The Italian’s Rightful Bride Read Online Free

little details, which she pretended meant nothing, until the day when it was no longer possible to pretend.
    At first she thought he was alone. Coming from the brilliant sunlight into the trees, she saw only him, and her heart leapt before she noticed that he was leaning over and down towards the woman in his arms.
    But then she saw them, and the way he was raining kisses on her upturned face, kissing her to the point of madness, again and again, so that Joanna knew that kisses would never be enough for him.
    Kissing as he had never kissed her.
    She stood and watched, her heart breaking, her world shattering around her.
    She drew back behind a great oak, although it was needless. They were beyond noticing her or anything else. She heard him say,
    â€˜I’m sorry, my darling. I had no right to do this when I have nothing to offer you.’
    â€˜Why can’t we be happy?’ That was Crystal’s voice. ‘Don’t you love me?’
    â€˜You know I love you,’ he said, almost violently. ‘I didn’t know I could feel like this. If I had—’
    He stopped. Joanna listened, her heart beating madly. If he had…
    â€˜If you’d met me first, you wouldn’t have proposed to Joanna, would you?’
    â€˜Never,’ he said hoarsely.
    â€˜Don’t you want to marry me, my darling?’
    â€˜Don’t ask me that.’
    â€˜But I must ask it,’ she persisted in her soft, enticing voice. ‘If we’re going to lose each other, at least give me honesty.’
    â€˜All right, I want to marry you,’ he said in a fierce,passionate voice. ‘I can’t, but neither can I stop loving and wanting you. You’re there with me every moment, night and day, waking or sleeping.’
    â€˜Then how can you cast me aside?’
    â€˜Because I have made promises to Joanna. My darling, I beg you to understand, I must keep those promises.’
    â€˜Why? She doesn’t love you any more than you love her.’
    â€˜But we’re a few days from our wedding. How can I humiliate her in front of the world?’
    â€˜Gustavo, have you thought of the future? All those years tied to a woman you don’t love. How will you endure them?’
    The silence that followed froze Joanna to the soul. Just a few seconds, but enough to make her feel that she was dying. At last his answer came in a voice that was bleak with despair.
    â€˜I’ll survive, somehow.’
    She’d thought her heart couldn’t break any more, but when she heard that she knew she was wrong.
    And strangely, it was the knowledge that there was nothing more to hope for that made it possible for her to step out from behind the tree, smiling and saying brightly, ‘Isn’t there something you want to tell me?’
    Their faces were imprinted on her memory forever, Gustavo’s pale and shocked, Crystal’s with an expression she couldn’t read. Only later did she think of cats and cream. At the time she was concentrating on what she must do.
    Crystal spoke first, sounding suitably uneasy.
    â€˜Joanna, we didn’t mean you to find out like this.’
    â€˜It doesn’t matter how I found out,’ she answered with a fair assumption of gaiety. ‘The point is that we’re still in time to put matters right.’
    â€˜I have no intention of asking you to free me.’ Gustavo’s voice was hollow.
    â€˜But perhaps I’d like to chuck you out,’ she replied with a shrug. ‘Oh, come on, this isn’t the nineteenth century. The sky isn’t going to fall if there’s a last-minute change of plan.’
    She never forgot the look on his face then, sheer blinding hope at the thought of not having to marry her.
    â€˜You—mean that?’ he asked as though unable to believe his ears.
    â€˜Of course I mean it. Honestly, darling,’ she added, using the term of endearment for the first time, ‘if you’re in love