‘Are you feeling all right, my dear?’

Ophelia stared back at Virginia and fought the woolly confusion of her racing thoughts. ‘I’m fine.’

‘You’ve turned as pale as marble.’

‘If I could just freshen up…’

In the smart cloakroom, Ophelia struggled to get a grip on her seething emotions. But she felt as if the ground were tilting beneath her. Her skin was clammy, her stomach unsettled. Shock held her in a crushing embrace of pain. Evidently her personal attractions had not had the slightest influence on Lysander’s request for a normal marriage. He was still faking it for his mother’s benefit. Virginia was delighted that he was married and Lysander was willing to stay married to please her. And of course he was happier now that his mother was recovering from her illness, she thought wretchedly. Health scares did make people much more aware of how much the sick person meant to them.

But where did that leave Ophelia? Madly in love with a guy only tolerating her as a wife out of consideration for his mother. Could she live with that? Have children with him? Pretend that she hadn’t put two and two together and added up a total that broke her heart? She hadn’t thought that he loved her, but she had come to believe that he found her very attractive and that he cared for her. Only now it seemed that he was simply making the best of a difficult situation.

She crossed her arms and accidentally pressed against her breasts, which had become rather tender. Her tummy still felt slightly queasy. It might just be shock, but she could equally well be suffering the early discomforts of pregnancy. She and Lysander had decided they didn’t want to wait. They had seen no good reason to. In a few days she planned to get a test done, but in her heart of hearts she already knew what the result would be. So, it wasn’t a matter of deciding what she could live with or without, was it? If she had already conceived, their child deserved a stable background with two parents.

Ophelia rejoined Virginia and managed to talk about Madrigal Court and the party and how much she had enjoyed staying on Kastros. She refused to think a single dangerous thought that might threaten her composure. When she had left the older woman and was able to stop putting on a front she slumped in the lift. She was supposed to be dining out with Lysander. But she couldn’t face him. She couldn’t face him feeling as she did: cheated, hurt, sorry for herself and angry all at the same time.

Her mobile phone rang. Lysander’s name flashed on the screen and she switched it off before telling the chauffeur of her changed itinerary. She would go back to Madrigal Court while she came to terms with what she had found out. A few minutes later, the car phone rang. She knew it would be Lysander and she had to steel herself to answer it.

‘I told you Virginia would love you, yineka mou,’ he drawled with rich satisfaction.

Tears almost blinding her as her eyes flooded without warning, Ophelia cleared her throat. ‘I’m not coming back to the town house tonight.’

‘Why?’ Lysander could hear the wobbly note in her voice and he frowned. ‘Are you upset about something?’

‘I’m going home. I…I just need a little break from you.’

‘Even with good behaviour, you don’t get time off,’ Lysander said very drily.

‘I’m sorry, but I don’t want to talk about this.’ Ophelia replaced the phone.

What was there to talk about? Lysander specialised in being brilliant at most things he focused on and, although it went much against the grain to admit it, at that moment Lysander was a runaway success in the husband stakes. He had made her happy. Oh, why stint on the praise? He had made her ecstatically happy. He had a knack for doing everything right. It was as if he had come up with a blueprint for a successful marriage and he was following it to the letter.

He made regular phone calls and endeavoured to take an interest in what interested her. If that meant struggling not to shiver in the walled garden in a gale-force wind while striving to demonstrate interest in the flora and enquiring into the meaning of their Latin names, never let it be said that Lysander had shrunk from the challenge. He even managed to put in long hours of work, while giving her the impression that if he had any choice at all he would be with her instead. And when she had confessed that she really would like a baby, the contraception had been ditched there and then. Instant wish fulfilment. What Lysander didn’t know about women could be written on a pin-head. He ticked all the boxes in bed-and out of it too. What could she possibly complain about? That he was a caring son? Love wasn’t part of their marriage deal. Tears were streaming down her face.

Some hours later, Lysander sprang out of the helicopter at Madrigal Court and strode towards the front door on long, powerful legs. He had cancelled a board meeting last minute. High on rage at his wife’s lack of self-discipline and consideration, he strode through the house in search of her.

‘Afternoon, Lysander,’ Haddock piped up in the Great Hall.

‘Good afternoon, Haddock,’ Lysander growled, passing by the parrot.

‘Metaxis bounder-good-for-nothing swine! You can’t trust a Metaxis!’

Lysander froze in his tracks and looked back. Haddock strutted along his perch and broke into a rendition of a nursery rhyme, the living embodiment of an innocent bird. It was pure coincidence, nothing more. The stupid creature had no idea what he was saying. He was merely a clever mimic who repeated phrases he had heard. It would be paranoid to suspect that Haddock was putting the boot in behind Ophelia’s back.

The clothing discarded in the master bedroom spoke of Ophelia’s recent presence and Lysander breathed a little easier. Her priceless pearl and diamond necklace lay on the dressing table alongside her wedding ring. He fell still, his attention welded to the ring, his wide shapely mouth tightening. There was no sign of luggage, no suggestion that she was packing to go anywhere this time around. Why should she run away? he asked himself angrily. She had no reason to take off again. Why was he even thinking this way?

Ophelia was potting up plants she had divided in one of the newly renovated Edwardian greenhouses. The work had cost a fortune, but the previous poly-tunnels had offended Lysander’s aesthetic sensibilities. Her eyes were still overflowing. She sniffed and wiped them irritably on the sleeve of her oversized sweater. She was annoyed that she was being so emotional. She had got the man of her dreams and the baby of her dreams was probably on the way as well. Wasn’t there always a serpent in paradise? So, it was a tad demeaning to learn that the man you loved was only making the best of things with you. Well, what had she expected?

Lysander thrust open the door of the greenhouse.

‘What are you doing here?’ Ophelia spun back to the bench in haste before he could notice her damp eyes. He looked outrageously out of place in his formal business suit with a striped silk tie and gold cufflinks gleaming at his wrists.

‘When you said you wanted a break from me, what did you expect me to do? Just get on with my working day?’

‘Yes.’

Feeling the full injustice of that comment, Lysander breathed in slow and deep. ‘Did Virginia upset you?’

‘She’s lovely-and, no, she didn’t upset me.’ Her golden head was bent as she potted up another plant. ‘But realising why I’m still your wife came as something of a shock.’

‘So, let me into this secret and the shock it dealt you,’ Lysander invited.

‘Don’t be flippant,’ Ophelia warned him shakily, scooping up compost and piling it into a pot. ‘Let me tell you how it went. Virginia was ill and you were ready to move heaven and earth to buy this house for her. That’s why you married me and why you said we had to pretend it was a genuine marriage after the paparazzi reported our wedding. You didn’t want her to find out how far you were prepared to go on her behalf.’

‘Yes,’ Lysander agreed without a shade of hesitance.

Ophelia had hoped he would argue and tell her she had got it all wrong. His agreement of those facts cut her to the quick. The pot she was filling furiously with compost began to resemble a miniature Mount Everest. ‘Then you realised that Virginia was delighted that you had married and you decided you might as well hang on to me to keep her happy.’

‘No.’

In the tense silence, Ophelia continued to build the compost mountain to a towering height. ‘Why are you saying no?’

‘I hope I am a good son, but I’m not an idiot. It would be insane to stay married to a woman I didn’t care about. When did you get the impression I was that much of a wimp? Or so unselfish? You’re underestimating me, yineka mou,’ he told her softly.

Ophelia stole a wary glance at him. ‘So tell me your side of the story…’

Lysander paced forward and gently turned her round, turning up her wrists and tugging off her gloves. ‘My well-laid plans went belly-up around the same day that I decided I had to buy a four-poster bed in which to put you-’

Pale blue eyes perplexed, Ophelia stared at him. ‘I beg your pardon?’

‘And that was the day after I met you. My reasoning processes were operating on a different frequency from that moment on. I should have stuck to business. You were supposed to be a business arrangement.’ His lean, darkly handsome features were grave. ‘But even though I believed you’d tipped off the paps, I still couldn’t wait to get you into bed.’

Ophelia had turned pink.

‘I began to make strange decisions. I forgave you for the tabloid interview you did. I decided we had to have a honeymoon. When you walked out on me on Kastros, there was nothing I wouldn’t have done to get you back, up to and including cancelling the island’s ferry service-’