collection of jewellery. When he remembered her existence Leandro bought her beautiful gifts like the platinum watch on her wrist or the array of perfumes from which she now had to choose.
Unhappily, she was convinced that, while Leandro was rarely out of her thoughts, Leandro himself didn’t remember his wife’s existence very often. It would never occur to him to phone her when he was away from her. He would never confide his deepest thoughts in her, nor would he even answer her curious questions about Aloise. Indeed he had labelled her curiosity about his first wife ‘unhealthy’ and had ensured that she was very reluctant to raise the topic again.
‘I think you should tell Leandro to take a running jump and come home to London,’ Jez had told Molly on the phone the night before. ‘You’re bored, you’re lonely and you’re in a foreign country. By the sounds of it, you see so little of your healthy duke that you might as well move back here. He could visit the kid when he comes over on business. At least you’d have a life in London.’
‘I’ve never been a quitter. I don’t want a divorce and a broken home for my child,’ she argued vehemently. ‘Marriage is for the long haul.’
‘Your long haul, not his. You seem to be the one making all the sacrifices,’ her best friend opined.
And wasn’t that the truth? Molly thought ruefully. Marriage appeared to have made very little impression on either Leandro’s schedule or his attitude to her. Leandro was strong, arrogant and reserved. She loved his strength, but hated being kept at arm’s length. He shut her out and she desperately wanted to be let in so that she could get close to him somewhere other than in the bedroom. She had nobody but Julieta to talk to, and during the week Leandro’s sister lived in Seville where she was studying fashion design. While Molly’s regular Spanish lessons with a local teacher had led to a steady improvement in her grasp of the language, it was still an uphill challenge for her to have a decent chat with anyone. At least, however, she could now make herself understood with the castle staff. For the first couple of months, while she was unable to express the most basic requests, she had felt very inadequate and isolated.
Furthermore, her mother-in-law, far from basing herself as promised in Seville, remained firmly in residence below the same roof. Dona Maria froze Molly out in company and made little acid comments and digs under cover of polite conversation. That was one reason why Molly spent the greater part of her day in her studio, which Leandro had yet to even visit. He had promised to come but never quite made it. In much the same way he had not found the time to take any interest in the nursery being decorated for their unborn child.
A knock on the door shot Molly back to the present and she spun round to see Julieta, gorgeous in white shorts and T-shirt, smiling hopefully across the studio at her.
‘It’s my birthday tomorrow,’ Julieta reminded her. ‘Will you come up to town and go clubbing with me and my friends in the evening? You can stay the night at my place.’
It was on the tip of Molly’s tongue to say no because she knew that Leandro would not approve. But then when did Leandro ever take her out anywhere? She was married to a workaholic too busy to waste his precious time entertaining his wife. Sudden defiance blazed through Molly. Since when had she been the sort of girl who sat home and did as she was told? On that thought, she accepted the invitation and Julieta was ecstatic at the prospect of introducing Molly to all her friends, for the two women had formed an increasingly close friendship, united by the truth that neither of them was capable of winning Dona Maria’s approval. Nothing poor Julieta wore or indeed did got her critical mother’s vote of confidence.
Late afternoon, Molly drove back to the
‘
She grabbed a magazine from the pile in her bedroom and went off to luxuriate in a long bath. Anticipation at the prospect of soon enjoying lively company had brightened her eyes. She was already planning to get her hair and nails done for her night out on the town the following day. She wondered what she would wear, reflecting that pregnant clubbers weren’t exactly cool or fashionable, and mentally flipped through her extensive wardrobe for an outfit that would magically conceal her rotund contours. So Leandro wouldn’t like it. Well, Leandro would have to roll with the punches.
In the act of flipping through the glossy fashion magazine for something to catch her interest, Molly froze at the fleeting glimpse of a woman’s face. Sitting up in an abrupt movement, displaced water swilling noisily all around her, Molly flipped back frantically through the issue to find the relevant page while struggling to keep it dry at the same time.
Her heart skipped a beat when she finally relocated the photograph of a very beautiful blonde woman standing in a walled garden full of colourful flowers. It was her sister, Ophelia, she was sure it was! Barely able to breathe for excitement, Molly settled back to read the article. Ophelia was married now-well why not? Her sister was seven years older and a mother as well, Molly registered in growing astonishment. My goodness, Ophelia had already had three kids by a Greek businessman called Lysander Metaxis! Now why did that surname ring a familiar bell with her? Ophelia, who now evidently ran a plant nursery, had opened her home and garden in aid of a children’s charity. Molly turned a page and stared fixedly at the picture of Madrigal Court. Her recognition of the lovely old Tudor house sent a cold shiver down her spine, rousing as it did unhappy memories.
She still remembered the initial excitement of first seeing that huge ancient house from her grandmother’s car the day after her mother’s funeral. She had been so hopelessly impressed that someone she was related to could possibly have enough money to live in a mansion. But her grandmother, Gladys, who could have given Dona Maria frostbite with her nasty tongue, had soon turned Molly’s youthful excitement into a sick sense of apprehension. As soon as Gladys had returned from enrolling Ophelia in her new school, she had sat Molly down and told her that she couldn’t possibly give her a permanent home.
‘Your sister is sixteen. You’re too young a child for me to take on,’ her grandmother had told her.
Molly had fearfully sworn that she would be no trouble and that she would help out round the house and not get in the way, and the older woman had had to admit the true reasons why she wasn’t prepared to raise her younger granddaughter.
‘Your father was a foreigner and he already had a wife when he got your mother pregnant with you. He was a loathsome man who jilted your mother at the altar long before you were born, but he still wouldn’t let her alone to get on with her life!’ Gladys Stewart had delivered with seething bitterness. ‘It’s a shameful disgrace for a woman to give birth to a child when she’s not married, Molly, and that’s why you can’t live here with me. It’ll be much better for all of us if you’re adopted.’
Until today, she had never seen the big sister she adored, Molly recalled painfully. If a heart could be broken, hers had been smashed, as Ophelia had been the only stable loving influence in Molly’s world since she was born. Her eyes wet from those recollections, Molly read on, eagerly sucking up every tiny personal detail about her sister’s life. She hauled herself out of the bath and dried herself at frantic speed. She was going to get in touch with Ophelia. Why not? There was no mention of her grandmother in the article. She was only risking rejection and couldn’t imagine the sister she remembered being that cruel. She was longing for another woman she could talk to, because it was impossible to admit the extent of her unhappiness to Julieta, and Jez was a man and didn’t understand, for he simply urged her to walk out on her husband. As if that would be the easiest thing in the world to do!
Before she could lose her nerve, Molly flung on some clothes and went on the Internet in search of contact details for Ophelia. Madrigal Court had its own website and she sent an email to her sister, couched as casually as she could manage it, asking after the family parrot, Haddock, and including her mobile phone number. After all, Ophelia might not want to talk to her.
At that same moment, Leandro was in his office at the bank in Seville and sustaining a very taxing visit from an elderly uncle who professed to be very much shocked and disturbed by recent outrageous gossip on the estate relating to a family member’s behaviour with an unnamed man. By the time all the complex and deeply apologetic and defensive outpourings had been waded through, Leandro was not a great deal wiser to the facts than he had been at the outset. His uncle, an old bachelor, had a highly refined sense of delicacy and honour that prevented him from being a good teller of tales, for he steadfastly refused to name the source of the gossip, the content of it or to identify the parties involved.
