AMANDA BROWNING - Savage Destiny

It was a move she never completed, because at her first touch the man beside her jack-knifed away, sitting up, thrusting back the cover.

‘Don’t touch me!’ The rasping tones, so harshly alien, shocked her into immobility—but only for a millisecond; then she too sat up, watching in total incredulity as the supple, naked figure of her husband moved away from the bed with a stiff-legged stride. One visibly trembling hand pushed the tumble of long platinum locks from her eyes. Large grey eyes, rimmed by dusky lashes, were suddenly clouded with disbelief and hurt.

‘What?’ She breathed the question on a note that hovered uncertainly between hopeful humour and pending horror.

The tall, slim-hipped, dark-haired figure of her husband seemed actually to stiffen at the sound of her voice, but he didn’t halt his progress to the en-suite bathroom. Gathering scattered wits, Alix was out of the bed in seconds, the sheet she used to cover her nakedness billowing about her legs as she followed him to the open door. He had to explain that remark if he wanted her to treat it as the joke it just had to be.

‘Pierce!’ Alix managed to keep her voice light by a monumental effort, but even so her underlying shock was plain. ‘That wasn’t funny, darling.’

Leaning casually against the sink, Pierce waited for the bowl to fill, turning off the water before swinging his head towards her. She wasn’t able to hold back her gasp as his beautiful blue eyes surveyed her from her head to her toes with blood-chilling disdain. She felt as if he stripped her. Not of clothes, but of her dignity. She suffered a searing wave of humiliation never experienced before, and her eyes widened, something as cold and heavy as lead filling her stomach.

When Pierce spoke, there was insolence in his voice too. ‘I never for a minute imagined it was.’

‘Pierce!’ She couldn’t believe he would say something to hurt her so. Not this cold-bloodedly. It wasn’t a joke. It was something more horribly real than that, and she had to find out just what it was before her world fell apart in tatters. ‘What’s happened? What’s wrong?’

Pierce was busy applying shaving-foam, but he paused to spare her a mocking glance that seemed to diminish her. ‘Whatever makes you think something is wrong?’

She floundered in a morass of confusion. Up until yesterday he had been so loving, and now... She cast about desperately in her mind for some sort of an answer, anything that would hold back the black tide of pain. ‘Is it something I’ve done? Are you regretting marrying me?’ It was the only thing she could think of.

He laughed at that, but without a single mitigating trace of humour. ‘No, I had every intention of marrying you. It was what I wanted.’

It should have been the answer she wanted to hear, but there was an edge to it which struck a chill through her heart. He sounded so cold, so...unemotional. Like a wanderer in a maze, she knew there was only one road out of this hell, and that was to follow the trail he laid for her. ‘You may have wanted it, but I know something’s wrong. I’m not that much of a fool, however much I may seem to be to you now. I only know that, whatever it is, it’s something we can solve together. That’s what it’s all about when two people love each other.’ Her voice, for all her attempts at sounding reasonable, carried a note of desperation.

Her husband didn’t even bother to pause in his shaving. ‘Who said anything about loving each other?’

The offhand question was a mortal blow which set her rocking. Alix found that her voice had to be dragged from a painfully tight throat. ‘But I love you, Pierce.’

‘That much we do agree on.’ He looked at her then, steely blue eyes daring her to follow up what he said.

She had no defence against the truth he wanted her to acknowledge. ‘No!’ Her cry was a hoarse denial, as a destructive pain tore through her.

Pierce calmly washed away the remaining soap and reached for a towel. ‘No. Quite correct. A good night’s sleep seems to have done wonders for your perception.’

Alix felt so weak that she had to hold on to the doorpost to stop from falling, while her other hand pressed tightly against her heart. ‘You told me you loved me,’ she whispered brokenly.

‘If you think back clearly, you’ll realise I never did use those actual words.’

Her tortured mind winged back to every conversation they had had, and knew it was true. The day she had told him she loved him Pierce had replied... Her eyes shot to his in anguish. She had thought he had told her, but his actual words had been that she couldn’t know the depth of feeling he had in his heart for her! Not love! Never love, only...

Though it killed her, she had to know. ‘Why did you marry me, Pierce?’

‘Why? At the risk of sounding melodramatic, I married you for vengeance.’

The word bombarded her. ‘Vengeance? But that makes no sense. For what? What have I done?’

She saw anger in his eyes then, a fury so great that it wiped out the terrible disdain. ‘Can the granddaughter of Yannis Petrakos really not know? I can’t believe that, my dear Alix. Search your memory, and I’m sure you’ll find the truth. Of course, if you don’t manage it, you can always come and ask me.’ He controlled his anger with that mocking contempt. ‘Now, if I’m going to get to the office for eight-thirty, I’d like to shower. For which I would prefer a little more privacy, if you don’t mind. Or can it be that watching a man walk about naked is one of your more interesting peccadilloes?’ Having sent that parting shot and watched it strike home, Pierce shut the bathroom door in her face.

Alix stumbled the few feet which separated her from the bed, and collapsed down on it. Her limbs were shaking with a palsy, her thoughts chaotic. The only fact which penetrated was that he didn’t love her. The words went over and over in her mind like a record stuck in a groove. Which was why she was still sitting there when Pierce emerged from the bathroom minutes later and, after affording her one brief glance, proceeded to dress. White-faced, she watched him, the scales falling from her eyes. Everything about him was hard now; there was none of the loving softness left. He had sloughed that off with yesterday’s travel-soiled clothes, and now he stood revealed to her in his true colours.

Having ignored her presence, once dressed in a dark grey business suit Pierce paused briefly before departing. ‘My housekeeper’s name is Mrs Ransome. Should there be anything you require you need only ask her.’

Alix didn’t have the necessary composure to reply and Pierce didn’t wait for one. Without another word he left her. Left her alone with her misery of betrayal and only her agonised thoughts for company. When, only minutes later, Mrs Ransome appeared to enquire if she required breakfast, Alix still hadn’t moved. Her chalk-white face showed no sign of tears because none had fallen, but she wasn’t numb either. She only wished she were, so that the pain would end.

Calmly she refused the food, going through the painful mechanics of smiling. ‘No, thank you, Mrs Ransome. I’m still feeling rather jet-lagged.’ That twentieth-century phenomenon would have been far easier to deal with than the truth, and a bubble of hysteria threatened to destroy what composure she had. She swallowed it back hastily. ‘I think I need to rest more than eat.’

The housekeeper nodded wisely. ‘Very good, Mrs Martineau. And may I take this opportunity of wishing you and Mr Pierce happy?’

Alix didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Happy? Yet she must have made some acceptable reply, because the housekeeper smiled and went out. The mask cracked then, as she lowered her head, the graceful arch of her neck revealing her terrible vulnerability. She didn’t know what Pierce meant. Her family hadn’t done anything to him. She had never heard his name mentioned. But Pierce had been so sure. He wanted vengeance, he said, and had set out on a course to deceive and entrap her just for that purpose. He had spent weeks pursuing her, wooing her, using every facet of charm that lay at his fingertips to persuade her of his affections—to claim her as his wife so that he could callously renounce it all this way.