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‘Here!’ Allegra was back, holding a large, flat box out in one hand and her glass in the other. It was full again, Lily noticed with concern. She must have bottles stashed all over the place.
Allegra set the box on the low table and sat back on one of the feather sofas. ‘Open it.’
Lily approached the box warily as if it were likely to contain something highly explosive, or liable to scuttle out and sting her. Lifting the tooled leather lid, she felt as if she were in one of those children’s cartoons where the characters opened the treasure chest and their faces were illuminated with the glow of the gold, only now the light coming from the treasure wasn’t a yellow glow, but a shimmering meteor shower of bright rainbows from the collar of ruby and diamonds that lay against the black velvet.
Allegra was watching her face. ‘You’re a Romero now,’ she said quietly, and suddenly she sounded absolutely sober. ‘A Romero bride, just as I was all those years ago. These are the Romero jewels, so it’s only right that they should be passed on to you.’
Lily’s hand had automatically flown to her mouth when she’d first seen the diamonds, but she dropped it now and tried to speak. ‘Oh…señora….’
‘Please, call me Allegra.’
‘Allegra, I can’t accept these,’ she protested a little breath-lessly. ‘They’re beautiful—more beautiful than anything I’ve ever seen, but so expensive…’
‘Priceless.’ Allegra got up, swaying very slightly as she leaned forward and picked up the necklace. ‘But you already have my son, Lily, and although he might not think it he is worth so much more to me than these are. Please, let me put them on.’
The stones felt very cold against Lily’s bare skin, and Allegra’s long fingernails scraped at her neck as she struggled with the clasp. Lily closed her eyes, fighting back the rising nausea and the feeling that she was being strangled…suffocated…
‘There.’ With a triumphant flourish Allegra stood back and, taking Lily by the hand, led her over to a mirror that hung on the wall.
The collar was wide, seeming to elongate her neck, and the large diamonds glittered with a brilliance that dazzled her. In the centre a single ruby nestled exactly in the hollow at the base of her throat, and it looked like a drop of blood.
Lily jumped slightly as Allegra’s face appeared beside hers in the mirror, and with a strange, dreamlike expression Allegra removed Lily’s own cheap costume earrings and slipped a pair of ruby droplets in their place.
‘I…I don’t know what to say…’ she said, truthfully. She felt a little faint, a little dizzy and it was taking all her energy just to suppress the sickness. Allegra’s fingers bit into her flesh a little too hard as she held Lily in front of the mirror.
‘Welcome to the family, Lily,’ she said in a strange, choked voice. ‘I hope that—’
She didn’t get any further. At that moment the door opened, and Tristan appeared.
‘There you are.’
He stopped, and although his expression didn’t change much there was something about the stillness that suddenly seemed to come over him that made Lily’s heart batter against her ribs. In the light of the silk-shaded lamps he looked very pale.
And terrifyingly angry.
Allegra stepped back, away from Lily. ‘Tristan, we were just—’ she began, falteringly and then started again. ‘The Romero jewels belong to Lily now.’
Tristan didn’t look at her. Not for a second did his eyes leave Lily. They glittered with a dark brilliance like the diamonds.
‘Take them off,’ he said in a voice of frosted steel.
‘It’s so kind of your mother,’ Lily said breathlessly, but her throat tightened around the words and she got no further. Her heartbeat drummed in her ears, and an icy mist of horror and panic seemed to be closing around her, blurring everything that was familiar and normal and logical.
‘Take. Them. Off,’ he snapped. ‘Now.’
Understanding tore into her head like a cyclone. Her fingers flew to the clasp and shakily fumbled with it. Of course, she thought despairingly, of course. He was telling her she had no right to wear the priceless Romero jewels. Her chest burned with the effort of breathing and acid tears gathered behind her eyes as the clasp opened and the necklace slithered off in a shimmer of brilliance that only real diamonds gave off.
Their marriage was a sham. Paste and plastic. Not real. The Romero jewels belonged around the neck of a woman Tristan loved, a woman he had willingly taken to be his bride, not the one who had trapped him into it.
She handed them back to Allegra, opening her mouth to say something, but discovering that she didn’t know what to say. Thank you?
Sorry?
In the end she settled instead for a frozen little smile before following Tristan from the room.
‘Well, that went well, then.’
It was a pretty feeble attempt at humour, Lily knew that. She couldn’t blame Tristan for completely ignoring it and keeping his stony face turned towards the blank, dark window of the car. But still it left the problem of the gaping chasm that had opened up between them. The closeness they had shared this afternoon now seemed about a million years ago. Miserably she tried again.
‘Tristan, I’m sorry. I didn’t know that she was going to do that, and I wasn’t going to—’
‘Forget it.’ His voice stung her like the lash of a whip. He took a deep breath, regaining his formidable self-control again before saying, ‘It’s not your fault.’
There was a terrible finality in his voice and he kept his face turned away. His profile looked as if it had been carved in ice.
Not her fault. Of course not. She couldn’t help what she was, or, more importantly, what she wasn’t—aristocratic, well-connected, with a string of surnames that would never fit in the strip on the back of a credit card, and a Christmas-card list that included all the crowned heads of Europe.
And that was what all this was about.
She had failed to pull it off, this business of being the Romero bride. Her face might have graced some of the most prestigious magazine covers in the world, but it had failed to fit in the Romeros’ exclusive circle. Juan Carlos hadn’t bothered to pretend, and although any fool could see that Tristan had issues with his family, it was also obvious that on some deep and primitive level he was also deeply bonded to them. In my family you get…roots so deep they’re like anchors of concrete, holding you so tightly that you can’t move.
That was how it was. How he was, and there was nothing anyone could do to change it. The question was, could they somehow find a way to live with it? As the car made its way through the narrow streets of the Barri Gotic she very tentatively reached out and covered his hand with hers.
‘Tristan, I know I was wrong to—’
Very gently he moved his hand away and turned his head to face her. The street lights shone on the rain-wet, night-black window, lining his face with watery shadows.
‘No,’ he said flatly. ‘You weren’t wrong. I was. I was wrong to think this could be more than just a business arrangement, Lily. I was wrong to let you think it was ever going to work.’
Lily felt the blood drain from her face as his shocking, hurtful words sank in. ‘But what about this afternoon? ‘A mistake.’
‘No…’ she whimpered. ‘Tristan, no.’
‘Yes.’ His voice was low and forceful. ‘I’m thinking of you, Lily; I’m trying to do what’s best for you. We have to keep up this charade in front of everyone else, but I can’t do it all the time in private as well.’ He sighed. ‘From now on, it’s as we discussed at the start. A business arrangement. A marriage in name only.’
Lily was too shocked to cry. She had gambled, and she had lost. Everything, including her dignity and her heart. All she had left was her baby.
That night Lily lay on her side of the wide bed that had been the scene of such rapturous lovemaking earlier. She felt as if she were balanced on the edge of some dark and fathomless abyss.
The next morning Tristan went to the office and Dimitri collected her from the hotel and took her to Tristan’s apart ment in the Eixample. Left by herself, she walked slowly around her new home, admiring the pale blond wooden floors, the sleekly efficient kitchen with its stainless steel surfaces and gleaming run of fitted units, the big windows that looked out over the city to the sea in the distance, and thought wistfully of the cluttered house in Primrose Hill.
She felt very alone. And very certain that, not only had her brief honeymoon ended, but so, effectively, had her marriage.
CHAPTER TEN
‘LILY, my darling!’
The nicotine-soaked rasp of Lily’s agent in London reached down the telephone line into the quiet of the Barcelona apartment like an echo from another planet.
‘Now, don’t hang up, angel—I’m not ringing to pressure you about work, I just want to know how you are. And of course make sure that you’re eating properly and getting plenty of sleep, darling. I’m worried about you.’
‘Just like the old days, Maggie,’ said Lily with a smile as she sank down into one of Tristan’s squat, modern sofas and slid a cushion into the small of her back. When Lily and Scarlet had arrived in London as green seventeen-year-olds Maggie Mason had clucked over them like a mother hen, although her motives were largely financial.
