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Fear had struck him—a dark, primitive fear. A blinding, urgent fear.
A fear that had one cry in it.
Too late.
In his head the cry had come—primitive, urgent.
Let it not be too late! Let me not have found my mother only to lose her to death.
And now, as the powerful twin engines of the private jet raced him back across the Channel, he heard that cry again. Felt that fear again.
But this time it was not about his mother.
Let it not be too late. Dear God, let it not be too late.
Not too late to learn the lesson that finding his mother had taught him. The lesson that meant he must now take a risk—the essential, imperative risk that was driving him on. Taking him back to England.
To Diana.
But as he opened his laptop, forcing his mind to a distraction it desperately needed, his eyes fell upon the latest round of emails in his inbox, and he realised with a hollowing of his guts that it was, indeed, too late.
The first email was from his lawyers.
His wife was filing for divorce.
And the money he had spent on Greymont—the money that she owed him—had been repaid. Every last penny of it.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
DIANA STARED AT Gerald across his desk. ‘What do you mean, he says no?’
Memory thrust into her head of how she had sat here in this very chair, in this very office, after her father’s death, refusing to sell her beloved home. Telling Gerald she would find a husband with deep pockets.
Well, she had done that all right. She’d done it and she’d paid for it.
But not with money. She was abjectly grateful that Princess Fatima had insisted on lending her the money—however long it took her to pay it back over the years ahead.
No, she had paid for what she’d wanted with a currency that was costing her far more. That would never be paid off. Try as she might by breaking the legal bonds that bound her to her husband. They were the least of the bonds that tied her to him. That would always tie her to him...
Her lawyer shifted position and looked at her directly. ‘I’m afraid he says he has no wish to agree to a divorce.’
Diana’s expression changed to one of consternation—and a whole lot more.
Gerald shook his head. ‘I did warn you, Diana, about this rash marriage. And as for that disgraceful pre-nup he insisted on—’
She cut across him. ‘This has nothing to do with the pre-nup. I don’t want a penny from him. Just the opposite. That’s why I’ve paid off the sum of every last invoice he settled, direct to his account. He has no reason not to agree to a divorce.’ Her mouth set in a tight line. ‘He has no grounds for refusing me.’
‘Except, my dear Diana,’ Gerald said in his habitually infuriating manner, ‘the law of the land allows him to do so, irrespective of any grounds you might imagine you have. And you don’t have any, do you? He hasn’t been unfaithful. He hasn’t inflicted any cruelty upon you—’
She blenched. Cruelty? What else had it been, these past nightmare months since he’d insisted on having his pound of flesh from her?
Oh, not in a physical sense—her thoughts shrank away from that; it was forbidden territory and must always remain so—but in requiring her at his side, as the perfect society wife. Beautiful, ornamental, decorative, the envy of all who knew him. The immaculately groomed society wife who could move in any circles he chose to take her, always saying just the right thing, in just the right way, wherever they went.
Outwardly it was a wealthy, gilded life—how could that possibly be considered cruel?
How could anyone have seen how she bled silently, invisibly, day after day, drained of all hope of release in the frozen chill of his obvious anger with her?
Anger because she’d refused to have the kind of marriage that he’d expected, had assumed they would have—taking it for granted that it would be consummated and then refusing to see why it was impossible...impossible!
