The Forced Marriage. Sara Craven

cool courtesy, ‘You are trying to shrug off what has happened, but you have had a severe shock and that will bring its own reaction. I do not think you should be alone.’

      ‘You’re very kind,’ Flora said tautly. ‘But I really can’t go with you. You must see that.’

      ‘I seem to be singularly blind this afternoon.’ He took a slim wallet from an inside pocket of his jacket and extracted a card. ‘Perhaps a formal introduction may convince you of my respectability.’

      Flora accepted the card and studied it dubiously. ‘Marco Valante,’ she read. And beneath it ‘Altimazza Inc’. She glanced up. ‘The pharmaceutical company?’

      ‘You have heard of us?’ His brows lifted.

      ‘Of course.’ She swallowed. ‘You’re incredibly successful. Whenever your shares are offered my fiancé recommends them to his clients.’

      ‘He is a broker, perhaps?’ he inquired politely.

      ‘An independent financial adviser.’

      ‘Ah, and do you work in the same area?’

      ‘Oh, no,’ Flora said hastily. ‘I’m a consultant in property sales.’

      His brows rose. ‘You sell houses?’

      ‘Not directly. The agencies hire me to show people how to present their properties to the best advantage when potential buyers are going round. I get them to refurbish tired décor—or tone down strident colour schemes.’

      ‘I imagine that would not always be easy.’

      She smiled reluctantly. ‘No. We have a saying that an Englishman’s home is his castle, and sometimes sellers are inclined to pull up the drawbridge. I have to convince them that their property is no longer a loved home but a commodity which they want to sell at a profit. Sometimes it takes a lot of persuasion.’

      He looked at her reflectively. ‘I think,’ he said softly, ‘that you could persuade a monk to abandon his vows, mia cara.’

      Flora stiffened. ‘Please—don’t say things like that.’

      He pantomimed astonishment. ‘Because you are to be married you can no longer receive compliments from other men? How quaint.’

      ‘That,’ she said, ‘is not what I meant.’

      Totally relaxed in his own corner, he grinned at her. ‘And you must not be teased either? Si, capisce. From now on I will behave like a saint.’

      He didn’t look like a saint, Flora thought. More like a rebel angel…

      She glanced back at the card he had given her. ‘You don’t look like a chemist,’ she said, and almost added either.

      ‘I’m not.’ He pulled a face. ‘I work in the accounting section, mainly raising funding for our research projects.’

      ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Well—that would explain it.’

      Actually, it explained nothing, because he wasn’t her idea of an accountant either, by a mile and a half.

      ‘Does everything have to be readily comprehensible?’ he enquired softly. ‘Do you never wish to embark on a long, slow voyage of discovery?’

      Flora had the feeling that he was needling her again, but she refused to react. ‘I’m more used to first impressions—instant reactions. It’s part of my job.’

      ‘So,’ he said. ‘You know who I am. Will you grant me the same privilege?’

      ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Yes—of course…’

      She delved into her misused bag and produced one of her own business cards. He read it, then looked back at her, those amazing eyes glinting under their heavy lids. ‘Flora,’ he said softly. ‘The goddess of the springtime.’

      She flushed and looked away. ‘Actually, I was named after my grandmother—far more prosaic.’

      ‘So, tell me—Flora—will you continue to work after you are married?’

      ‘Naturally.’

      ‘You are sure that your man will not guard you even more closely when you are his wife?’

      ‘That’s nonsense,’ Flora said indignantly. ‘Chris doesn’t guard me.’

      ‘Good,’ Marco Valante said briskly. ‘Because we have arrived at the hotel, and there is nothing, therefore, to prevent you going in with me.’

      Flora had every intention of offering him a last haughty word of thanks, then hobbling out of his life for ever. But suddenly the commissionaire was there, helping her out of the taxi and holding open the big swing doors so she could go in.

      And then she was in the foyer, all marble and plate glass, and Marco Valante had joined her and was giving soft-voiced orders that people were hurrying to obey—a lot of them concerning herself.

      And suddenly the reality of making the kind of scene which would extract her from this situation seemed totally beyond her capabilities.

      In fact, she was forced to acknowledge, all she really wanted to do was find somewhere quiet and burst into tears.

      She didn’t even utter a protest when she was escorted to the lift and taken up to the first floor. She walked beside Marco Valante to the end of the corridor, and waited while he slotted in his key card and opened the door.

      Mutely, she preceded him into the room.

      Although this was no mere room, she saw at once. It was a large and luxuriously furnished suite, and they were standing in the sitting room. The curtains were half drawn, to exclude the afternoon sun, and he went over and flung them wide.

      ‘Sit down.’ He indicated one of the deeply cushioned sofas and she sank down on it with unaccustomed obedience, principally because her throbbing legs were threatening to give way beneath her.

      ‘I have told them to send the nurse here to dress your cuts,’ he said. ‘I have also ordered some tea for you, and if you go into the bathroom you will find a robe you can wear while your suit is being valeted.’

      She said shakily, ‘You’re pretty autocratic for an accountant.’

      He shrugged. ‘I wish to make some kind of amends for what happened earlier.’

      ‘I don’t see why,’ Flora objected. ‘It wasn’t your fault.’

      ‘But I could, perhaps, have prevented it if I had been quicker. If I had obeyed my instinct and left the restaurant when you did.’

      ‘Why should you do that?’ Reaction was beginning to set in. She felt deathly cold suddenly, and wrapped her arms round her body, gritting her teeth to stop them from chattering.

      ‘I thought,’ he said softly, ‘that I was not permitted to pay you compliments. But, if you must know, I wanted very much to make the acquaintance of a beautiful girl with hair that Titian might have painted.’

      So Hes had been right, Flora realised with a little jolt of shock. He had indeed been watching her during lunch.

      ‘Presumably,’ she said, with an effort, ‘you have a thing about red-haired women.’

      ‘Not until today, when I saw you in the sunlight, Flora mia.’

      For a moment her heart skipped a treacherous beat, before reason cut in and she wondered with intentional cynicism how many other women that particular line had worked with.

      She closed her eyes, deliberately shutting him out. Using it as a form of rejection.

      While at the same time she thought, ‘I should not—I really should not be here.’

      And only realised she had spoken aloud when he said quietly, ‘Yet you are perfectly safe. For at any moment people will start arriving, and I shall probably never be alone