his eyes dancing with rueful amusement. ‘I was sworn to secrecy about you.’
‘I didn’t think I was that important,’ Jess confided a touch bitterly when she cast her mind back to the cold reception she had received on the one and only occasion when she had tried to make the acquaintance of her birth father.
Currently a well-known member of parliament with a political career that meant a great deal to him, William Dunn-Montgomery had refused to have anything to do with the illegitimate daughter born to Sharon Martin while he was still a student. He had even had a solicitor’s letter sent to Jess warning her to stay away from him and his family. It was as if she might be the carrier of some dread social disease, she recalled painfully. She marvelled that she had ever expected any warmer a welcome from the man when he had given her teenaged mother the cash to pay for an abortion and had then considered his responsibility discharged even after he learned that he had a daughter.
‘I’ve always been madly curious about you—my only sibling,’ Luke told her. ‘My word, with that hair and those eyes you do look very like Dad’s side of the family, although you’re a little on the short side!’
At that quip, Jess glanced up at him, saw that he was tall and she grinned, her tension suddenly dissipating. He was her half-brother, after all, and she was pleased that he’d had the interest to attend her wedding and introduce himself to her. ‘I didn’t even know there were any Dunn-Montgomerys on the guest list.’
‘Your bridegroom got to know my parents when he bought this place and my father’s very proud of his extensive connections with the business world. I’m sure Father made a very polite excuse for his and Mother’s non-attendance. I imagine he was very shocked when he realised who Cesario was marrying. It’ll be a challenge for him to avoid you now.’
‘Cesario doesn’t know about my background,’ Jess admitted. ‘And I have no plans to tell him.’
‘I can understand why you would prefer to keep quiet about my father.’
‘Some secrets are better left buried. I don’t see the point of treading on anyone’s toes now.’
Luke took the hint and dropped the subject, walking her off the floor while happily answering all her questions. He had all the assurance of a much-loved only child and explained that, in the family tradition, he was a pupil barrister as his father and grandfather had been before him.
Cesario glanced over Alice’s shoulder and saw Jessica with her tall male companion. His dark golden gaze zeroed in on his bride, noting the happy glow she exuded, and his eyes widened in surprise when she laughed, showing more animation than she had shown throughout the whole of her wedding day. That she liked the company she was in was obvious and he could see that she was chattering away. Cesario, who had never yet got his bride to chatter, stared and frowned, wondering who the young man was because he didn’t recognise him.
Sharon intercepted her daughter to ask in a worried undertone, ‘What were you talking about with Luke Dunn-Montgomery?’
Jess laughed. ‘He knows about me and he couldn’t have been friendlier.’
‘His family won’t like that,’ her mother pronounced.
‘That’s not my problem,’ Jess replied, reaching for another glass of champagne and registering that she felt remarkably buoyant.
‘Watch out,’ Sharon said anxiously nonetheless. ‘It’s safer not to get on the wrong side of people like that.’
‘Times have changed, Mum. The Dunn-Montgomerys are not lords of the manor any more and the locals don’t have to bow and curtsy when they pass by.’
And, at that moment, Luke reappeared at her elbow and insisted on being introduced to her mother before sweeping Jess off to meet his friends. The champagne had loosened her tongue and made her more of a social animal than usual. Luke’s friends were fun and she was giggling like mad over a silly joke when Cesario approached their table, spoke to everyone with rather chilling dignity and anchored a hand that would not be denied to Jess’s elbow to raise her from her seat and walk her away.
Bristling at that high-handed intervention, Jess shot him a reproving look. ‘What was that all about?’
‘It’s time for us to bow out of the festivities.’
‘But we aren’t leaving for Italy until tomorrow morning,’ Jess protested, realising belatedly as she glanced at her watch that time had moved on without her awareness and that, at what felt like very little warning, she was about to embark on her much-agonised-over wedding night.
‘It’s after midnight and our guests are beginning to leave, a fact that seems to have passed you by while you were flirting—’
‘I’m not Cinderella.’ Jess froze, facial muscles tightening, slight shoulders stiffening as Cesario herded her out to the magnificent main staircase. ‘And I wasn’t flirting!’
‘You’ve been flirting like mad with Luke Dunn-Montgomery for the past hour! Maledizione! I could hear you laughing across the dance floor.’
On the wide first landing, Jess slung Cesario a furious look and the truth trembled on her lips, but she wouldn’t let it loose. Why should she admit that Luke was her half-brother and that she was thrilled he had sought her out and treated her like a sister? She didn’t owe Cesario any explanations. He might have married her but he wasn’t entitled to her deepest secrets, particularly not the wounding or embarrassing ones. Cesario was from an aristocratic privileged background similar to her estranged birth father’s and she cringed at the thought of admitting that she was the former squire’s unacknowledged child by one of the village girls. Even if it was the truth, it sounded hideously, mortifyingly like something out of a nineteenth-century melodrama. And when she was already struggling under the humiliation of Robert Martin having been responsible for the loss of Cesario’s valuable painting, and having had to admit to having loan-shark, jailbird relatives as well, was it really her duty to lower herself further in his estimation?
‘To be truthful it was good to have something to laugh about today!’ Jess tossed back cheekily, clutching the full skirts of her gown in impatient hands as she mounted the stairs and struggled to keep up with his long impatient stride. ‘I’ve not been in much of a laughing mood recently.’
‘Believe me, I’ve noticed!’ With that ringing indictment, which any woman would have taken as a direct criticism, Cesario thrust wide the door of a big bedroom, furnished with atmospheric pieces of antique oak and a fire flickering in the grate to ward off the chill of the late spring night air.
Jess stared wide-eyed and disorientated at the room; she had never been upstairs in the hall before. The Tudor magnificence of her surroundings was in stark contrast to the contemporary décor that embellished the ground floor reception rooms that she had seen.
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Her tone was truculent as she questioned his censorious comment, but then she was assailed by dizziness as her head began to swim. She caught at the doorknob with her hand and leant on it to steady herself on knees that momentarily had all the consistency of jelly. Perspiration broke out on her short upper lip as she straightened up, wondering in dismay if she might have been a little too free with the champagne cocktails on offer at Luke’s table. Depending on how much she narrowed her eyes, the vast oak four-poster bed that dominated the room seemed to be shifting and changing position rather like a boat on the edge of a whirlpool.
‘That, in spite of the fact that I’ve done everything possible to accommodate your needs, you have been a very sulky bride!’ Cesario condemned, still picturing her glowing face as she sparkled as brightly as a Christmas tree ornament while she talked, giggled and smiled for that toyboy, Luke Dunn-Montgomery’s, benefit.
‘So, I’m human and imperfect and you’re surprised at this discovery?’ Jess fired back, stumbling slightly in her high heels as she moved away from the door. She pushed the door shut too hard and it slammed, very loudly, closed behind her, making him frown and wince. ‘It isn’t that easy to marry a stranger and contemplate