Bride in a Gilded Cage

He bent down and came close, snaked a hand around Isobel’s neck. The skin of his hand burned against her bare skin.

‘And, yes, Isobel, you will fall into my bed—whenever and however I want. We’ve just proved that you want me just as much as I want you. However, I think your lack of experience will make restraint for you harder to bear…’

Isobel knocked his hand away, but more because he was ready to let her go than because of her strength—and that made her even angrier. To her intense relief he stood up and moved back a few feet. She sat up. ‘Don’t believe that you know everything, Rafael. Just because I didn’t have a boyfriend in Paris it does not mean I didn’t have lovers.’

Right now, the thought of him suspecting she was still a virgin made her clammy with horror. Would he think that she’d waited for him? Had she on some level waited for him?

She went even clammier and did her own impression of raking her eyes up and down his body, tried to inject as much disdain into her voice as possible. ‘Perhaps I’ve not had the indiscriminate quantity of your experience, but quantity does not always equal quality.’

Rafael stepped back and chuckled dangerously. For the first time in long minutes Isobel felt as if she could breathe again.

‘I’ll leave you to freshen up. And you might want to put on a little make-up to take down that flush in your cheeks. People will suspect that we’ve been getting a head start on our wedding night.’

He calmly and insouciantly walked to the door and then turned back. ‘The photographer will be ready soon, so when you come down we’ll get the photos out of the way. I’ll be waiting downstairs.’

He left and closed the door behind him. Isobel picked up a pillow from the bed and threw it at the door, where it bounced ineffectually back onto the carpet. Which was exactly how she felt—ineffectual.

Knowing it was useless, but wanting to do something, Isobel hauled herself off the bed and went to the interconnecting door to their rooms, her dress swishing around her feet. She locked it, relishing the sound it made. Unfortunately, it gave only the merest hint of a veneer of security. Rafael couldn’t be locked out for ever, and she was very much afraid that he’d already found a way into a place within her that had no lock and key.

Going into her new bathroom didn’t help matters. Rafael had been right. She was flushed and her eyes were overbright. Her mouth was slightly swollen and pink from his kiss. With a cry of disgust, Isobel splashed her face with cold water and went to find her make-up bag so that she could eradicate the damage. The awful thing was, she knew if Rafael hadn’t stopped when he had they might well be on their way to consummating this marriage—virginity or no virginity.

Rafael stood at the window of his study and looked out over the lush expanse of lawn to where he could see guests already walking up the pathway to the beautifully decorated marquee. He could hear the faint strains of music. Waiters greeted the guests with glasses of sparkling vintage champagne. The wedding had taken place in the late afternoon so the sun was starting to set, staining the sky in a dusky mauve colour.

As soon as the light dipped further the fairy lights strung in the trees would come on, along with flaming lanterns.

It was a perfect wedding. It was exactly as Rafael had envisaged it happening. He realised something in that moment. Despite his lack of choice in the matter, he knew that Isobel was right for him. He felt it deep in his bones; it was what he’d sensed three years before. And he also felt it in a more strategic part of his anatomy, which was still hot and hard. It had taken more restraint than he’d thought he possessed not to follow her down onto that bed and take her there and then, up in her bedroom.

He recalled her as she’d stood in front of him, just before he’d kissed her, her chest rising and falling rapidly. Hands balled into fists. Veil askew. Spitting like a cornered cat. And he could not remember ever being so blindsided by lust for a woman. He’d been unable to stop himself from hauling her into his arms. And to feel the way she’d put up her resistance and then melted into him so deliciously, kissed him so passionately, the way no novice could possibly kiss—it had sent some welcome sanity into his hot and tangled brain.

She was artful, and she knew exactly what she was doing. He was used to manipulative women. He’d learnt at the hands of one of the best: his ex-fiancée.

She’d all but admitted up there that she was no virgin, so her shy little moves and blushes were just an act, designed to bring him to the edge of his control. And he had no doubt that once she’d brought him to that edge she’d drive him back again. Teasing him to show him that she was in control. Did she have some plan to drive him into another woman’s arms so that she might even initiate a divorce?

His mouth firmed. He wouldn’t let her get away with this. The ultimate triumph would be his when she lay underneath him, panting and sobbing for him to take her.

A knock sounded on the door and he turned to see a paler, albeit still slightly mutinous-looking Isobel standing on the threshold. ‘Juanita told me where to find you. The photographer is waiting outside. He says the light is falling…’

Schooling his features, and fighting the surge of lust which nearly blindsided him again at the sight of her, Rafael strode to his new wife and reassured himself that once she was tamed they would have a very nice life indeed. He took her by the arm and said sanguinely, ‘I’d better make the most of your cooperative mood.’

CHAPTER FIVE

A FEW hours later Isobel knew that it was sheer grit keeping her from collapsing in a heap. Her face was numb from smiling, her hand aching from shaking hands. And at every step of the way Rafael was at her side, carrying her along. After the photographs had been taken, with her parents and his mother, who had seemed friendly enough, Rafael had led Isobel and her parents back into his study, where their respective lawyers had been waiting.

There, the basic and sordid reality of their marriage had hit home. Hard. It had been nearly too much to take in—to think that this deal had been born out of her grandfather’s desperation to save the estancia at all costs, and Rafael’s father’s manipulative machinations.

Rafael had presented a cheque for an astronomical amount of money to Isobel’s parents, and they’d signed a contract to say that the deal was now closed, all terms and conditions met.

Isobel had been disgusted by her parents’ unashamedly avaricious response. They were seeing only the dollar signs of their inheritance coming their way at last, and not the fact that their only daughter was being forced into a marriage she didn’t want. She’d felt intensely alone.

One of the women who had helped Isobel into her dress earlier in the day had appeared as they’d come out of the study and taken her upstairs, where she’d taken off her veil and shown her a little wrist-tie on the train of the dress so she could keep the dress up and out of her way while she danced with Rafael for the traditional first dance.

Not knowing what to expect for that first dance, she’d been surprised when Rafael had spoken to the band and then started the crowd clapping rhythmically to the music of ‘La Chacarera,’ a traditional Argentinian folk dance. He’d taken off his jacket and tie, opened the top button of his shirt, and he looked so rakishly handsome that for a second Isobel had felt seriously overwhelmed.

Her chest had felt tight. She’d always found the simple dance impossibly romantic, its trademark being the intense eye contact between the man and the woman as they circled each other, with arms held high, turning without touching in a mesmeric series of back-and-forth steps to the beat of the music. It was a game of advance and retreat, and Isobel couldn’t help but feel that it mirrored how she felt about Rafael, being alternately drawn to him and wanting to get as far away as possible.

The truth was she couldn’t have broken eye contact even if she’d wanted to, and there had been something incredibly intimate about it. Eventually, when Rafael had caught Isobel into him at the end, and everyone had clapped raucously, he’d just said, ‘I’ve got you now…’ And it truly did feel as if he had caught her, for good.

The band had switched to a different number then, to Isobel’s intense relief. The dance had had a more profound effect on her than she cared to admit.