The Blackmail Baby. PENNY JORDAN

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СКАЧАТЬ as he bent to pick up her lightweight case, ‘for a woman who is still a virgin, you look…decidedly unvirginal.’

      Imogen tried to convince herself that the rushing sensation of faintness engulfing her was caused by the airlessness of the hallway rather than by what Dracco had said, but still she heard herself demanding huskily, ‘How…how do you know?’

      ‘That you are still a virgin?’ Dracco completed for her. ‘I know everything there is to know about you, Imo… After all, you are my wife…’

      His wife!

      Imogen felt sick; filled with a cold, shaky disbelief and an even colder fear. This was not what she had expected; what she had steeled herself to deal with.

      During the long flight from Rio she had forced herself to confront the fear that had raised its threatening head in her nightmares in the days leading up to her journey. She had been terrified that somehow, totally against her will and all logic, if she were to see Dracco again she might discover a dangerous residue of her teenage love for him had somehow survived; that it was waiting, ready to explode like a time bomb, to destroy her new life and the peace of mind she had fought so hard for. But now! Now it wasn’t love that Dracco was arousing inside her but a furious mixture of anger and hostility.

      So she was still a virgin—was that a crime?

      ‘You have no right to pry into my life, to spy on me,’ she began furiously, but Dracco refused to allow her to continue.

      ‘We are still married. I am still your husband; you are still my wife,’ he pointed out coldly.

      Imogen turned away to conceal her expression from him. Married in the eyes of the church, perhaps, but surely not in the eyes of the law, since their marriage had never been consummated. And that certainly didn’t give Dracco the right to claim her as his wife in a voice that suggested… Wearily Imogen shook her head. Now she was letting her imagination run away with her. Thinking she had heard possessiveness in Dracco’s voice.

      His words had given her a shock. Why on earth hadn’t Dracco had the marriage set aside? He, after all, loved another woman—her stepmother!

      Even after all these years it still filled her with acute nausea and disgust to think of Dracco with Lisa. Her father’s wife and the man her father had loved and valued so very much. Had Dracco slept with Lisa whilst her father was still alive? Had they…? Had he…? Unstoppably all the questions she had fiercely forbidden herself to even think before suddenly stormed through her. The images they were conjuring up sickened her, causing a red-hot boiling pain in her middle.

      All those years ago, Dracco had implied to her that he was marrying her to protect her, when all he had really wanted to protect had been his own interests!

      Tiredly Imogen closed her eyes. She had come to England for one purpose and one purpose only and that was to claim whatever money might be owing to her. And to persuade Dracco to transfer her interest in the business into the name of the charity so that in future it could benefit direct from her inheritance. Anything else…

      ‘I haven’t come back to discuss our marriage, Dracco.’ Firmly Imogen took a deep breath, determined to take control of the situation. ’I’ve already written to David Bryant, explaining what I want, and that is—’

      ‘To give away your inheritance to some charity,’ Dracco interrupted her grimly. ‘No, Imo,’ he told her curtly. ‘As your trustee, there’s no way I would be fulfilling my moral obligation towards you if I agreed, and as your husband…’

      She ached to be able to challenge him, to throw caution to the wind and demand furiously to know just when moral obligations had become important to him. But some inner instinct warned her against going too far. This wasn’t how their interview was supposed to go. She was an adult now, on an equal footing with Dracco, and not a child whom he could dictate to.

      ‘Legally the money is mine,’ she reminded him, having mentally counted to ten and calmed herself down a little.

      ‘Was yours,’ Dracco corrected her harshly. ‘You insisted that you wanted nothing to do with your inheritance—and you put that insistence in writing—remember.’

      Imogen took another deep breath. The situation was proving even more fraught with difficulties than she had expected.

      ‘I did write to Uncle Henry saying that,’ she agreed, pausing to ask him quietly, ‘When did he die? I had no idea.’

      Dracco had turned away from her, and for a moment Imogen thought that he had either not heard her question or that he did not intend to answer it, but then without turning back to her he said coldly, ‘He had a heart attack shortly after…on the day of our wedding.’

      Horrified, Imogen could only make a soft, anguished sound of distress.

      ‘Apparently he hadn’t been feeling well before the ceremony,’ Dracco continued as though he hadn’t heard her. ‘When he collapsed outside the church…’ He stopped whilst Imogen battled against her shock. ‘I went with him to the hospital. They hoped then… But he had a second attack whilst he was in Intensive Care which proved fatal.’

      ‘Was it…?’ Too shocked to guard her thoughts, Imogen blurted out shakily, ‘Was it because of me? Because I…?’

      ‘He had been under a tremendous amount of pressure,’ Dracco told her without answering her anguished plea for reassurance. ‘Your father’s death had caused him an immense amount of work, and it seems that there had been certain warning signs of a heart problem which he had ignored. He wasn’t a young man—he was ten years older than your father.’ He paused and then said abruptly, ‘He asked me to tell you how proud he had been to give you away.’

      Tears blurred Imogen’s eyes. She had a mental image of her father’s solicitor on the morning of her wedding, dressed in his morning suit, his silver-grey hair immaculately groomed. In the car on the way to the church he had taken hold of her hand and patted it a little awkwardly. He had been a widower, like her father, with no children of his own, and Imogen had always sensed a certain shyness in his manner towards her. Her father had been a very loving man and she had desperately missed the father-daughter warmth of their relationship. She had known from the look in his eyes that, like her, Henry Fairburn had been thinking about her father on that day.

      She had been sad to learn of his death from his nephew, but she had never imagined…

      ‘If you’re going to throw yourself into a self-indulgent bout of emotional guilt, I shouldn’t bother,’ Dracco was warning her hardly. ‘His heart attack was a situation waiting to happen and would have happened whether or not you had been there.’

      Somehow, instead of comforting and reassuring her, Dracco’s blunt words were only making her feel worse, Imogen acknowledged.

      ‘I don’t want to argue with you, Dracco,’ she said quietly. ‘You are a wealthy man in your own right. If you could just see the plight of these children…’

      ‘It is a good cause, yes, involvement with the shelter. My sources inform me that—’

      ‘Your sources?’ Imogen checked him angrily. ‘You have no right—’

      ‘Surely you didn’t think I would allow you to simply disappear without any trace, Imo? For your father’s sake, if nothing else; I owed it to him to—’

      ‘I СКАЧАТЬ