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‘It doesn’t matter.’ Lily’s voice had dried up to a husk of a whisper. Tristan was coming towards them, one hand loosely thrust into the pocket of his trousers. Every beautiful inch of him, every relaxed, graceful movement declared his utter self-assurance and complete ease, while she felt as if her insides were slowly being fed through a paper shredder. She wondered whether she might actually be about to pass out cold. The idea of blissful oblivion was remarkably appealing.
‘Congratulations, Scarlet.’ Tristan spoke gravely as he bent to kiss each of Scarlet’s cheeks. ‘Tom is a very lucky man. You look radiant tonight.’
There had been times in the past eight weeks when Lily had managed to convince herself that her mind was exaggerating the power of Tristan Romero de Losada Montalvo’s attraction. During the blank hours of those sleepless nights the memory of his cool, moonlit perfection had taken on an almost mythical quality, mingling as she slid into restless, fragmented sleep with the story he had told her about the moon goddess and Endymion, until she could no longer distinguish reality from fantasy, dreams from memories.
But she had exaggerated nothing, and the beauty of his chiselled angel’s face shocked her afresh. She flattened herself back against the stone balustrade, both dreading and burning for the moment when he would turn his attention to her, certain that the secret she carried within her body was written all over her face.
‘Tristan!’
Tom’s triumphant shout echoed from above, and Lily felt a mixture of frustration and relief as the spell of anticipation was broken. A second later Tom was clattering down the stairs towards them, a lopsided grin on his face. ‘You’re hardly over the threshold and already you’re kissing my fiancée. Have you no respect for the sanctity of marriage?’
Tristan raised his hands in an elegant gesture of helplessness. ‘Haven’t I always said that you can’t hold a woman with a piece of paper?’
‘Unless she wants to be held,’ laughed Scarlet slightly awkwardly as Tom put his arm around her shoulders and pulled her to him. He dropped a kiss on her cheek.
‘Sorry to drag her away, but there are about five hundred distant relations of mine up there demanding to meet her, so you have to release her—just for the time being.’ He started to move off, pulling Scarlet back up the stairs with him. Keeping her eyes fixed on the stone-flagged floor, Lily felt panic rising like flood water up from the soles of her feet at the prospect of being left alone with Tristan. ‘We’ll catch up later once the hordes have been satisfied!’ Tom called back from halfway up the stairs, then added with an airy wave of his hand, ‘Sorry, you two have met, haven’t you? At the summer ball?’
Her heart was thudding wildly. He could probably hear it. God, he could probably see it. Heat bloomed in her cheeks as she steeled herself to look into his face. The face of the man who was going to be the father of her child.
His expression was cool, distant, polite. And when he spoke the tone of his voice perfectly matched it.
‘Have we?’
CHAPTER FIVE
THERE were people who enjoyed deliberately inflicting pain, as Tristan Romero de Losada Montalvo knew only too well.
He was not one of them.
However, when it came to women he was firmly of the belief that it was necessary to be cruel to be kind, and he had absolutely no intention of allowing Lily Alexander to think that there would be any kind of repeat of what had happened on that hot night in the summer. Or giving her any hint of how much the memory of it had troubled him afterwards.
He watched hurt cloud her slanting, silvery eyes and tensed himself against a sudden rush of unfamiliar guilt. He had expected anger, indignation, a slap in the face—all of which he deserved, and had received from many women similarly slighted in the past. Lily Alexander’s quiet dignity unsettled him.
‘Yes, we have,’ she said softly, almost apologetically. ‘I was the girl with…with the dove.’
Instantly her words transported him back to the tower in the dusk and he felt as if the air had been forced from his lungs as he recalled the gentle murmur of her voice, the compassion that shone in her eyes. And the effect it had had on him.
One-nil to Lily Alexander.
He nodded slowly. ‘Of course.’ His lips twitched into a faint, reluctant smile. ‘Selene. The girl with the dove.’
Her eyes flew to meet his, and, seeing the cautious hope that flared there, he cursed himself. The golden rules of engagement were keep it emotionless, impersonal and keep it as a one-off. He had broken the first one in the tower, and the consequences of that had been difficult enough to deal with. He certainly wasn’t going to break either of the others.
He looked away.
‘Yes,’ she whispered. ‘I wonder what happened to it?’
Tristan paused. The next morning when he’d gone up to the dovecote at the top of the tower there had been no sign of the injured dove, which probably meant it had been taken by some predator in the night. But he wasn’t entirely heartless. Not entirely.
‘It recovered and flew away, I think,’ he said before taking a step backwards and half turning towards the stairs. ‘Anyway, it’s nice to see you again,’ he said with blank courtesy, taking a step backwards and half turning towards the stairs, ‘but now, if you’ll excuse me, I should…’
For the brief moments that Tristan’s gaze had held hers and a thousand wordless images had risen up between them, Lily was aware of the blood rushing to her face, her chest tightening and the breath catching in her throat.
It wasn’t a good combination with morning sickness. As Tristan turned away she struggled to take air into her starved lungs as a swirling tide of nausea threatened to drag her under. Groping for the stone balustrade, she felt her legs buckle, and before she could grasp at anything for support the world had gone black and she was falling.
He caught her. Of course he caught her. It would have been too much to hope for that she could just faint quietly, in private, without her humiliation being witnessed by the man who had made it perfectly plain he wanted nothing to do with her. Held tightly against the strong wall of his chest, tugged by powerful currents of sickness and dizziness, she wanted to protest, but knew that the slightest movement on her part could tip her over the edge. And the thought of throwing up all over Tristan Romero’s impeccable dinner jacket was enough to make her submit quietly.
He carried her easily, as if she really had the kind of petite build that she and Scarlet used to wish for. Cool air caressed her face, filling her lungs and sending oxygen tingling back into her bloodstream, so that she dared to risk opening her eyes again.
They were outside, walking alongside the wall of the castle. Her face was inches from the hard line of Tristan’s jaw, so she could clearly see the tautness in its set, the cleft in his chin, his full, finely shaped mouth. She took a deep breath in, and just the scent of his skin was enough to make her feel faint with longing again. Her body went rigid as she fought to escape his iron hold, desperate to put some distance between her treacherous, needy body and his hard, strong one.
‘I’m fine now…I’m so sorry…Please, put me down.’
‘Wait.’
The word was a low snarl, and instantly Lily let the fight go out of her as humiliation and despair ebbed back. She had imagined this meeting a thousand times, planned how she would be perfectly reasonable, perfectly controlled and in command of her emotions as she told him the facts and reassured him that she expected nothing from him. No demands, no histrionics, no apologies.
And definitely no fainting.
They rounded a corner and found them selves at the side of the castle that faced the gardens, which lay in a sweeping arc before them. There was a scrolled iron bench set in the shelter of the castle wall; Tristan put Lily down on it, and stood back, looming over her.
She couldn’t look at him, not trusting herself to keep the truth from showing on her face. Below, the lake was a disc of black, with the tower in its centre looking dark and forbidding. She couldn’t look at that either.
‘Better now?’
‘Yes. I’m sorry.’ Suddenly she was glad that she was sitting down. Adrenaline burned through her, making her feel shaky and spacey as the moment when she would have to tell him rushed towards her with the terrifying inevitability of an express train. She bit her lip and said hesitantly, ‘In a funny kind of way it’s worked out rather well.’
‘Meaning?’
His voice was icy. She could feel goose bumps prickling her bare arms. ‘I wanted the chance to talk to you…alone.’
His face darkened, hardened, and he sighed and turned away. ‘I thought I explained. I thought you understood that the night we shared—’
‘I did. I do.’ She cut him off, speaking with soft determination, but her heart felt as if it might burst. Oh, God…this is it. ‘But I thought you had a right to know. I’m pregnant.’
For a moment he didn’t move. Then he took a couple of steps forward, away from her, and Lily caught a fleeting glimpse of his hands, balled tightly into fists, before he thrust them into the pockets of his trousers.
It was cold. She was aware of the chilly iron scrollwork of the bench biting into her flesh through the thin silk of her dress, but she was powerless to move.
