Barcelona you told me you were a lawyer.’
‘I am a lawyer. And you aren’t in any position to accuse me of messing with the truth.’
Touché.
Kaitlin quickened her pace slightly as they exited the marquee and stepped into the late-afternoon sunshine that bathed the lush green landscaped lawns with dappled light. Other guests stood in small groups as Kaitlin led the way along the gravelled path, lined with lush green manicured hedges, towards a bench she judged to be secluded, but not so isolated as to give anyone reason to gossip.
Once seated, she turned towards him, keeping her smile in place for the benefit of onlookers. ‘So, why are you here, Daniel?’
IT WAS A good question. Why was he here? Sitting in the splendour of Derwent Manor’s famed landscaped gardens. Nearby camellias provided vivid splashes of pink, and their bench overlooked the breathtaking glory of the rhododendron garden for which the Manor was famed.
But in truth the surroundings didn’t matter; right now all that mattered was the woman next to him on the wooden bench in the sunshine. The woman he’d known as ‘Lynette’. The woman whose true identity had turned out to be Lady Kaitlin Derwent.
Anger battled an unwanted stab of desire as he absorbed her sheer beauty.
Titian hair of a near-indescribable shade—tints of auburn interwoven with shades of reddish-gold—cascaded in loose waves to meet creamy bare shoulders that had his fingers tingling. Her dark green eyes met his gaze in a mixture of defiance, vulnerability and hope.
‘Well?’ she repeated. ‘Why are you here?’
‘Because I wanted to check for myself whether Lady Kaitlin Derwent and “Lynette” were one and the same.’
‘How did you find out?’
‘I saw a recent picture of you and Prince Frederick.’
Glaring up at him from the glossy cover of a celebrity magazine, the image had caught his eye at an airport lounge just weeks ago. About to look away something elusive had nagged at him: the set of Lady Kaitlin’s head, the angle of her cheekbones...a willow-the-wisp of recognition.
‘And you recognised me from that?’
‘Not at first.’
At first he’d thought nothing of it. But some instinct had made him purchase his very first gossip rag and study the photograph further. One business flight later he’d known he must be losing the plot—big-time—but the conviction that Lady Kaitlin Derwent and his ‘Lynette’ were one and the same wouldn’t quit. The more he’d researched Lady Kaitlin the more sure he’d become, preposterous though the idea was, that he’d found ‘Lynette’.
‘Until today I wasn’t a hundred per cent sure.’
Her hands twisted together on her lap. Then, as if aware of the gesture, she loosed the grip. ‘You could just have called me. This is a disaster—now you’ve made contact with my family...we have an association.’ Horror etched her classical features. ‘What if we end up meeting again?’
‘Then so be it. I wanted to see you face to face—make sure beyond a shadow of a doubt that you are “Lynette”. Without calling first and giving you a chance to lie. Again.’
Forcing himself to lean back, Daniel kept his anger in check.
‘Plus, it’s hard to call someone who didn’t leave a number, didn’t even give their real name, and who vanished without so much as a goodbye.’
‘You knew it was one night only.’
A night of freedom.
‘Yes, but I didn’t know your “one night of freedom” was an aristocrat slumming it with the hoi-polloi.’ Anger at her deception, wrath at his own stupidity in falling for her show, fuelled his words. ‘Is that the new trend—to lose your vir—?’
Her poise broke and a laser of ire flashed in her eyes. ‘Stop right there. How dare you? That is not what it was. That night was—’
Breaking off, she pressed her lips together and for a moment vulnerability lit those emerald-green eyes and momentarily sideswiped his anger.
‘Was what?’
‘It doesn’t matter. I know it was shabby to leave like that, but I had no choice. In case you woke up and realised who I really was. Or someone might have recognised me...seen us together.’
Sheesh.
‘Would that have been so bad?’ Good thing his ego was in good shape.
‘Yes.’ The word was delivered with simplicity. ‘The scandal would have been too much. Especially...’
‘Especially because you were planning to marry a prince.’
‘No! I mean... I hadn’t decided what to do.’ She twisted her hands into the teal-green folds of her skirt and then, as if realising what she was doing, she smoothed the material and pulled her shoulders back. ‘I wasn’t dating Frederick at the time, but I knew there was a possibility that I would in the future. I was a free agent that night, Daniel, and I didn’t offer more than I could give. One night.’
‘But you lied. And you took what I gave under false pretences. I wouldn’t have spent the night with you in Barcelona if I’d known who you were and exactly what your gilded cage was.’
‘Why not?’ The question tumbled out and she pressed her lips together as if in regret.
‘Because you were as good as promised to another man and I don’t poach.’ The idea was anathema—he’d watched his mother’s repeated humiliation at his stepfather’s numerous infidelities.
Kaitlin leant forward, shook her head, her red-gold hair swinging as if in emphasis. ‘I was not promised to anyone. Frederick and I had no understanding at that point. It was simply an idea that my parents had put to me. He hadn’t approached me—there had been no discussions.’
‘But you knew.’ His voice was implacable. ‘All the time you were with me you knew that you would soon be dating someone else. You as good as said it.’
‘One night of freedom before I step into a gilded cage.’
Her words in Barcelona had been poignant. Because he knew all too well the iron bars of a gilded cage.
He’d grown up in one—benefited from the gilding, the luxuries, the power, the money, the lifestyle. At what point had he suspected that all those advantages had been bought with money raised from illegal sources? When had he realised what his mother had done?
Guilt coated his insides. She’d done it for him—to give him all those advantages. His father had been dead, she had been destitute, and so his mother had stepped into a gilded cage, married into the mob, and taken two-year-old Daniel in with her.
Enough. That part of his life was over.
