Diana Hamilton - The Last Illusion

The Last Illusion

Diana Hamilton

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHARLEY paid the driver off at Plaza San Francisco. He had the grey eyes of a Berber in a face like a walnut, and they crinkled appreciatively as she added a generous amount of pesetas to the fare, thanking him in his own language.

At least her Spanish hadn’t emerged too rustily, though Olivia, who had prided herself on her pure Castilian, would no doubt still deride the distinctive Andaluz dialect she had picked up from her teacher, Andrés, who had tended the sumptuous gardens behind Sebastian’s town house here in Cadiz.

Despite the heat, a convulsive shudder rocked her too slender frame. She had no illusions. Olivia would spend as much time here as she had done before. Probably more. Facing her again, knowing what she knew, would be as hard, if not harder, than facing her husband.

Not that she had thought of Sebastian Machado as her husband since she had left him four years ago, she reminded herself as she picked up the small, soft-backed suitcase which had doubled as hand luggage on the flight from London to Jerez. She had cut him out of her life and, with a great deal of input from her aunt Freda, had made herself over, made a career of sorts for herself. And deciding, at last, to accept Gregory’s offer of marriage had been the final and decisive change, a change that had irretrievably cancelled out the trauma of the past.

The only thing left to do was to ask Sebastian to agree to a divorce.

And to buy back those shares. Greg had told her to insist on that, though to her way of thinking nothing was as important as her legal freedom, certainly not the extra money, useful though it would be.

Restlessly her tawny eyes ranged around the pretty square as she wondered whether to give in to the cowardly temptation to sit at a table beneath the shade of one of the dozens of orange trees and sip at an ice-cold jugo de naranja , but decided against, because she knew her churning stomach would instantly reject anything she tried to put into it—even something as innocuous and refreshing as orange juice.

Besides, she had already allowed herself the concession of stopping off at the square, using the five minutes or so it would take to find her way on foot to the home she had once shared—with equal measures of rapture and pain—with Sebastian. Time enough to quell the unlooked-for flutter of nerves that was, dismayingly, threatening to turn into a full-scale attack.

Striking off into the narrow, shadowed streets of the old quarter, she tightened her jaw, ignoring the trickle of perspiration between her shoulderblades. Here, deep in the maze of narrow white streets, glinting with miradores —the glazed balconies that offered protection from the Atlantic breezes—she felt drainingly homesick. She had forgotten how much she had learned to love this joyous, bustling white city, built on the tip of a headland, thrusting so confidently out into the sea.

There was so much she had believed forgotten, both the good and the bad thrust willy-nilly into the dark netherworld of her soul where they could no longer hurt her. And when she caught her first glimpse of the ornate iron gates that seemed to overpower the narrow street she almost turned tail and ran, beginning to wish she had followed Greg’s advice and done everything through her solicitor.

But she conquered the impulse as she had learned to conquer all her fears during the last four years. Beneath the sleekly styled ochre linen suit she had chosen to travel in, her slender body tautened with determination. It was just a house. Rather more splendid than most, but nevertheless just a house. Beyond the intricately fashioned gates lay a courtyard and beyond that the ancient, arcaded stone house, beyond that the gardens where the magnolia trees grew and within, somewhere among the dozens of sumptuous rooms, a place where she could quietly sit and collect herself until her husband returned from his arrogant office block in the commercial area beyond the ancient Moorish walls of the town.

And Teresa would bring her some tea.

Inconceivable that her old Spanish friend would have given up her jealously guarded position as Sebastian’s housekeeper. Four years ago Teresa had ruled the household with an iron fist in a very threadbare velvet glove, and that wouldn’t have changed.

Teresa had the tongue of a scold and the heart of a lion, but she had taken the almost painfully innocent girl Charley had been when she’d arrived here to her vast bosom. She had been nineteen years old when Sebastian had brought her here as his bride—with the experience and outlook of a child of ten, as Freda had tartly pointed out.

But that was no longer the case, she reminded herself as she pushed at the impressive iron gates. A year of marriage had all but broken her, but with Freda’s initial help she had put her life back together, wiped Sebastian and what he had done from her brain, and had emerged as a twenty-four-year-old woman who was nobody’s fool.

Sebastian meant nothing to her now. She couldn’t even be bothered to hate him for what he had done. So instead of feeling nervous she would concentrate on her achievement in travelling the road to complete self-recovery!

And when he returned this evening she would be waiting, would calmly state her business, and the moment she had obtained his agreement—and surely there would be no problem there—she would get herself back to the safe predictability of England and Greg and her work and quietly look forward to an autumn wedding.

Passing quickly through the scented courtyard, not giving the vibrant heat, the perfume of orange blossom and oleanders time to seduce her senses, she entered the huge dim hall, marble-paved and cool, the walls clad with dark, elaborately carved wood, the marble staircase a thing of almost ethereal beauty, soaring upwards like a pathway to heaven.

And hell, she reminded herself staunchly, her small face going stiff with the determination to block out the instinctive appeal this land, its architecture and its people had exerted on her in the past. It wouldn’t happen again. She had learned that appearances could often be deceptive, that people could lie, silver tongues saying things they didn’t mean.

Blinking, trying to get her eyes to readjust after the whiteness of the light outside, she absorbed the silence of the great house. Siesta time, so it wasn’t to be wondered at, and, rather than disturb Teresa, she would find herself somewhere to wait.

Putting her case down against one of the walls, she straightened, her ears picking up the faint rustle of fabric, a sibilant drag of indrawn breath, and her narrowed eyes fastened on a shimmer of white movement and she was fixed to the spot, because her feet seemed to have rooted themselves to the pale cold marble, and Sebastian said thickly, ‘So you return, at last.’

She hadn’t expected to see him so soon; it put her at a disadvantage. Thick dark lashes drifted down, briefly closing him out. The white cambric shirt made his olive-toned skin and his cropped midnight hair even darker, his narrow black trousers emphasising his long-legged leanness, the whippy strength of the hard, wide shoulders and non-existent hips. She had forgotten the impact he made.

She should have remembered, been more prepared.