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Tonight Vidal would introduce her to the bedtime rites. She’d be a liar if she tried to make out that she viewed the prospect with loathing, she acknowledged, turning her gaze on him again. The feelings he aroused in her were all that had kept her going these past weeks.
‘Analysis complete?’ he asked, startling her as she had thought him genuinely asleep.
‘I wouldn’t presume to be capable of plumbing your depths,’ she retorted, gathering her wits.
He turned his head to look at her without lifting it from the rest, expression enigmatic. ‘You think I have depths to plumb, then?’
‘Everyone has,’ she said. ‘Of one kind or another. You weren’t born despising women.’
Dark brows lifted. ‘You believe that’s what I do?’
‘Basically, yes.’ Having begun this, she wasn’t about to back down. ‘We’re there to be used. Your reputation bears that out.’
‘Reputations,’ he said, ‘are often illusory.’
‘Meaning the media make it all up?’
‘Embellishment is a journalistic skill learned early in a career. I always credited you with more intelligence than to take everything you read in a newspaper as a hundred per cent correct.’
Leonie bit her lip, knowing he had a point. ‘If I’d been all that intelligent I’d have steered well clear of you two years ago!’ she declared in an attempt to keep her end up.
‘If you had, your father might be in a very different position today,’ Vidal returned equably. His eyes roved her face, devouring every feature, the look in them causing her heart to beat faster. ‘It took time, but I got my way in the end. I look forward now to a long and happy life together.’
‘Can a marriage contracted the way ours was ever be happy?’ she asked, still doubting the ‘long’.
‘Given the will, there’s no reason to doubt it,’ he said. ‘We’ll be spending the rest of the week at the quinta,’ he added. ‘A time to get to know one another a little better.’
‘In more ways than the one, you mean?’
‘In more ways than the one,’ he agreed, ignoring the satire. ‘We found a great deal in common the day we sailed the river together. You were at ease with me then.’
Recalling the way she’d felt that day, ‘at ease’ wasn’t exactly the way she would have described it, but she knew what he meant. There had been a compatibility in tastes: a liking for classical music, for theatre, for books with meaningful content. Looking back, it was amazing how much ground they’d covered during those few hours together.
‘What happens next week?’ she asked. ‘Do I take it you’ll be flitting round Europe?’
‘Next week we travel to the Douro,’ he said. ‘I have to introduce you to my family.’
Catching a certain tension in his voice, Leonie slanted a glance. ‘I take it they do know you’re married?’ she queried in sudden suspicion.
‘Not yet,’ he admitted. ‘Nor are they likely to approve.’
Pride raised flags in her cheeks. ‘You mean they may think I’m not good enough to join the Dos Santos clan?’
The smile that touched the firm mouth was wry. ‘Snobbery isn’t confined to any one race. They have fixed ideas of continuance where the bloodline is concerned. But faced with a fait accompli, they have no choice but to accept my choice of bride.’
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