Angel of Darkness

‘Since your daughter appears to have lost her voice, I’m depending on my son to fill in the blanks—’

‘No, please!’ Kelda broke in. ‘It isn’t Angelo’s...I mean, definitely not...I just can’t imagine Angelo and I together that way—’ Literally stupefied by the horror of Tomaso’s discovery that she had been in Italy with Angelo, Kelda was having a very hard time finding convincing words of denial.

Her stepfather dealt her an intuitive look. ‘Can’t you?’ he fielded even more drily. ‘You were alone with Angelo for what...three days? I wouldn’t trust the two of you to be alone together for an hour—’

‘Tomaso!’ Daisy gasped in reproof.

‘My son has wanted your daughter practically from the first moment he laid eyes on her, and judging by a certain episode six years ago Kelda was not—’

‘It is not Angelo’s child!’ Kelda suddenly sobbed, covering her face.

‘Then you have nothing to worry about when I tell him,’ Tomaso told her speciously.

Kelda reeled out of the limousine outside the mansion she had spent five years of her life in. She surged through the wide open front door, deaf and blind to the housekeeper’s greeting and dived into the downstairs cloakroom at the back of the huge hall. She lost her breakfast there.

When she made a strained reappearance, everyone was being seated in the ballroom which had been set out with tables for the reception. It was milling with guests and caterers and she had never been so grateful to see crowds. She was less grateful when she found herself at the top table, only several seats down from Angelo and Fiona.

The meal and the speeches were ever afterwards a blur. Tomaso had shattered her. Never before had she been made so aware of the likeness between father and son. Her stepfather had not previously shown that side of his temperament to her. There was dancing after the meal. She wanted to go home, but knew that she had to sit it out. Several men asked her to dance and grimly, for the sake of appearances, she obliged. She averted her eyes every time she caught a glimpse of Angelo and Fiona on the floor, didn’t even question why she had to protect herself that way.

When Angelo smoothly cut in on her partner as the music changed, she was quite unprepared for the confrontation. Instinctively, she stilled and the lean hand at her spine pulled her closer. ‘Smile,’ he suggested silkily, raking dark eyes absorbing the sudden tense pallor freezing her beautiful face. ‘Or I might suspect that you’re pining for me.’

Her nostrils flared on the disturbingly familiar scent of him. Her fluid body was poker straight in the circle of his arms. ‘I don’t smile for you, Angelo,’ she said.

‘Except in my bed,’ he murmured with black velvet satire.

Involuntarily, Kelda flinched and missed a step.

‘Yes...you are rather sensitive today,’ he mused softly into the veiling torrent of her hair and her skin tightened painfully over her bones as his breath warmed her throat. ‘And you lack your usual glow—’

‘Still stuck with my apartment?’ Kelda interjected tautly. ‘I hope you make a loss on it.’

‘Sold at profit to an impatient Arab,’ Angelo drawled. ‘Though a loss wouldn’t have bothered me. I had what I wanted, after all...and should I ever want it again, I’m convinced I wouldn’t be disappointed. You don’t play hard to get by any stretch of the imagination—’

White as death, Kelda pulled free just as the music stopped. ‘You bastard,’ she whispered tightly and headed back to her seat, savaged by his cruelty.

Her mother dropped down into the empty chair beside her and said, ‘Tomaso has calmed down.’

‘Good...I’m sorry,’ Kelda sighed. ‘I’ve wrecked your day.’

‘That’s nonsense. I’ve never been so happy,’ Daisy carolled a little tipsily. ‘And if it’s Angelo’s baby, that makes it OK, doesn’t it? Tomaso says, he’ll have to marry you and so he should, seducing my little girl—’

‘I am not a little girl, Mother!’ Kelda hissed, aghast.

‘You are measured up against Angelo. Tomaso says it serves him right...’

‘It isn’t Angelo’s ba—’

Daisy frowned at her. ‘Don’t lie to me any more, Kelda. I deserve better than that.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘I forgive you. It’s your hormones. They make you moody.’ With a dizzy smile, her mother drifted off again.

Suddenly suffocated by the crush, Kelda went for a walk. She would be able to leave soon. Tomaso and Daisy weren’t going away until tomorrow. She wandered into the drawing-room past several elderly ladies tucking into champagne and talking Italian in staccato bursts of energy. She headed for the conservatory, certain of finding privacy there.

But the conservatory was already very much occupied. Angelo and Fiona were entwined in a passionate embrace beneath the palm trees. Kelda stood on the threshold for sev

eral taut, stricken seconds, watching Fiona pushing her fingers through his hair, her lithe body arched into his with the sensual intimacy of lovers who thought they were alone. It was X-certificate stuff and clumsily, slowly, Kelda backed away, her heartbeat pounding unnaturally loudly in her eardrums.