LITMIR.BIZ

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      ‘You have a six-month-old baby. It’s not so easy to stay on the move with a young child,’ Alice pointed out. ‘I need a permanent riding instructor and the job’s yours if you want it. My stables would profit from you staying on just as much as you would—’

      Feeling the dialogue had gone far enough when there was not the smallest chance of her changing her mind about leaving, Emily lifted her bright head. Her aquamarine eyes were troubled and embarrassed, for she hated to turn down an offer that she would have loved to accept. However, telling the truth about why she had to refuse wasn’t an option. ‘I’m sorry, but we really do have to leave—’

      ‘Why?’ The older woman’s weathered face was set in stubborn lines.

      Emily’s fair complexion was flushed with discomfiture. ‘I guess I’m a rolling stone—’

      ‘I don’t believe that. I know travelling folk and you don’t have that restlessness. You could have a comfortable home and job here with friends—’

      ‘You’re making this very difficult for me, Alice—’

      The older woman tilted back her greying head and studied Emily with wry eyes. ‘Maybe I’m hoping that you’ll come clean and admit that you’re running from something or somebody…and that the only thing keeping you on the road is fear of that somebody or something catching up with you!’

      Emily turned very pale at that disturbingly accurate assessment.

      ‘Of course, I suspected that you might be in some sort of fix,’ Alice Barker admitted with a sympathetic look. ‘You’re too reserved and, by nature, I’d say you were a much more relaxed person. You’re also too nervous of strangers.’

      ‘I haven’t broken the law or anything,’ Emily responded in a strained undertone. ‘But I’m afraid that’s as much as I can say.’

      But even as she made that assurance, she wondered if it was still true. Had she broken any English law in what she had done? How was she to know when she had not taken legal advice? She’d been on the run for eight months and she’d not got back in touch with her family or indeed anyone else during that period.

      ‘Are you trying to shake off an abusive boyfriend?’ Alice was keen to get to the root of Emily’s problems. ‘Why don’t you let me help you? Running away never solves anything.’

      Dismayed by her companion’s persistence, Emily muttered in a rush, ‘You’ve been really great to us. I’ll never forget that but we have to leave first thing tomorrow.’

      Recognising the sheen of tears in Emily’s eyes, Alice sighed and gave the younger woman an awkward hug. ‘If you change your mind, there’ll always be a bed here for you.’

      Closing the caravan door behind her, Alice trudged back down the lane to the stable block to lock up for the evening. Emily drew in a slow, deep, shaken breath. One thing that Alice had said had hit Emily on a very tender nerve. Running away never solves anything. That was so horribly true, Emily conceded heavily. Nothing had been solved or settled. It was eight months since she had left Portugal. She had run home to her family for support but her family had treated her like an escaped convict.

      ‘Don’t think that we’re going to get involved!’ Emily’s mother had pronounced in furious dismissal. ‘So please don’t embarrass us with the details of your marital problems.’

      ‘Go home to your husband. You’re not staying here with us,’ her father had told her in outrage.

      ‘Have you gone out of your tiny mind?’ Her eldest sister, Hermione, had demanded. ‘What do you think your walking out on your marriage is likely to do to the family business? If Duarte blames us, we’ll all be ruined!’

      ‘You really are an absolute idiot to come here,’ her other sister, Corinne, had said with stinging scorn. ‘None of us are going to help you. Did you really expect us to react any other way?’

      The answer to that frank question would have been yes but Emily had been too devastated by that mass rejection to respond. Yes, time and time again through childhood and adolescence and indeed right up to the age of twenty when she married, Emily had fondly hoped to receive some small sign that her family loved her. That blind faith had sunk without trace for the last time. She’d finally accepted that she was the cuckoo in the family nest, an outsider who was both resented and unwelcome and that nothing was ever likely to change that reality.

      Why it should be that way she’d never understood. Yet she was painfully aware that had she got the chance to sit down and tell the honest truth about why her marriage had fallen apart, she would undoubtedly have been shown the door by her family even more quickly.

      She’d had to face the fact that, whatever she chose to do, she was on her own. So she’d sold her engagement ring. With the proceeds, she’d bought an old car and a caravan and she had hit the road to make a living the only way she could. Travelling around the countryside from one stables to another, she offered her services for a few weeks as a riding instructor and then moved on to pastures new. The longer she stayed in one place, the greater the chance that she would be tracked down.

      Of course, Duarte was looking for both her and his child. Duarte Avila de Monteiro, the terrifyingly powerful and even more terrifyingly wealthy banker she had foolishly married. His brilliance in the world of finance was a living legend.

      When Duarte had asked Emily to marry him, she had been stunned for she hadn’t been beautiful, sophisticated or even rich. Furthermore, her relatives might like to give themselves airs and graces in polite company but, though her family could not bear to have it mentioned, Emily’s grandfather had been a milkman. So, understandably, Emily had been overwhelmed that Duarte Avila de Monteiro should decide to marry her humble and ordinary self. That he didn’t love her…well, so nothing was perfect, she had told herself. At the outset, she’d been full of cheerful and trusting hopes for the future. Adoring him like a silly schoolgirl, she’d simply marvelled at her own good luck.

      Although she had been in awe of her husband, she had never feared him, not the way others did. People were afraid to cross his reserve and offend him. People were afraid of his unapologetic ruthlessness. She’d been stupid not to fear him, Emily conceded heavily with the knowledge of hindsight. A wretched light in her troubled eyes, she reached into her son Jamie’s cot and lifted his warm, solid little body up into her arms. Eight months ago, Duarte had threatened to take her baby from her as soon as he was born and raise him without her. Within days of being told of that appalling threat, Emily had fled Portugal in a panic.

      But unhappily there was no escape from the reality that she had destroyed her own marriage. She had been the guilty partner. It was her fault that Duarte had demanded a separation, her fault that Duarte had ultimately decided that she ought to be deprived of their child as well. Indeed, in recent months, Emily had started feeling even worse over the fact that Duarte was being deprived of the right to even see his own son. Only her terror of losing custody of Jamie and her fearful awareness that she had neither Duarte’s money nor influence had triumphed over her guilty conscience.

      Now, however, Emily was finally facing the immaturity of her own behaviour. It was time that she went to see a lawyer and found out exactly where she stood. It was time she stopped running…

      Yet how did she deal with Duarte? And how would Duarte now deal with her? In spite of herself, she shivered as discouraging memories engulfed her. During their separation, Duarte had exiled her to the country house in the Douro for the winter. She had lived there alone for three months, hoping against hope that he would eventually agree to see her and talk to her again and that the great divide between them might somehow be miraculously mended. But that had been such a naive dream.

      For Duarte, Emily thought painfully, would be happy to acquire a son and dispense with the baby machine who had produced that son. For really that was all she had ever been to her gorgeous husband…a baby machine. For what other reason had he married her? Certainly not for love, lust or loneliness. Childlessness was a disaster to the average Portuguese male and Duarte had an illustrious name.

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