien, Vivien had evidently in the past carried on in such a way about her late husband’s infidelity that the whole family must have suffered greatly. Certainly Alex had. With derision he had enumerated all his personal hates in a women: getting possessive, keeping tabs on his every movement and throwing tantrums. Vivien must have been seriously guilty of all three sins and she had not had the sensitivity to wage her war with her erring husband behind closed doors.

Alex had mapped out his future with a bride he had calculated to be as different as she could possibly be from his stepmother. Unemotional, uninvolved. That had been Alex’s ideal marriage. The hatching of a dynasty and all the freedom he could want on the side. A detached relationship in which only the barest necessities would have to be shared. Sarah shuddered. Alex was capable of so much more...wasn’t he?

Her head now really was aching fit to burst. She lay down, feeling suddenly foolishly tearful. What was wrong with her? But she knew...didn’t she? She was involved, much more involved with Alex than she had ever planned to be and it was all his fault. If he had left her alone, the marriage would have been a total sham and she wouldn’t have minded then, would she?

Or would she have? How long could she have lived in Alex’s radius without becoming aware that she fancied him something rotten with all the lack of control of an adolescent suffering from a severe crush? Alex didn’t need to go out and bed-hop to humiliate her, she decided. She was being humiliated enough by the feelings he had awakened inside her, promptings that day by day were casting her into ever deeper turmoil.

About an hour later, a knock sounded on her door. Alex appeared. Sarah snatched the bedding all the way up to her throat. His sensual mouth tightened, sparks flaring gold in his dark eyes. He set a glass down beside her bed.

‘What’s that?’ she demanded, as if it might be rat poison.

If possible, Alex stiffened even more. ‘Something to take your headache away.’

Sarah surveyed him in helpless amazement. ‘You brought me something for my sore head?’

‘I fail to see why the fact should fill you with such rampant disbelief!’ Alex roared at her without warning, the syllables splintering with sudden temper. ‘I can be as considerate and sensitive as the next man...!’

Attila the Hun? Vivien, it seemed, had left her mark on a temperament that was volatile to say the least. Sarah stretched out a blind hand, lifted the glass, downed the contents and choked. Brandy, enough to knock out a bull elephant. Fire hurtled down her throat and into her stomach. Tears streaming from her eyes, she breathed again.

‘It’s good for period pain,’ Alex told her.

Sarah’s jaw dropped. Her skin flamed.

‘Don’t be such a prude,’ Alex muttered impatiently. ‘I know more about PMT than nine out of ten men. Vivien saw to that.’

‘I don’t get PMT,’ Sarah asserted shakily. ‘And I actually just had a headache.’

Alex shrugged a broad shoulder, his startlingly handsome features impassive, temper back under lock and key. He studied her for several unbearably tense seconds and then strode over the windows, tugging back a curtain and opening one. ‘It’s too stuffy in here,’ he complained.

The silence stretched.

‘I think we ought to have a party.’

‘A party?’

‘It’s time you were introduced to family and friends.’