Bride in a Gilded Cage

Isobel was struggling to find her equilibrium, seriously scared at how easily Rafael managed to turn her whole world upside down with just a touch, a dance, a light caress.

She nodded her head, moving back, pushing herself out of his arms. She needed space to think. Right now he could have pointed to a tiny galvanised garden shed and she would probably agree to take it as the studio.

‘Yes…that sounds…good.’

He took her by the hand to lead her out of the building, and without his intense focus on her Isobel felt as if she could draw breath again. She was very afraid of confronting what was in her heart now she had little or no reason to hate Rafael any more.

She’d told him that he’d never know her, but she hadn’t counted on what it would do to her to know him.

The following day, as she helped Juanita to move the last of her things into Rafael’s room, Isobel saw the housekeeper holding a box.

‘What do you want to do with this?’

Isobel recognised the rosewood box she’d taken from the estancia. She’d forgotten all about it. She explained to Juanita that she’d brought it to try and get someone to open it, so she could see what was inside, and Juanita led Isobel outside to a garage at the side of the house, where Rafael’s general handyman was working. Isobel said a shy hello, realising that she hadn’t really made an effort to get to know the rest of the staff yet.

Within a few minutes, and with minimal

damage to the box, Carlos had it open. Having given him an effusive thankyou, Isobel went back into the house and into her now empty suite of rooms. She sat cross-legged on her stripped bed and opened the box.

In it she found bundles of letters tied together with ribbons. Opening them with shaking hands, she realised that they were love letters. For a heart-stopping moment she thought they were letters from her grandmother to someone other than her grandfather, but then realised that they weren’t. They were between her grandparents—both sets of letters, from both sides. Right from when they’d met as teenagers up until they were married.

Carved into the inside of the lid was the inscription ‘Together for ever, my love.’ Isobel already had tears threatening before she’d even opened the first letter.

The letters were at first as gentle and loving as she might have expected, but to her utter surprise, as their relationship had become physical—well before their marriage, by all accounts, which had a blush stealing into Isobel’s cheeks—they became by turns heated, passionate, cajoling, jealous and sometimes downright X-rated, bringing Isobel vivid memories of her own from the last few nights. It gave her a whole new insight into the rather idealised love she’d imagined her grandparents to have shared.

After closing the box again, Isobel vowed to put it where it belonged—in her grandparents’ burial vault. She felt emotionally strung out at having borne witness to something so intimate and private, and couldn’t help the tears spilling over, sliding silently down her cheeks. She angrily brushed them away, but they kept coming, thick and fast. She tried to tell herself it was just grief for the past…but it wasn’t, and she couldn’t keep fooling herself.

It was grief for the fact that she’d never know that kind of requited love.

Lying back on the bed, she had to face up to what was really going on inside her own heart. She was head over in heels in love with Rafael. Everything she’d just read summed up exactly how she felt, and she couldn’t deny it any more. It had been there, growing stealthily, since that night he’d first kissed her, when he’d set the bar so high that every other man had fallen far short.

It had been in her unconscious desire to save herself for him—as if on some level her body had already known that only he would be able to wring such a sensual response from it. It had been there in the way he’d consumed her utterly since he’d walked back into her life. It was in the way that at every turn he’d proved himself to be the opposite of the man she’d believed him to be, making her see depths and shadows that made him achingly vulnerable even though she knew he’d rather die than show it.

She knew now that she’d been fighting Rafael so desperately not because she’d feared the external prison of a life behind gilded marriage bars, but a much scarier, more internal prison.

Rafael walked into the darkened bedroom and saw Isobel’s sleeping form on the bare bed. Hot anger rushed to the surface as he assumed she was going to insist on staying in this room, despite sharing his bed, but then he stopped in his tracks.

He cursed softly when he saw the unmistakable signs that she’d been crying: dried tear tracks like delicate silver trails down her cheeks. A hard knot twisted tight in his chest and he felt momentarily winded.

He saw the rosewood box near her hands and recognised it. Reaching down, without disturbing her, he opened it up and plucked out a letter, flipping it open. As he read his face grew sombre.

Silently he folded it back up and replaced it, straightening just as Isobel stirred and her eyes opened. Rafael saw the way her cheeks leached of colour when she saw him there, and a knot twisted tight in his gut.

‘What time is it?’ she asked huskily. ‘I must have fallen asleep.’

‘It’s 7:00 p.m.’

Isobel sat up, looking deliciously tousled, her hair standing up on her head. It took all Rafael’s strength to not flatten her back down and shut out the clamour of disturbing voices in his head by making love to her. But that was a luxury he couldn’t afford right now.

‘I thought you were working late?’

‘I was meant to be…but I’m afraid I need you for a little damage control.’

Feeling unbearably exposed and sensitive after her afternoon of revelations, not to mention from sitting beside the man who made love to her with such intensity that her whole body quivered like a tightly strung bow just to be near him, Isobel was retreating back to where she felt safe, trying her best to push Rafael away again. Despite knowing how futile her efforts were, because he’d already breached every defence.

He’d explained to her that Bob Caruthers was jittery after witnessing their dramatic public display the other night; they’d run out without even saying goodbye. Not to mention the fact that he’d also been with them the night Rafael had had to all but carry an inebriated Isobel out of the restaurant.

Mortified, because Isobel now knew what was at stake, she’d said, ‘I’m not the only one to blame, Rafael. I’m not the one who initiated a tango display more suited to the back streets of La Boca.’