Duarte's Child

‘Shut up!’ he roared.

‘You see, I’m not a bully—’

‘What did you say?’

‘I think you heard me—’

‘Inferno! I am bloody well not a bully!’ Duarte raged, jawline rockhard. ‘How dare you accuse me of being a bully?’

‘Well, if carting me back indoors without my consent is not bullying, I don’t know what is.’

Duarte jerked to a very abrupt halt. ‘I’m looking after you, not bullying you,’ he framed, in such a rage he could hardly get the words out.

‘But I don’t want to be looked after. I can look after myself and I can walk on my own legs.’

With hugely exaggerated care, Duarte lowered her to the grass. Only then did she realise that her shoes had been left behind in the folly. Duarte had been well aware of the fact. He gave her a sardonic smile.

‘Thanks,’ she said compressing her lips.

‘That night I saw you in Jarrett’s arms, I controlled my temper. How many men would have done that?’ Duarte demanded rawly.

‘I was very upset and I felt guilty even though I hadn’t done anything and you scared me—’

‘I didn’t lay a finger on you!’ Duarte bit out.

‘No,’ Emily agreed unevenly. ‘But I was scared that you might—’

‘When have I ever hurt you?’ His bronzed features very pale in the light still cascading from the quinta, Duarte stared at her in fierce reproach.

‘Never. But that night I was scared—and, because I was scared and very upset, I made a hash of explaining myself to you. You didn’t listen anyway. You were already convinced that I had betrayed you. Yet what did you see?’ she prompted tautly. ‘You saw him grab me and kiss me—’

‘I was around long before that,’ Duarte cut in grimly. ‘I heard him begging you to run away with him and a whole hell of a lot of other juvenile rubbish!’

‘Until Toby spoke, I had no idea that he believed that he was in love with me. I was in shock and I didn’t want to hurt him and I didn’t know what to say—’

‘So you just stood there and let him kiss you. If that’s as good as your story gets, don’t waste your breath trying to raise the subject again!’

‘Well, I’m looking forward to seeing how you plan to convince me that you have been one hundred per cent faithful to me for the whole of our marriage,’ Emily countered in a slightly strained voice as she picked her way painfully across the gravel fronting the house in her bare feet.

‘I expect you to trust me’ Duarte informed her without the smallest hesitation.

‘I expected you to trust me and look where it got me,’ Emily countered without hesitation. ‘So please don’t expect me to be more generous than you were.’

On the steps of the house, she stopped to brush off the gravel embedded in the stinging soles of her feet. That task achieved, she headed straight for the sweeping staircase.

‘Emily…this is ridiculous,’ Duarte breathed wearily. ‘When you vanished for eight months, I thought it would serve you right if I did find another woman but I didn’t do it!’

‘Prove it,’ she said without turning her head.

‘How the hell can I prove it?’ he raked at her rigid back. ‘Call in character witnesses?’

Emily was so exhausted after the effort it had taken to stand up to Duarte’s towering personality, she was beyond any further thought or action. In any case, since she had long since sent the staff to bed, Duarte was going to have to douse lights and lock up, which was likely to take him quite a while. In the bedroom that she’d never shared with him before, she dug her teddy nightshirt out from under the bed, padded into the bathroom and stripped where she stood. Donning the nightshirt, she freshened up and pulled the clips out of her piled-up hair, letting it fall round her in a wild tangle. On her passage to the bed, she remembered the sapphires she still wore. Setting the earrings and the necklace down on the cabinet, she slid between the sheets and lay there, barely able to keep her heavy eyes open.

Had she got anywhere with Duarte? Had he seen the point that she’d been trying to make? That he had judged her on superficial evidence? Where had his trust been? Had he ever trusted her? It was not as if she’d ever been a femme fatale, who flirted like mad with other men and gave him cause for concern.

Duarte strode into the bedroom like a threatening storm ready to rain down thunder and lightning. As his attention settled on the slight bump she made in his bed, some of his high-voltage tension visibly ebbed.

Emily sighed, tucked her hand under the pillow and turned on her side to go to sleep. ‘G’night,’ she mumbled sleepily.