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Reality had burst the bubble of her foolish illusions and she felt that she only had herself to blame. Hadn’t Leonidas been honest from the outset?
For business arrangement, read marriage of convenience, she thought heavily. He would continue to have his casual mistresses—the stunning, sycophantic tribe of high-profile women who provided him with sexual variety in his travels round the world. Maribel would wear his ring and raise his son and pretend that it didn’t matter that she had nothing else. But just then she knew that what she didn’t have, what he wouldn’t give her, would matter very, very much to her…
CHAPTER EIGHT
MARIBEL removed a petal from the flower. ‘I love him.’ That petal dropped like a little stone to the gravel below the stone seat. ‘I hate him,’ she breathed and several petals came off in unison and fluttered further afield in the breeze that was blowing across the rose garden. Mouse and Elias scampered past her, chasing along the elaborate maze of box-hedged paths with noisy enjoyment. Maribel ended her idle game with the flower on a note of hatred that made her superstitiously tear that final petal in half before she cast the stem aside.
Nobody needed to tell Maribel that hatred was the dark side of love, but she could not have told a soul at the moment what was in her heart. Yet her wedding day was fast approaching. The event had been so pumped up by press speculation and excitement that she had been forced to take advantage of the privacy on offer at Heyward Park. At his father’s country house, Elias could at least play without the threat of a camera lens suddenly zooming out of the shrubbery. The level of curiosity about the most junior member of the Pallis family was alarmingly strong.
Maribel was also virtually homeless since an attempted break-in at the empty farmhouse had left her with no choice but to agree to the removal of all her personal possessions. The university term had ended and she had cleared out her desk after handing in her notice. She was shaken by the speed at which her comfortable, quiet and secure life had been dismantled. Indeed, the pace of change engulfing her had left her more than a little shell-shocked and she was feeling the strain.
In just three days’ time it would be too late to back out of becoming a Pallis, Maribel reflected fearfully. It was most unlike her, and she had never been a coward, but sometimes she just felt like scooping up Elias and running for her life. She covered her face with cool hands and breathed in slow and deep. She couldn’t do that to Leonidas; she couldn’t jilt him at the altar just because she was absolutely terrified that she might be making a very big mistake. He was so proud, he would never get over the insult. In any case, everything was organised to the nth degree, right down to the fabulous designer wedding dress and a string of little Greek flower-girls and page-boys selected from Leonidas’ extended family circle. Under pressure, Ginny had agreed to act as her matron of honour, and Maribel had felt forced to accept the offer of Imogen’s sisters, Amanda and Agatha, as bridesmaids. They were the only family she had left. Had she snubbed them, it would probably have caused embarrassing comment in the local papers and she knew she owed her aunt and uncle more than that.
Ginny had accurately forecast how association with a billionaire might affect the people around Maribel. No sooner had word of the engagement been made public than the Strattons had landed en bloc on Maribel’s doorstep to mend fences. Her aunt had thought better of cutting off all contact with a niece on the brink of marrying one of the richest men in the world. But the Stratton family had decided to acknowledge Elias somewhat too late in the day to impress Maribel and she had felt horribly uncomfortable with such a calculating parade of insincerity.
Her state of mind had not been helped by the fact that she had scarcely seen Leonidas. Since their mutually dissatisfied parting before his trip to New York, Leonidas had been colder than ice. He had spent most of the intervening weeks abroad and had only returned to the UK twice for fleeting visits to see Elias. She did not flatter herself that a desire to see her had figured on his agenda. His scrupulous politeness and reserve had warned her that marriage promised to be an even bigger challenge than she had feared, for he had the resistance of granite towards any attempt to change him. But, on balance, she did know that he very definitely wanted the wedding to go ahead. How did she know that? Well, certainly not by anything he had said, Maribel conceded ruefully.
Every day, Maribel had scoured every magazine and newspaper and had failed to find a single photo of Leonidas with another woman. This was so highly unusual that she could not believe it was a coincidence. For the first time in his notoriously racy existence, Leonidas appeared to be embracing a low social profile. Even the gossip columns were commenting on his new discreet lifestyle and laying bets as to how long it would last. But Maribel could have given them the answer to that question: until after the wedding.
