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She paused, looking awkward. ‘And there’s a Mr Fleming waiting in the book room, sir. I believe he’s expected.’
‘I will see him now,’ Zac said. ‘While you show my wife to our room.’ He took Dana’s nerveless hand and kissed it lightly. ‘A matter of business, but I shall not keep you waiting long, mia cara,’ he added softly.
She stammered something and turned almost precipitately to follow the housekeeper up the stairs, her mind whirling.
Surely, she thought, he didn’t mean that as it sounded.
She’d thought she’d be allowed a breathing space.
Time to adjust to this new and difficult situation.
But she could hardly protest. This, after all, was what she’d signed up to. And Zac was a businessman. Whether it was day or night, he would expect his money’s worth.
They had reached their destination, she realised, and Mrs Harris was throwing open the door with something of a flourish, and standing back to allow Dana to precede her into the room.
‘I do hope you’ll be pleased, madam.’
A better word would be ‘astounded,’ Dana thought as she looked around her. Because she barely recognised her new surroundings.
The great canopied bed had gone, along with the rest of the enormous dark furniture, to be replaced by a wide, low divan, with an elegant headboard in the same pale honey-coloured wood as the pretty antique dressing table and the night tables flanking the bed.
The walls were now ivory, as were the curtains at the long windows, which were embellished with a delicate tracery of leaves and flowers in gold, a design matched by the bedcover.
‘So nice that this room is being used again,’ said Mrs Harris. ‘Mr Adam, of course, preferred to sleep in his old room, but, even so, I was sorry when he decided to get rid of the bed, although it wasn’t my place to say so. But the room’s certainly more cheerful without it.’
She walked across to a door. ‘Your bathroom and dressing room are through here, madam. Mr Belisandro’s dressing room and shower are reached by that door opposite.
‘It’s been a real rush getting everything ready,’ she went on. ‘But I think it’s been worth it.’
‘Yes,’ Dana said rather faintly. ‘It’s—beautiful. Absolutely amazing.’
Mrs Harris beamed at her. ‘Mr Belisandro will be glad to hear that, madam. He insisted that everything be exactly right for you.’
‘He’s—very considerate,’ Dana agreed quietly. She became aware that she was still clutching her roses, and Mrs Harris noticed it too.
‘May I put those in water for you, madam, while you have a proper look round?’
‘Why, yes. Thank you.’ Dana surrendered her bouquet to the housekeeper, who bustled away with it.
Investigation showed that her part of the suite had been created from the adjoining large bedroom.
She could not fault the dressing room, lined with fitted wardrobes on one side and drawers and smaller cupboards on the other, already filled with the trousseau that had been sent down two days earlier. While the bathroom beyond it was a dream, with its deep tub and roomy shower, all enclosed in tiles gleaming like mother-of-pearl, and giving the impression that she would be bathing in an enormous shell.
As she returned to the bedroom, she glanced across at the other door, but decided against investigating what arrangements Zac had made for himself, telling herself just to be glad that they were separate.
She wandered over to the dressing table and studied herself in its mirror. She was sure most brides didn’t look so wide-eyed and nervous or have lines of strain etched beside their mouths.
It occurred to her that until now she’d been cocooned in an aura of unreality, telling herself that she would never be called on to ratify her unholy bargain.
Yet here she was. And with no one to blame but herself for her predicament.
She wondered, with a sudden shiver, how she’d be feeling if her original plan had worked. If it was Adam with the right to share that bed and impose his demands on her.
Except it would never have happened, she thought slowly. Because somewhere along the way the real Adam would have surfaced and I’d have run, even though it meant losing Mannion.
And that being the case, why didn’t I tell Zac I’d changed my mind and get out while I still could?
Only to realise, as if some veil in her mind had been suddenly torn aside, the truth she’d been hiding from for the past seven years.
And exactly why she was standing here now, waiting for her husband to join her.
