Page 8 of The Spaniard's Wedding Revenge

On the rare occasions when she’d ventured out of the area she lived in she’d seen places like this. Old buildings surrounded by high walls. Houses where the rich lived.

She’d once lived in a house like this herself, but it had been a long time ago and elsewhere, when she’d been a little kid. Before her father had kicked her and her mother out of their palatial mansion and life had changed drastically.

She still remembered what it had been like to have money, to have a roof over her head and clean clothes and food. Nice memories, but they’d been a lie, so she tried not to think about them. It was better not to remember such things because they only made her want what she could never have—and wanting things was always a bad thing.

She stared distrustfully out into the darkness, where the silhouette of a massive old house reared against the sky.

The driver came around the side of the car and opened the door. The duke gestured at her to get out.

She turned her distrustful attention to him.

A duke. An honest-to-God duke. He didn’t look like one—though she had no idea what dukes were supposed to look like. Maybe much older. Although, given the faint lines around his eyes and mouth, he was certainly a lot older than she was. Then again, his hair was still pitch-black so he couldn’t bethatold.

His name had sounded faintly familiar to her, though she couldn’t think why. The fact that he was Spanish had given her a little kick, since she’d been born in Spain herself. In fact maybe she’d met him once before—back in Spain, before her father had got rid of her and her mother and her mother had dragged her to Paris.

Back when she’d been Leonie de Riero, the prized only daughter of Victor de Riero, with the blood of ancient Spanish aristocracy running in her veins.

Perhaps she knew this duke from then? Or perhaps not. She’d been very young, after all, and her memories of that time were dim.

Whatever he was, or had been, she didn’t want to remember those days. The present was the only thing she had, and she had to be on her guard at all times. Forgetting where she was and what was happening led to mistakes, and she’d already made enough of those since ending up on the streets.

If she hadn’t been so absorbed in getting the lettering just so as she’d graffitied his car, she wouldn’t be here after all.

You certainly wouldn’t have had a bed for the night, so maybe it wasn’t such a mistake?

That remained to be seen. Perhaps she should have fought harder to escape him. Then again, she hadn’t been able to resist the lure of a job—if he actually meant what he’d said, that was.

The duke lifted that perfect brow of his. ‘Are you going to get out? Or would you prefer to sit here all night? The car is quite comfortable, though I’m afraid the doors will have to stay locked.’

She gave him a ferocious glare. ‘Give me back my knife first.’ She liked to have some protection on her, just in case of treachery.

He remained impervious to her glare. ‘I’m not going to hurt you,gatita.’

Kitten. He kept calling her kitten. It was annoying.

‘I don’t trust you. And I don’t want to sleep in a strange place without some protection.’

His jungle-green gaze was very level and absolutely expressionless. ‘Fair enough.’ Reaching into the pocket of his jacket, he extracted her knife and held it out, handle first.

She took it from him, the familiarity of the handle fitting into her palm making her feel slightly better. Briefly she debated whether or not to try and slash at him again, then bolt into the darkness. But she remembered the high walls surrounding the house. She wouldn’t be able to get over those, alas. She could refuse to get out and sleep in the car, but she didn’t like the idea of being locked in. No, it was the house or nothing.

With as much dignity as she could muster, Leonie pocketed her knife then slid out of the car. Behind her, the duke murmured something to his driver and then he was beside her, moving past her up the big stone steps to the front door of the mansion.

Some member of his staff was obviously still up, because the door opened, a pool of light shining out.

A minute later she found herself in a huge vaulted vestibule, with flights of stone steps curling up to the upper storeys and a massive, glittering chandelier lighting the echoing space. Thick silk rugs lay on the floor and there were pictures on the walls, and on the ceiling far above her head was a big painting of angels with white wings and golden haloes.

It was very warm inside.

She was used to being cold. She’d been cold ever since she was sixteen, coming home after school one day to the rundown apartment she’d shared with her mother only to find it empty, and a note from her mother on the rickety kitchen table informing Leonie that she’d gone and not to look for her.

Leonie hadn’t believed it at first. But her mother hadn’t come home that night, or the next, or the one after that, and eventually Leonie had had to accept that her mother wasn’t coming home at all. Leonie had been evicted from the apartment not long after that, and forced to live on the streets, where she’d felt like she’d become permanently cold.

But she hadn’t realised just how cold until now. Until the warmth from this place seeped up through the cracked soles of her sneakers and into her body, into her heart.

Immediately she wanted to go outside again—to run and never stop running. She couldn’t trust this warmth. She couldn’t let her guard down. It wasn’t safe.

Except the big front door had closed, and she knew it would be locked, and the duke was gesturing at her to follow the older woman who stood next to him, regarding her with some disgust, making her abruptly conscious of the holes in her jeans and the stains on the denim. Of the grimy hoodie that she’d stolen from a guy who’d taken it off to fight someone in the alleyway where she’d been sleeping one night. Of the paint stains on her hands.

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