The Secret Wife

‘I was offensive and you were justifiably angry but when I followed you out of the dining room I intended to apologise,’ Constantine admitted with raw-edged clarity.

‘Wow,’ Rosie said, but she was still trembling and deep down inside she was a stricken bag of nerves. She had been jealous, jealous for the first time in her life! Justine’s familiar advances to Constantine had filled her with rage and she had lost her head. Now the paparazzi had a photo of them having a stand-up fight outside the hotel.

‘Your behaviour was...’ Constantine seemed to be struggling to find the right word in English.

‘Appalling,’ Rosie slotted in heavily. ‘But maybe we should try to look on the bright side of this—’

“Christos...you sound like Anton...the roof has fallen in, let us be joyful that the walls still stand!’ Constantine grated incredulously. ‘What bright side?’

Rosie coiled her trembling hands together. ‘If that picture is published, it’ll accelerate the break-up, won’t it?’

Constantine frowned without comprehension. ‘The break-up?’

‘When our fake marriage ends. I mean, obviously if we’re so badly matched we’re at each other’s throats within days of the wedding and we’ve got the publicity to prove it, we shouldn’t need to wait a whole two months to split up and go for a divorce,’ Rosie pointed out tightly.

‘There is a cloud in every silver lining.’

‘You’ve got that the wrong way round.’ Suddenly Rosie was feeling horribly depressed and wondering if it was that awful loss of temper which was responsible or the decided awareness that she definitely did not hate Constantine the way she had believed she did. What she hated and feared was the extraordinary power he had over her emotions.

‘Have I?’

A strained silence stretched.

‘When I asked how long it was before you became intimately involved with Maurice, I spoke without thought. I was not being as insensitive as I may have sounded,’ Constantine framed in a roughened undertone. ‘I was very disturbed to learn that you had endured a vicious assault at that age but I do not see Maurice as your saviour beyond that one gallant act...in fact I now see him as a yob who took advantage of your hero-worship and gratitude.’

From throwback to yob. Had Maurice risen from rock-bottom in Constantine’s estimation? It was hard to tell. But she herself had definitely sunk and shrunk in stature. Constantine no longer talked as if he thought she was the more dominant partner in the relationship. Now she sounded like a poor little victim.

‘I am not intimately involved with Maurice,’ Rosie muttered, biting hard at her lower lip.

‘Not now, not any longer,’ Constantine stated with grim emphasis, his strong jawline clenching as he shot her a sardonic glance. ‘And when we go our separate ways, if I have anything to do with it, you will not be crawling back to him! He’s a bad influence on you.’

‘I’m twenty, not ten, Constantine.’

‘But you still tell as many lies as a child.’ As the car drew to a halt in the courtyard at Son Fontanal, Constantine murmured drily, ‘Do you really think I could believe that you haven’t slept with either of the men you were living with? Or that Anton forced me to marry you over anything less than his honest belief that you were expecting his child?’

‘Don’t you dare call me a liar!’ Springing out of the limo, Rosie stalked indoors.

‘I console myself with one reflection,’ Constantine drawled as he drew level with her in the stone-flagged hall. ‘Had you been pregnant by Anton or indeed had there been a blood-tie between you—’ a derisive laugh expressed his opinion of that possibility ‘—I would have been trapped in this marriage for the rest of my days.’

Disbelief halted Rosie in her tracks. ‘That’s... that’s a crazy thing to say.’

‘Crazy?’ His winged brows drew together in genuine astonishment at the charge, his black eyes frowning. ‘In either of those circumstances it would have been a matter of honour that I should fully accept the obligation he laid upon me.’

‘But that’s outrageous...’ Rosie condemned unevenly.

‘To you, perhaps,’ Constantine conceded wryly. ‘But Anton brought me up and I had enormous respect for him. I owe him a great deal. He had a very strong sense of duty towards his family. That kind of loyalty should take precedence over personal feelings.’

A jerky little laugh fell from Rosie’s dry lips as she found herself blindly studying her feet. Suddenly she was very grateful that she had not repeated her claim that she was Anton’s daughter. She had a vision of Constantine hog-roped and tied to her out of respect for her father’s last wishes. ‘A matter of honour’, he called it. She winced at the demeaning concept but a tinge of curiosity remained.

‘Are you actually saying that you would have married a stranger and stayed married to her just because that was what Anton asked you to do?’ she prompted.

‘I have married a stranger...only you become more familiar and yet more strange with every minute I spend in your company,’ Constantine confessed with a sudden fierceness that made her shiver. ‘I do not understand you... and I will not be satisfied until I do!’

Rosie moved away a step. She wasn’t even looking at him. Already she had learnt that defence but it wasn’t working now. The darkly passionate rasp of his voice made her feed all hot and sort of quivery and even a foot from him she knew she was still too close for safety.

‘Look at me...’ Constantine invited softly.

Rosie was in retreat. ‘I think I—’