A Stormy Spanish Summer(52)

‘I mean it more than I’ve ever meant anything in my life.’ Vidal assured her. ‘The truth is that I fell in love with you when you were sixteen, but of course you were too young for a man’s love, and it would have been dishonourable and very wrong of me to have spoken to you of my feelings then. I told myself that I’d wait until you were older, until you were mature enough for me to court you properly as a woman.’

‘Oh, Vidal,’ Fliss breathed.

‘It’s true,’ he assured her. ‘That was why I misjudged you. Because I was jealous. Jealous that someone else had taken you from me. I did you a terrible wrong, Fliss. I don’t deserve your love.’

Fliss could see that he meant what he was saying, and her heart ached for him.

‘Yes, you do,’ she insisted. ‘And if I’d known then how you really felt about me, I suspect I’d have done everything I could to persuade you to change your mind.’

‘That is what I was afraid of,’ Vidal admitted tenderly. ‘It would have been the wrong thing to do for both of us but especially for you.’

When Fliss started to protest, Vidal stopped her.

‘You were too young. It would have been wrong. But hearing that boy boasting in the way that he did sent me a little mad, I think. I told myself afterwards that the girl I loved didn’t exist, that I’d created her inside my own imagination. I told myself I should be glad that you were not the innocent I had thought, because had you been my self-control might have betrayed me and I might, out of my love for you, have broken the trust your mother had in me.’

‘So you stopped loving me?’

‘I tried to tell myself I had, but the reality is that I ached and longed for you. Only my pride kept me away from you—especially when your mother died. You haunted my dreams and made it impossible for me to put any other woman in your place. I resigned myself to living without love, and then you walked back into my life. I knew that everything my pride had told me about the impossibility of loving you was a lie. I loved you no matter what. I realised that that first time we were in bed together—before I realised that I had misjudged you. I wanted to tell you how much I loved you, but I felt it would be wrong to burden you with my love. I wanted you to have the freedom to make your own choices, free of any burdens from the past.’

‘You are my choice, Vidal. You are my love, and you always will be.’

‘Are you really sure that I am what you want?’ Vidal asked her with unfamiliar humility.

‘Yes,’ Fliss told him emotionally.

‘I am your first lover.’

‘The only lover I want,’ she said fiercely. ‘The only lover I have ever wanted or will ever want.’ Fliss knew as she spoke that it was true.

‘I hope you mean that,’ Vidal told her thickly, ‘because I am not generous enough to give you a second opportunity to walk away from me.’ When he saw the way Fliss was looking at him Vidal warned her in a voice rough with passion, ‘Don’t look at me like that.’

‘Why not?’ Fliss asked him mock innocently.

‘Because if you do then I shall have to do this,’ Vidal told her, kissing her so passionately that Fliss felt as though the desire he was arousing within her was melting her body right down to her bones.

‘We’ve both fought so hard not to love one another, but it was obviously a fight we were destined to lose,’ she told him breathlessly, once he had stopped kissing her.

‘And one in which losing I know I have won something far more precious—you, my darling,’ Vidal responded, before kissing her again.

What a joy it was to know that she could respond to him with all her heart and all her love, knowing that he had given her his, Fliss thought as he kept on kissing her while he carried her over to the bed.

‘I love you,’ Vidal told her as he placed her on it. ‘I love you and I will always love you. This is where our love begins, Felicity. Our love and our future together—if that is what you want?’

Wrapping her arms around him, Fliss whispered against his lips, ‘You are what I want, Vidal, and you always will be.’

‘I want you to marry me,’ Vidal told her. ‘Soon—as soon as it can be arranged.’

‘Yes,’ Fliss agreed. ‘As soon as it can be arranged. But right now I want you to make love to me, Vidal.’

‘Like this, do you mean?’ he asked softly, as he started to undress her.

‘Yes,’ Fliss sighed happily. ‘Exactly like that ‘





EPILOGUE


‘HAPPY?’

Fliss raised her hand to touch Vidal’s face, the wedding ring he had placed on her finger less than twenty-four hours earlier gleaming in the sunlight. Her sparkling eyes and the emotion that lit up her face gave Vidal his answer without the need for any words, but she still spoke, telling him emotionally, ‘More happy that I ever believed possible.’