Emerald Mistress

‘Una is extremely unhappy at being forced to do anything she doesn’t want to do. Until I entered her life she did exactly as she pleased and she played truant for weeks at a time.’

‘She’s sitting exams at the minute, and that has definitely put her under pressure,’ Harriet persisted gently. ‘I think she may be struggling to cope with her schoolwork.’

‘Like Valente, Una is cleverer than a cartload of monkeys, and equally manipulative. She hopes that if she gets chucked out of yet another educational establishment I’ll surrender and let her leave school for good this summer. I’m sorry, but you don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Rafael concluded, in cool and cutting dismissal of that suggestion.

In the sensitive mood that Harriet was in, it was a painful snub. She was dismayed and annoyed to feel tears prickle the back of her eyes, for crying was not something she did easily. But the warmth and intimacy between them had gone as if it had never been. Did she blame him for that? She tried to imagine how she would have reacted to being called by another woman’s name. It would have hammered her self-esteem. She would certainly have wondered if she was a second best substitute for some female whom he would have preferred to be with. Ultimately, however, being of a practical rather than melodramatic nature, she would have calmed down.

Rafael might have been offended, but he was certainly intelligent enough to accept that that kind of error could be a mere slip of the tongue and nothing more. On the other hand, it was perfectly possible that nothing she had said or done was responsible for creating the fresh detachment she now sensed in him. It was a mortifying thought but perhaps, having slept with her, his interest in her was simply at an end.

With her temper rising rapidly at that lowering suspicion, Harriet had to force herself to concentrate on Una’s plight instead. She was very worried about the younger woman, and concerned that Rafael would be too tough on her. Although she was very wary of interfering in something that was none of her business, she felt that she ought to at least show Rafael that misspelt note from his sister. Incredible as it seemed to her, he did not appear aware of Una’s low level of literacy, or of the difficulties that this had to be causing her at school. He seemed to believe that only wilful defiance lay behind the teenager’s problems. He might be right too, she conceded ruefully. How well did she really know Una?

When they landed at Flynn Court, Rafael walked her over to the Lamborghini to run her home immediately.

‘There’s something I want to show you. It relates to Una,’ she said awkwardly when he drew up outside the cottage. ‘Will you wait for a moment?’

She was surprised to discover Peanut waiting for her in the house, rather than in the barn where Fergal had said he would leave her overnight. But in a rush Harriet rifled through the kitchen drawer to find the note and hurried back outside again. Standing out of the car, with his arms braced on the driver’s door, Rafael treated her to a cool, measuring appraisal as she moved back to him to extend the note.

‘What is this?’ he asked drily, before he had even looked.

Annoyance and mortification made her stiffen. She wondered if he imagined that she might be using delaying tactics to keep him with her. ‘Una wrote it to me a few weeks ago…I thought you should see it.’

Rafael stared down at the crumpled sheet in his hand and then strode out to the front of his car, where the outside lights shone down with greater clarity on the paper. ‘Una wrote this? Is this a joke?’ he demanded.

‘She can’t spell very well—’

Rafael shot her a look of raw incredulity. ‘But this is like something a child in nursery would write!’

‘I think she tries very hard to hide the problems she has, but could this explain her failure to meet work targets at school? Whenever she gets the chance she seems to use a computer spellchecker, but most of her schoolwork has to be handwritten. When I last spoke to her on the phone she was really unhappy…I suspect it was the stress of the exams she was about to sit.’

Rafael was an ashen colour below his vibrant olive-toned skin. He looked devastated. ‘I’ve never seen Una write or read anything. I had no idea there was a problem.’

‘I’m sure that with the right help she’ll be able to catch up, but you’ll need to be careful how you discuss this with her,’ Harriet warned him. ‘She’s ashamed of the difficulties she has, and she does seem to think of herself as stupid—’

‘She’s not stupid,’ Rafael breathed in gruff interruption, long brown fingers crushing the note. ‘She’s probably dyslexic. Like me.’

It was Harriet’s turn to be shocked, and she could think of nothing to say but a muttered, ‘Oh…’ that made her wince at her own lack of verbal dexterity.

‘I have been so blind,’ Rafael ground out in a driven undertone of regret, his lean, strong face bleak. ‘I’m very grateful to you for bringing this to my attention.’

Harriet went back indoors. Well, she’d had the fling she’d thought she wanted, and got her fingers burnt with painful thoroughness, she acknowledged tautly. But if she had managed to do Una a good turn, then at least something positive had come out of the experience.

‘Is Rafael gone?’

Harriet almost leapt right out of her skin, for Una was poised a few feet away in the kitchen doorway. For once, the fifteen-year-old looked her age, and pretty pathetic at that, in her crumpled clothing with her eyes and her nose red and swollen from crying.

‘You almost gave me a heart attack…’ Harriet whispered shakily. ‘Where were you when I came in a few minutes ago?’

‘Trying to get to sleep in the guest room,’ the teenager muttered, hanging her dark head. ‘I know where Fergal leaves the spare key…’

‘Well, I’m really glad that you’re here and you’re safe. Will you ring your brother…or will I?’

‘No!’ Una sobbed. ‘Please don’t ask me to do that!’

Harriet put a comforting arm round the distressed girl, fetched her a box of tissues and let the storm of tears run its natural course. ‘Why did you come here?’

‘I thought you’d be at home and we could talk, but you were out,’ Una mumbled unevenly.

‘Rafael is worried sick about you—’