Postcards From Madrid: Married by Arrangement / Valdez's Bartered Bride / The Spanish Duke's Virgin Bride

Why would Antonio Rocha be over in England? What was he doing on the Isle of Sheppey where the titled rich were scarcer than hens’ teeth? Surely he could only be in Sheerness on this particular day to keep the same appointment that she had been asked to attend? No other reason could rationally explain such a coincidence.

Sophie hurried over to the door that led back into the reception area where an alarming amount of activity had broken out. The once laconic receptionist was standing to attention with a megawatt smile of appreciation and a well-dressed older man was greeting Antonio with a horrendous amount of bowing and scraping. ‘Your Excellency,’ he murmured obsequiously.

As though some sixth sense warned him of her presence, Antonio turned his proud dark head. Eyes as rich as gold ingots in sunlight encountered hers. Her tummy flipped and her mouth ran dry and her heartbeat escalated as though she were trying to run up a hill. It was like being hit by a truck at breakneck speed and she reacted with panic.

‘Just what the heck are you doing here?’ Sophie asked belligerently.

Taken aback though Antonio was by her unexpected appearance, he betrayed no visible sign of the fact. In the space of a moment, he had absorbed every facet of the slender woman poised by the door. She had the fine bones and grace of a dancer and the transient air of a butterfly ready to take wing at the first sign of trouble. Her toffee-blonde hair fell in a riotous mass of curls round her delicately pointed face, framing wide green eyes bright and sharp as lancets, a freckled nose turned up at the tip and a full sweet cupid’s bow mouth. His keen gaze semi-cloaked by the lush density of his lashes, he tore his attention from the provocative appeal of that very feminine mouth and struggled to suppress a primitive and infuriatingly inappropriate flare of pure lust.

Sophie folded her arms to hide the fact that her hands were shaking. ‘I asked you a question, Antonio—who asked you to come here?’ she demanded.

‘His Excellency is attending this meeting at my request, Miss Cunningham,’ the solicitor interposed in a shocked tone of reproof.

Antonio moved a step closer and extended both his lean brown hands. His stunning dark deep-set eyes met hers in a head-on collision. Before she even knew what she was doing she was uncrossing her defensive arms and freeing her fingers to make contact with him, for a yearning she could not deny had leapt up inside her.

‘I know how close you were to your sister. Allow me to offer you my deepest condolences on her death,’ Antonio breathed with quiet gravity.

Hot colour rose like a flood tide to wash Sophie’s pale complexion. Her small hands trembled in the warm hold of his. Ferocious emotions gripped her and threatened to tear her apart. She could not doubt his sincerity and his compassion pushed her to the brink of tears. With his immaculate sense of occasion, social sophistication and superb manners, he had put her in the wrong by answering her less-than-polite greeting with courtesy. For that alone, Sophie could have screamed at him and wept in rage. She refused to be impressed. She also refused to think about how much he had hurt her almost three years earlier. Instead she concentrated on a more relevant line of attack. Where had Antonio Rocha and his rich, snobby family been when Belinda had been desperate for help and support?

She jerked her hands free in stark rejection. ‘I don’t want your precious condolences!’ she told him baldly.

‘Nonetheless they are yours,’ Antonio purred smoothly, marvelling at the level of her aggression and the novelty value of her rebuff. Women were never aggressive towards Antonio or ungrateful for his consideration. Sophie was the single exception to that rule.

‘You still haven’t told me what you’re doing here,’ Sophie said stubbornly.

‘I was invited,’ Antonio reminded her gently.

‘Your Excellency…please come this way,’ the solicitor urged him in a pained tone of apology.

Although Sophie had grown increasingly pale with discomfiture and nerves, her chin came up. ‘I’m not going anywhere until someone tells me what’s going on! What gives you the right to hear what my sister said in her will?’

‘Let’s discuss that and other issues in a more private setting,’ Antonio suggested quietly.

Once again Sophie’s face flamed pink with chagrin. Squirming embarrassment afflicted her when she unwillingly recalled the consequences of her visit to Spain nearly three years earlier. His rejection had hurt like hell and devastated her pride. She had been too pathetically naïve to recognise that the blue-blooded Marqués de Salazar was simply amusing himself with a bit of a flirtation. It was an effort for her to repress that wounding memory and concentrate on the present.

Her slender spine stiff, she sank down in a seat in the spacious office. Determined to emulate Antonio’s cool, she resolved to resist the temptation to give way to any further outbursts and she compressed her lips. At the same time she was frantically striving to work out why Antonio Rocha should have been asked to come all the way from Spain. After all, Pablo’s haughty brother had not bothered to get in touch before, nor had he shown the smallest interest in the existence of his infant niece. An enervating frisson of anxiety travelled through Sophie.

The solicitor began to read the will with the slight haste of someone eager to get an unpleasant task out of the way. The document was short and simple and all too soon Sophie understood why Antonio’s presence had been deemed necessary. However, she could not accept what she had heard and questioned it. ‘My sister nominated Antonio as a guardian as well?’

‘Yes,’ the solicitor confirmed.

‘But I’m more than capable of taking care of Lydia,’ Sophie proclaimed brightly. ‘So there’s no need for anyone else to get involved!’

‘It’s not quite that simple,’ Antonio Rocha slotted in smooth as a rapier blade, but a faint frown line now divided his ebony brows. He was surprised that the will had made no mention of the disposition of Belinda’s property and was about to query that omission.

Sophie spared the tall Spaniard her first fleeting glance since entering the room. Her troubled green eyes telegraphed a storm warning. ‘It can be as simple as you’re willing to make it. I don’t know what came over Belinda when she chose to include you—’

‘Common sense?’ Antonio batted back drily.

‘I suppose Belinda must’ve been scared that both her and me might be involved in an accident,’ Sophie opined heatedly, fingers of pink highlighting her tautening facial bones as she fought to maintain her composure. ‘We’re talking worst-case scenario here, but luckily things aren’t as bad as that. I’m young and fit and well able to take care of Lydia all on my own.’

‘I would take issue with that statement,’ Antonio murmured.

Her teeth gritted. ‘You can take issue with whatever you like but it’s not going to change anything!’ she shot back at him.

‘Your sister nominated you and the marqués as joint guardians of her daughter,’ the solicitor expanded. ‘That means that you have equal rights over the child—’

‘Equal rights?’ Sophie gasped in rampant disbelief.

‘Equal rights,’ Antonio repeated with a silken emphasis he could not resist.

‘No other arrangement is possible without application to the courts,’ the solicitor decreed.

‘But that’s utterly outrageous!’ Sophie launched at Antonio.

‘With all due respect, I would suggest that my family is entitled to assist in the task of raising my brother’s child to adulthood.’

‘Why?’ Sophie slung back wrathfully as she leapt to her feet. ‘So that your precious family can make as big a mess of bringing up Lydia as they did with her father?’

Angry disconcertion had tensed Antonio’s lean, darkly handsome features. ‘Both our siblings are now dead. Let us respect that reality.’

‘Don’t you dare ask me to respect Pablo’s memory!’ Sophie flared back at him in disgust. ‘Your brother wrecked my sister’s life!’

‘May I speak to Miss Cunningham alone for a few minutes?’ Antonio enquired of the solicitor.

The older man, whose discomfiture during that increasingly heated exchange of views had been extreme, got up with relief at the request and left the room.

‘Sit down,’ Antonio instructed coolly, determined not to rise to the bait of her provocative accusations. ‘Appreciate that I will not argue with you. Recriminations are pointless and wrong in this situation. The child’s interests must come first—’

Sophie was so furious that only a scream could have expressed her feelings. Denied that outlet, she coiled her hands into tight little fists of restraint by her side. ‘Don’t you dare tell me what’s right and what’s wrong. Let me tell you—’

Antonio rose upright with unhurried grace. ‘You will tell me nothing that I do not ask for, as I will not listen. You will lower your voice and moderate your language.’

‘Where do you get off talking to me like that? Like I’m some stupid kid?’ Sophie launched at him. ‘You walk in here, you start laying down the law and acting like you know best—’

‘I most probably do know best,’ Antonio incised and not in a tone of apology. ‘I recognise that you have suffered a recent bereavement and that grief may well have challenged your temper—’

‘That’s not why I hate your guts and that is not why I am shouting at you!’ Sophie informed him fiercely, green eyes bright with fury. ‘Your rotten brother robbed my sister of everything she possessed and left her penniless and in debt. He was a hateful liar and a cheat. He took her money and threw it away at the gambling tables and at the racetrack. When there was nothing left he told her he’d never loved her anyway and he walked!’

Antonio was perturbed but not that surprised by those revelations. He felt it would be tactless to point out that, even before Belinda had wed his brother, he had made an unsuccessful attempt to warn Sophie’s sibling of her future husband’s essential unreliability when it came to money. ‘If that is the truth I am sorry for it. Had I been made aware of those facts, I would have granted Belinda all the help that it was within my power to give.’

Sophie snatched in a jagged breath. ‘Is that all you have got to say?’

Antonio had a low tolerance threshold for such personal attacks. In his blood ran the hot pure-bred pride of the Spanish nobility and a long line of ancestors to whom honour had been a chivalrous, engrained concept of prime importance. He had lived his own life within those tenets and his principles were of the highest. He had a profound dislike of being upbraided for his brother’s sins, for which he had too often paid a high personal price. His strong jaw line squared. He had no intention of getting dragged into an exchange that was only likely to exacerbate hostilities.

‘It is an unhappy fact that I cannot change the past,’ Antonio pointed out flatly. ‘The only subject I’m willing to discuss at this moment is your niece’s well-being.’

Eyes glinting a ferocious green, Sophie surveyed him in raging frustration. Nothing fazed him. Nothing knocked even a chip off that cold, smooth, marble façade of his. He was neither shamed nor affronted by his younger brother’s appalling mistreatment of her poor sister. Indeed there he stood, all six feet three inches of him, wonderfully insulated by his great wealth and aristocratic detachment from the harder realities of those less fortunate in life. He lived in a castle with servants. He had a private jet and a fleet of limos. His fancy suit had probably cost as much as she earned in a year. He would never know what it was to struggle just to pay the rent at the end of the month. He had even less compassion to spare for Belinda’s sufferings.

‘I’m not going to discuss Lydia with you!’ Sophie snapped in the feverish heat of her resentment. ‘You’re as much of a bastard as your sneaky brother was!’

Dark colour accentuated the superb slant of Antonio’s fabulous cheekbones. His brilliant eyes suddenly flared gold as the heart of a fire. ‘On what do you base your abuse? Ignorant prejudice?’

‘I’ve got personal experience of what kind of a guy you are!’ Sophie declared in a tempestuous surge of hurt and anger. ‘Not my type anyway!’

‘Sorry, I’m just not into tattoos,’ Antonio murmured in a sibilant tone designed to wound.

‘Tattoos?’ Sophie parroted in response to that particular taunt, feeling the image of the butterfly she had acquired at eighteen burn through the flesh of her shoulder like a brand. A fresh spurt of angry mortification took hold of her. ‘You total snob and snake! How dare you sneer at me like that? You act like you’re so superior and so polite, but you strung me a line and let me down and misjudged me that night!’

Antonio’s intent dark golden gaze was welded to her flushed heart-shaped face and bright green eyes. Her passion fascinated him. Temper was running through her like an electric current and she could not control it. He was grimly amused and unexpectedly pleased to discover that his justifiable put-down that night still rankled with her nearly three years after the event.

‘I don’t think so. I think you resent the fact that I saw you for what you were—’

Sophie was trembling with the force of her feelings. ‘And how did you see me?’ she challenged.

‘You don’t want to know,’ Antonio asserted lazily, dangling that carrot with every hope of provoking her further. She was already so mad she was practically jumping up and down on the spot and he could not resist the temptation to see just how much further he could push her before she lost it altogether.

Sophie took a hasty step closer and stared up at him with outrage stamped in her delicate features, her hands on her hips like a miniature fishwife. ‘Tell me…go on, just tell me!’

Antonio lifted and dropped his wide shoulders in an infinitesimal shrug of dismissal, deliberately prolonging the moment to the punchline. ‘In common with most men, I confess that I can really enjoy a wanton woman, but I’m afraid that promiscuity is a real turn-off. You missed your chance with me.’

Sophie hit him. She tried to slap him, but she was not tall enough. His reactions were also faster than her own and he sidestepped her so that her palm merely glanced off his shoulder, leaving him infuriatingly unharmed. ‘You pig!’ she seethed up at him. ‘You think I care about missing out with you?’

‘Attempted assault on that score nearly three years later rather speaks for you, querida,’ Antonio shared in his dark-timbred drawl, only dimly wondering why he was enjoying himself so much.

White with shock and chagrin at her own behaviour and the biting effect of his derision, Sophie headed to the door. ‘I refuse to have anything more to do with you.’

‘Perhaps just once you could exercise some discipline over your temper and think of the child whose future is at stake here.’

Sophie froze as if his words had plunged a dagger into her narrow back. Guilt and shame engulfed her. Stiffly she turned and tracked back to her seat without once looking in the direction of her tormentor.

‘Thank you,’ Antonio Rocha murmured smoothly.

Her fingers carved purple crescents of restraint into her palms. Never in her life had she hated anyone as she hated him at that moment. Never in her life had anyone made her feel so stupid and selfish. He invited the solicitor back in. Initially she was silent for fear of letting herself down by saying the wrong thing, but she had been planning to ask questions. However, there was no need for her to do so. Antonio requested the clarification that she might have asked for her own benefit and the answers told a chastened Sophie what she least wished to hear.

All arrangements for Lydia would have to be reached by mutual agreement between her and Antonio. Either of them could refuse the responsibility or relinquish rights to the other. But, as executor, the solicitor was empowered, if he thought it necessary, to invite social services to decide how Lydia’s needs would best be fulfilled. Adequate security and funding to support a child would naturally have to be taken into consideration.

‘So as I’m poor and Antonio’s rich, I can’t possibly have equal rights with him over my niece, can I?’ Sophie prompted tightly.

‘That is not how I would view the situation, Miss Cunningham.’ Dismayed by such blunt speech, the solicitor glanced at Antonio for support.

Antonio Rocha, Marqués de Salazar, rose unhurriedly upright a split second after Sophie scrambled to her feet, eager to be gone. ‘I see no reason why Miss Cunningham and I should not reach an amicable agreement,’ he drawled with all the controlled calm and cool of a male who knew he had beaten an opponent hollow. ‘I’d like to see Lydia this evening. Shall we say at seven? I’ll call at your home.’

‘I’m sure you’re not giving me a choice,’ Sophie framed bitterly.

Having taken complete charge, Antonio accompanied her out to the narrow corridor. ‘It doesn’t have to be this way between us,’ he murmured huskily.

‘How else could it be?’ she heard herself prompt.

He was so close that she could have reached out and touched him. The very sound of his rich, deep-pitched drawl was incredibly sensual. She let herself look up and it was a mistake. He took her breath away and rocked her world on its axis. In the blink of an eyelid it was as though time had slipped and catapulted her back almost three years. Meeting the slumberous darkness of his spectacular eyes, she trembled. Treacherous excitement seized her and made a prisoner of her. For a wild, endless moment, she was so fiercely aware of him that it was agony not to make actual physical contact with his lean, powerful frame. She heard the roughened catch of his breathing and imagined the burn of his beautiful mouth on hers. Only the humiliating memory of his comments earlier forced her back to solid earth again and left her bitterly ashamed of her own weakness.

‘Do you honestly think I’m stupid enough to fall for the same fake charm routine you used on me the last time?’ Sophie asked with stinging scorn, sliding sinuously past him with the quicksilver speed that characterised all her movements. She had vanished round the corner at the foot of the corridor before he was even properly aware that she had gone.

Antonio swore long and low and silently and with a ferocity that would have astounded those who knew him.

CHAPTER TWO

ON THE drive back home, Sophie gave Matt a brief update on events and then fell silent. She was too upset to make conversation.

Shattered by the contents of Belinda’s will, Sophie was simply terrified that she was in serious danger of losing Lydia and shell-shocked by meeting up with Antonio Rocha again. How could her sister have chosen Antonio to be her child’s guardian? After all, Belinda had had virtually no contact with her Spanish in-laws after her wedding. She had once admitted to Sophie that Pablo had never got on with his relatives and that that was why he preferred to live in London. When Antonio had contacted Belinda after Pablo’s death, Belinda had been almost hysterical in her determination to have nothing further to do with her late husband’s family. Even when Belinda had mentioned the will she had made, she had not admitted to Antonio’s place in it. Sophie had been totally unprepared for her sibling’s evident change of heart.

Nevertheless, Sophie could also understand exactly why Antonio had been selected: Belinda had always had enormous respect for money and status. It was rather ironic that her sister had actually been rather intimidated by the sheer grandeur of her husband’s family, who lived on a palatial scale. She thought that Belinda had most probably been hedging her bets when she had named Antonio in the will. Knowing that Sophie was poor as a church mouse, she could only have hoped that including the mega-rich Antonio might result in his offering to contribute towards his niece’s support. Sophie clutched at that concept and prayed that Pablo’s brother would have no desire to become any more closely involved in Lydia’s life.

Sophie had come to love Lydia as much as if her niece had been born to her. The bond between Sophie and her infant niece would always have been strong because, having suffered leukaemia as a child, Sophie was painfully aware that the treatment that had saved her life might also have left her infertile. Her attachment to her sister’s baby had been intensified, however, by the simple fact that from birth Lydia had been almost solely in Sophie’s care.

Initially Belinda had not been well and she had needed Sophie to look after her daughter until she was stronger. Within a few weeks, though, Belinda had met the man with whom she had been living at the time of her death. A successful salesman with a party-going lifestyle, Doug had shown no interest whatsoever in his girlfriend’s baby. Having fallen for him, Belinda had been quick to pass all responsibility for Lydia onto Sophie’s shoulders.

On many occasions, Sophie had attempted to reason with her sister and persuade her to spend more time with her baby daughter.

‘I wish I’d never had her!’ Belinda finally sobbed shamefacedly. ‘If I have to start playing Mummy and staying in more, Doug will just find someone else. I know I’m not being fair to you but I love him so much and I don’t want to lose him. Just give me some more time with him. I know he’ll come round about Lydia.’

But Doug did not come round. Indeed he told Belinda that there was no room for a child in his life.

‘That’s why I’ve reached a decision,’ Belinda told Sophie tearfully two weeks before she died. ‘You probably can’t have a baby of your own and I know how much you love Lydia. You’ve been a terrific mother to her, much better than I could ever be. If you want Lydia, you can keep her for ever and that way I can at least see her occasionally.’

That day Sophie deemed it wisest to say nothing, for she was convinced that Belinda’s affair with Doug was already fading and that her sister would soon bitterly regret her willingness to sacrifice even her child on his behalf. Sophie had grown up in a household where her father’s lady friends had almost always had children of their own. She knew that there were plenty of men who refused to take responsibility for anyone other than their own sweet selves. Her father had been one of that ilk, a work-shy charmer of colossal selfishness, but he had never been without a woman in his life. All too often those same women had put his needs ahead of their child’s in a pointless effort to hold on to him.

‘My goodness…fancy Belinda not even telling you!’ Norah Moore exclaimed in astonishment when she heard about Antonio Rocha’s appearance at the solicitor’s office. ‘That sister of yours was a dark horse, all right.’

Engaged in cuddling Lydia close and rejoicing in the sweet, soft warmth of her niece’s weight in her arms, Sophie sighed, ‘Belinda probably put Antonio’s name down and never thought about it again. She didn’t keep secrets from me.’

‘Didn’t she?’ the older woman snorted, unimpressed. ‘I reckon Belinda only ever told you what she thought you wanted to hear!’

Sophie stiffened. ‘What’s that supposed to mean? Are you teasing me?’

Reddening, Norah looked discomfited. ‘Of course I am,’ she said awkwardly.

It was not the first time that the older woman had hinted that Sophie might not have known her sibling as well as she thought she did. Sophie was irritated but placed no credence in that suggestion. She was well aware that Norah and Belinda had merely tolerated each other. Norah had been too rough and ready for Belinda’s refined standards and had been hurt and offended by the younger woman’s coolness.

With Lydia in her pram, Sophie left the Moores’ neat little bungalow and walked back to the static caravan where she lived. Belinda had totally loathed living there and had been delighted to move into her boyfriend’s smart apartment in town. But Sophie looked on the caravan as her home and loved the fact that the big front window looked out on a field where sheep sometimes grazed. Indeed, high on her agenda was the dream that some day she might be in a position to stop renting and buy a more up-to-date model.