The Society Bride. Fiona Hood-Stewart

was no light matter. Handled wrongly, this could affect a lifelong friendship.

      Reluctantly Ramon nodded. ‘Very well, Father. But on one condition,’ he declared, his chin jutting firmly, ‘that I get to see Nena. I presume she has been made aware of the circumstances?’

      ‘Uh, not that I’m aware of,’ Don Pedro murmured, carefully shuffling a pile of papers on his desk. ‘All in good time.’

      ‘Great,’ Ramon replied cynically, rolling his eyes. Then, for some inexplicable reason, he avoided delivering the rest of the sentence about to escape his lips.

      ‘The Villalbas?’ Nena’s well-shaped brows creased and she tilted her lovely, lightly tanned face to one side, her flashing green eyes fixed on her grandfather. ‘I don’t seem to remember them. Did we know them back in Argentina?’

      ‘Of course, my love. But it has been quite a while since they last visited. Certainly not since you went off to school. Pedro Villalba is an old and trusted friend of mine, and his wife Augusta is in some way related to your late grandmother’s family.’

      ‘Ah.’ Nena nodded and smiled. Everyone was always somehow related to the family.

      ‘They are coming to tea tomorrow with their son, Ramon, whom you may remember. He came over once or twice when he was at Eton and then Oxford.’

      ‘Sorry, I haven’t a clue who he is.’ She shook her tawny gold-flecked hair, highlighted by two weeks of playing tennis every day in the South of France, and jumped up. ‘I’m off to the tournament now. Do you need anything before I go? Water for your pills?’ she asked, suddenly concerned.

      Her grandfather seemed to have aged much during the past weeks, and she worried about him. Not for nothing had she inherited her deceased French mother’s perception and innate capability for running Thurston Manor, their lovely country house near Windsor, and for making sure that her beloved grandfather was cosseted.

      ‘No, no, my child. Off you run. Just make sure to be back on time for tea tomorrow.’

      ‘I’ll try. But we have the semi-finals, and if I get through today I may be playing.’

      Don Rodrigo smiled at her benignly. He loved her so dearly, and wished—oh, how he wished—that he could live to see her bloom into the flower he perceived emerging, watch as she travelled towards womanhood. But that was not to be, he reminded himself with an inner sigh, accepting the soft kiss on his withered old cheek. And he must make sure she was safely provided for. Not just financially—there she was only too well provided for. If anything that was half the worry. In fact what truly concerned him were the fortune-hunters that he knew would hover like anxious vultures from here to Tierra del Fuego the minute he was dead and buried.

      It was four by the time the Bentley drew up on the gravel drive before the splendid country house. Ramon experienced another wave of distaste. The whole thing was utterly absurd, and left him feeling as though he were participating in a very bad B movie. Still, he’d listened to his mother’s urgings and his father’s request to at least honour the visit. And he would, he supposed, alighting from the vehicle. At least after this he might be able to bring his father and Don Rodrigo to reason.

      Several minutes later they were being conducted by the dignified white-haired butler onto the lawn, where Don Rodrigo heaved himself with some difficulty out of a wicker chair.

      ‘Amigos,’ he said, embracing Pedro and kissing Augusta. ‘What a pleasure it is to receive you in my home.’ Then he turned towards Ramon and eyed him closely. ‘How do you do, Ramon? It is several years since we last met, but I’ve followed your may I say rather brilliant progress?’ He quirked a brow and smiled. ‘Knowing your father, I am not surprised. But impressed. Very impressed.’

      ‘Coming from you, that is a compliment indeed,’ Ramon murmured, shaking the other man’s hand. He sensed the slight shaking and frailty in the fingers and realised that the sharp grey eyes belied failing health. He also realised that Don Pedro would not easily be fobbed off. As he sat down next to his mother at the table, already laid for afternoon tea, he wondered just how hard it was going to be to get out of this marriage. There was no sign of Nena, he observed a sudden spark of hope flashing. Perhaps she’d been told and had refused to agree to the arrangement. She was, after all, nearly twenty.

      If so, all the better.

      He was quite willing to help her out, advise her financially—even be a trustee, if Don Rodrigo so wished.

      The thought began to take shape. Perhaps that was the way to work the situation, he mused, his quick brain already solving the matter. If Nena didn’t agree to the marriage then he could bow out gracefully and not be blamed, and it would all work out for the best. It was, he reflected, allowing wishful thinking to take the upper hand, a mere question of initiating the correct strategy.

      ‘Have they arrived?’ Nena asked breathlessly as she jumped out of her new Audi TT. After throwing her tennis racket onto one of the hall chairs, she glanced at herself in the gilt mirror. ‘I look a mess. But I suppose I’d better dash out and say hello, or Grandfather will kill me,’ she exclaimed to Worthing, the butler, who was eyeing her severely as he closed the door.

      ‘Don Rodrigo and the guests are on the lawn, Miss Nena.’ He still called her by her childhood name.

      ‘Good. Well, do see that tea is served, won’t you? Oh, and Worthing? Please ask Cook to serve both China and Ceylon. I don’t know which the guests would prefer.’

      ‘Of course, Miss Nena,’ he replied, pursing his lips and shaking his head fondly as she flew across the hall, through the drawing room, and down the steps to the lawn, where the group was seated under the chestnut tree facing the lake.

      Smoothing her hair back, she hurried across the grass. How nice for her grandfather to have some people to entertain. He saw so few nowadays. She was sure it wasn’t good for him to lead such a solitary existence, she reflected as she drew up on them from behind, but perhaps a lot of social activity might tire him.

      ‘Hello, I’m so sorry I’m late.’

      Ramon turned.

      ‘Aunt Augusta, Uncle Rodrigo, it’s been ages,’ she said, kissing Ramon’s parents while he looked in frank admiration at the gorgeous, lithe young woman—at her never-ending long bronzed legs that eradicated for ever the fuzzy image he’d formed of a rather dowdy, plump adolescent. Her smile, he reflected, was dazzling, her teeth white and perfect, and her lightly tanned skin set off the beauty of her huge almond-shaped green eyes in a manner fit to leave even a seasoned womaniser like himself dazed.

      And her hair…

      It fell in feathery wisps from a ponytail, giving her the air of having tumbled straight out of bed, and leaving him in dire danger of an embarrassing physical reaction.

      Pulling himself together, Ramon rose and shook hands, hoping none of these untoward emotions showed, and reminded himself of the true nature of their visit here.

      ‘Will you excuse me if I pop upstairs and change?’ she was saying to his mother in a charmingly assured manner that belied her youth. ‘I look a dreadful fright.’

      He watched as she retreated swiftly across the lawn, trying to suppress the delightful image of that long, curved, slim body uncoiling amongst bedsheets, finding himself distressingly prey to a sensual twisting tug. He must not, he realised, removing his eyes from her, lose track of reality here. He caught his father’s approving eye and quickly concentrated once more on the conversation.

      But if his father thought that Nena’s astonishing beauty and charm might make the marriage any more acceptable he was wrong. Instead it somehow made it worse. It was one thing to do a poor dowdy creature a favour, another to place under his protection a paragon whom, when she found her feet, would be the toast of society in every city they visited. The thought was strangely disturbing and he banished it.

      ‘Ramon, I hope you have thought about your father’s and my proposition,’ Don Rodrigo said, easing