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‘The death of my parents was probably easier for me,’ Angel conceded tautly after a long stretch of silence had prompted her to turn her head and look at him enquiringly. ‘We weren’t a close family. They had their lives and I had mine and, aside from photo opportunities to sell the cosy family concept to the public, I only saw them occasionally when I was home from boarding school.’
Gaby was frowning. ‘It sounds pretty cold and artificial.’
‘It was.’
‘So why did they have you?’
‘Don’t be naive. My father needed an heir for the throne and once I was born he could relax, duty done.’
‘And your mother...you said she didn’t like children much?’
‘She didn’t but I’m not sure my father would have married her if she hadn’t got pregnant, so my conception was probably planned every step of the way,’ Angel said cynically. ‘Her family had married her off to a man old enough to be her grandfather and she wanted out of Alharia...look, I really don’t want to talk about this.’
Disconcerted by that blunt admission, Gaby swallowed hard. ‘Er... I—’
‘You seem to have an incessant curiosity where my family is concerned. I should warn you that there’s a lot of murky messy material in my background, not the sort of stuff you would enjoy hearing about,’ he assured her pointedly.
Gaby had paled, recognising that she had pushed too hard too fast for him to talk about his troubled background. He wasn’t ready yet to talk, to share with her, but time, she reflected, would make him more comfortable with her. Naturally, her curiosity had increased when she’d learned through his half-brother’s existence that there was another whole layer to his family circle.
‘I’m not a prude,’ Gaby murmured tightly, referring to his assumption that she would be upset in some way by what he called ‘murky material’ in his background. ‘Sensible doesn’t mean stuffy.’
‘A virgin at twenty-four? That speaks for itself. Look in a dictionary and under P for prude you will find an image of someone who looks remarkably like you!’ Angel riposted.
‘If you weren’t driving, I’d thump you!’ Gaby told him tartly.
‘See...sensible,’ Angel murmured, soft and smooth as silk, reaching for her hand and bringing it down on a lean, powerful thigh, the strong muscles below the taut denim flexing beneath her palm. ‘You can’t change what you are at the core.’
‘I seriously hope you’re wrong in that conviction,’ Gaby contended. ‘After all, you’re a womaniser and I don’t want to be married to a womaniser.’
‘I made the most of my freedom while I was a single man, nothing wrong with that,’ Angel asserted with unblemished cool. ‘Now I’m in a different phase of life and I want a successful marriage.’
‘That all sounds very good on paper but it’s not easy for a leopard to change his spots over the long haul,’ Gaby opined, not so easily convinced that he could be a changed man.
‘You cherish such low expectations of me, and do try not to refer to our brand-new marriage as “the long haul”. That’s downright disheartening,’ he censured while electric gates swept back to allow the SUV access to a steep track lined with trees that arched overhead in a living canopy.
The track became rough and stony and passed along the edge of a large lake, also surrounded by woodland. A sprawling stone and wood building that looked remarkably like a large Tuscan farmhouse came into view. It was very picturesque and not at all what she had expected of their destination.
‘This place hasn’t been used much since my grandfather passed away half a century ago. My parents weren’t into country life. I did think about tearing it down and replacing it with something more contemporary.’
‘Oh, no, look at those roses!’ Gaby exclaimed, already climbing out of the car to get a closer look at the superb many-petalled ivory blooms trained to frame the veranda. ‘It would be a sin to disturb them.’
She likes roses, Angel registered, watching in fascination as his bride lifted an almost reverent fingertip to stroke a velvety soft cream petal. He wondered if she would ever touch him with the same appreciation and wondered why he would even want that from her, why the sight of her hair gleaming in the sunshine, her delicate profile and the glitter of the dress sheathing those wondrous curves almost dazzled him. Sexual deprivation, he reckoned wryly. He’d be seeing unicorns in the woods next. After all, womenneverdazzled him.
He was not easily impressed by her sex. He knew that very few women could be trusted, for women had let him down time and time again, not least the one who had given birth to him. No, keep it all in proportion, he urged himself. Gabriella was a rare beauty, clever and entertaining and in a decidedly different style from his previous lovers, but she was also completely infuriating on a regular basis.
‘There’s a rose garden somewhere around,’ he proffered vaguely, feeling oddly guilty for that last critical thought as he thrust open the door and urged her inside. ‘I used to fish in the lake when I was a boy.’
Gaby stared at the rustic wooden stairs several feet ahead of her and shone her inquisitive gaze round the roomy hall, with its old-fashioned black-and-white photos on the walls and the cosy fireplace adorned with a basket of greenery and a vase of roses. ‘It’s charming,’ she said softly.
A little woman emerged from an ultra-modern kitchen that looked new and bobbed a curtsey. ‘This is Viola, Gabriella. She looks after the house while her husband and sons tend the vines. She’s a wonderful cook,’ he murmured in a low voice, switching to Italian as he told the older woman that she was free to finish for the day. ‘Let me show you the rest of the house...’
Upstairs he showed her into a big airy room with ancient floorboards and a high beamed ceiling but while the surroundings were old, the furnishings were modern. Pale green and white drapes fluttered in the cooling breeze emanating from the open French windows. Gaby walked through them out onto a large balcony that literally seemed to be hung on the edge of a cliff to give a fabulous view of the wooded mountain range and the agricultural land spread out in the valley below. ‘I feel as though I’m standing at the top of the world,’ Gaby murmured appreciatively.
‘Apparently, my grandparents stumbled on this place soon after they married. The house was derelict, and they rebuilt it and extended it several times. I imagine the lake sold itself because my grandfather was, apparently, a keen fisherman.’
‘But you didn’t know them personally,’ she gathered, by the way he was talking.
‘No, they had my father later in life and had passed by the time I was born. It’s a shame. By all accounts, my grandfather had the stability that my father lacked.’
