The Forbidden Touch of Sanguardo

‘Then you’re quite mad,’ he said.

There was a bluntness in his voice that made Celeste stare at him. His attention was focussed only and entirely on Madeline.

‘You will never,’ he said to her, ‘get away with it.’ He took a step forward. There was an edge audible in his voice as he spoke. ‘Madeline, drop him now. While you can.’

She was looking at him. Her face was different now, Celeste could see.

‘You don’t really think,’ Madeline said slowly, ‘that anything you put out about me will look like anything other than thwarted jealousy and open malice? You’ll make a laughing stock of yourself!’

Rafael’s eyes speared her. ‘And you, Madeline, will get yourself crucified by the American press!’ His expression changed. ‘For God’s sake, get real! Do you really think you won’t get found out? If Roxburgh gets selected, the press will go through everything about you—absolutely and totally everything! And once you’re on TV and campaigning, memories will be jogged, I promise you! Someone, somewhere, will recognise you, make the connection—and then they will cash in with the biggest political sex scandal they’ve ever found!’

Madeline had gone white, Celeste could see. White with fury.

‘Don’t you dare threaten me!’

‘I’m not threatening you. I’m warning you!’ he shot back. ‘And if you imagine I’d say a word about it you’re even more insane. Insane to think I would want to be caught in any sordid backwash!’

Madeline was twisting Lucien’s bag in her hands, crushing it with the force of them. Her face working.

‘I will get what I want—because I always do! I always do! Nothing’s stopped me in my life—and it won’t now! If I want to be Mrs Edward Roxburgh, wife of the next damn Vice President, I shall!’

Rafael took a breath. Hard and scissoring. His eyes were like bullets.

‘Madeline,’ he said, incising each word, ‘you might be the world’s most...liberated...woman, and you might be worth close to a billion dollars now...but you can never, never be the wife of the Vice President of the USA. Because there will never be a Vice President whose wife...’ he took another breath, then said it ‘...once worked as a prostitute.’

CHAPTER TWELVE

THERE WAS SILENCE—complete silence. Then into the silence came the sound of the sapphire clutch falling on the floor. Madeline had dropped it.

Rafael watched her turn, slowly, back to the front door. Saw her walk out of it. Saw her walk down the carpeted corridor to the elevators. Then he crossed to the door and closed it quietly. He turned back to Celeste.

She looked like a ghost.

Regret hit him—regret that she had heard what he had just said. Regret flooded through him that she’d had to endure Madeline at all.

He came up to her as she stood, as motionless as a statue. ‘I am so, so sorry,’ he said, looking her in the eyes. ‘I am so sorry that you had to be subjected to that—to any of that!’

‘She’s still got keys to this apartment.’

Celeste heard her voice speaking. It didn’t seem to be saying the most important thing, but it was saying the thing that seemed to be in her head right now. Keeping out everything else. Everything that had to be kept out.

Rafael swore, then simply said, ‘The locks will be changed today.’ He took another breath, steadying himself. ‘I need a drink,’ he said. ‘And you look like you do, too.’

She didn’t answer, just went to pick up the discarded bag, smoothing it out. She put it on a side table and then, since Rafael was looking at her with such concern on his face that it hurt, she nodded. She followed him through into the kitchen. He got out a bottle of malt whisky and downed a shot in one. She ran some water and started to sip it.