The Stand-In Bride. Lucy GordonЧитать онлайн книгу.
‘Yesterday I was a disreputable woman who was dragging Catalina into dens of vice. Now you’re ready to forget that because I can be useful to you.’
He had the grace to redden. ‘I may have spoken hastily. Catalina has given me a full account of your evening, including the fact that she pressured you into buying that erotic dress.’
‘It’s not erotic,’ she said quickly, drawing the edges of the grey woolly together.
‘If it wasn’t erotic, you wouldn’t be wearing that thing over it.’
‘I’m surprised you believed Catalina,’ Maggie said, hastily changing tack. ‘Surely you know that under my influence she tells lies?’
‘She’s told lies since she was a little girl,’ Sebastian admitted wryly. ‘You have nothing to do with it. Besides, I always know when she’s lying, and this time she wasn’t.’
‘When did she tell you all this?’
‘In the cab, half an hour ago.’
‘Oh, that’s what she was saying. I was half asleep and just heard her voice distantly. And, of course, your replies. I could tell you were simply fascinated.’
He gave her a black look. ‘It’s true I don’t take easily to the prattling of children,’ he said defensively.
‘Well, you’d better get used to it, if you’re going to marry her.’
‘Can we stick to the matter in hand?’
‘That’s easy. You say, “Come to Spain” I say, “No way.” End of conversation. What do you want me for, anyway?’
‘I’m Catalina’s guardian as well as her fiancé. From tomorrow she will be living in my house. She must have a chaperone.’
‘In this day and age?’
‘Spain is not England. Our belief in propriety may seem a little old-fashioned to you, but it’s important to us. I hope that you’ll change your mind, for her sake. She’ll need a female companion in the last weeks before our marriage.’
Something constrained in his manner caught Maggie’s attention and a suspicion crept into her mind. ‘I see what it is,’ she said. ‘Propriety, my foot! You want me to keep her occupied so that you won’t have to listen to her chattering.’
A hint of ruefulness crept into his eyes, and for a moment he almost allowed himself to grin. ‘I feel sure she would be happier for your presence. Please oblige me in this.’
‘But this is December. Your wedding isn’t until next March.’
‘I forgot to mention that I’ve arranged for it to be moved up to the second week in January.’
‘Forgot to mention—? Did you forget to mention it to Catalina, too?’
‘I have every intention of telling her when she comes out to breakfast.’
‘And suppose she has other ideas?’ Maggie demanded, incensed almost past bearing by this high-handedness.
‘We’ll ask her, shall we?’
Catalina appeared at that moment, dressed in slacks and sweater. ‘Oh, good!’ she exclaimed when she saw the breakfast table. ‘I’m so hungry.
‘I was just explaining to Señora Cortez that official business obliges me to bring forward our wedding date to next month,’ Sebastian said smoothly.
Catalina gave a little scream. ‘But I can’t be ready by then. I haven’t even chosen a bridal dress.’
‘Señora Cortez will help you decide when we return to Granada.’
‘Oh, Maggie, you’re coming to Spain? That will be wonderful.’
‘Now, wait—I haven’t said—besides, you’ve missed the point. He’s changed the date without consulting you.’
Catalina gave a resigned little shrug. ‘He does everything without consulting me. This bacon looks lovely.’
It was hopeless, Maggie realised, trying to make an impression on Catalina’s butterfly mind. Last night Catalina had talked bravely under the influence of Maggie’s strong personality. Today she was under Sebastian’s even stronger influence. She listened while he explained that Isabella’s sister would be arriving that afternoon, and the three of them would be leaving next day.
‘As easy as that?’ Maggie said, nettled by this casual way of arranging matters.
‘Of course it’s as easy as that,’ he said in some surprise. ‘Why shouldn’t it be?’
‘It would take too long to tell you.’
‘Everything is easy for Sebastian,’ Catalina said, tucking into her food with relish. ‘People just do what he tells them.’
‘Other people,’ Maggie said firmly. ‘Not me.’
‘Oh, Maggie, please!’ Catalina wailed. ‘You can’t just abandon me. I thought you were my friend.’
‘I am, but—’
How could she explain to this wide-eyed girl that she had sworn never to return to Spain, and especially to Granada, where her heart had been broken and her spirit almost destroyed? If it had been anywhere else…
But perhaps, after all, it had to be Granada, where the ghosts she’d fled still raged. Maybe she’d run for long enough, and it was time to turn and face them.
‘All right,’ she said slowly. ‘Just for a short time.’
‘Oh good!’ Catalina exclaimed. ‘I’m so glad you’ve given in.’
Before Maggie could take exception to the phrase ‘give in’, Sebastian said, ‘You’re mistaken, my dear. Giving in is for weaklings. A strong person like Señora Cortez makes tactical concessions for reasons of her own.’
And this time there was no doubt of it. He smiled.
It was annoying that everyone and everything seemed to jump to do Sebastian’s bidding, but that was the reality, Maggie had to recognise. Isabella’s sister arrived later that day, full of effusions at Don Sebastian’s ‘generosity’. He took her to the comfortable little hotel just around the corner from the hospital, and then to see Isabella. Watching the sisters greet each other, Maggie conceded that he’d done exactly the right thing.
She was less delighted by his insistence that she take over Isabella’s old room for their last night in England. ‘I can’t stay alone in that suite with Catalina,’ he said firmly. ‘The world would assume that I’d allowed my—er—ardour to overcome me, and she would be compromised.’
He gave her a look in which humour and cynicism were combined, and she suddenly had to look away.
The next day the snow began in earnest as they reached the airport. Maggie knew she would miss spending Christmas in England, but it might be nice to fly away to a warmer climate.
In no time the plane had climbed out of the snow and they were heading south to Spain, where the land was still brown. For the last half hour of the flight Maggie resisted looking out of the window, but she shut out the thoughts that troubled her. Far below lay all the stark magnificence of the country that she wasn’t quite ready to face yet, to which, eight years before, she had come as a bride.
In some respects she had been like Catalina, barely old enough to be called a woman, eager for life, sure that every mystery could be explained with reference to her own limited experience. And so terribly, tragically wrong.
At eighteen she’d lost both her parents in a car crash, and at first had been too stunned to realise anything but her loss. When she finally overcame the worst of her grief, she found that she was well off. Two insurance policies and a house didn’t amount to great wealth, but it was financial independence.