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

her life—for good, it had seemed.
    The words swung round and round in Luis’s head, gaining a new and terrible bitterness with every repetition.
    My husband, my love… Once he had longed to hear her say them as often as she could. He would have sworn that he would never grow tired of them. That he could never hear anything that would have made him happier.
    Until one bitter dawn when he had heard her shout them after him down a long, shadowy hotel corridor as he’d walked away from the terrible sight of her and her lover in bed together.
    He hadn’t been able to bear to stay a second longer then. He had had to get away—fast—just as he had to now. If he stayed, then he would surely give himself away completely, by letting her know just how he was feeling. And the truth was that he was such a mess, such a knot of tangled emotions deep inside, that he didn’t know what to say to her.
    ‘L-Luis…’ Isabelle tried, but her voice failed her completely, shrivelling into nothing as he turned back to her and she saw the tightness of every muscle in his face, the blank, opaque eyes.
    ‘ Perdón ,’ he said stiffly. ‘Forgive me, but I cannot…’
    My husband, my love . But if he had loved her enough he would have stayed. He would have listened. He would have trusted.
    He had done no such thing. He had failed her. And now he would have to live with his conscience for having wronged her so badly.
    ‘You were right, Isabella,’ he went on harshly. ‘Perhaps we should forget the whole thing. I will not trouble you again.’
    Not until he could prove to her that he believed in her the way she needed him to.
    ‘But, Luis…’ Isabelle began, but she was speaking to empty air.
    Without even another glance in her direction, Luis had marched from the room and she could only stare in silent desperation as the door swung to behind him.
    ‘Forgive me, but I cannot…’ His cold, stiff words seemed to hang in the air, freezing, like the cruel hand that gripped her heart.
    ‘I cannot…’ What? If he could never forget what had happened, then what possible hope of a future was there?

CHAPTER SIX
    ‘A LL alone, my dear?’
    ‘What?’
    Isabelle looked up in surprise, struggling to drag herself into the present as Luis’s father came towards her along the stone-flagged terrace.
    ‘Is that son of mine neglecting you?’
    ‘He—he had business to attend to. Something about one of the vineyards.’
    It was an excuse that would do as well as any other, she told herself. It was the one Luis had used to explain his absences at first.
    But lately he had stopped doing even that. He had just headed out at the start of the day, some mornings even before she was awake, and he was more often than not very late back.
    ‘The vineyards can take care of themselves.’ The duke frowned into the sun. ‘Luis should be here.’
    ‘He will be,’ Isabelle put in hastily, hoping she sounded more confident than she actually felt. ‘I think he just wants to make sure that everything is in order before we leave on our honeymoon.’
    A honeymoon that was now not so far away. The days since she had come to Spain had flashed by so fast that she could hardly believe she had been here a month or more now. Every day had been taken up with some sort of planning or preparation for the wedding so that she had barely had time to think.
    And if she was honest, she’d been grateful for the endless round of fittings, consultations, coffee mornings, visits to relatives that had filled her time and taken her away from Luis’s disturbing absences and his even more disturbing presence in the brief times he had actually spent in the castle.
    ‘How are you feeling today?’
    Don Alfonso always looked pale, and his tall frame hadn’t an ounce of spare flesh on it. But the bronze eyes that were so like his son’s were bright and alert these days, his energy belying his state of health.
    ‘I feel fine,’ he assured her now, a smile lighting up his face.