Wife in the Shadows
Ellie lifted her head and looked at him, her eyes enormous in her pale face. ‘If there is no other way, then I suppose—yes.’
Angelo’s brows lifted mockingly. ‘You are graciousness itself.’
‘If you wanted a more generous reply,’ she said, ‘you should have asked a more willing lady.’
‘On the contrary, Elena,’ he said softly. ‘I think you will suit my purpose very well.’
He reached for her hand and made to raise it to his lips, but Ellie snatched it back, flushing.
‘Perhaps you’d restrict your overtures to those times when we have an audience to convince, My Lord?’
About the Author
SARA CRAVEN was born in South Devon and grew up in a house full of books. She worked as a local journalist, covering everything from flower shows to murders, and started writing for Mills & Boon in 1975. When not writing, she enjoys films, music, theatre, cooking, and eating in good restaurants. She now lives near her family in Warwickshire. Sara has appeared as a contestant on the former Channel Four game show Fifteen to One, and in 1997 was the UK television Mastermind champion. In 2005 she was a member of the Romantic Novelists’ team on University Challenge—the Professionals.
Recent titles by the same author:
THE HIGHEST STAKES OF ALL
HIS UNTAMED INNOCENT
RUTHLESS AWAKENING
CHAPTER ONE
April
THE EAR-RINGS WERE the most exquisite she had ever seen.
Nestling in their bed of black velvet, the single diamond drops glowed with a fierce inner fire that made her wonder if her fingertips would burn as she touched them.
But, in fact, they were cold, she thought with a small ironic smile as she fastened them into her earlobes.
Cold as the rest of the jewellery she had been given over the last endless months.
Cold as the chill in the pit of her stomach when she envisaged the evening ahead of her. And its possible aftermath.
She took the pendant, which had been the previous gift, from its case, and handed it to Donata, her maid, to fasten round her throat.
Then she rose from her dressing table, walked to the full-length mirror on an adjacent wall, and stood, straight and silent, subjecting her reflection to a critical, almost clinical examination.
The prescribed outfit for the evening was black, a simple full-length column of silk jersey, long-sleeved, and gathered in soft folds under the bust, its deep neckline revealing the first swell of her breasts, as well as setting off the pendant.
The dress was not in a colour or a style she particularly cared for. It made her look older than her twenty three years, she thought objectively. Conveyed a sophistication she certainly did not possess. But, like so much else in life, it was not her choice.
And, anyway, she asked herself with irony, when had a puppet ever picked its own costume?
Her hair had been swept up into an artfully arranged topknot, with just a few careless strands allowed to brush her cheeks and the nape of her neck.
She had never really warmed to Donata—the girl was too closely involved in the hollow sham that was her life, and probably saw altogether too much, she thought bitterly—but she could not fault her talent for hairdressing. Or, it seemed, her discretion. Whatever she might think of her employer’s marriage, she appeared to keep it to herself.
She had learned to apply her own cosmetics. Practised with shadow, liner and mascara to make the most of the grey-green eyes that were her one real claim to beauty, so that they gleamed almost mysteriously under their fringe of heavily darkened lashes.
Her mouth wore the warm flush of a wild rose, and the same shade was echoed in the polish that enhanced her manicured nails.
And in her ears and at her throat, the diamonds glittered like ice in winter sunlight.
She heard a warning cough from Donata, and saw her glance significantly at her watch.
Time, it seemed, for another performance to begin. Reaching for her evening purse, she walked to the door and out along the gallery to the head of the stairs, hearing from the opposite direction the sound of another door closing.