The Society Wife (10 page)

He moved to open the door, but Lily stayed where she was, fighting the nerves that were shredding her insides.

‘Tristan?'

‘What?' He spun round, not bothering to conceal his impatience. She was standing in the middle of the oppressively grand hallway, her chin lowered, her hands plucking nervously at her dress.

The dress he'd chosen for her earlier, sensing without knowing much about such things that the colour would bring out the pale gold of her skin, and that the low scooped neck would show off the fragile perfection of her collarbones.

It did.

Dios mio,
it did…

She bit her lip, looking up at him with smoky, hesitant and unreasonably lovely eyes. ‘Do I look OK?'

Tristan stiffened, straightening his shoulders, his head jerking back slightly as he forced back the almost over whelming urge to cross the stretch of marble floor between them and take
her in his arms and kiss her until her lips were bare of gloss and her hair had tumbled from its pins.

He pushed open the door. ‘You look fine,' he said tonelessly. ‘Now, let's get this over and done with.'

 

Lily had never seen a room so luxurious or so chilling.

Long, high-ceilinged and decorated entirely in shades of cream and gold, it made Stowell, with its faded silks and threadbare Persian rugs, look positively down at heel by comparison. And although Scarlet frequently joked about the drafts there, Lily felt an icy chill creep down her spine as she followed Tristan into the crowded room. It was as if the temperature had just dropped several degrees, and almost without thinking Lily felt for Tristan's hand as they made their way through the crowd towards a group of people at the far end of the room.

She couldn't be sure exactly how she knew that the tall man with his back to them was Tristan's father. Perhaps it was something to do with the breadth of his shoulders, a certain arrogance in the tilt of his head that was already familiar. He was talking to another man, gesturing eloquently, confidently with a hand that held a crystal champagne flute. Beside them two women—one about Lily's age in an impeccable but rather conservative little black dress, one older and wearing a high necked dress in midnight blue—stood mutely.

Draining her glass, the older woman looked up suddenly. She was slender, elegant and immaculately made up in a way that obscured rather than enhanced her considerable beauty. As she saw them a look—shock? fear?—flickered across her face. Before Lily had time to put her finger on what it was, it was gone; replaced by a gracious smile of welcome.

‘Tristan, darling boy! You're here!'

Juan Carlos Romero de Losada turned round slowly, flicking back the cuff of his expensively tailored jacket and checking his watch before looking at his son.

‘At last,' he said with a sinister smile. ‘You are precisely one hour and five minutes late.'

Tristan ignored him, leaning across to kiss both women, but Lily felt his hold on her hand tighten. ‘Good evening, Mama, Sofia…' His lips twitched into the ghost of a smile. ‘Sorry we're late. We rather lost track of time.'

Lily was aware of all eyes turning in her direction. Her heart was crashing against her ribs as Tristan raised her hand so that everyone could see her fingers laced through his, with the diamond glittering beside her new wedding band. Slowly he brought it to his lips, kissing it gently before saying, ‘I'd like to introduce Lily Alexander. My wife, and the new Marquesa de Montesa.'

For a second it seemed that a spell had fallen on the small group. While all around them the rest of the guests talked and laughed and drank the excellent vintage cava, no one in the circle around the fireplace moved or spoke. Lily glanced at Juan Carlos and felt a sickening thud of horror as she saw the fury rising in his eyes like some dark liquid coming to the boil. Fury that in this setting, in front of his guests, he was powerless to express.

It was Tristan's mother who broke the terrible silence, stepping forward and kissing Lily on both cheeks with a blast of designer perfume and alcohol fumes.

‘But, my dear, how delightful! You must forgive us for being so unmannerly, but this is such a shock. I had almost given up hoping that Tristan would settle down—and with such a beautiful girl.' She gave an awkward little laugh. ‘It is almost too much to take in!'

As Lily submitted to Allegra Montalvo y Romero de Losada's gracious embrace she had the strangest feeling that she were floating amongst the painted clouds and cherubs on the ceiling, looking down on the tableau of figures below. Sofia, whose olive skin had flushed with telltale colour when Tristan had kissed her cheek, now seemed to stiffen and shrink backwards, clearly desperate to move away. Tristan's father, the oddly compelling Juan Carlos, stepped forward to take Lily's hand in his.

For an awkward moment she stood, one hand still clasped in Tristan's, one imprisoned between Juan Carlos's soft fingers. She could almost feel the animosity between the two men crackling through her, as though she were some kind of conductor.

‘Lily…Alexander?' Juan Carlos repeated quietly, with a smile that didn't quite reach his eyes. ‘I think our paths have not crossed before?'

It was a clever question, Lily thought with a stab of anguish. Everyone must have been thinking the same thing—that the idea of her ever having brushed even the most outward peripheries of Juan Carlos's exclusive social circle was utterly preposterous. Sofia gave a strange snort of amusement, which she quickly suppressed with a swig of cava.

‘No,' she said quietly. ‘I don't think so.'

‘No. Of course,' Juan Carlos continued softly, ‘I would have remembered such a pretty face. You must tell us all about yourself—where you come from and what you do for a living.'

‘I'm a model. I live in London.'

From the look on Juan Carlos's patrician face it was as if Lily had said she was a high class hooker. His brows rose almost into his distinguished grey-streaked hair.

‘My dear, how fascinating. What surprising people my son seems to mix with. And where did you meet?'

‘At Tom's,' Tristan said coldly. ‘At a party in the summer.'

Allegra's exclamation of delight sounded almost genuine. ‘How romantic!' she exclaimed a little too brightly. ‘And how sudden. It must have been love at first sight!'

Frowning a little, Tristan tucked the stray lock of hair behind Lily's ear. ‘I don't remember it being
love
at first sight. I don't think that came until we woke up the next morning.'

Lily was aware of the brittle tinkle of Allegra's laugh, but only distantly.

A shiver of helpless longing rippled across Lily's skin—skin that still tingled from the ecstasy he had awoken in her earlier. But she was aware that beside her Juan Carlos's face had taken
on a bland and dangerous look. Giving an abrupt nod in the direction of the ladies, he turned to Tristan.

‘A word in private, if you please.'

For a moment Tristan hesitated, as if he was going to argue, and then Allegra stepped forward and tucked her arm through Lily's.

‘You men go and talk business! I'm going to show Lily around our home, and get to know her properly.'

 

‘I assume she's pregnant?'

In the masculine enclave of Juan Carlos's wood-panelled office there was no place for such feminine refinements as champagne flutes and cava. Picking up a solid, square cut decanter from a cedarwood tray, Juan Carlos sloshed dark liquid into two glasses. He held one out to Tristan, who ignored it.

‘And why would you assume that?'

Juan Carlos looked at him over the rim of his glass. ‘Because,' he said with slow, unpleasant relish, ‘I can't think why else you have married her. Women like that are mistresses, not wives.'

Don't react. Don't show him that he's got to you. Don't let him see that it hurt.
It was the mantra that had echoed through Tristan's head countless times before when he'd stood in this room. No doubt at some point during all those years the ability to conceal his emotions successfully had gone from being an effort of will to being a habit.

With deceptive nonchalance he leaned against one corner of Juan Carlos's impressive desk and raised his eyebrows slightly. ‘Women like that?'

‘Women with no breeding,' Juan Carlos said dismissively, taking a mouthful of his drink and giving a grimace that Tristan understood was not directed at the excellent brandy. ‘A
model
, Tristan! Such a cliché.' He looked down into his glass, swirling the liquid around for a moment before saying quite conversationally, ‘I take it you are doing this to deliberately undermine me?'

‘Just like you undermined me at the meeting this morning?'
Tristan said with quiet contempt. ‘How did you get those men to vote with you—against me—on increasing the interest on the African loans? That money is going to come straight out of that country's healthcare budget or education, or farming subsidies, as everyone in that meeting knew. How much did you have to pay them for their votes?'

Juan Carlos moved round to the other side of the desk and sank into the huge leather chair. ‘Not everything comes down to money,' he said thoughtfully, examining his manicured fingernails. ‘Most things, but not all.' ‘Oh,
Dios
… Sofia.' Tristan got up from the desk and took a few paces, thrusting his hand through his hair as his mind raced. ‘The deal was to do with me and Sofia, wasn't it?'

‘Would that be such a bad idea? Do you think I married your mother for love?'

‘No.' Tristan's laugh was edged with bitterness and despair. ‘No, I
never
thought that.'

Acid burned at the back of his throat and the darkness that he constantly felt crouched around him encroached a little further. It was something that he was used to—he had lived with it for as long as he could remember, without ever really wanting to look directly at it, or give it a name. Until now. Standing here, in the room that had been the scene of so much suffering, he remembered again Lily's soft voice, the warmth of her hand on his heart.
The emotion you're most in touch with at the moment is fear…

He hadn't wanted to admit she was right. He hadn't even wanted to consider the possibility.

But suddenly he knew she had been absolutely spot on. Looking into the empty eyes of his father, so similar to the ones that looked back at him from the mirror every morning, he was afraid.

For a long time he had accepted that because of the man in front of him he wasn't able to love. Neurological fact. But for the first time he allowed himself to look right into the blackness and confront what had been lurking there all the time; the fear
that where there should have been love, all the cruelty and the coldness of those crucial early years had been hardwired into his brain instead. What if it was there, waiting for an outlet, and when Lily had this child…?

Dios, oh, Dios,
what had he done?

He had forced her into this out of his innate sense of family honour, but what about her? What about his duty to her and to the baby? He had promised to protect her and keep her safe, but how could he do that if the biggest danger she faced was from him? She made him feel things that scared him. Things that he knew he couldn't control.

He had told her that he wasn't a monster. But what if he was? What if he was just like his father and he didn't know it yet?

His fists were tight balls of tension, and he pressed them to his temples as Juan Carlos's quiet, eminently reasonable voice washed over him.

‘It would have been a brilliant match, surely you can see that? A link between our bank and the largest privately owned bank in Greece. Sofia would have been a good wife, and you could have had your sordid little affairs with models on the side.' He paused and shook his head uncomprehendingly. ‘But instead you
married
one. It's a shame, Tristan—I thought you were more in control of your emotions. I thought you were too sensible to get carried away by stupid notions of romance.'

‘I didn't,' Tristan said icily. ‘You were right first time. Our marriage has nothing to do with emotion or romance. Lily is pregnant, and I'm doing my duty—to her and to our ancient, rotten, noble
family
.'

From the other side of the desk he saw something gleam in his father's cold eyes, and thought it might be triumph. ‘She trapped you into this deliberately,' said Juan Carlos harshly.

Walking towards the door, Tristan laughed—a sound as hollow and bleak as his own heart. ‘I think she's the one who's been trapped, don't you? Trapped into a loveless, sterile, dutiful marriage.'

‘Hardly,' said Juan Carlos pompously. ‘You are a Romero—the Marqués de—'

Tristan opened the door. ‘Exactly,' he said, with bitter resignation. ‘Who in their right mind would want anything to do with that?'

 

‘You have a lovely home,' Lily said awkwardly as she stood in the small sitting room in Allegra's private suite of rooms. It seemed that they had come a long way from the large, crowded place where the reception was being held. This room, with its thick, thick carpets, quilted sofas, acres and acres of swagged silk curtain, was in a different world entirely: still opulent, still expensive, but warm and comfortable to the point of being suffocating. Lily was beginning to feel faint.

Allegra smiled and took another mouthful of cava. ‘Thank you. I hope that in time you will come to think of it as your home too. None of the children spend much time here any more, but maybe…' She faltered, and Lily glanced sharply up.

‘None of them?'

‘Sorry.' With a little laugh, Allegra shook her head and waved her glass in a sweeping arc. ‘I mean
neither
of them. Maybe now he is married Tristan will have more time. He's always so busy, you see…'