The Marriage Surrender

But she had been busy, still working two jobs because she was stubbornly insisting on paying for her own bridal gown and trousseau, and time had been racing by, so she hadn’t particularly dwelt on his obsession with her virginal state because she’d had more important things to think about—like being nervous about meeting his very large family, or moving into his lovely home in Belgravia, where she’d felt like a duck in a swan’s nest from the moment she’d first stepped over the threshold. Then there’d been Molly to worry about, because she was suddenly making noises about not going on to university, about getting a job instead and maybe even a flat to share with some friends. And Joanna had been worried that Molly was saying all of this because she felt she should be leaving Joanna and Sandro alone to start their marriage.

So she’d been pretty lost in worries that night she travelled on the Underground home from work a week before her wedding day. Too preoccupied to be alerted to what was brewing around her on that train.

Afterwards—well, afterwards she’d found her whole world had come tumbling down, bringing Sandro’s world tumbling down with it.

Could he really be serious about thrusting them both back into that kind of living breathing hell again? she wondered heavily. Did he think anything would be different this time just because he believed he now knew why she had been like that with him?

Well, he was wrong, because no one knew the real truth about what had happened that night because she had never told the truth, not even to Molly. And nothing was going to change. It couldn’t—she couldn’t.

The bedroom door swung inwards, allowing Sandro to walk in carrying a tray loaded with coffee and a rack of freshly made toast.

He looked different again, dressed for business in an iron-grey suit and white shirt, a dark silk tie knotted at his throat.

‘I have to go out for a short while,’ he said as he placed the tray across her lap. ‘If you want me for anything, then the number of my mobile phone is written on a pad by the telephone.’

‘The prisoner is allowed to make telephone calls, then?’ she said caustically.

He didn’t answer, his mouth straightening. ‘I will be about an hour,’ he informed her instead. ‘Try to eat, then rest. We will talk again later.’

Talk! Talk about what? she wondered apprehensively as she watched him depart again. The past? The present? The future?

Well, she didn’t want to talk about any of them. She didn’t want to eat She didn’t want to rest. She just wanted to get out of here!

Without warning, the old panic hit.

She needed to get out of this apartment, where bad memories lurked in every corner! She needed time to herself, to think, go over what had already happened and how she was going to deal with what was promising to come next. But, above all, she needed to do it now while Sandro wasn’t standing guard over her!

CHAPTER SIX

PUSHING the breakfast tray from her lap, Joanna scrambled quickly out of the bed, only to land swaying on her feet, feeling about as weak as a newborn kitten.

A quick shower might help, she decided, glancing around the room until she spied a door that promised to be an adjoining bathroom.

Ten minutes later she was back in the bedroom, feeling better—clean, refreshed, more alert—wrapped in a snowy white bathrobe she’d found hanging conveniently on the bathroom door. It smelled faintly of Sandro, that subtle tangy scent that was so uniquely him. But then, she grimaced to herself, her whole body now smelled like Sandro since she had just used his soap.

Which led her to another troubling concept—Sandro’s soap, Sandro’s bathroom, Sandro’s bed!

The bed she had just been lying in had to be Sandro’s bed! But, if that was the case, then it was not the same bedroom he had taken her to the last time he had brought her here. That room had been bigger than this one, more opulent, and fifty times more frightening.

She shuddered, remembering why the room had been so frightening; then grimly shoved the memory aside while she dealt with her next most pressing problem—namely, some clothes to wear.

No luggage, she remembered. No need for it, Sandro had said. Did that mean he really did intend to keep her here as a prisoner until he had managed to make this a real marriage?

Alarm shot through her, lending her limbs the required impetus to open wardrobe and cupboard doors; she was expecting to find Sandro’s clothes and frowned when she didn’t.

Instead they were full of the most stylish women’s clothes she had ever laid eyes on—even during her one-year long marriage to Sandro she had never owned outfits as stylish as these!

But then, she had always insisted on choosing her clothes herself, stubbornly refusing to let him spend gross amounts on her because she hadn’t felt that she deserved it. So, although she had been forced to accept the odd designer outfit Sandro bought for her him-self—like the Dior suit she had worn yesterday—most of her clothes had been good but not designer-label, and nothing—nothing like the garments hanging here.

Who did they belong too? she asked herself frowningly, then felt her spine stiffen as the answer came to her.

Did these beautiful clothes belong to his very discreet mistress?

She felt sick again suddenly, too sick to think beyond the need to get away from here. So, with heart pounding and hands trembling, she dragged a pair of denims and a tiny white tee shirt off their hangers, and almost sank to the ground in relief when she noticed they still possessed their shop tags—which meant that all these clothes were brand-new.

They also fitted her slender figure as if they had been bought for her, which led to the next uncomfortable suspicion—that, if they did not belong to his mistress, he must have had them brought here specifically for her.

New clothes, new life.