Sleeping Love (15 page)

‘I am merely keeping the distance you required. But I want you in plain sight near me, so do not get any ideas about finding an opportunity to evade me.’

The formal tone in his voice cut deeply into her heart. But she persisted, needing to know his feelings about her account of her rape and kidnap. Maybe he viewed her as being unfaithful with her attacker. The very thought stung her insides.

Julian Michaels rushed into the room. He hadn’t even taken his coat off, and he was moaning about the French traffic and the snow holding him up. He stopped and stared at Sabrina.

‘Sabrina, it really is you.’

Julian Michaels’s attractive fair features paled for a moment and then a smile widened his mouth and lit his face providing it with much needed warmth. He rushed to put his arms around her and hugged her close. She felt such warmth and sibling love in his embrace, and it pained her that she was incapable of reciprocating.

He looked down at her with deep affection studying her features, staring into her eyes for the merest hint of recognition. She watched his face crumple with dismay. But he expertly covered the betrayal of emotion quickly. There was determination in his voice that signalled that he would not allow his unhappiness to spoil the reunion. Sabrina looked at him with glassy eyes.

‘I’m so glad you are alive and well. Sabrina, I have missed you so much. It just hasn’t been the same. It doesn’t matter that you can’t remember me. That will all come in time.’

She glanced at Raoul. He was leaning against the white fireplace, striking a tall formidable pose. He was as still as one of the Sculptures in the Louvre carved from perfect smoothly toned muscle. He watched Julian with suspicion. Sabrina felt her back straighten with affront as her distant mind acknowledged her need to protect her brother. There was a tension in the air between the two men. Both were too formal in their language with each other. Julian kissed the top of her head.

‘Sabrina is coming with me,’ Julian insisted. ‘She isn’t staying here one moment longer in this house, after what you did to her.’

Sabrina’s eyes shot questioningly at Raoul. One dark eyebrow rose making the pit of her stomach throb with a pleasurable ache. Her unexpected reaction made her angry, and she looked at him with a haughty air.

‘If you think I am leaving my sister here with you alone when the last thing she told me was that you were having an affair and she wanted a divorce. She was frightened of what you would do to stop her from leaving. No way. You don’t win this one, Raoul.’

Colour drained from Sabrina’s face as Julian watched Raoul with stern triumph, waiting for his reaction. Raoul straightened to his full height.

‘I will not continue to defend myself. I am not, nor have I ever had an affair. And Sabrina has no reason to be afraid of me. I would never hurt her, I love her. But then you have never been able to cope with that have you, Julian?’

‘My sister did not imagine anything, Raoul.’ Julian continued ignoring Raoul’s question.

‘Look that’s enough, both of you. Who do you think you are? I am here you know. Stop talking about me as if I am not. Don’t I get a say in my own life?’ Sabrina interrupted.

Both men were suitably silent. She stared at them angered by their lack of response.

‘Right that’s it, I am moving out and going back to England to carry on my new independent life. It seems my life before was dictated to me.’

She turned on her heel to leave, to make a grand exit, but Raoul was there catching her arm and swinging her round.

‘You are not leaving and that is final Sabrina. Remember what I told you I would do, if you tried to leave. I always carry out my threats, and I will have you put into a private hospital until you get your memory back.’

‘You are my wife, Sabrina, and your place is here by my side, and I will do whatever it takes to keep you here. I know you well, and you have no intention of leaving until you find out the truth.’

‘Stop filling her head with that mystical notion of wedded bliss, Raoul. She is coming home with me.’

Julian stood in front of Raoul, inches away from his face. Raoul’s broad shoulders squared.

‘Get used to it, Julian. You can’t play at being her father anymore. You can’t stand it that she married me and left you on your own.’

Sabrina was sure if she walked out of the room neither man would notice. They were so engrossed in their argument over her. It seemed both of them wanted to control her life and she wasn’t to have any say in it at all.

‘Stop it,’ Sabrina issued the order prising the two men apart before more than words began to fly like bullets. ‘Get a grip both of you. I don’t know what the old Sabrina was like, but you are dealing with a new one and by the looks of it a much improved one. And the sooner you get it through you thick, egotistical male skulls we will all be better off. I make my own decisions about my own life. Get used to it.’

‘Raoul, Sabrina, are you coming? They won’t serve until you come, and I’m starving,’ Amelia moaned entering the room. ‘Oh, Julian, you’re here at last. I’m sorry I’ve interrupted something haven’t I?’

Amelia looked embarrassed, her eyes flicking between the men and Sabrina for confirmation. Sabrina wasn’t so sure of Amelia’s innocence and was convinced her interruption had been a rescue attempt. Relieved and thankful she joined her friend and gave a shaky smile when Amelia turned to walk out of the room and winked at her.

Chapter Ten

Sabrina glanced around the table at the faces of the guests in the flickering candle light. Beatrice and Jacques were married and worked with Sabrina as lawyers. Clearly their relationship was strained with Jacques’s wavering eye that frequently rested on Cressida, roved around to Amelia and finished with Sabrina herself. Beline and Floren were originally friends of Raoul’s from his youth. But Sabrina had become close with Beline when they all lived in the same apartment building in Paris. They were very much in love and planning a family. Alain and Sophie were Raoul’s top executives. Both were eyeing her nervously.

The police officer, Inspector Tissier was unnerving and left Sabrina feeling alert and on her guard with everyone in the room. His eye wandered around the table as frequently as her own did but with more suspicion. Then there was the bitch from hell, Cressida, pawing Luc Valoire whilst trying to catch Raoul’s eye. But Sabrina was having her own battle with Luc, his constant vigil of every move and lift of her eyes made her feel scrutinised and embarrassed. He wore the same knowing smile on his lips that Raoul often did, only his had a sinister quality to it.

Then there was Raoul, the man who she was beginning to remember as husband and lover, who wanted her so much, yet now wished to keep away from her. He did not engage her in conversation and spent most of his time brooding. And her brother didn’t stop watching Raoul and Cressida with a steely eye. If it weren’t for Amelia’s and Julian’s constant attention, she would have left the room. By the end of the meal she was feeling isolated and anxious of everyone. These people were strangers, she knew nothing of their lives, hopes and dreams, yet they were her supposed to be her closest friends. She hated having lost her memory. It continually put her at great disadvantage. The conversation amongst the people in the room once they had recovered from their initial shock of her miraculous return, made her feel ignored.

By the time coffee was served in the lounge and further stories of the life she didn’t know were recounted with amusement, she couldn’t take anymore. The room full of people made her feel like a freak and lonely with the unnerving notion that they all knew more about herself than she did. Luc’s constant staring and Alain’s nervous suspicious looks made her want to seek the solace of sleep. Once she was sure Amelia, Julian and Raoul were both engaged in conversation, she slipped unnoticed from the room.

‘Going somewhere?’

It was Cressida standing at the bottom of the stairs. Sabrina stopped half way up and turned to face her enemy. The woman mounted the stairs and came to rest on one step down from Sabrina. She smoothed her red tipped fingers over the silk material of Sabrina’s dress on her shoulder, a flute of champagne in the other hand.

‘I suppose it will be tiring and quite uneasy to be in a room full of people who know you much better than yourself,’ she smiled pausing to take a sip of her drink and lean against the marble balustrade. ‘Maybe they know things you don’t? Such as how much Raoul prefers the company of my bed to your own.’

‘Really?’ Sabrina questioned with sarcasm, frowning at Cressida with distaste.

Sabrina watched the vixen’s cherry lips pout when she didn’t receive the reaction she was looking for.

‘He only wanted you back so he could prove he didn’t kill you. He wants a divorce so we can be married. You were never good enough for him, you could never give him what he wanted and needed in his bed. You were always so inhibited, that’s why he always came to me . . .’

Sabrina’s hand shot out in a reflex action, swiping neatly across Cressida’s polished face. Cressida’s eyes narrowed, but she laughed.

‘You should pack your bags and leave. He doesn’t want you now. Make it easy for him to get a divorce. Or maybe I should tell him about the affair you were having with Luc. I’m sure he would love to hear the details of your torrid affair with his brother.’

‘I didn’t . . . I couldn’t have . . .’ Sabrina’s voice faltered. The bitch had her at a disadvantage. The colour drained from her face.

Did I really have an affair? No, no I wouldn’t have done that to Raoul. I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t . . . You lying bitch.

Sabrina’s hand shot out again, but Cressida caught her wrist.

‘Do as you are told and nobody will know anything. Then you won’t be responsible for tearing a family up, especially when Raoul and Luc’s mother, old delightful Madame Valoire is recovering from a stroke. You wouldn’t want to make her ill again by putting a rift between her sons would you?’

Sabrina wrenched her hand free. She was about to retaliate with disbelief when Luc appeared. Sabrina gave him a thunderous look as he came to stand next to them and smiled wickedly.

‘Now ladies what are you arguing about? Has Cressida been filling you in on the parts of your life your darling husband forgot to mention? Don’t you remember that night in your bed when you were feeling so alone and rejected, Sabrina? Don’t you remember how I made you feel wanted again all those lonely nights?’

Alarm bells began ringing inside Sabrina as he approached.
They were both lying, they have to be. . . I don’t know.

She backed away from Luc and lifted her dress to run up the stairs. She had to figure this out. Their laughter echoed up the stairs and down the corridor of the first floor as she made her way to the blue room. This was the room she had first been brought to when she arrived at the Chateau and she craved its solace. Relieved to be safe, she shut the door and locked it.

* * *

Sabrina leant against the closed door wondering when her torment would end. They had to be lying. She couldn’t have been having an affair. It wasn’t her style to deceive someone, but as Sabrina Valoire she didn’t know what she was capable of doing. Raoul may have hurt her to the point that she sought comfort or retaliation in someone else’s arms. The room was cold, making her shiver. She threw a couple of logs on the fire and lit it. Standing back with her arms folded defensively across her chest, she watched it burst into flame.