Giselle’s petulant voice pulled him from his thoughts. ‘Why can’t I come to the wedding with you? Anyone would think you were trying to avoid being seen with me.’
‘That’s not true, cara. But I can’t turn up at a wedding with an uninvited companion.’
The hard gleam in Giselle’s eyes warned Luca that damage limitation was needed. His fiancée had been blessed with beauty at the expense of brains, but she was well aware that his thirty-fifth birthday was two weeks away. He felt a surge of impotent fury that everything that mattered to him lay in the hands of a brainless bimbo. It wasn’t Giselle’s fault, he reminded himself. She was the solution—not the cause of his problems.
‘While I’m away, why don’t you visit the jewellers and buy that diamond necklace?’
He dropped a credit card onto the bed and Giselle snatched it up.
‘I might as well get the matching earrings, too.’
‘Why not?’ Luca murmured drily.
So what if his bride-to-be had an avaricious streak a mile wide? he thought five minutes later, as he walked out of the building and climbed into the chauffeur-driven car waiting to take him to the airport. What were a few diamonds when he would soon have everything he wanted?
Inexplicably, the memory of a pair of sapphire-blue eyes slid into his mind. He gave an indifferent shrug. Later today Athena Howard would become Mrs Charles Fairfax. He had only agreed to attend the wedding as a favour to Kadir.
Luca frowned, thinking of the phone call he’d received from the Sultan of Zenhab.
‘Lexi is upset that we can’t fly to England for her sister’s wedding because the baby is due any day. We’d both be grateful if you would attend the wedding in our place and try and talk to Athena. Lexi is worried that her sister is making a mistake by marring Charles. You and I both know from our schooldays that Charlie Fairfax is a charmless oaf,’ Kadir had reminded Luca. ‘But if Athena seems happy then you won’t need to hang around. However, if you detect that she’s having doubts about the marriage...’
‘What do you expect me to do?’ Luca had demanded.
‘Stop the wedding from going ahead,’ Kadir had replied succinctly. ‘I don’t know how, exactly, but I’m sure you’ll think of something.’
* * *
She did not look so much like a meringue as a cream puff, Athena decided as she studied her reflection in the mirror in her bedroom at Woodley Lodge, the country house of Lord and Lady Fairfax. But it was too late now to wonder why she had allowed herself to be persuaded to choose this crinoline-inspired wedding dress with a skirt so wide that she could be mistaken for the White Cliffs of Dover. The puffed sleeves broadened her top half, while the enormous skirt with its layers of white satin ruffles accentuated her lack of height and made her look dumpy.
‘You’ll be marrying into the aristocracy in front of five hundred guests,’ her mother had reminded Athena when she had tentatively remarked that a simpler style of dress might suit her better. ‘You need a dress that will make you the centre of attention.’
Butterflies performed a clog dance in Athena’s stomach at the prospect of five hundred people looking at her as she walked down the aisle. Please God, she prayed she didn’t do something embarrassing like trip on her long skirt and annoy Charlie.
She hoped he was in a better mood than he had been the previous evening. She had felt awful when she’d spilt red wine on the cream velvet carpet in the sitting room. Lady Fairfax had said that it didn’t matter, although she’d compressed her lips into a thin line, but Charlie had made a fuss and had said she was like a bull in a china shop.
Athena bit her lip. Sometimes Charlie said quite hurtful things—almost as if he didn’t care about her feelings. During the past year that they had been engaged, she had tried her best to be a gracious and elegant hostess at the dinner parties he had asked her to organise. But she would be the first to admit that she was clumsy—especially when she was nervous—and she always seemed to do something wrong that earned Charlie’s criticism.
Heaven knew what he would say when he heard of her latest catastrophe. While inserting the contact lenses she wore because she was short-sighted she had dropped a lens—the last of her disposable lenses as it turned out—down the plughole of the sink, which meant that she would have to wear her glasses to the wedding.
Athena glanced longingly out of the window at the cloudless September sky. It was a beautiful day, and she would love to be outside, but she’d had to spend hours having her hair styled in an elaborate ‘up-do’, which required dozens of hairpins and so much hairspray that her hair felt as rigid as a helmet. And a make-up artist had applied a heavy foundation to her face which made her feel as though she was wearing a mask. Dramatic eye make-up and a cherry-red shade of lipstick certainly made her noticeable.
The person in the mirror did not look like her. Somewhere in all the wedding preparations Athena Howard had turned into someone she didn’t recognise, she thought ruefully.
She tried to reassure herself that the sick feeling in the pit of her stomach was just pre-wedding nerves. But her sense of panic would not go away. Her legs felt as if they had turned to jelly and she sank down onto the edge of the bed.
Why was she about to get married in a four-thousand-pound dress that did not suit her? That amount of money would keep the orphanage she supported in India running for months. She thought of the House of Happy Smiles in Jaipur, which was in desperate need of funds, and wished that instead of paying for an expensive wedding the money could have been donated to the fundraising campaign she had set up for the orphanage. She didn’t want an extravagant wedding—she would have been happier with a small event—but what she wanted didn’t matter.
It was typical of her that she had tried so hard to please everyone—her parents, Lady Fairfax and Charlie—that she had ignored the voice inside her head warning her that she was making a mistake. It had taken a phone call from her sister last night to make her confront her doubts.
‘Do you love Charles Fairfax with all your heart? And does he love you?’ Lexi had asked her. ‘If you can’t say yes to both those questions you should cancel the wedding.’
‘I can’t cancel it!’
The tension Athena had felt during her conversation with her sister gripped her again now. Through the window she could see the huge marquee on the lawn. Dozens of waiters in white jackets were scurrying to and fro, carrying trays of glasses for the champagne reception which was to take place after the four o’clock wedding ceremony at the village church. Later in the evening there would be a banquet for five hundred guests, followed by a firework display.
Charlie had said that three members of the House of Lords who were friends of his father’s were on the guest list, as well as a minor member of the royal family. Calling off the wedding at this late stage was not an option. It was all her parents had talked about for months, and her father, for the first time in Athena’s life, had told her that he was proud of her.
Lexi’s words played in Athena’s head. ‘Do you love Charles Fairfax with all your heart?’
A picture flashed into her mind of Lexi and Kadir on their wedding day. A huge state celebration befitting the Sultan of Zenhab and his bride had been followed by a private ceremony at the palace for close family and friends. The couple’s happiness had been tangible, and the adoration in Kadir’s eyes as he had looked at his wife had been deeply moving.
Charlie had never looked at her like that, Athena thought, unconsciously gnawing on her lip until she tasted blood. His eyes had never blazed with fierce possession, as if she was the most precious