Emerald Mistress (28 page)

‘You don’t understand how I feel about him,’ Una mumbled thickly. ‘I told Rafael and he understands—because he didn’t say anything like that…
he
just listened!’

Harriet stared a hole in the sack of feed she was opening. She was not as naive as Una, who seemed to have no suspicion of how protective her brother was. She was imagining Rafael listening. Rafael, who was too clever and too controlled to speak and reveal his thoughts. It was ten days since they had parted in London. He had been cold as ice. He had shown nothing, felt nothing. But what had she expected? Wasn’t it better that way? On his terms it had been a casual affair that he, at least, would swiftly forget. Why should that hurt her even more? Her eyes were so heavy that she marvelled she didn’t fall asleep standing up. But she knew that no matter how tired she was she would be tormented by nightmares. She would also wake up feeling distraught in the middle of the night, and then lie tossing and turning until dawn.

‘Don’t think I haven’t noticed that Rafael and you are acting real weird. I just haven’t said anything because Tolly said I shouldn’t,’ Una added, half
under her breath, before she took off to park her bike and help in the morning routine of feeding, mucking out and exercising the horses.

Harriet wanted to chase after the younger woman and ask
how
Rafael had been acting. She craved information about him but would not allow herself to seek it. With every atom of her will-power she was attempting to suppress her longing for him and retrain her thoughts. Incest. The word and the meaning of it haunted Harriet. She had tried so hard to avoid it, but it crept up on her and attacked her countless times a day. A crime against the moral order of society. A crime in law. It was done and could not be undone.

Yet still she found it hard to believe that she had unwittingly made such a disastrous mistake—that in the whole wide world she had had to meet and fall madly in love with the only other man who was as closely related to her as Boyce was. But then it was quite natural for her to be reluctant to believe that, wasn’t it? How could she trust her own misgivings about Eva’s dramatic revelation? Why had some inner streak of unfamiliar cynicism noted that even at seventeen Eva had not sunk to the level of a Mr Ordinary? Even in a remote Irish village her mother had still managed to catch the eye of a very wealthy and newsworthy man. But then Eva was very beautiful,
and why on earth would her mother choose to lie about such a thing?

If Valente Cavaliere had fathered Una, why should he not also have fathered Harriet thirteen years earlier? Rafael had acknowledged that his late father had been a womaniser without any sense of conscience or responsibility. Harriet had looked for pictures of Valente on the Internet and had sought in vain to find some point of similarity between her supposed father and herself. Rafael and Una had inherited Valente’s height and colouring and his bone structure, whereas she bore not the slightest physical resemblance to the man. Yet that only meant that she had inherited her physical characteristics from the maternal side of the family.

Was it possible that on some deep level she had felt a strong affinity with both Rafael and Una right from the start because of the very existence of that blood relationship? That was a possibility she shrank from.

That evening she was running a bath when she heard the helicopter passing overhead. Before she could stop herself, she had run through to the back bedroom to watch the helicopter drop down over the trees and disappear from view as it went into land. Dressed in clean jodhpurs and a faded green shirt, she was feeding Samson and Peanut at the back door when she looked up and stilled in surprise. Rafael
was out by the sand paddock beyond the stables, watching Fergal put Tailwind through his paces.

She feasted her attention on him, helpless before her overpowering need to stare. There was an aching familiarity now to his lean, dark profile and tall, powerful physique. But the instant she experienced that magnetic pull she was ashamed of herself, and she dredged her attention guiltily from him again. She no longer knew how to behave around him. Just ten days earlier she would have felt free to walk over and join the two men. Now she was constrained by a whole host of concerns and she went back indoors. Half an hour passed slowly and painfully before she heard a car engine start and a car move off into the distance. He was gone again, she reflected just as a knock sounded on the front door.

Her heart in her mouth, she answered it.

Rafael studied her with dark as midnight eyes full of keen enquiry. ‘How are you?’

‘I’m great,’ she said weakly.

She was lying, Rafael decided: she looked as though she wasn’t sleeping or eating properly. He had no idea what was going on, but he had every intention of getting to the bottom of the mystery.

‘May I come in?’

Harriet hesitated, and then moved back to let him enter the cottage.

‘Why didn’t you warn me that my sister was infatuated with Fergal Gibson?’

Unprepared for that grimly voiced question, Harriet frowned in dismay.

‘Didn’t it occur to you that she might be at risk?’

‘Not with Fergal, no. He’s decent and sensible, and he’s well aware of what age she is. He does nothing to encourage her,’ Harriet countered tautly. ‘I hate to say it, but he’s probably at more risk from Una.’

Taken aback by that frank opinion, Rafael almost laughed out loud. ‘I get the picture. Your honesty on that point is appreciated.’

‘I just meant that she can be very determined. But I don’t think you need to worry. I gather Fergal’s dating some tourist at the moment.’

‘Whitewash. Fergal is not as indifferent to my sister as I would like him to be.’

‘He’s fond of Una…yes…’

‘He may not even know it, but he’s hooked. It’s a dangerous situation and I’ll deal with it.’ Rafael leant back against the solid oak table with indolent cool. ‘Next on the agenda…us.’

Harriet stiffened. ‘That’s over.’

‘But what I would like to know is…
why
?’

An electric silence fell. Her mind was blank. It was the most simple question, and hardly unpredictable, and yet she could not think of an answer.

‘There’s no one else, is there?’

‘No…’ The admission had escaped her before she could think better of it.

‘Then explain what happened with your sister and your mother.’

She froze. ‘What do you mean?’

‘When we flew back from Italy everything was fine. But then you went visiting for a few hours and came back the colour of a ghost, and suddenly all bets were off.’

‘No, it wasn’t like that—’

‘It was, and I want to know what changed. Did someone warn you off me? Tell tales that made your blood run cold?’ Rafael had his brilliant dark golden eyes pinned to her with penetrating force. ‘I’m trying to understand what the problem is.’

‘I didn’t say there was a problem—’

‘But there
is…
I’ve spent the last ten days without you. That’s a problem.’

That statement shook Harriet. ‘Is it?’

His dense lashes lowered over his intent gaze. ‘The ten lonely nights were equally painful.’

Beneath his scrutiny, Harriet lost colour, her fine facial bones tightening as she spun away from him, saying, ‘Don’t!’

‘Don’t what? This is new to me,
a mhilis
. I haven’t been in this position before. Usually I do the
dumping. Full marks for taking me by surprise. Very few people have ever managed to do that to me.’

‘Are you saying nobody ever dumped you before?’ Suddenly, ridiculously, Harriet wanted to wrap her arms round him and cry.

‘All I want is an explanation. What went wrong? I’m an alpha-male high achiever. If you tell me why, I will never mention it again.’

Her hands knotted into fists as she fought the tears burning the back of her eyes. ‘It’s not that simple—’

‘It
is
that simple. Why do women always make things more complicated?’

The dark knowledge dammed up inside her weighted her down. ‘You don’t know everything…you wouldn’t even want to know…’

Rafael picked up on that declaration straight away. ‘What wouldn’t I
want
to know?’

Too late she recognised her mistake. ‘It was just a figure of speech.’

His hands came down on her rigid shoulders and slowly, carefully, turned her back round to face him. ‘No, don’t lie to me. Or, should I say, don’t keep on lying to me. I respect your truthfulness. But from the minute you entered my London apartment I saw that you were hiding something from me.’

Harriet felt cornered, even though he had been
careful to drop his hands and step back from her again. ‘No!’

Stunning dark golden eyes flared down into hers. ‘Whatever it is, I need to know. Because
not
knowing is driving me crazy!’

Harriet sped back to the door and dragged it open. ‘I think you should leave—’

‘And you said you wanted to be friends?’

She didn’t trust herself to look at him. ‘I’ll talk to you about Una or the yard, but not about anything more personal.’

Rafael strolled out through the door at his leisure. ‘I won’t quit until you tell me.’

‘Just leave it,’ she muttered in a feverish plea, half under her breath. ‘Don’t push me on this.’

She had not expected Rafael to tackle her and demand an explanation. She had not been prepared for him to drop his façade of fabled cool and impassivity to stage so open a confrontation. The only woman ever to dump him. A choked sob was wrenched from her and she rolled up in a tight ball, as if she was trying to contain her grief. The hot tears slid down her face in silence.

When she had believed that he was essentially indifferent to her she had been able to tell herself that she was only precipitating an ending that would have occurred anyway. She had consoled herself with the
belief that their affair had had no future—that, in effect, she had lost nothing—for his interest would inevitably have waned before many more weeks had passed. But now Rafael had approached her, ten days after she’d walked out of his life, and asked her to tell him where things had gone wrong. He wasn’t demonstrating indifference. He was reserved and he trusted few people. He was also very proud. Yet he had still been prepared to make that request, and ironically that made her feel more wretched than ever.

* * *

Rafael listened to Albert bring in the dawn on his new and unique middle-of-the-night timescale. It bothered him that for the first time he did not feel like strangling the rooster in mid flow. It bothered him that he had been lying awake for hours and that he had skipped dinner the night before. The uneasy rocking of his previously well-ordered world disturbed him.

He was a logical man. Illogical behaviour naturally unsettled him. Some men said women were illogical. But Rafael had from the outset of his acquaintance with Harriet appreciated her innate common sense. She had no inclination to make mountains out of molehills. At the
fattoria
she had glowed with contentment and happiness. Even when
she had slept there had been a hint of a smile on her ripe mouth. Her good-natured tolerance had smoothed the edges off every tiny irritation. She drew him like an oasis of peace in a war zone.

Why, then, did such a woman suddenly begin acting out of character? Why would she suddenly finish a very satisfying affair? And contrive to look inconsolable at the same time? The more he devoted his powerful intellect to that conundrum the more impatient he became to get to the truth of the matter. Then he would be content, he reflected with confidence. Once she had given him a proper explanation he would be satisfied and he would put the matter behind him.

* * *

Harriet walked down through the ancient oak woods soon after six that morning, as she did most days. Usually she rode, but Snowball had been off-colour with a mild viral infection for a few days and the vet had recommended complete rest. She could have taken Missy out instead, since she had enjoyed exercising the young lively mare. But Una now rode Missy most days, and Harriet no longer liked to borrow her.

She always took a break at the heart of the wood, where the oak and the ash and the hawthorn grew. She would remember her first visit to the tranquil
green bower with Rafael. Before she continued on to the beach she would shut her eyes tight and wish for happiness, as if she was still a child who believed in magical places and fairy spells.

Pale golden sand stretched in an unbroken arc all the way from the rocks at the lower end of the strand to the distant headland. On this particular day the sky was a moody almost purplish grey and the breeze was stiff. Head bent, she trudged down through the dunes.

‘Harriet…’

Her head flew up, copper hair flaming back across her pale brow and a flash of dismay in her very blue eyes.

‘How could you possibly not have seen me?’ Rafael looked down at her from the back of his big black gelding. ‘Why aren’t you riding Missy?’

‘Una adores her…’

He quirked a questioning brow and she understood his meaning completely.

‘She wouldn’t dream of commenting if I made equal use of Missy. But I remember how I felt about my first horse, and I think it’s nice for Una to have her all to herself.’

Rafael winced. ‘I can’t believe that I didn’t even think of buying her a horse of her own!’

Comfortable with the conversation, Harriet was
already losing her pronounced tension in his presence. ‘Why should you have? As I recall, only a couple of months back you didn’t know how fond Una was of horses.’

In a fluid movement he slid down off the gelding’s back. His eyes sought hers and her mouth ran dry.

‘I love looking at the flowers that grow down here,’ she confided in a rush, nudging a pink lilac striped trumpet with her toe. ‘This is so pretty.’

‘That’s bindweed…’

The dark, deep timbre of his accented drawl wrapped round her like a prison chain. She walked over the cushioned tufts of thrift and down on to the flat sand that bore the imprint of the gelding’s hooves.

‘When my mother was well enough she would walk along the beach with me, naming the wild flowers and the shells. Sea holly and samphire, scallops and whelks,’ Rafael rhymed evenly. ‘I still remember the names.’