Never A Bride. Diana Hamilton
for feeling so miserable because she’d done the right thing, committed herself to two whole weeks without him. Which only went to show how uncomfortably real the danger was becoming.
She opened her eyes very wide at the look of frowning suspicion he darted her then closed them on a spasm of unadulterated pain when he returned his attention back to the road and told her, ‘Good. I’m glad you’ve seen sense. There’d be no point in your kicking around on your own in London. I’ll be in Rome, plunging into some rather exciting unfinished business.’
The voluptuous principessa, of course. And did he have to be so crude about it? Any other time he would have wanted her there with him, arranging meetings, sitting in on them wearing her secretarial hat, acting as a sounding board for his involved thought-processes as they shared a nightcap together back at the hotel.
But not this time. And she didn’t have to be a mind-reader to know why.
Half reluctantly, she turned her head and allowed her eyes to dwell briefly on his savagely handsome profile. Was he aware that the rot had set in, that his indiscretions were pointing the way to the final break-up, that he had at last found a woman for whom he was happy to throw caution out of the window?
She looked quickly away again, misery darkening her eyes. In agreeing to stay on with his sister and her husband she had done exactly the right thing. The process of weaning herself away from him was about to begin.
* * *
Litherton Court had been in the Winter family for generations. The sturdy stone house, built in the reign of Elizabeth Tudor, looked particularly lovely on this bright, crisp morning, Claire thought as she emerged from the copse, looking down on the house in its smooth green hollow of land.
Sunlight glittered on the tiny panes set in elegant mullions and made the pale building stone look warm and mellow. Claire wondered, not for the first time, how Jake could have turned his back on the property, handing it and the vast estates over to Emma when she’d married Frank.
But it was impossible to imagine the restless, dynamic Jake Winter settling down to run a country estate, she acknowledged, pushing her hands deeper into the pockets of her sheepskin coat. And that being the case, what could be more natural than his handing over his inheritance when Emma married? When he had been twenty-five and already a force to be reckoned with in the business world, and Emma a sheltered eighteen, their parents had been killed in a motorway pile-up. The double blow had traumatised them both, particularly Emma. It had taken her a long time to get over it and Jake had become very protective of her. Until the advent of the principessa Claire had believed that Emma was the only female under sixty Jake had any tenderness or respect for. The way women had always thrown themselves at him had made him cynical. So did he know he was ready to fall in love, ready to make a lasting, worthwhile commitment? An expert at second-guessing other people’s moves, correctly judging their motivations, had he recognized his own slip for what it was—a willingness, in the case of this one special woman, to give the world at large advance notice of his intentions?
If it had been a slip then it had been a deliberate one. No one could ever accuse him of being a man who didn’t know what he was doing. During the two years of their marriage he must have had the occasional short-lived affair; he was too virilely male not to have done. But there had never been a breath of scandal, never a hint.
So this was different.
Her fine brows knotted together, she set her booted feet on the downward track, heading back towards the house. How many times during the five days since he had left for Rome had she worried away at the conjectures that kept rearing up inside her head? Was he with Lorella Giancotti now, at this very moment? Was he explaining about his paper marriage—something that had been their secret up until now? Making plans, promising to get an annulment very soon, asking her to marry him?
With a savage spurt of temper she kicked out at the loose stones in her path, sending them skittering. The decisions he made about his private life didn’t matter, did they? She had entered into marriage for purely practical reasons, with her eyes wide open. In spite of his offhanded denials, she had always known that this was on the cards, accepted that he would fall in love one day and ask her for an annulment. So why did she feel as if her whole world was falling apart?
Because the breakdown of their marriage would mean the end of her job, she answered herself staunchly as she unlatched the gate in the high stone wall that surrounded the gardens proper, keeping them separate from the rest of the estate.
Relief poured through her like a flood of sweet warm water and she whistled cheerfully for the two young Labradors and the pensioned-off sheepdog who had accompanied her on her morning walk, smiling as they bounded towards her. She had heard Emma say that she could never have too many dogs and they seemed to be all over the house, curled up in armchairs and sofas, heaps of them on the rug in front of the Aga, basking in the warmth. And because Frank was devoted to his prettily plump wife he tolerated them cheerfully.
Ushering the dogs through the gate, she closed it securely behind her, feeling light-hearted for the first time in days.
She loved her job, thrived on the challenges and hassles, the praise Jake gave so generously, the companionship that inevitably built up when you worked so closely with someone you admired and respected. But she certainly couldn’t keep it after they separated. It would look very odd to the rest of the world if she were to continue to work for her ex-husband after he remarried.
So the prospect of losing her job had to be responsible for the bleak mood she’d been in ever since she’d seen that photograph and realized the implications behind his first ever indiscretion. And before that, even, beginning when Liz had told her about that legacy and she’d thought—wrongly, as it happened—that Jake would terminate their agreement because the conditions were no longer being met and he, above anything, was an honorable man.
And the relief that she had worked it all out must have shown on her face because when she walked into the big, cosy kitchen Emma, heating milk on the Aga to add to the mid-morning coffee, turned and said, ‘What’s happened to cheer you up? You’ve been looking like a wet Sunday since Jake left. I said you were missing the brute but Frank thought you were sickening for something.’
Claire didn’t like to think she was so transparent, but she hid her unease with a smiling shrug and offered, ‘Fresh air and exercise does wonders! It’s a beautiful morning and you don’t feel the cold if you keep moving. The dogs enjoyed it, too.’
Thankfully, the mention of dogs deflected her, as it had been meant to do. Emma petted and crooned over the dogs which had just returned, sitting at her feet, pink tongues lolling. Claire rescued the milk.
She and Emma had taken an instant liking to each other the first time they’d met. Jake had insisted she spend that first Christmas here. They’d just got ‘engaged’—one of the shortest on record—and he’d brought her down to meet the only family he had. And last Christmas they’d been here as a married couple, he giving the same reason she had for their preference for separate rooms, and they would be here together again this year. For the very last time, she expected.
Jake always spent the festive season at Lither ton, and was openly impatient for Emma to provide him with nieces and nephews for him to spoil and play with. But Emma was in no hurry to oblige. She had her dogs and her husband, not to mention the absorbing business of running the big estate like clockwork, with the occasional input from Frank, who was Jake’s personal accountant, handling his impressively massive portfolio.
Claire deeply regretted being unable to let her sister-in-law get really close. Emma was open and bright and bubbly and would have liked nothing better than to have long heart-to-heart chats with her brother’s wife, but Claire, recognizing the dangers in that, put on an act of reserve and refused to be drawn. No one but she and Jake knew what a sham their marriage was. They both wanted to keep it that way.
‘There’s just the two of us today,’ Emma remarked as Claire finished making the coffee. ‘Frank’s spending the day with Liz. He’d have asked you along too, but they’ll be spending the time talking investments. Boring!’ She pretended