Duarte's Child

Alice left with Jamie. Then a very weary-looking police sergeant made a brief visit to Emily’s bedside to confirm that she had no complaint to make against her husband. Having made that assurance while cringing at the thought of what Duarte must have undergone, Emily fell asleep and did not awaken until lunch arrived on a noisy trolley. The doctor called in to have a brief word with her and tell her that she was free to leave. As she had no appetite for food, she slid straight out of bed. Removing her clothes from the cabinet, she got dressed again.

Mateus Santos was waiting at Reception to escort her out to the limousine.

Duarte was seated in the back of the limo. Emily climbed in and sat down at the furthest point from Duarte that she could contrive. ‘What now?’ she asked tightly.

‘We’ll pick up Jamie and then we’re going home.’

The silence lay between them, deep as a swamp and twice as treacherous.

Emily swallowed hard. Going home? She had not yet given him a direct look. Now she turned her head, her throat tight, her sea-green eyes strained. ‘Just like that?’

‘Just like that,’ Duarte confirmed, skimming her a veiled glance from his dark, deep-set eyes. ‘I had your possessions cleared from the car and the caravan and packed. I also told Mateus to dispose of both vehicles as you will have no further use for them.’

That was the moment that Emily appreciated that she now possessed only the clothes she stood up in. Her fingers closed over the ragged cuffs of her old sweater in an effort to contain an almost overwhelming sense of being trapped. ‘It would have been nice if you had asked me what I wanted to do with them.’

‘But then, all that concerned me was what I wanted,’ Duarte murmured with velvet soft cool, reaching forward to sweep up the car phone as it buzzed.

Going home? He was taking them straight back to Portugal. From below her lashes, she studied him, nervous as a cat on hot bricks. The hard smooth line of his high cheekbones in profile, the classic perfection of his arrogant nose, the tough angular jawline slightly blue-shadowed by the hint of returning stubble. He was incredibly good-looking and sexy and she found it very difficult to resist the urge to stare when his attention was distracted from her. She listened to him talk in Portuguese, as smooth and cool as if he had not just dramatically reclaimed his runaway wife and child. No, indeed, it might have been any ordinary day and she might have been any woman.

‘Duarte…’ she framed jerkily as soon as he had replaced the phone. ‘I’d like to stay in England—’

‘That’s not possible unless you insist on a divorce.’

Emily did not feel that she was in a position to insist on anything. Duarte had slaughtered all the protest in her the very instant he had threatened to fight her for custody of Jamie. She’d already spent far too many months fretting about how poor a parent she might seem in comparison to him in any courtroom. Her evident lapse in fidelity, her flight to England, her fear-inspired failure to deal with matters like an adult which had forced Duarte to mount a search. Nothing that she had so far done would impress a judge. Nor would her case be helped when it came out that she had been raising Jamie in a caravan while she roved around taking casual employment. In a Portuguese court, she had not the slightest doubt that Duarte would win custody of their child.

She curved her trembling hands together to steady them. ‘I thought you would want a divorce.’

‘Not at present.’

Emily wanted to scream. He was shutting her out. He had always done that, depersonalising every encounter, holding her at a distance…except in bed. Her fair complexion reddened to ferocious heat at that inadvertent thought. Just then, she could not bear to recall the physical intimacy which she had once cherished as evidence that he must care for her to some degree. Now it pained her to recall her own humiliating naivety. They had had separate bedrooms from the start. Sex had always seemed to have a faint aura of the forbidden. But it also had been wildly exciting…for her. The only time she had dared to touch him had been in the privacy of her own bed. In daylight, Duarte had been way too intimidating.

In a fierce struggle to control her wayward mind, Emily made herself focus on the child’s car seat anchored opposite. Jamie’s seat. Duarte was taking them both back to Portugal. Duarte was not thinking of a divorce. Duarte was not currently planning to deprive her of her son. Those facts were the only facts that mattered right now, she told herself urgently. She was tired of running and exhausted by living on her nerves. All these months, she had had no real life. What lay ahead could surely be little worse than what she had experienced in the past…