hall below, she saw Jake’s face lifted to them and met the full force of his eyes. She felt herself freeze. He looked...angry.
Her entire body tensed with an irrational fear. Her chest tightened so disturbingly that she had to draw in a series of quick little breaths to ease her straining lungs as she remained within the circle of Leo’s arms and Jake slowly turned his dark eyes to Leo.
‘Hell! That’s a look and a half!’ muttered Leo in awe.
‘Oh, he’s a pussy-cat really!’ she declared unconvincingly, flapping her hand in a cheerful wave to Jake, to cover up her unnerving sense of foreboding.
‘I think his claws are out.’ Leo pushed her back a little. ‘Your husband’s jealous. I think you’d better make it clear what our relationship is!’
‘Jealous?’ Amber went very still, her eyes slanting again to where Jake stood. And then she understood. It was a necessary part of the act, she supposed, to be annoyed at seeing your bride in another man’s arms. ‘But of course he is!’ she said lightly, playing along with the pretence. ‘So he should be.’
No one could know how safe Jake’s real lack of interest had made her feel. Free from any complicated emotions towards him, she’d been able to relax with him. Thankfully, she and Jake wanted the same thing: to remain good friends and stay mercifully immune from the dangers of love.
Love was frightening. It tore out your heart and threw it at someone’s feet where it lay pumping out your life’s blood. It left you open to having that raw heart trampled on without regard to your dignity or pride. Love was like standing on a greasy pole with a tiger pit below.
Thankfully her brief, destructive affair was over. Her marriage to Jake would ensure that she never experienced such misery again.
She smiled at Jake in a sudden rush of gratitude. He lifted a disapproving eyebrow in Leo’s direction then beckoned her with an authoritative finger to come down to the hall.
Smiling, she lifted her hand and, splaying out her fingers, mouthed, ‘Five minutes!’
Jake frowned and turned away. His heavy lids were lowered, his lashes making shadowed smudges on his sabre-cut cheekbones. She watched as his head bent and he murmured something urgently to the women around him, his mouth taking on a ravishingly wicked curl as he did so.
‘You can’t take your eyes off him, can you?’ chuckled Leo.
‘Yes! Oh, OK, no! He’s...very compelling!’ she answered reluctantly. And felt worried that it seemed to be true. Why was that? she wondered, feeling a sensation as if a hundred butterflies were dancing on her skin. Butterflies with hot feet; her body tingled with warmth and she fanned her face with her hand. ‘Heavens, isn’t it hot?’
‘Not particularly,’ said Leo. ‘But I know the feeling.’
She hardly heard. Her eyes were glued to Jake as he strode purposefully across the dance floor towards the door that led to the servants’ quarters.
Leo touched her arm gently. ‘Amber, you understand why I’m leaving, don’t you? I can’t leave Ginny in her hour of need. Places and possessions are nothing to me. Only Ginny. You’d give up everything for Jake, wouldn’t you?’
She managed a wan smile. ‘Are you kidding?’
But she wouldn’t. To her there was only one place to live in the world. It didn’t matter to Jake where they lived. He could continue working around the world as a war correspondent while she stayed in Castlestowe, with people she’d known all her life around her.
‘I’ll have children,’ said Leo, breaking in on her thoughts. ‘One of them might love the idea of taking over Castlestowe on my behalf. Father’s reconciled to that idea. He’s looking forward to grandchildren. And...maybe you and Jake will come to visit us some time?’ He grinned mischievously. ‘Compare children, maybe?’
He knew! she thought in horror, and then saw that he was laughing at her startled expression. Somehow she again managed not to touch her stomach in a protective gesture. Somehow she stretched her lips into a smile.
‘Whoa, there! Steady! I’m only just married,’ she protested, quelling the nausea that threatened her composure.
Leo gave her a goodbye hug and slipped away. Suddenly exhausted, she sat down on a tapestry-covered chair which was tucked away out of sight of the revellers below. It was then that her hand instinctively crept to where her baby lay.
She didn’t even know how she felt about the baby. There’d been no time to register anything other than shock and then a shy joy and then... Then she’d told its father—Enzo, the handsome UN captain who had been responsible for the African enclave where she’d been working.
‘It’s all right,’ he’d told her some two months or so earlier, when protective supplies had run out. ‘I’ll be careful, I promise. I love you. I need you... Please, Amber! Please...’
She’d denied him; he’d insisted. And stupidly she’d let him persuade her because he’d swamped her in passionate, emotional blackmail, and life out there was so tough that you took your pleasure with a desperation that would be unthinkable under more normal circumstances.
Their relationship had cooled the next morning because she’d felt used. Her white teeth drove deep into her full lower lip. Love, he’d said! It had been lust, though she’d been too naive and innocent to recognise it as such. And Enzo had been annoyed when she’d hesitantly told him that she was pregnant.
‘What can I do about it? I’m married,’ he’d said with a shrug, unaware that Amber had frozen with the shock.
Then he’d gone on to say that their six-month affair had been fun, wonderful, sensual and he adored her, of course; she was the best lay he’d ever had...but nothing else.
She felt weak at the memory. The best lay. Amber drew in a shuddering breath as the humiliation hit her anew. Enzo had vanished, leaving her incapable of work. Even her team leader, Mary Smith, had been unable to console her.
Then Jake had stepped in, acting with typical thoughtfulness and sensitivity. He’d come across her huddled body in the Jeep that Enzo had used and he’d talked to her for ages. While she’d sobbed her heart out, his soothing, velvety voice had persisted, relentlessly describing some of the children waiting for a trace on their parents, making them real to her by his accurate observations—one child’s crooked smile, another’s saucy eyes, the family of four looked after by the eldest—a child of nine...
Slowly he’d brought her back to the world again. But this time she’d met it and her obligations without any love in her heart. And with a child secretly growing in her body.
Her face flamed with the shame. ‘Enzo! Oh, Enzo!’ she groaned in misery.
There was a sharp intake of breath behind her and she jerked her head around, releasing a flurry of creamy petals from the roses which secured her floating veil. Jake! she registered, ignoring the fall of velvety petals onto her breasts. And her tearful eyes widened. He was tense with anger.
‘What’s the matter?’ she asked in confusion.
‘Surely you know?’
Her heart thudded at the passion shaking his voice. He remained in the dark shadows
