The sudden silence around her in the church jolted Amber out of her reverie, dragging her back to the present. The choir had stopped singing, the glorious sound of their voices dying away, and the priest stepped forward to begin the real heart of the ceremony.
‘We are gathered here together to join this man and this woman…’
Amber found that her mouth had dried painfully and she had to swallow hard to relieve the tightness in her throat.
Could she really do this? Could she go through with this wedding, knowing that her heart wasn’t truly in it? She was fond of Rafe. She loved him in a quiet, gentle way—in the way that good friends loved each other. And a year ago, he had helped her escape from the worst situation of her life.
But she could never give her heart to him as she had once given it to another man. Given it and had it ripped to shreds, the tiny pieces tossed back at her without a care. With only supreme contempt on his face.
No!
With a violent mental effort, Amber clamped down tight on the Pandora’s box of memories she’d risked opening again. She was not going to let that happen. She was not going to let that man’s name into her thoughts, into her world, ever again. He had ruined her life once and she had barely recovered from it. She was not going to suffer that way ever again.
That was why she was marrying Rafe.
Turning her head, Amber looked up into the face of the man at her side, surprised to find that he looked pale—as pale as she imagined she must look herself. His jaw seemed tight, his mouth compressed. But then, as he realised her eyes were on him, he glanced her way too, and flashed her a brief smile.
Immediately Amber felt some of the cruel tensions that had tightened her spine, twisting in her nerves, slacken and ease, and she slid her hand into his where it hung at his side. His skin was cool, his response muted. He just let her fingers rest in his. But that was Rafe’s way. He made no major demonstrations of affection; they hadn’t even slept together. He had said he was happy to wait and that was how Amber preferred it.
She would be OK with Rafe. Safe and secure. And that was all she wanted in life now. She’d known passion once and it had frightened her. It had turned her into someone she didn’t recognise and she never wanted to see that person again. She’d left the dark days behind her and she was moving forward at last.
‘If any person present knows of any reason why these two should not be joined…’
The priest intoned the words in a voice that made them sound so solemn, so ominous, that in spite of herself Amber felt a tiny shiver run down her spine. It was deliberate, she knew. The cleric was Rafe’s uncle and he had joked with them before the ceremony that this was their last chance to back out; to escape the marriage vows.
‘I’ll wait a good while after I’ve said it,’ he’d teased. ‘Just to make sure that if anyone wants to say anything they can.’
‘…then let him speak now…or forever hold his peace…’
There, it was said. The words were out. The challenge had been made and now they could continue with the wedding service.
No one would answer it. No one ever did. Amber had no idea just how many weddings she had attended in her life but at all of them those words had been spoken in one form or another and no one had ever stepped forward to ‘speak now’ instead of forever holding peace.
But still, there was always that long-drawn-out moment that seemed to go on forever. The awkward, rather nerve-racking moment when everyone paused and listened and waited…and no one ever spoke.
But everyone wondered just what would happen if someone did.
Of course, no one spoke this time. And Rafe’s uncle beamed with delight and satisfaction as he drew in his breath to continue once again.
‘In that case—’
‘I do!’
The voice came so suddenly and unexpectedly that for a moment Amber was confused. They were the words she was expecting to hear—when she and Rafe made their vows—but not yet, not before they had been asked…
Had Rafe been so nervous, in so much of a rush that he had jumped the gun, plunging in to say the words that everyone knew were coming? Surely not now, not yet. Not without the prompt from the cleric first.
‘Wait…’ she began to whisper.
At least, she opened her mouth to try to say it. But then she realised that the words had come from behind, and not beside her, And there was something dreadful about the stillness that had fallen over the entire church, about the way that there had been one sudden murmur of shock, abruptly choked off and leaving instead an appalled silence that reverberated inside her head like the after-effects of a vicious blow to her skull.
‘I do,’ the voice said again and there was no mistaking it this time. This time she caught the soft lilt of a musical accent that should have made the words sound beautiful, soft, enticing.
Instead they made her shiver with the ice-cold, soul-deep dread that came with recognition of that voice. The voice she had once loved to hear whisper her name or tease her softly.
The voice that could only belong to one man and he was the man she hoped she would never meet again. The man she most dreaded seeing in the entire world.
‘What—?’ Rafe seemed to have jolted out of his inexplicable trance, some of the tension leaving his body as he jerked his head around to see who had spoken. ‘What are you—?’
But the man behind them didn’t let him finish. Instead he interrupted Rafe, lifting his voice slightly and speaking in a harsh and dangerous tone that defied anyone to try to stop him.
‘I do,’ he said again, just to emphasise the fact. ‘I know of a reason why these two should not be joined together in holy matrimony. Don’t I, Amber?’
And it was that use of her name, the icy cruelty in it, the savage edge to the syllables that turned it into an accusation, a warning and a threat all in one that left her with no place to go; nowhere to hide. The only thing she could do was to face her tormentor head-on.
Look him straight in the face.
It took all the strength she possessed. Trembling, shivering, nausea churning deep in her stomach, she forced herself to turn, green eyes blurring badly as she tried to focus them on him.
He was bigger than she remembered. Bigger and darker and far, far more devastating.
Or was that just the way that he seemed to be in contrast to the mellow stone and wood of the interior of the church, the pale colours of the flowers? He was dressed in superbly tailored black from head to foot, shirt, jacket, trousers, black boots on the feet that were planted so firmly on the stone flags that lined the aisle. With his jet-black hair and gleaming bronze eyes he looked like nothing so much as the devil himself come to earth—and come to torment her.
‘Amber?’ he prompted harshly when she could only stand and stare, eyes wide, her trembling hands half-raised towards her mouth, not having the strength to complete the move.
The whole congregation had frozen too. Her mother,
