She knew she was being studied by every employee in the place, all waiting with bated breath for the announcement.
Day after day she and Gustavo rode together, and he told her about the estate he loved in a voice that was gentle, almost emotional. One day as they walked through the woods he said, ‘Do you like my home, Joanna?’
‘I love it,’ she said fervently.
‘Do you think you could be happy living here?’
That was his proposal.
She accepted so quickly that the memory made her blush later. She brushed her fears aside, desperate to seize her heart’s desire.
When, at last, he kissed her it made her forget everything else. There was skill in everything he did, covering her mouth, teasing her with his lips, caressing, holding her close. The effect on her was electric. Yet even then she was cautious enough to hold back a little, waiting until she could sense that his passion was as deep as her own.
The wedding was set to take place two months later, in England. Two weeks before the date Gustavo and his family arrived to stay at Rannley Towers and take part in a series of glittering festivities. In the weeks apart they corresponded, but mostly about practical affairs. They talked about the estate, the life they would live there. He addressed her as ‘My dearest Joanna’ and signed himself ‘Yours affectionately’.
But when she saw him again nothing mattered but that he was here, and they would soon be married.
Her dress was a masterpiece of ivory silk, cut simply to suit her tall figure. The sleeves were long, almost down to the hem, the train stretched behind her and the veil streamed down to the floor and over the train. When she put it on and regarded herself in the mirror she knew that she was beautiful. Now, surely, he would fall in love with her?
And then Crystal arrived.
CHAPTER TWO
AT THE time she seemed like the wicked witch, but Joanna supposed that the bad fairy was more accurate, because Crystal actually looked like a fairy, being petite with blonde hair that fluffed about her face like candy-floss.
She had deep blue eyes, full of fun, a dainty nose, a mouth that was pure Cupid, and her delicious, gurgling laugh was irresistible. She was lovely, glamorous, enchanting.
Everything I wasn’t.
Crystal had been invited to stay in the house by Frank, one of Joanna’s many cousins, who was courting her. At their first meeting Joanna had liked her. Crystal charmed everyone with her beauty and her wicked sense of humour.
She had a way of talking rapidly, so that Gustavo often asked her to slow down or explain some English word to him. Several times Joanna heard her saying, ‘No, no, you say it like this.’
Then she would dissolve into laughter at his pronunciation, and he would laugh with her.
Was it then that Joanna first sensed danger?
How can I tell? Whatever I sensed, I wouldn’t admit it.
So many things: the burning look that flashed briefly in his eyes for Crystal, which had never been there for her. The way he watched the door until she entered, and relaxed when she appeared.
A hundred tiny little details, which she pretended meant nothing, until the day when it was no longer possible to pretend.
At first she thought he was alone. Coming from the brilliant sunlight into the trees, she saw only him, and her heart leapt before she noticed that he was leaning over and down towards the woman in his arms.
But then she saw them, and the way he was raining kisses on her upturned face, kissing her to the point of madness, again and again, so that Joanna knew that kisses would never be enough for him.
Kissing as he had never kissed her.
She stood and watched, her heart breaking, her world shattering around her.
She drew back behind a great oak, although it was needless. They were beyond noticing her or anything else. She heard him say,
‘I’m sorry, my darling. I had no right to do this when I have nothing to offer you.’
‘Why can’t we be happy?’ That was Crystal’s voice. ‘Don’t you love me?’
‘You know I love you,’ he said, almost violently. ‘I didn’t know I could feel like this. If I had-’
He stopped. Joanna listened, her heart beating madly. If he had…
‘If you’d met me first, you wouldn’t have proposed to Joanna, would you?’
‘Never,’ he said hoarsely.
‘Don’t you want to marry me, my darling?’
‘Don’t ask me that.’
‘But I must ask it,’ she persisted in her soft, enticing voice. ‘If we’re going to lose each other, at least give me honesty.’
‘All right, I want to marry you,’ he said in a fierce, passionate voice. ‘I can’t, but neither can I stop loving and wanting you. You’re there with me every moment, night and day, waking or sleeping.’
‘Then how can you cast me aside?’
‘Because I have made promises to Joanna. My darling, I beg you to understand, I must keep those promises.’
‘Why? She doesn’t love you any more than you love her.’
‘But we’re a few days from our wedding. How can I humiliate her in front of the world?’
‘Gustavo, have you thought of the future? All those years tied to a woman you don’t love. How will you endure them?’
The silence that followed froze Joanna to the soul. Just a few seconds, but enough to make her feel that she was dying. At last his answer came in a voice that was bleak with despair.
‘I’ll survive, somehow.’
She’d thought her heart couldn’t break any more, but when she heard that she knew she was wrong.
And strangely, it was the knowledge that there was nothing more to hope for that made it possible for her to step out from behind the tree, smiling and saying brightly, ‘Isn’t there something you want to tell me?’
Their faces were imprinted on her memory forever, Gustavo’s pale and shocked, Crystal’s with an expression she couldn’t read. Only later did she think of cats and cream. At the time she was concentrating on what she must do.
Crystal spoke first, sounding suitably uneasy.
‘Joanna, we didn’t mean you to find out like this.’
‘It doesn’t matter how I found out,’ she answered with a fair assumption of gaiety. ‘The point is that we’re still in time to put matters right.’
‘I have no intention of asking you to free me.’ Gustavo’s voice was hollow.
‘But perhaps I’d like to chuck you out,’ she replied with a shrug. ‘Oh, come on, this isn’t the nineteenth century. The sky isn’t going to fall if there’s a last-minute change of plan.’
She never forgot the look on his face then, sheer blinding hope at the thought of not having to marry her.
‘You-mean that?’ he asked as though unable to believe his ears.
‘Of course I mean it. Honestly, darling,’ she added, using the term of endearment for the first time, ‘if you’re in love with someone else-well, why should I want you?’
‘But the formalities-’
‘Blow the formalities. We’ve changed our minds. Both of us. Come on, let’s get it over with.’
She turned away quickly, not sure how long she could keep up the façade. As she began to walk she heard Gustavo call, ‘Joanna…’
And there it was, the note she had dreamed of hearing in his voice, warm and emotional now that he was grateful for his release. She fled back to the house.
She had only the dimmest recollection of what followed. There was family uproar, scene after scene in which she did most of the talking, laughing as she insisted that it was a mutual decision and she couldn’t be happier.
She doubted if anyone was fooled, especially as the engagement to Crystal came immediately after. But in the face of her determination there was nothing anybody could do.
A special licence was obtained with Crystal’s name on it and the wedding was to go ahead on the same day in the same church, with one bride substituted for another. Joanna sailed through the whole process, apparently with not a care in the world. She dreaded their wedding, but knew she had to be there or the world would know why.