The Forced Marriage by Sara Craven Page A

would have broken off the engagement anyway, but I never meant it to happen like that. To publicly humiliate him in front of his friends.’
    ‘Then why are you crying?’
    Because, she cried out in her heart, I thought I would never see you again. Because I’ve just realised that, for me, it was never just sex. That, God help me, I’ve fallen in love with you. But I know you don’t feel the same, so this has to be a secret I can never share—with anyone.
    She gave a wavering smile. ‘Perhaps because I’ve never had so many people concertedly angry with me before.’ She swallowed. ‘The general view is that I’ve done an unforgivable thing.’
    He was silent for a moment. ‘That is a harsh judgement,’ he said at last. ‘Engagements are broken every day.
    ‘But not by me,’ she said. ‘I—I’ve always been so—well-behaved. And now I’m a bad lot. A scarlet woman, no less.’
    He said her name, on a shaken breath, drawing her into his arms and holding her close. She flattened her hands against the breast of his shirt, absorbing the comforting warmth of his body, feeling the beat of his heart under her palm. Content, she realised, just to be near him. And how pathetic was that?
    He took the band from her hair, running his fingers through the silky waves to free them, lingering over the contact. She could sense the pent-up longing in his touch, and her heart leapt.
    ‘Your friend told me you are planning to go away for a while,’ he said at last. ‘Is that true?’
    ‘Yes.’ She bit her lip. ‘I know I’m being a wimp, but Chris seems to have told everyone about us, and I’d rather not face the music for a while.’
    ‘Have you decided where to go?’
    ‘Not yet.’ She shook her head. ‘I don’t seem capable of active planning at the moment.’
    ‘But your passport is in order?’
    ‘Yes, of course.’
    ‘Then that makes it simple,’ he said. ‘I shall take you back to Italy with me.’
    Her lips parted in a soundless gasp. She stared up at him. ‘You—can’t be serious.’
    ‘Why not?’ He shrugged. ‘I have to return there, and you need to escape. It solves several problems.’
    And creates a hundred others. She thought it, but did not say it.
    ‘Won’t your family—your friends—find it—odd?’
    ‘Why should they? I shall take you to the castello . I often have friends staying with me there.’
    In translation, the castello was where he took his women, she told herself with a pang. She would be just another in a long line.
    She ought to apply some belated common sense and return a polite but firm refusal, and she knew it. But he was leaving soon, and she wasn’t sure that she could bear knowing this was the last time she would be in his arms, breathing the warm masculine scent of him, or feeling his lips touching hers.
    She thought in agony, I can’t let him go. I can’t…
    She said slowly, ‘Marco—why do you want me with you?’
    He put his lips to the agitated pulse in her throat. ‘You have a short memory, mia cara .’ The smile was back in his voice. That husky, sensuous note which sent her blood racing. ‘Do you really not know?’
    It was the answer she’d expected, so there was no point in regret or recrimination.
    Heaven, she thought. Hell—and now heartbreak. Stark and inevitable, whether she stayed or went. But at least he would be hers—for a little while longer.
    On a little whisper, she said, ‘Do you think this is wise?’
    ‘Ah, mia bella .’ There was an odd note in his voice that was almost like sadness. ‘I think it is too late for wisdom.’
    ‘Yes,’ she said, sighing. ‘Perhaps so.’ She tried to smile. ‘In that case the answer’s yes. I—I’ll go with you, Marco.’
    He took her hand and kissed it, then laid it against his cheek, his eyes closed, his face wrenched suddenly by some emotion that she did not understand.
    But instinct told her it had nothing to do with happiness.
    And she thought, Heaven help us both.

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