Free The Duke’s Secret Wife by Kate Walker Page A

might rebound on her so appallingly, until it had been too late.
    ‘I can see that now, Luis,’ she admitted miserably. ‘And I was very stupid, very selfish—but that’s all I was. Please don’t hate me for being stupid.’
    ‘I don’t.’
    He didn’t hate her.
    Dios , didn’t she know that he could never hate her? That was the reason she could get to him so badly. The reason why he’d had to come to England when he’d got that letter. He’d tried to convince himself that he never wanted to see her again, but the truth was that he had never felt anything so terrible as the fear that he might lose her for good. And he’d endured that fear twice now.
    ‘Why do you think you are here? I forgave you—’
    ‘Forgave!’
    Isabelle couldn’t believe what she was hearing and her distress was a savage wound in her heart as she faced the way her hopes had been lifted, only to be dashed right down in the next second. She could hardly bear to look into his face, to see the way he had stiffened, the golden eyes narrowing, his jaw setting hard and tight.
    How could he have taken her so close to the future she had dreamed of and then snatched it away again? She felt as if she had been given a glimpse of heaven, only to have the door slammed right in her face.
    ‘I didn’t want forgiveness for something I didn’t do! I wanted trust! The sort of trust that doesn’t need proof—that believes in me completely and totally. And if you can’t give me that, then our marriage has no future and we might just as well forget the whole thing!’
    That got through to him. It slashed straight through everything else he had been feeling, stabbed straight to the heart. And in that moment he knew that, two years before, he had made the worst, most appalling mistake of his life.
    There had always been something he had kept coming back to, something he hadn’t been able to quite put his finger on, and it had disturbed him, nagged at him throughout the past two years. Now he knew he wouldn’t be able to rest until he’d cleared the whole matter up. And if he had been wrong, then he’d spend the rest of his life making it up to Isabelle.
    ‘I don’t want to forget it,’ he muttered harshly.
    Isabelle didn’t know how to take that.
    ‘Oh, Luis, mi marido, mi amor …’
    ‘No!’
    He couldn’t bear those words. Not now. Not when he feared that he had wronged her so badly.
    Pushing himself to his feet, he swung halfway across the room, needing to put a physical distance between them that matched the emotional one he had let grow because of his stupid hurt pride.
    ‘Don’t call me that. Not now.’
    Isabelle knew her mistake as soon as the words had left her lips, and desperately, hopelessly, wished them back, knowing there was no chance of salvation.
    Beside her she had felt Luis’s hard length tense, freezing in shock, and then, agonisingly, the immediate, inevitable swift withdrawal, the movement away that spelled out his rejection, tearing her heart in two.
    ‘Luis, mi marido, mi amor …’ The first few words of Spanish he had taught her. The most important words, he had said. If she never learned any other phrases, then these woulddo. They would say all she ever needed to say to keep him happy.
    But one night she had used those words and known they would never have the same effect again. That even if she handed her heart to him at the same time, he would never, ever believe that she loved him.
    They had been the last words she had shouted after him on that dreadful night when he had arrived back unexpectedly and found her and Rob, in bed together. She had tried to explain but he had turned from her as he was doing now, his eyes dark with rejection. And so she had screamed the only words she had thought might bring him back.
    But they had had as little effect as they were having now. His face had closed up, steel shutters seeming to slam shut behind his eyes, cutting him off from her completely. And he had walked out of