SARA WOOD - Scarlet Lady

No wonder he’d been shocked. She was too, merely thinking of what they’d done, red stains working their way up from her slender feet to her mortified face. So she’d ruined her chance to show Leo that they could be lovers again by revealing an untamed and uncontrolled side of herself that he must have hated.

After all, she thought mournfully, everyone adored her Grace Kelly manner. They loved her serenity, her calmness. Leo had said that he liked the fact that she always behaved like a lady. Some lady. But that was what he’d wanted—a woman who’d project an image of breeding. And now she’d ruined that.

Her body quivered with the pleasure that had rippled through it in great roller-coaster waves. Over and over again they’d crashed through her and physically she felt totally sated. Emotionally, however...

Her perfect white teeth snagged her lower lip. It was bruised and swollen and she touched it with her finger, wondering whether Leo had always known what real, uninhibited sex was like and if she’d been a disappointment to him before because she’d never given her whole self. Till it was too late.

But he’d wanted her. Desperately. Beyond all his rigidly imposed self-control. He’d been arazy to have her and he’d hated her for that because he would have preferred to take her with cool ruthlessness and fling her aside.

Perhaps she could build on his desire. A ragged breath shuddered through her and she stood, quickly dressing. It was the only hope she had. Hastily she searched for enough of the scattered hairpins to do her chignon again and had to give up, combing the silken hair with her fingers instead. She paused as Leo’s words came back to her, jolting her with their intensity.

Divorce... Life without Leo. Cold horror iced her body. He was all she had! The only man she’d ever loved. She wouldn’t, mustn’t lose him! Especially now that she’d given her whole self to him, abandoning a lifetime of restraint to show him what he meant to her.

Frantically she ran out of the library and began to search the rooms downstairs, then hitched up her tight skirt and raced up the wide stairs two at a time.

Relief flooded through her when she heard the shower running in their en suite bathroom. Thinking of nothing else but convincing him, she went straight to the cabinet, opened the door and walked inside.

‘Leo! Listen to me!’ she begged, water plastering her hair to her scalp.

‘What the—? You’re fully clothed, Ginny! Get out!’ he said with an irritable frown.

But she held him, her arms wrapped around his waist. And instantly he became aroused. Relief burst into her mind. She had a chance. ‘Don’t turn me away, Leo,’ she said softly, lifting her face to his. ‘I can’t imagine life without you—’

‘You’re already living it without me,’ he muttered, wrenching her arms away and flinging open the shower door.

She stood there, saturated, dazed. Don’t give up hope. Try again, she told herself. Try again. Stripping off her jacket as she spoke, she said, ‘Everything is good except for the problem of my work and Castlestowe.. We can discuss our differences and compromise. Change things—’

‘One thing’s changed. You’ve become a spectacular lay,’ he said crudely. ‘But I don’t want a tramp for a wife or for the mother of my child.’

‘I’m not a tramp,’ she insisted quietly.

‘The stones—’

‘Are only stories. They’re not true,’ she cried desperately, easing off her soaking skirt.

‘I’ve heard the details.’ His eyes flashed. ‘Confirmed by several people—’

“They’re repeating the same lie that someone’s circulated!’ she cried, beginning to fear that her protestations would be in vain. ‘I can’t prove my fidelity, Leo! But surely you must give me the benefit of the doubt?’

The lines around his aristocratic mouth were deep with pain. “How can I when you so brilliantly display a sexual expertise you never had before? When you respond to me with such devastating sensuality that I—? Oh, Ginny!’ He threw his head back in a gesture of helplessness. ‘I stood up for you. I looked everyone straight in the eye at my club when they whispered behind my back. But now I’m sure I’m a cuckold. And I sure as hell won’t stand for that!’ he snapped. ‘I want a divorce. I must remarry. Time is running out—my grandfather is ninety. I would like him to see that I have an heir to the earldom before he dies.’

‘Leo! Is that more important than our marriage?’ she faltered, naked now and grabbing a thick towelling robe and slipping into it.

‘Having a child is an important part of marriage for me,’ he growled. ‘It always has been. That—and having a loyal wife.’

Ginny’s anguished eyes watched him stride to the mahogany linen press. French. Priceless. Louis the something, she remembered, and inherited with a castle full of French furniture after one of the earls had married into the French aristocracy in the eighteenth century. France and Scotland had always been linked in the past. She thought of the castle, sitting on the windswept crag, all turrets and drawbridges, narrow windows and vast, draughty halls, and shivered.

It was an inheritance she didn’t understand and didn’t want to be part of. It had been a mistake for them to marry. She’d been naive to imagine that their marriage could be ordinary. Leo had expectations she couldn’t meet however much she loved him.

‘I love you,’ she said quietly, sadly.

He froze, his arm halted in the action of reaching for a clean shirt. It was a moment before he moved or spoke again. ‘I’m not sure you do,’ he said shortly, slipping his arms into the shirt and not looking at her. ‘Love has little to do with it, anyway. We’re incompatible and that’s that.’ He picked up the cuff-links that she knew had been given to his father by a minor royal and finally met her eyes. As he dressed, she thought mournfully, he looked more and more the perfect gentleman with every impeccable garment he put on.

‘I have a duty to continue the family line,’ he continued. ‘To see the Brandon name die out after nearly a thousand uninterrupted years would be unthinkable. I had hoped to father children by a woman I loved but it seems I’m to be denied that.’

Ginny’s eyes widened. ‘Are you intending to make a marriage of convenience?’ she cried.

His eyes stared sightlessly ahead and he was still for several seconds before he answered. ‘Do I have any option? Love was always a risk for both of us. We didn’t know much about it from our parents, did we? And now all I have left is Castlestowe and a dynastic marriage some time in the future.’

She couldn’t believe her ears. He’d marry, make love to a woman and father children all for the sake of a wretched blood-line... ‘No! I won’t give you up to anyone else!’ she seethed.

‘No?’ He wouldn’t look at her and his face was grim, his mouth working as if he was grinding his teeth. We’ll see about that.’ With a look of sheer determination on his face, he picked up a pair of linen trousers and stalked into his dressing room, locking the door behind him.

Two years and a few months or so later Ginny was secretly divorced.

Leo had convinced her that he had washed his hands of her only eight hours after the incident in the shower.

She’d been tucked up on the big window-seat in a guest bedroom, horrible racking sobs tearing at her body, when she’d heard a racket in their bedroom. Laughter—squeals of it, and Leo’s chuckle. She’d been stunned for a moment, then had stormed in, to find him and Arabella, naked in the huge four-poster bed, romping like eager children. Their bedroom. Their bed. Even now, after two interminable, depressing years, it made her ball her fists in fury.