Passionate Protection

g if now he would change his mind.

'Circumstances sometimes dictate a lowering of one's standards. If I do not marry you now, doubtless I will be accused of despoiling two innocent young women.' His mouth twisted bitterly. 'I cannot allow that to happen, for the sake of my aunt and brother, if not for myself.'

'It's rather a high price to pay for family pride, isn't it?' Jessica queried numbly. Never in her wildest imaginings had she ever imagined herself in a situation such as this.

'For some things no price is too high,' he told her sombrely, 'and when we celebrate the birth of our first son perhaps I will be able to tell myself that there is after all some virtue in our marriage.'

She would never allow a child of hers to be brought up thinking that his whole life must be given over to upholding the pride of the Calvadores name, Jessica decided fiercely. Her child would not be sad and lonely like Lisa. Her child…

With a shock she realised that already she was thinking about bearing Sebastian's child, and she knew then that she would marry him, no matter how much common sense warned her against it.

* * *

CHAPTER SEVEN

Three days later they were married in Seville. Sebastian had asked Jessica, with the same distant politeness he had adopted towards her ever since she had accepted his proposal, if there was anyone she wanted to invite to the ceremony.

She thought fleetingly of her aunt and uncle and Colin, and then regretfully shook her head. To invite them would lead to too many questions; too many doubts to add to those already crowding her mind. It would be far easier to simply tell them once it was over.

Over! She was viewing the thought of her marriage in much the same light as she would a trip to the dentist, and who was to blame? Ever since the afternoon she had agreed to marry Sebastian their marriage had been treated as though it were an unpleasant necessity: It was true that Lisa had greeted the news with unalloyed joy.

'I'm so glad you're going to marry Tio Sebastian,' she had confided Jessica only that morning. 'I would have hated it if he had married Pilar. She doesn't like me!'

But as far as the rest of the family were concerned, it had been all long faces and grave expressions.

Jorge had sought Jessica out and confided that he could not see what other course his brother could have taken.

'He should never have allowed you to become the object of Pilar's speculation in the first place,' he had told her. 'Sebastian knows how possessive Pilar is about him, how she would seek to discredit anyone who is close to him.'

Jessica scarcely felt that she came into that category, and if that had been the reason for Pilar bursting in on them in the manner she had, it had had completely the opposite effect from the one she had desired.

She glanced briefly at Sebastian, wondering what thoughts lay behind the shuttered face. They had been married this morning, she was now the Condesa de Calvadores. She touched the new band of gold on her finger, as though the touch of the shiny metal would make her new status more real.

A wedding breakfast had been arranged at Calvadores town house. Fifty-odd guests had been invited—all close family, Sebastian's aunt had assured her, and all of whom would be bitterly resentful if they were not invited.

'They look upon Sebastian as the head of our family,' she had explained to Jessica when she had protested. 'It will only cause problems later if they are not invited. There has already been so much turmoil in his life…'

She broke off, and Jessica sensed that she was thinking back to that other girl Sebastian should have married. In fact Sofia had done all she could to welcome Jessica into the family, her serene expression betraying no hint of the shocked reproach Jessica had glimpsed in her eyes in those few horrifying seconds when she had followed Pilar into the tower room.

Only this morning as Jessica was dressing for the service she had come into her room, proffering a pearl choker.

'You must wear them,' she had insisted. 'Every Caldvadores bride does.'

'But I'm scarcely the bride you can have wanted for your nephew,' Jessica had protested miserably. Today of all days she longed to have her aunt with her, longed for the misty white dress she had always secretly dreamed of wearing, instead of the expensive silk separates she had bought hurriedly in Seville—extremely beautiful in their way, but scarcely bride-like.

'You love him,' Sofia had stunned Jessica by saying quietly, 'and that is enough for me. Above all else Sebastian is a man who needs a wife's love. I know he can sometimes seem hard, arrogant even,' a small smile lifted her mouth. 'My own husband was much the same, it is a Calvadores trait, unfortunately, but Sebastian has had to endure much in his life. The loss of his parents was a terrible blow to him. He had to assume the role of guardian and mentor to Jorge; and then there was poor Manuela. So much misery and pain! I have hoped for a long time to see him married. You will make him a good wife, I know, because you love him.'

'But he doesn't love me!' Jessica hadn't been able to stem the anguished words.

'He desires you, who knows where that desire may lead?'

Who knew indeed? Jessica thought unhappily, glancing down the length of the table, listening half-heartedly to the hushed Spanish voices. She was a part of this family now, an important part,as one dowager had already reminded her, for she would be the mother of the next head of the family.

They were not having a honeymoon; Sebastian had deemed it unnecessary. They would return to the hacienda, at least for a few weeks, until he had completed his work on the designs, and then they would divide their time between the house in Seville and the hacienda.

Out of the corner of her eye she noticed Jorge. Sebastian was angry with him because Jorge had announced that he would not marry Barbara.

'Isn't it enough that one of us has married without love?' he had flung at Sebastian in the middle of their argument, and Jessica, who had been standing outside the study waiting to talk to Sebastian, had fled, just managing to reach the privacy of her room before she dissolved in tears. What sort of marriage had she committed herself to? One where her husband took his pleasure of her body while ignoring her mind? Could she endure that?