Watching him go, Zoe felt defeat wash over her in heavy black waves. Back to square one, or even further. Javier’s opinion of her would be rock-bottom. Miserably she regretted having thrown at him that she might marry Ollie, not having meant a word of it because it had sprung from deep hurt and anger.
If she ever saw Oliver Sherman again she would throttle him! Spite had made him send that vile message. As Javier had pointed out, her future fortune was no secret, and she had always known that Sherman’s proposals had stemmed from avarice. He’d seen her as a soft touch, but she wasn’t. Just because she’d been free with her generous allowance, happy to pick up the tabs in exchange for fun nights out in smooth, cynically witty company because it had temporarily taken her mind off her unstoppable longing for Javier, didn’t mean she was a complete fool.
Thwarted in his plans to get himself a wealthy wife, Sherman was spitefully trying to make mischief.
‘Are you all right, my dear?’ Lionel Masters was beside her, leaning heavily on his cane, Isabella Maria clinging onto his other arm. ‘You are very pale.’
‘A bit of a headache.’ Zoe pulled herself together. ‘Too much champagne, probably.’ Her smile felt strained. How could she convince Javier that that note from Sherman was just a cruel attempt to pay her back for consistently turning him down?
The utterly distasteful implications would put her light years away from earning his respect, never mind his love!
‘Javier should be taking you on an exotic honeymoon,’ Lionel proclaimed. A sentiment echoed by Isabella Maria’s ‘He should pamper his pretty young bride, I told him as much!’ making Zoe feel like something silly and childish marrying a man old enough to be her father. Javier was only twelve years her senior, for goodness’ sake, and she wasn’t just out of the nursery and her smile was making her face ache!
‘We’re both perfectly happy here,’ she said by way of scotching any more parental interference, neglecting to explain that what use was a honeymoon when the bridegroom had no intention of getting up close and intimate? And even if she’d harboured hopes of making him change his mind in that direction he wouldn’t touch her with the proverbial bargepole after what Oliver Sherman had written.
She fell in step beside her in-laws as they progressed slowly towards the house. The caterers were clearing the debris, dismantling the long trestle-table; her wedding day was over. From the corner of her eye she saw Ethel take the gaudy bouquet away—hopefully towards the compost heap!
‘Lionel and I will take a rest until supper and give you and Javier some time on your own,’ Isabella Maria stated. ‘I was surprised and touched when Ethel showed us to the rooms we used when we lived here—I would have thought you and Javier would have chosen them.’
‘I chose the blue suite when I came to live here,’ Zoe offered obliquely, desperate to get off the subject of sleeping arrangements. ‘As far as I know, Javier’s never used the master suite. When he came here—’ never once since the Spanish disaster ‘—he used the room above his office for easy access. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ll go and find him.’
Easier said than done. A rapid search of the ground-floor rooms, the faithful Boysie at her heels, followed by Honey, the inquisitive ginger cat, revealed nothing but his absence.
Had he taken himself off to fume in private at the discovery that he had got legally tied up to the sort of chick who had been around the block a few times? A flighty piece who would naturally seek forbidden excitement with a former lover when her husband began to bore her?
His proud, fastidious nature would be appalled. That she hadn’t exactly given him the impression that she was the type of girl to sit chastely around knitting doilies for her bottom drawer, should Mr Right ever hove into her limited view, made her shudder right down to the soles of her feet.
No, of course not! she scolded herself as she mounted the stairs to seek her room and rid herself of her wedding finery. Get real! Her supposed lack of morals wouldn’t touch him emotionally. He’d married her out of his strict sense of duty, hadn’t he? Nothing else. He’d decided she was running out of control, and that only by marrying her could he make her toe the line, and that vile note would have reinforced that already entrenched opinion.
Knowing him, and his determination to do the right thing, she’d probably find herself incarcerated in a nunnery for the next two years!
The shadows were softening into hazy dusk as Javier garaged the Jag beside the racy yellow Lotus. Grim satisfaction hardened the sensual line of his mouth. Hooking his discarded suit jacket over his shoulder, he stood to watch the bats’ acrobatic aerial display. His thoughts, mercifully calmer now, winged back over the events of the earlier part of the evening.
Sherman would know better than to attempt to contact Zoe again.
A call at his parents’ home in the village a couple of miles away had had Monica Sherman, a wispy, fluttery woman, apologizing. ‘I’m afraid our son’s out. His friends were here earlier and I heard them talking about a new club that’s opened just outside Gloucester on the Cheltenham road. I’m sure they decided to try it and that means he won’t be in until the early hours—you know what boys are like! Can I give him a message?’
No message, and at around twenty-four Sherman was hardly a boy.
He’d found the club without difficulty. It might be new but the scene had been tediously predictable. Overheated, overcrowded, underlit. Loud, mindless music. He’d located Sherman leaning against a gilded pillar, glass in hand, a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth, eyes drooping as he’d ogled a redhead in a yellow dress that had looked little larger than a vest.
Javier had confronted him, his bones clenched, his voice harsh as he’d advised, ‘Keep away from my wife. If you know what’s good for you, you won’t even nod in her direction if you pass her in the street.’
The redhead had giggled. Pique pouting his mouth, Sherman had tried to make himself look taller. Javier had swung away, distaste flattening his mouth. Then had abruptly turned back, going very still as the younger man had sniped, ‘You’re welcome to her but when your first kid turns up get it DNA-tested to make sure it’s yours. Zo’s a bit of a goer!’
With one well-aimed blow Javier had felled him. With icy eyes he’d watched the other man slide down the pillar, his arms sheltering his head, his mouth crumpling as if he’d been about to cry and call for his mother!
Javier had turned on his heel and stalked out.
His anger under tight control, he had driven back to Wakeham Lodge, taking extra care to keep within the speed limit. That initial white-hot rage when he had wanted to kill the creep was over. It wasn’t like him to resort to violence. In fact it was totally unprecedented. He couldn’t understand why he had slapped the little toad when a cutting put-down would have been just as effective and far more dignified.
Logically, the low-life could have been stirring it. And equally logically there was no need to confront Zoe with what her former boyfriend had said. If she had been having sex with him—and it seemed likely in view of the fact that she’d previously announced that she was thinking of accepting his repeated proposals of marriage—his decision to marry her himself to take her out of circulation and keep her safe until she developed at least a modicum of maturity had been the right one.
So why did he suddenly feel empty, as if he was reaching out to find the one thing that would fill the void in his life that was as strange as it was unexpected, not knowing what it was, knowing only that he desperately needed it?
Cynically putting his odd mood down to hunger, he tracked his family down in the conservatory, grouped around the Victorian white-painted cast-iron table lavishly spread with a selection of cold foods.
As he stood unnoticed in the shadows beneath the high arching doorway his breath clogged in his lungs. Zoe had changed into something long, slithery and clingy the colour of old ivory. It left her graceful arms bare and the thigh-high split at the side of the skirt