Cordero's Forced Bride. Kate Walker

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СКАЧАТЬ himself up from his lowly and impoverished beginnings to the height of his wealth and power, was marrying into the British nobility, a family whose name had been amongst the highest in the land for centuries past. It had been the stuff that fairy tales were made of, especially when the bride was acknowledged to be a stunning beauty and the groom a hunk whose carved, handsome features and lean, powerful frame had featured in many photographs in the gossip columns and in magazines, usually with some supremely decorative female draped on his arm.

      ‘I don’t think…’ she tried again, feeling even more lost and adrift than in the first moments when she had arrived in the church and had come under the scrutiny of those coldly burning eyes as she walked up the aisle towards him.

      Because the truth was that she didn’t know what she was meant to say or how—and what—she was supposed to explain. Nothing had been as she had expected it. But then how did you know what might happen when you had to break up a wedding by announcing to the groom that his fiancée had jilted him? It wasn’t exactly something that you did every day.

      But Santos wasn’t listening to her protests. Instead he had levered himself away from the door and taken two swift strides towards her, his hand coming out and clamping over her arm, just above the elbow, hard fingers digging into her skin as he swung her round to face the door at his side.

      ‘You will do it,’ he declared, cold and brusque. ‘Your family has messed up my life enough already, so now…’

      He was interrupted by another rap at the door and her father’s voice again, sharper this time.

      ‘Alexandra—what’s going on in there…?’

      ‘Nothing—I mean, it’s fine,’ Alexa managed when Santos turned a forceful glare on her, the burnished eyes directing a silent command that she should respond. ‘We—we’re coming out now and I’ll…I’ll explain.’

      She had no option, it seemed, because that hand that gripped her arm was now pulling her forward, leaving her no choice but to follow.

      ‘Let go of me!’ she spat in furious protest. ‘OK, so I had to bring you bad news—but there’s a saying about not shooting the messenger. And that’s all that I am—the messenger. Natalie’s the one—’

      ‘But your sister is not here.’

      It was a low growl and he didn’t look at her, didn’t slow his steps towards the door, yanking it open as soon as he reached it.

      ‘So don’t take it out on me! You can’t drag me about like this—’

      She’d taken her attention off her own feet for a moment and as a result she caught her toe against one of the uneven flagstones, stumbling awkwardly in the unaccustomed high-heeled shoes. For a second she thought she would fall but then that cruel grip around her arm tightened even more, holding her upright by sheer force.

      ‘Don’t yank me about!’

      ‘I was trying to help.’

      The cold flash of his brilliant eyes warned her not to argue but her own temper was bubbling up sharply and she was having to struggle to contain it. How had this happened? How had she come from being just, as she had said, the messenger of bad news, to being the victim of Santos Cordero’s dark disapproval, hauled out into the church by him to face the congregation assembled for his society wedding, without even being aware of just what was involved?

      Because something was involved, that much was obvious.

      ‘Then don’t help.’ She laced her tone with sarcasm to make it clear that helping was the last thing she thought he was doing. ‘I can manage quite well enough on my own.’

      ‘You might be able to manage,’ he flung back from between gritted teeth, keeping his voice low so that no one, not even her stepmother in the front row, or her father, still waiting by the altar steps, could catch what he was saying. ‘But I would prefer it if you didn’t fall flat on your face and then blame it on me. And I want to make sure that you don’t take off like your sister and disappear out the door.’

      ‘What would it matter if I did?’

      For a second Alexa was tempted to aim a hard, pointed kick at Santos’s ankle but another of those flashing sidelong glances seemed to catch her intent and a grim smile crossed his mouth as he brought them both to a halt right in front of the altar.

      ‘Alexa,’ her father began once more but silenced himself hastily when Santos turned a burning glare on him.

      ‘Ladies and gentlemen…’

      He barely had to raise his voice to be heard, the church had fallen so silent as soon as they had appeared. Every eye in the place was fixed on them, some faces frowning in confusion and puzzlement, others, like those of her father and stepmother, looking pale and taut with tension. Just what was going on here? What were the undercurrents she was just not picking up on? The things she didn’t understand?

      But Santos didn’t seem to be aware of them as he continued to speak as calmly and as confidently as if he were making his after-dinner speech—the one that now would never have to be made.

      ‘There has been a slight change of plan…’

       Slight?

      That brought Alexa’s head round to his in a reaction of stunned shock. How could he describe Natalie’s jilting of him, her flight to the airport, as a ‘slight change of plan’?

      But Santos ignored her total consternation, her wide, shocked eyes and continued with total control.

      ‘The wedding is not going to take place.’

      ‘Not…’

      The word was choked from her father as he took an unsteady step backwards. And in the front pew. Alexa saw how her stepmother went even whiter, one expensively manicured hand flying to her mouth as if to hold back the cry of shock and disbelief that almost escaped her.

      ‘What…?’

      It was Stanley Montague, trying again to make his tongue work, to ask the question that was so obviously whirling round and round in his head. Alexa had rarely seen her father looking so shocked and upset. In fact, his reaction seemed out of all proportion to the situation. OK, so it was bad, there was going to be a terrible embarrassment to face, and the aborted wedding would be the talk of their friends—and probably the gossip columns for some weeks to come.

      But surely that was better than Natalie making a huge mistake and marrying a man she didn’t love? Better to call the wedding off now than to face a costly divorce—costly in more ways than financial—maybe just months from now? But her father was looking as if the end of the world had come and…

      Alexa had no chance to think things through further because at that moment Santos’s firm grip on her arm propelled her forward so that she was standing just in front of him, facing the gaping congregation.

      ‘Natalie is not coming,’ he said coolly. ‘She has run out on me—that is what her sister came here to tell me. And now she’s going to explain it all to you.’

      A forceful little push made her take another step forward in the same moment that it pointedly told her that now was the time for her to speak—to tell everyone СКАЧАТЬ