scrutiny, and on the few occasions when she had looked across the room her gaze had collided with the icy stare of a haughtily beautiful Spanish woman.
‘Pilar is stunning, isn’t she?’ Ramon’s sister Juanita murmured as she joined Lauren by the open French doors and followed her gaze out to the terrace, where Ramon was in deep conversation with the willowy, elegant woman whose mass of silky black curls fell halfway down her back.
‘You’ve probably heard of her, or seen pictures of her at any rate,’ Juanita continued. ‘Pilar Fernandez is one of the world’s top models. Only someone with her fantastic figure can wear a skirt that short,’ she commented, with a rueful glance at Pilar’s pure white suit, which contrasted so eye-catchingly with her exotic colouring.
‘I suppose she’ll concentrate on her modelling career now that—’ Juanita halted abruptly, and looked so uncomfortable that Lauren’s curiosity was aroused.
‘Now that what?’
‘Now that Ramon has married you,’ Juanita muttered, clearly regretting that the subject of Pilar Fernandez had come up. ‘It was kind of expected that they… Well, anyway,’ she hurried on when she saw Lauren’s face fall, ‘Pilar is adored by top designers around the world, so I don’t suppose she’ll visit the castle as much as she used to.’
Ramon’s sister’s words were not reassuring, Lauren thought dismally. When Ramon had taken her to lunch in London he had dismissed his relationship with Pilar as nothing more than friendship, but clearly it had been more than that if there had been an expectation that he would choose her to be his wife.
It would have made sense for him to marry her, she brooded. Pilar was an aristocratic Spanish woman, from Ramon’s elite social circle, elegant, sophisticated, and ideally suited to be a duquesa. Added to that, she was exquisitely beautiful. Doubts swamped Lauren with the force of a tsunami, drowning her common sense in a flood of insecurity. She could not compete with Pilar on any level, she thought dully as she tore her eyes from Ramon and his gorgeous ‘friend’ and looked down at the white gold wedding band that he had placed on her finger, next to the ostentatious ruby engagement ring that had been worn by previous generations of Velaquez brides.
Jealousy burned in her stomach when she saw the Spanish woman place her hand on Ramon’s shoulder and lean close to him to whisper something in his ear. Suddenly she was fourteen, wearing her new dress and handing around mince pies at her parents’ annual Christmas party. Her mum was rushing around, in her element as the busy hostess, but there was tension behind her smile when she came up to Lauren and asked if she had seen her father.
‘I’ll look for him,’ she had promised, unconcerned. Her mother always flapped. But she had lugged the plate of mince pies all around the house, looking for Donny, and had found him at last—in the conservatory, with a blonde woman with a big bust who was the secretary of the golf club. Jean had been leaning close to her father, whispering something in his ear. And her dad had been smiling—just as Ramon was smiling at Pilar now.
‘Hello, pet. What have you got there—mince pies?’ Donny had walked towards her, laughing, blocking the view of Jean frantically pulling up the strap of her dress.
The awkward moment had passed, because Lauren hadn’t understood why it was awkward, but a long time later, after her father had left his wife and daughter for an exotic dancer, she had recalled the incident and her mother had revealed that Jean had been one of Donny’s many mistresses.
Lost in her memories, she stepped onto the terrace and wandered in the opposite direction from Ramon and his companion. She gave a start when someone spoke to her, and her heart sank when she looked up and met Pilar’s haughty stare.
‘Mateo is a charming child. Ramon is clearly very proud of him,’ the Spanish woman commented in a distinctly cool tone.
‘We both are,’ Lauren replied politely, feeling uncomfortable beneath Pilar’s intent scrutiny.
‘Ramon married you to claim his son, of course.’
It was a statement rather than a question, and Lauren did not know what to say—it was the truth, after all, she thought dully.
Pilar’s black eyes were as cold and hard as polished jet. ‘How do you think you will cope with being a duquesa? I imagine that your life in England did not prepare you for joining the ranks of the Spanish nobility.’
Which, of course, was a pointed reminder that while Pilar had blue blood running through her aristocratic veins Lauren was a very ordinary English lawyer.
‘I’m sure I’ll manage,’ she told the stunning model tightly.
Pilar shrugged her thin shoulders dismissively. ‘Perhaps you will not be a duquesa for very long now that Ramon has his son,’ she suggested softly, and walked away, leaving Lauren staring after her, shivering suddenly as a cloud covered the sun with a grey shadow.
The castle’s huge master bedroom was dominated by a four-poster bed hung with velvet drapes. It was an enormous bed for one person—but perhaps Ramon did not sleep alone in it very often? Lauren thought bleakly. Perhaps Pilar Fernandez had shared the bed with him during the eighteen months that they had been apart?
Stop it, she told herself angrily. She was making something out of nothing, just because Pilar had made that spiteful comment about Ramon not wanting her for his wife for very long.
Ramon was still downstairs, bidding farewell to the last guests, but in a few minutes he would join her. After her run-in with Pilar she had forced herself to rejoin the wedding celebrations, and had chatted and smiled until her jaw ached. But she had been conscious of his speculative glances, and when, in answer to his query, she had assured him that she was enjoying the day, his expression had been sardonic.
With a heavy sigh she walked through the connecting door into an adjoining room that he had explained was traditionally the Duquesa’s bedroom. She did not know if Ramon and Pilar had once been lovers, and she did not want to know, she told herself fiercely. But she could not dismiss the sight of him standing close to the Spanish beauty. Their body language had spoken of an easy familiarity, and somehow the image of Ramon and Pilar had become muddled with the image of her father and Jean from the golf club, and she wondered if she was as blind now as she had been naïve at fourteen.
Her eyes felt scratchy, and when she caught sight of herself in the mirror she was suddenly desperate to get out of her wedding finery. The dress and the roses had all been part of an illusion, created by Ramon to fool everyone into believing that the Duque de Velaquez and his new bride were blissfully happy. But she knew the truth, and with trembling hands she tore off the dream dress and the fragile lacy bra she had worn beneath it. Searching through a drawer she dug out an oversized cotton tee shirt that had been among her things sent over from England.
She was standing in front of the dressing table, brushing her hair, when Ramon walked in.
‘Not quite what I had envisaged,’ he drawled, as his eyes skimmed the baggy tee shirt that had faded to an unbecoming shade of sludge in the wash. ‘Your choice of nightwear leaves much to be desired, querida. Although even that shapeless garment does not dampen my desire for you,’ he added self-derisively, when she spun round to face him and he noted the faint outline of her nipples beneath her thin shirt.
He had discarded his tie and unfastened the top buttons of his shirt, and Lauren glimpsed his bronzed skin beneath. Leaning nonchalantly against the doorframe, his dark hair falling across his brow and his eyes gleaming with sensual heat, he
