A Stormy Spanish Summer (12 page)

Fliss shivered in an agony of pleasure as she felt the strength of it pressing against the entrance to her own body. Her sex ached with longing, its muscles quivering in eager anticipation of the pleasure his possession of her promised. His first swift, urgent thrust made her cry out in a paroxysm of heart-stopping pleasure. Her body waited on the crest of that pleasure for more of what it craved.

Another thrust—deeper, harder—had her body tightening around him.

Her fiercely passionate ‘yes’ was breathed against Vidal’s mouth, her longing and arousal overwhelming her completely.

‘You want me,’ he told her.

‘Yes. Yes. I want you now, Vidal. I need you now.’ The hot, passionate words tumbled from her lips as she clung to him, holding him within her, trembling with pleasure and anticipation.

‘Tell me again,’ he urged as he stroked deeper inside her. ‘Tell me how much you want me.’

‘So much—too much. More than there are words for,’ Fliss told him as she pressed frantic kisses against his face.

Now he was moving within her, satisfying her need and yet increasing it at the same time. Helplessly Fliss clung to him as the tension within her grew, until it possessed every bit of her, every pulse of her blood and her heart, all that she was. And then all at once it was there, a brief second of hanging in space, and then the implosion, the fierce contraction of her body that took her over the edge of arousal and into the eye of a storm. Her orgasm was shot through with the pulse of Vidal’s release.

Lost in the wonder of their closeness, helpless and vulnerable to all that she was feeling, Fliss clung to Vidal, knowing that this wasn’t desire alone that possessed her, this was
love.
And his feelings for her?

Against her ear she could feel the warmth of his breath. Her voice trembled as she whispered softly, ‘Vidal?’

Vidal’s chest tightened. He could hear the emotion in
Felicity’s voice. The way it had trembled when she had said his name had felt like a physical caress against his skin. That emotion, though, came from the satisfaction of desire. Nothing else.

He exhaled slowly. Taking another deep breath, he told her curtly, ‘Now we are even. You used my desire for you to prove that I misjudged you. Now I have used yours for me to prove that you lied when you said you didn’t want me.’

Fliss could hear Vidal speaking coldly as she lay there, still wrapped in the vulnerability of loving him so intimately and intensely, wholly unable to protect herself from the cruelty of what he was saying now.

S
HE
couldn’t lie here like this for ever, in the grip of a grief so intense that it went way beyond the release of any tears, Fliss told herself. She must have showered and dressed after Vidal had gone, she recognised, but she had no memory of having done so. All she could remember was his final words to her, his final cruelty. She had been crazy to think that what had happened between them just now could change anything. He hated her.

Someone was knocking on the bedroom door. Fliss stiffened, and then trembled. Had Vidal come back? Did he want to utter more cruel words? Her heart pounded with pain. There was a second knock on the door. She would have to answer it. She got to her feet and walked unsteadily towards the door, exhaling with what she told herself was relief when she opened it to find the Duchess standing outside in the corridor, her face creased with tension.

‘Can I come in?’ the Duchess asked. ‘Only there’s something I have to say to you—about Vidal and what you said earlier.’

Numbly Fliss realised that in the heat of the moment, when she had been arguing with Vidal earlier, she had
completely forgotten that his mother was also there—a silent witness to the accusations Fliss had made against her son. Unable to do anything else, she nodded her head and held open the door, closing it once the Duchess was in the room.

‘I had to speak to you,’ the Duchess told Fliss as she sat in one of the chairs by the fire, obliging Fliss to take the other or be left standing over her visitor. ‘No mother likes to hear her child being spoken of as you spoke of Vidal earlier. You will learn that for yourself one day. But it is not just for Vidal’s sake that I want to talk to you, Felicity. It is for your own as well. Bitterness and resentment are destructive. They can eat away at a person until there is nothing left but those destructive emotions. I would hate to think of such damaging emotions destroying you—especially when those feelings are not necessary.’

‘I’m sorry if I hurt or offended you,’ Fliss apologised. ‘That wasn’t my intention. But the way Vidal has behaved—preventing me from making contact with my father—’

‘No, that is not true. It was not Vidal. On the contrary, in fact. You owe Vidal so much, and it is thanks to him that you have had—Oh!’

Guiltily the Duchess placed her hand over her mouth, shaking her head.

‘I only came up here to defend Vidal, not to. But I’ve let my emotions run away with me. Please forget what I said.’

Forget? How could she.
‘What
is not true?’ Fliss demanded,
urgently. ‘And what do I owe him? Please, tell me.’

‘I can’t say any more,’ the Duchess answered, very obviously flustered and uncomfortable. ‘I have said too much already.’

‘You can’t say something like that and then not explain,’ Fliss protested, feeling equally emotional.

‘I’m sorry,’ the Duchess apologised. ‘I shouldn’t have come up here. Oh, I am so cross with myself. I’m sorry, Fliss. I really am.’ She got up and walked towards the door, pausing there before opening it to repeat softly, ‘I really am sorry.’

Fliss stared at the closed door. What had the Duchess meant? What was it she had started to say and then refused to tell her? It was, of course, only natural that a mother should defend her child, Fliss could understand that. But there had been much more than maternal protection in the Duchess’s voice. There had been certainty, knowledge. A knowledge that
she
did not have. What kind of knowledge? Something to do with Fliss’s father? Something to do with the fact that Fliss had never been allowed to contact him? Something she had a right to know. Something that only one person could tell her, if she had the courage to demand an answer.

Vidal himself. And
did
she have that courage?

The Duchess’s slip made Fliss feel as though a secret door had suddenly appeared in a room she had thought she knew so well that it could not hide any secrets. It was an unnerving, uncomfortable experience. There was probably nothing for her to discover, no secrets for her to learn, no darkness for her to fear beyond that secret door.
But what if there was? What if …? What
could
there be? Vidal had told her himself that he had intercepted her letter to her father and that she was not to write to him again. The evidence had spoken for itself. Hadn’t it?

She needed to talk to Vidal, Fliss recognised.

Vidal was in his own suite of rooms, working, Rosa informed Fliss in a tone that suggested he would not want to be interrupted, when Fliss asked her where he was.

Not giving herself time to change her mind, Fliss started to climb the stairs. All the way up her stomach was cramping and her knees were almost knocking. Her mouth was dry with apprehension.

As she walked along the corridor, part of her wanted her to turn round, her courage almost failing her. The door to Vidal’s rooms was slightly ajar. Fliss knocked on it hesitantly and then waited, a cowardly relief filling her when there was no immediate reply.

Letting her hand fall to her side, she was just about to step back from the door when she heard Vidal call out briskly in Spanish from inside the room, in a voice that commanded obedience, for her to enter.

Feeling decidedly unsteady, Fliss turned the handle.

She might not have touched any alcohol, but she felt slightly light-headed—light-headed and, she recognised, rather dangerously emotional.

The first thing she realised as she stepped into the room and let the door swing shut behind her was that this room was decorated in a far more modern and pared-down fashion than the rest of the house, in shades of
grey and off-white, and was furnished as a functional working office. The second was that Vidal was standing in the doorway between the room she was in and a shower room adjacent to it, with only a towel wrapped round his damp body, and he was looking at her in a way that told her that her presence was neither expected nor wanted.

Unable to say anything, but helpless with longing and love, and humiliatingly aware that she was in danger of betraying everything that he made her feel, Fliss forced herself to drag her gaze away.

Only now did it dawn on her that Vidal had instructed her to come in in Spanish because he had assumed she was one of the servants. He certainly wasn’t at all pleased to see her. She could tell that from the grim expression on his face.

To her dismay he was actually turning away from her, about to walk off.

‘No!’ Fliss protested, darting forward and then coming to an abrupt halt when he turned round so quickly that only a couple of feet separated them. ‘I want to talk to you. There’s something I want to know.’

‘Which is?

Why did you stop me communicating with my father?
That was what Fliss had intended to ask him but for some reason she heard herself saying instead, ‘Was it really you who stopped me from making contact with my father?’

The silence in the room was electric, the air almost humming with Vidal’s tension, and Fliss knew immediately
from his unmoving silence that her question had caught him off-guard.

‘What makes you ask me that?’

Should she lie to him and say it was just curiosity? If she wanted to hear the truth from him then maybe she should start the ball rolling by offering him her own truth first. Fliss took a deep breath. ‘Something your mother let slip, by accident, that made me think what I’ve always assumed to be fact might not be.’

‘When the decision was taken it was done with your best interests in mind,’ Vidal told her obliquely.

He was choosing his words carefully—too carefully, Fliss realised. Too carefully and in a way that suggested to her that he was concealing something—or protecting someone?

‘Who took that decision?’ she demanded, adding fiercely, ‘I have a right to know, Vidal. I have a right to know who made that decision and why it was made. If you don’t tell me I will go back and ask your mother and I shall keep on asking her until she tells me,’ she threatened wildly.

‘You will do no such thing.’

‘Then
tell
me. Was it your grandmother? My father? It has to be one of them. There wasn’t anyone else. The only other person involved was my mother …’ Fliss had almost been speaking to herself, but the sudden movement of Vidal’s head, the brief tensing of his jaw when she mentioned her mother, gave him away, made her stiffen and stare at him in disbelief. Her voice was a raw, emotional whisper as she demanded, ‘My mother?
It was my
mother?
Tell me the truth, Vidal. I want to know the truth.’

‘She believed she was doing the right thing for you,’ Vidal told her, sidestepping her question.

‘My
mother!
But you were the one who brought my letter back. You …’ Fliss felt so weak with shock and disillusionment that she couldn’t help saying tremulously, ‘I don’t understand.’

The admission was a small agonised whisper that made Vidal want to go to her and hold her protectively, but he fought the urge. He had sworn to himself that he must allow her to have her freedom, that he must not impose on her the burden of his love for her. It was hard, though, to see her so distressed and not be able to offer her the comfort he longed to give her.

Instead all he could do was say quietly, ‘Let me try to explain.’

Fliss nodded her head, sinking down into the nearest chair. Her thoughts and her emotions were in total disarray, and yet totally focused on what her questions had revealed. But still there was something about the sight of Vidal wearing only that towel around his hips that touched her senses as though they were a raw wound, reminding her of all that she could never have.

‘After my father’s death, control of the family’s affairs and finances passed back to my grandmother. I was a minor, and my grandmother was my trustee along with the family solicitor. My grandmother’s treatment of your father, combined with her refusal to help your mother financially or recognise you, resulted in your father having what was in effect a minor breakdown.
Your father was a kind, loving man, Felicity, but sadly his mental health was damaged by my grandmother’s determination to ensure he married well. He was a very gifted amateur historian, and as a young man he wanted to pursue a career in that field. My grandmother refused. She told him that it wasn’t acceptable for him to take up any kind of paid occupation. As I said before, your father was a kind and gentle man, but my grandmother was a strong-willed woman who rode roughshod over everyone and thought she was doing the right thing. She bullied and cowed him from the moment she realised he wanted to choose his own path in life. She never allowed him to forget that she was trying to do what his birth mother would have wanted for him, and that caused so much guilt and confusion in him. That was why he gave up your mother so easily, and I believe it was also why he had a breakdown when he learned of your mother’s pregnancy. He wanted to be with you both so much, but he could not stand up to my grandmother. He never recovered fully from that breakdown.’

Fliss could hear the sadness and the regret in Vidal’s voice and recognised that he had cared a great deal about her father.

‘I have never ceased to feel guilty that it was my thoughtless comment that provoked my grandmother into questioning Felipe and your mother about their relationship. And I never will.’

That Vidal should make such an admission caused Fliss’s heart to ache for the pain she could tell he felt.

‘You were a child,’ she reminded him. ‘My mother
told me that she felt your grandmother had her own suspicions about her and my father anyway.’

‘Yes, she told me the same thing when I first visited her—after my grandmother’s death. Her kindness was balm to my guilt.’

‘When you first visited her?’ Fliss questioned. ‘When was that?’

She could see from Vidal’s frown that he had said more than he’d intended. His voice was clipped, his words sparing, as though he was being forced to say more than he wished to say, when he told her, almost reluctantly, ‘After my grandmother’s death I visited your mother. As head of the family it was my duty to … to do so—to ensure that both you and she—’

‘You came to England to see my mother?’ Fliss interrupted him.

‘Yes. I thought she might want to have news of your father. The manner in which they had been parted had not been … kind, and there was you to consider—their child. I wanted your mother to know that you and she would be made very welcome if she were to choose to bring you to Spain. I thought she might want your father to see you, and you to meet him.’

Vidal was trying to choose his words very carefully. Felicity had suffered so much pain already. He didn’t want to inflict still more on her.

Fliss, though, had guessed what Vidal was trying to shield her from.

‘My mother didn’t want to go back to Spain? She didn’t want me to meet my father?’ she guessed.

Vidal immediately defended Fliss’s mother. ‘‘She
was thinking of you. I’d had to tell her about Felipe’s breakdown, and she was concerned about the effect that might have on you.’

‘There’s more, isn’t there? I want to know it all,’ Fliss insisted.

For a minute she thought that Vidal would refuse. He turned away from her to look towards the window.

‘I have a right to know.’ Fliss persisted.

She heard Vidal sigh.

‘Very well, then. But remember, Felicity, all your mother wanted to do was protect you.’

‘Nothing you can tell me will change how I feel about my mother,’ Fliss assured him truthfully. And nothing could change how she felt about Vidal either, she knew. He had misjudged her, and it seemed she had misjudged him, but her love for him remained as true now as it had been all those years ago.

Vidal turned back to look at her. Fliss held her breath. Could he somehow read in her eyes her love for him? Quickly she dropped her lashes to conceal her expression.

‘Your mother told me that she did not want there to be any contact between you and the Spanish side of your family,’ Vidal began. ‘She asked me to give her my promise that there would not be. Initially she was afraid that it might lead to you being hurt. You were a young girl, with perhaps an idealised vision of your father that she recognised he could not match, and then later she was equally afraid that you might—out of daughterly love—sacrifice your own freedom to be
with your father. I gave her the promise she asked for, so when your letter to your father arrived—’