Sara Craven - The Innocent's Sinful Craving

‘Heaven only knows what the Marchwoods will think,’ she went on peevishly. ‘I’ve tried to talk some sense into the child, but, for some reason, that cousin of Serafina’s, the Belisandro man, has taken her side.’ She sniffed again. ‘Of course, he’s always spoiled Nicola, encouraging her to have her own way. I’m only surprised he isn’t marrying her himself.’

Dana felt her heartbeat stumble and her throat tighten. She forced down another mouthful of Earl Grey.

When she spoke, her voice was remarkably steady. ‘Zac Belisandro hardly seems the marrying kind.’

Besides being safely on the other side of the world. Although it seemed that had not stopped him again pulling strings in the Latimer affairs.

‘Well, I dare say his father will have something to say about that before he’s much older,’ Miss Latimer opined snappishly. ‘Not that it’s any concern of mine,’ she added hastily. ‘Or yours for that matter.’

Dana managed a serene smile. ‘You’re quite right. Gossip can be so damaging.’

The silence that followed seemed to be waiting for her to ask, ‘And where is Adam?’

But all hell would freeze over before she said any such thing. Especially to Mimi Latimer.

Anyway, I shall see him soon enough, she thought, allowing her mind to dwell pleasurably on his windblown blond hair and almost boyish good looks, enhanced by the laughter lines at the corners of his blue eyes and the mouth that seemed always ready to smile.

A man that any woman would want, even without the riches he was bringing with him, and she knew it. Had reminded herself over and over again that it justified the course of action she was set upon.

Even so, she was suddenly struggling to hold on to that inner picture. To prevent it being superseded by another image, as disturbing as it was unwelcome. By another face, olive-skinned and saturnine, the features strongly marked, the eyes as dark and impenetrable as a starless winter night.

She put her cup with what remained of the tea carefully back on the table. ‘This has been most enjoyable, but, if you’ll excuse me, I need to stretch my legs after the drive.’

And, with another smile, she walked across the room and out through the French windows on to the terrace. Where she paused, staring at the lawns below as if in rapt admiration of its billiard table smoothness.

In reality, and in spite of herself, she was listening to her brain frantically re-echoing the name— Zac Belisandro.

His father’s only son and heir to the vast Belisandro International empire. Currently running its holdings in Australia and the Far East with an aplomb and success that was becoming legendary.

‘The man who makes Midas look like a beginner’ had been a headline in the business pages of a popular daily.

And to Dana—the man who’d caused her to be sent away from Mannion seven years ago. Her enemy, who would still want her barred now, if he wasn’t thousands of miles away.

Don’t think of him, she told herself fiercely. Concentrate on Adam. He’s the only one who matters and always has been.

But her mind—her memory—would not obey her. Because Zac Belisandro was still there like a shadow in the sunlight.

In spite of the heat, Dana shivered. Just let him stay away, she whispered silently. Don’t make me have to see him again. Ever. Or at least until I’ve got what I want and it’s too late for him to interfere and ruin everything a second time.

Until I’m Mrs Adam Latimer and Mannion belongs to me as it always should have done.

Captain Jack Latimer, she thought. Serafina’s soldier son and my father. If he hadn’t been killed in that ambush in Northern Ireland, my mother’s life—and mine—would have been very different. They would have been married, and whatever Serafina thought, she would have had to accept it.

He wouldn’t have allowed the girl he loved to be sent away in disgrace.

She walked down the terrace steps and headed across the lawn to the shrubbery. Ever since she’d first come to live at Mannion, it had been her favourite bolthole, a place to hide in when she was missing her mother and wanted to cry in peace. Aunt Joss was kind enough but too busy and often too harassed to devote much time to her. And taking charge of her young niece was something Dana knew had been thrust upon her, because her sense of duty would not allow the little girl to be fostered during her mother’s frequent and often lengthy absences in hospital.

So, a lot of the time, she was lonely. Not the kind of desolation where she knelt on the other side of a locked door listening, frightened, to her mother’s harsh weeping.

It was more a sense of bewildered abandonment which remained even when she and her mother were reunited in some new poky flat, while Linda, each time more fragile, more diminished, struggled with yet another dead-end job, and promised the brisk women who visited her in the evenings with their files of paperwork, that this time she would make an effort—make it work for Dana’s sake as well as her own.

She paused, fists suddenly clenching at her sides, as she wondered if she, a small child, had been the only one to see it was never going to happen.

And by that time all that filled her heart and mind was Mannion.

‘Our home,’ Linda had told her over and over again, murmuring to her at night in the bed they shared. ‘Our security. Our future. Taken away because I was only the housekeeper’s sister.

‘I thought your grandmother would welcome me when I went to her. Be glad that Jack had a child. I thought we could mourn for him together. Instead she sent us both away. I felt my heart break when I lost your father, but she shattered it all over again.

‘But she won’t beat us, my darling. Mannion was your father’s inheritance, so it belongs to us now and one day we’ll take it back. Say it, sweetheart. Let me hear the words.’

And obediently, eyes closing, voice fogged with sleep Dana would whisper, ‘One day we’ll take it back.’

Not that it helped. Because, all too soon, it would begin again—the soft monotonous sobbing from behind the closed bedroom door, interspersed with the periods where Linda sat by the living room window, unspeaking and unmoving as she stared into space.

When Dana would find herself whisked back to Mannion and Aunt Joss, each time finding herself more secure. Feeling a sense of possession growing as the seeds her mother had planted took root.

Mrs Brownlow, one of the brisk ladies who visited her mother, was now calling at Mannion for regular conferences with Aunt Joss.

Sometimes, she caught snatches of their conversation. ‘Such a difficult situation...’ ‘Not the child’s fault...’ ‘Very bright at school, but suffering from these disruptions...’

And over and over again from Aunt Joss: ‘This unhealthy obsession...’

One day, Mrs Brownlow had been soothing. ‘Linda seems much more upbeat—a real change. We’re hoping that this complete break will help get her back on track. She seems to be looking forward to it.’

‘Two weeks in Spain?’ Aunt Joss had sounded doubtful. ‘Without Dana?’

‘This first time, yes. To see how she copes. Perhaps we can arrange a joint holiday later on.’

Dana was thankful. Not that she was particularly happy at the village school where the children, confused by her arrivals and departures, treated her as an outsider. But she wasn’t altogether sure where Spain was—except that it was almost certainly a long way from Mannion, the only place she really wanted to be.

And where she would fight to stay.

But Linda, it seemed, had given up the fight because, towards the end of the two weeks, Aunt Joss got a letter from her to say she’d got a job in a bar and had decided to stay in Spain for a while.