Chapter 37

'It's ten minutes to midnight.' Impervious to hints, he was reaching for her. 'Isn't it supposed to be bad luck for me to see you after midnight?' he teased, glittering golden eyes tracking over her in the most offensively proprietorial way.

Without even thinking about it, Catherine lifted her arm and slapped him so hard across one cheekbone that she almost fell. 'That's for Nice!' she hissed, stalking up the staircase. 'And if I see you after midnight, it won't be just bad luck, it'll be a death-trap!'

'Buona notte, carissima,' he said softly, almost amusedly.

Incredulous at the response, she halted and turned her head.

He stared up at her and smiled. 'You're crazy, but I like it.'

'What's the matter with you?' she snapped helplessly.

He checked his watch. 'You have six minutes to make it out of my sight. If you start talking, you'll never make it.'

Her fingermarks were clearly etched on one high cheekbone. The sight of her own handiwork filled her with sudden shame. She really didn't know what had come over her. 'I'm sorry. I shouldn't have done that,' she conceded.

'I'd forgive you for anything tonight. Even keeping me awake,' he advanced huskily.

That did it. She raced up to her room as though all the hounds in hell were pursuing her.

* * *

The beautiful breakfast brought to Catherine on a tray couldn't tempt her. The hair-stylist arrived, complete with retinue, followed by the cosmetics consultant and then the manicurist. The constant female chatter distanced her from the proceedings. As the morning moved on, she felt more and more as if she were a doll playing a part. She had nothing to do. Everyone else did it for her. And finally they stood back, hands were clapped, mutually satisfied sm

iles exchanged and compliments paid…the doll was dressed.

It wasn't real, not really real, she told herself repeatedly and stole another glance at her reflection, for it so closely matched that teenage dream. Certainly she had never before looked this good. No wonder they were all so pleased with themselves.

The little church was only a mile from the castle. It had been small and plain and dark when she had seen it earlier in the week. Today it was ablaze with flowers that scented the air heavily. She was in a daze. She went down the short aisle on the arm of a Spanish duke she had only met the night before. It's five years too late, five years too late; this doesn't mean anything to me now, she reasoned at a more frantic pitch as Luc swung round to take a long unashamed look at her. But somehow from that moment she found it quite impossible to reason at all.

'The most beautiful bride I've ever seen.' Luc brushed his lips very gently across hers and the combination of a rare compliment and physical contact sent her senses reeling dizzily.

Sunlight was warming her face, glinting off the twist of platinum on her finger next, and Christian was dropping a kiss on her brow, laughingly assuring her that Luc had said her mouth was out of bounds.

In the limousine, he caught her to him and took her mouth with all the hunger he had earlier restrained. Her bouquet dropped from her fingers, fell forgotten to the floor, and her arms went round his neck, her unsteady fingers linking in an unbroken chain to hold him to her.

Violins were thrumming in Catherine's bloodstream. She drifted round the floor in a rosy haze of contentment.

'Catherine?'

'Hmm?' she sighed dreamily into Luc's shoulder, opening her eyes a chink and vaguely surprised to recognise that the light, cast by the great chandeliers above, was artificial. In her mind she had been waltzing out under the night stars. 'Candles would have been more atmospheric,' she whispered, and then, 'You're thinking of the fire hazard and the smoke they would have created.'

'I'm trying very hard not to. I know what's expected of me,' Luc confessed above her head, and she gave a drowsy giggle. A lean hand tipped her face back, lingered to cup her chin. 'It's time for us to leave.'

'L-leave?' she echoed, jolted by the announcement.

His thumb gently eased between her parted lips and rimmed the inviting fullness of the lower in a gesture that was soul-shatteringly sensual. A heady combination of drowning feminine weakness and excitement spread burning heat through her tautening muscles. He might as well have thrown a high-voltage switch inside her. Dark eyes shaded by ebony lashes glimmered with gold. 'Leave,' he repeated, the syllables running together and merging. 'Fast,' he added as an afterthought.

'Everybody's still here.' She trembled as the hand resting at her spine curved her into contact with the stirring hardness of his thighs. 'Oh.'

'As you say, cara…oh,' he murmured softly. 'Our guests will dance quite happily to dawn without me. I have other ambitions.'

Her body was dissolving in the hard circle of his arms. She would have gone anywhere, done anything to stay there. The very thought of detaching herself long enough to get changed scared her. She was waking up out of the dream-like haze which had floated her through the day. And waking up was absolutely terrifying.

Had she really been stubborn enough to cling to the conviction that she hated him? It hadn't been hatred she'd felt when she saw him at the altar. It wasn't hatred she felt when he touched her. It was love. Love. She was blitzed by that reality. Her emotions had withstood the tests of pain and disillusionment, time and maturity. Why? But she knew why; scarcely had to answer the question. And in the beginning there was Luc…and there ended her story.

He steered her out of the ballroom, quite indifferent to the conversational sallies of several cliques in their path. In the shadow of the great staircase, he moulded her against him, his mouth hard and urgent, long fingers framing her cheekbones as he kissed her, at first roughly, then lingeringly with a slow, drugging sexuality that devastated her.