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Lionel Asensio, who looked wholly unscathed to Geraldine’s eye, which was an injustice in one profoundly male form.
Lionel Asensio, who was looking at her now as if she’d sprouted an extra head when she’d fainted.
Not that Geraldine could get her head aroundthat, either. She was no wilting flower. She had neverswoonedbefore.
She was sure that was his fault, too. Somehow.
And she was certainly not planning to dwell on the way it had felt to come awake in his arms, warm against his chest, as if the whole of the world and all she would ever be or want to be was...him. That harsh, aristocratic face, tipped toward hers. That gleam in his dark gaze, as if he could and would hold her forever.
As if he really was her husband.
She’d had the strange and yet comforting notion that, at last, she was precisely where she belonged.
Odious thought, she told herself now.You must have hit your head, despite what he told you. There will no doubt be a bump to make sense of all this later.
As for right now, she told herself she wassitting in her power. She had made it perfectly clear that she meant what she said and whether he believed it or not, Geraldine was prepared to do whatever was necessary to make sure that Jules was taken care of as she deserved. As Seanna had deserved, too. The confusion of this strangest of days was nothing compared with her mission here.
And she felt something inside her ease, almost, because she was finally doing the thing she’d promised Seanna she would. Again and again in those last days, when she hadn’t known if her cousin could even hear her any longer.
“I can see that you have nothing to say for yourself,” she said a few moments later, when all Lionel did was gaze back at her with that faintly bemused expression on his supremely arrogant face. “I’m not surprised. I know it is often difficult to face the consequences of one’s actions.”
Or so she had heard and witnessed.Shehad personally never left anyone pregnant by the side of the metaphoric road, soshewas not an expert on these matters. Only their terribly sad and unjust consequences.
Which, apparently, Lionel Asensio had avoided until now. It had astonished Geraldine that no matter how deep her digging on him had gone, she had found no other illegitimate children knocking about. When she’d expected to find several battalions’ worth, at the least.
“Mi querida esposa,”he murmured, seeming toexpandsomehow, there in the back seat of the car as it bumped its way along ancient Italian roads she might have found beautiful at any other time. To say nothing of that famously beautiful lake gleaming in the distance. “My dear wife, you seem to have me confused with someone else.”
“I know exactly who you are,” Geraldine told him, and shoved her glasses back up her nose. Perhaps more vigorously than necessary. “Yours is the name my cousin spoke again and again on her deathbed. And just to be certain, I spent months researching you after she passed.”
“I do not doubt these things, necessarily,” he said, though there was a certain sheen in his dark-coffee gaze that made her suspect that he did, in fact, harbor more than a little doubt. But if so, it did not appear to upset him overmuch. All he did was relax back into the seat, managing to look somehow indolent and stern at once. Geraldine had no earthly idea why a simple shift of his body should seem to run straight through her like something electric. She assured itself it was further evidence of his guilt. “However, a few words from a woman in some distress—no matter her circumstances—and whatever it is you call research do not add up to proof, I am afraid. That would require blood tests.”
Theaudacity. Geraldine bristled. “I’m not at all surprised you have found a way to excuse yourself. Isn’t that just like a man? Always willing to shirk responsibility at the faintest indication—”
“I have never shirked responsibility in my life and do not intend to start now,” Lionel told her with a certain intensity in his voice, so that when he cut her off it did not quite occur to her to continue. Especially when she could see a matching blaze in his eyes. “This is a pointless conversation to have in the absence of any tests and the cool comfort such scientific fact inevitably provides, Geraldine. But I will ask you this. Who exactly is this cousin of yours that you believe I treated so shabbily?”
And then, because he actually looked as if he wanted to know, Geraldine found herself wishing that was a simpler question. Or one that even now, all these months later, long after Seanna had finally gone to her rest, she could actually answer with some authority.
She told herself she wasn’t entirely sure she evenwantedto open up Seanna’s wounds to this man, when he’d already proved he could not be trusted to take care of them. Or her.
On the other hand, she had gone to all this trouble to find him. And was now married to the man, if he was to be believed. That she did not intend to honor any part of a ceremony she still couldn’t quite believe had taken place did not make her any less married. Not if it was real. That was a curveball she hadn’t seen coming.
She was beginning to deeply regret that she had charged into this whole situation so thoughtlessly. There had been no need to disrupt that wedding. She could have made an appointment with this man or one of his minions, as her mother had suggested repeatedly on the plane. But Geraldine had decided that the situation called fora little bitof drama. Surely the man deserved it after what he’d done.
I hope you’re happy now, she told herself, in a voice that sounded uncannily like her mother’s.
Because she really did know best, it seemed. Entirely too much of the time. No wonder she was Geraldine’s favorite person.
Still, Geraldine had never been any sort of shrinking violet and it wasn’t as if she could rewind and start the day anew. What was done was done and now all there was left to do was make the best of things.
She fully intended to do just that, no matter what it took.
Geraldine had promised Seanna she would, andshewas a woman who kept her promises. So she squared her shoulders, adjusted her glasses once more for good luck and courage, and forced herself to meet his gaze as directly as ever.
Maybe more, because he clearly hadn’tseenSeanna before. He’d seen only what she’d become, Geraldine assumed. Only what the life she’d chosen had done to her.
But she wanted him to know the person her cousin had been beneath all that. The person who should have lived long enough to raise her own baby.
The person who deserved far more than his callous abandonment.
