‘You really were wonderful,’ Mateo told her.
‘Your feet must be killing you.’ Rachel reached up and took out the teardrop earrings. ‘These are lovely, but they’re agony to wear. I haven’t worn earrings since my uni days.’
‘You look amazing.’
‘Thank you.’ She still wasn’t looking at him, and Mateo bit back his annoyance. What game was she playing?
‘I think I’ll go to bed.’ Rachel let out a little laugh that sounded brittle as she started towards the staircase. ‘I think I could fall asleep right here.’
‘It’s been a long evening.’
‘Yes.’ She glanced back at him, like a beautiful flame in her bronze gown with the topazes and diamonds glinting in her hair and at her throat and wrists. ‘Goodnight, Mateo.’ She almost sounded sad, and that irritated him further.
They’d had a brilliant evening, they were getting married the day after tomorrow, and she was playing some passive-aggressive game of showing him she was sad without actually saying it.
‘Why don’t you just tell me what’s going on, Rachel?’ His voice came out hard, harder than he’d meant it to, but he’d never liked these games. Not with Cressida, when he’d so often had to guess the reason for her pique, and not with Rachel. Not with anyone.
Her eyes widened as she stilled, one hand on the banister. ‘What...what do you mean?’
‘You know what I mean.’
She stiffened, her eyes flashing with affront at his tone. ‘I really don’t.’
‘Are you sure about that?’ Mateo knew he was handling this all wrong, but hours of wondering and worrying that something was amiss had strung him tighter than he’d realised. He was ready to snap now, and it was hard to pull back.
‘Yes, I’m quite sure. I’m tired, Mateo, and I want to go to bed.’
So he should let her go. He knew that, and yet somehow he couldn’t. ‘Why did you keep giving me looks all evening?’
‘Looks?’
‘During dinner. As if...’ He struggled to put a name to the expression in her eyes. ‘As if you were disappointed in me.’ The realisation that that was indeed what her look had been was a heaviness in his gut.
Recognition flashed in Rachel’s eyes, and Mateo knew he was right. Something was wrong...and she didn’t want to tell him what it was. She wanted him to guess, and beg, and plead. He’d been here before, and he hated it. He wouldn’t play that game.
‘You know what? Never mind.’ He shook his head, the movement abrupt, dismissive. ‘I don’t care what it is. If you can’t be bothered to tell me, I can’t be bothered to find out.’
‘Why are you so angry?’ She sounded bewildered, and rightly so. He was overreacting, he knew it, and yet he still couldn’t keep himself from it. Because this was bringing back too many old, painful memories, memories he’d suppressed for fifteen years. He really didn’t want them rising up now.
‘I’m not angry.’ His tone made his words a lie.
She gave a little shrug, as if the point wasn’t worth arguing, which it probably wasn’t. His hands balled into fists at his sides.
‘Rachel...’
‘Fine, Mateo, if you want to do this now.’ She let out a weary sigh that shuddered through her whole body before she gave him a look that was both direct and sorrowful. ‘Who is Cressida?’
CHAPTER ELEVEN
SHE HADN’T WANTED to confront him. She’d told herself there was no point. And yet Mateo had forced an argument, much to her own shock, because he’d never acted in such an emotional and unreasonable way before. And now they were here, and she’d asked the question that had been burning on her tongue since Karolina had patted her hand at dinner and said in a dreamy way, ‘You’re so much better for him than Cressida, my dear.’
When Rachel had smiled politely in return, the conversation had moved on, but then the man who had escorted her from the table had said something similar.
‘Thank God he didn’t marry Cressida.’
And Rachel had started to feel...unmoored. She couldn’t have explained it better than that, that the sudden emergence of this unknown woman that Mateo must have considered marrying had left her feeling entirely and unsettlingly adrift. And so she’d asked, and now she wasn’t sure she wanted to know the answer.
Who is Cressida?