The Valquez Bride. Melanie Milburne

my head.’

      ‘Your father changed his will the month before he was diagnosed with cancer,’ the lawyer said. ‘It was as if he’d known he didn’t have much time left and wanted to get his affairs in order.’

      His affairs?

      It was her home! That was her affair. It was her life! It was her safety and security. How could her father hand it over to her cousin, who hadn’t even visited him once during his illness?

      Teddy’s heart was galloping so fast and so hard she could feel the blood beating in every one of her fingertips. Shock chilled and chugged through her body like a flow of ice. She blinked to clear her vision. What sort of nightmare was this? Was she really sitting in the library with her father’s lawyer having this crazy conversation?

      It had to be a mistake.

      For the last five months she had nursed her father through his pancreatic cancer and stayed with him and held his hand as he finally slipped away. It was the only time she had felt close to him. During those last days he had shared snippets of his childhood previously unknown to her. It had explained so much about his difficult personality. The way he had constantly found fault with her. How he was so impossible to please. How he was such a control freak who never let her have a say in things. Towards the end she had found a space in her heart to forgive him. She had even told him she loved him. Something she had vowed she would never do.

      And yet the whole time he had been intent on tricking her?

      Betraying her?

      She swallowed tightly, annoyed at the knotty lump of hurt that was lodged in her throat like an oversized walnut. Why had she fallen for it? Why had she let her father do that to her? He had made her feel safe and then whipped the rug of security out from under her. Why hadn’t she seen it coming? Why had she been so...so stupid to fall for that happy families routine?

      ‘My father led me to believe Marlstone would always be mine.’ Teddy tried to speak clearly and steadily even though her emotions were tumbling and twisting inside her chest like clothes spinning in a dryer set on too fast a speed. ‘Why would he have changed his mind? Surely I don’t have to be married in order to inherit what should be automatically mine? That’s totally outrageous!’

      The lawyer tapped the legal document with the pen he was holding. ‘It’s a little more specific than that...’ He paused for a beat as if he was trying to find a way to say his next words without causing her more stress. ‘Your father has also nominated the groom.’

      Shock opened a broad hand inside her belly and grabbed at her intestines. Nominated the— ‘What?’

      He pushed the document towards her. ‘He wants you to marry Alejandro Valquez.’

      Teddy looked at the name. Saw the man in her mind. Felt the bottom of her spine loosen as she pictured that imposingly tall, dark-haired, dark-eyed playboy with the enigmatic smile of a fallen angel. The man women the world over flocked around like bees to top shelf pollen. She felt her cheeks heat up as if twin furnaces had been lit beneath her skin. This had to be a joke. Her father couldn’t possibly be so cruel. To force her to marry someone so out of her league it would make her a laughing stock the moment it was announced. The press would mock her. They would ridicule her mercilessly. No one would believe it for a second. Alejandro Valquez and her? She could already see the headlines: Lame Lady of the Manor Lands Argentinian Playboy in Money Match Marriage.

      What had she done to deserve this? Was this her father’s way of showing his disgust for her disability? To make her a target of ridicule and derision? To be the butt of puerile bar room jokes for the next decade?

      Teddy took a steadying breath, slowly bringing her gaze back up to the lawyer’s. She had to keep cool. There had to be a way to solve this. It wasn’t going to help things by panicking and getting hysterical. That wasn’t her way. Cool and composed was her modus operandi, even though below the surface her nerves were stretched to snapping point. ‘Is there any way of...getting around it?’

      ‘Not if you want to retain full ownership and occupancy of Marlstone Manor.’

      She looked out of the library windows to the gardens and the rolling fields beyond. The green folded valleys with their borders of thick hedgerows, the curve of the river that flowed through the forest that fringed the upper boundary. The still and silent silver sheet of the lake, the sycamore, beech and yew trees that had stood for centuries while life moved on around them.

      The Wiltshire mansion and its surrounding estate was her home. It was her inspiration for her work as a children’s book illustrator. Her botanical drawings with their whimsical themes were inspired by her surroundings.

      Her studio was here.

      Her home was here.

      Her sanctuary was here.

      How could she lose it? How could she be turfed out as if she was nothing more than a leaseholder? What was her father thinking?

      Her stomach knotted again.

      Hadn’t he cared about her at all?

      Hadn’t he known how much she loathed men like Alejandro Valquez? Alejandro was a disgustingly rich and dashingly handsome playboy who—like his younger brother Luiz—only ever dated supermodels and film stars. Beautiful women. Perfect women.

      Alejandro hadn’t noticed her in the past. Girls like her were invisible to men like him. His coal-black gaze had looked straight through her when he’d been introduced to her at a polo event her father had taken her to years ago.

      Alejandro had barely mouthed a word of greeting before he had spied a tall, slim blonde beauty standing behind her, who soon after became his fiancée. Their whirlwind affair had been in the press for weeks—for months—until his fiancée, supermodel Mercedes Delgado, called off their wedding at the last minute.

      What was her father playing at in forcing the hand of a man who could choose any woman he liked? What possible reason could her father have for wanting such an alliance, even if it was only temporary?

      Teddy had never been close to her father. He had never disguised the fact he would have preferred a son to a daughter. Since her childhood he had found fault with her for everything she said or did, and yet, like all little girls, she had continued to love him. To seek his approval. To win him over. It had taken her years to realise he had been too obsessed with work and winning every corporate battle to care about her. He hadn’t had time for her, even though he had gone to extreme lengths to secure custody of her after the divorce from her mother. Gaining custody of her had been another battle to win. Another victory.

      Was this his way of punishing her for never forgiving him for the way he had driven her mother to an early grave? Or had he been so ashamed of his only daughter living such a quiet spinsterish life he had decided to do something about it by tying her to a man she had no possible chance of attracting any other way?

      The Valquez name was synonymous with wealth and prestige. The playboy polo set who partied as hard as they played. If and when the fast-living brothers decided to marry, it certainly wouldn’t be to someone like her.

      Teddy brought her gaze back to the lawyer’s. ‘What’s in this for Alejandro? Why would he agree to such an arrangement?’

      ‘Your father bought some acreage off Alejandro’s father in Argentina twenty years ago to relieve financial pressure on the family after Paco Valquez suffered a polo accident and became a quadriplegic,’ Benson said. ‘Your father kept it in his possession all this time, even though Alejandro has made numerous offers to buy it back. The deeds of the property will be handed over to him upon your marriage.’

      She was being exchanged for property? Handed over like a trophy? Like goods and chattels? How could her father do this to her? This wasn’t the Regency period. This was the twenty-first century. Women were supposed to choose their own husbands.

      To fall in love.

      To be loved back.

      Teddy had secretly dreamed of having the fairy tale