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  “You’re only being mean to me because I refuse to tell you where Elonwy is,” Avril shot back.

  “I have every right to know where my wife and son are,” Antonio said harshly.

  “Well maybe when you’ve learned to control your fists—”

  Antonio rose from his chair, offended. “I’m on the wagon,” he shouted, running an exasperated hand across his black hair. “I haven’t touched a drop of liquor in eight months and I’ve nearly completed my anger management program, too.”

  “And that’s supposed to make everything all right?” Avril replied.

  Antonio’s mouth hardened like a trap. “I know when I’m licked and when to face up to my responsibilities.” he said. “That’s why I took the job at Armstrong Caribbean Foods when Maxwell offered it. At least he knows I’m making an effort.”

  “Will you stop,” Bertha interceded a second time. “This is not helping, my two children arguing like adolescents.”

  Avril’s eyes swelled. “Tony’s being hateful.”

  “Listen,” Bertha continued on the throes of a throbbing headache. “I just don’t know what to do. The telephone’s been ringing all night. Kesse Foster telephoned and wants to come over with a bunch of your friends.”

  “I can’t see anyone,” Avril panicked, as she thought of her maid of honor. “Tell…everyone I’ll be talking in a few days.”

  “A few days! Where’s your father?” Bertha demanded. “The last time I saw him, he was ushering you back into the limo.”

  “Dad’s staying with his wife at the London Hilton,” Avril declared soberly.

  “Isn’t that just like Maurice,” Bertha griped. “Never around when there’s a crisis. How are we going to explain this…to anyone?”

  Avril straightened her shoulders. “Tony’s right,” she admitted. “It’s up to me to…give the Armstrongs an explanation.” She looked at her wedding dress. It was a hand-beaded champagne silk sheath covered with massive gilded daises, gold bugle beads and tiny rhinestones. The simple stand-up band collar was lined in silk satin with baroque pearls and a smattering of sequin-filled flowers. “I’m going to change out of this dress, have a shower and drive over there. The least I can do is look Maxwell in the eyes when I tell him how sorry I am.”

  “For jilting him at the altar,” Antonio reminded, rubbing the tip of his small nose. “Only some crazy psycho chick would pull a stunt like that.”

  Avril felt a heavy ache in her heart. “Don’t make me feel more guilty than I do,” she hollered. “I know what I’ve done.”

  “You made him look like a prized fool, that’s what you’ve done,” Antonio continued. “In front of his family, with his snake-in-the-grass brother knowing you had the hots for him and Delphine none the wiser. Ain’t nobody going to play me like that.”

  “Just remind me why Elonwy left you?” Avril asked. “You hit her when she was five months pregnant. Ain’t nobody going to lay a hand on me like that.”

  Antonio’s face fell. “Don’t….”

  “Brandy everyone,” Lennie offered as he returned to the sitting room. With a tray in his hand and four glasses filled with ice, Lennie’s interruption was timely and welcoming. “Have we reached a decision?” he asked, seconds later.

  “Tony thinks I’m having an affair with Meyrick Armstrong,” Avril remarked.

  “Are you?” Lennie inquired, deciding that in his fifty-six years, he had heard just about everything.

  “No!” Avril bit her bottom lip. “How…could you think I would do something like that?”

  “Model lifestyle. A ton of boyfriends on the down low. Need I go on?” Antonio responded, his brown eyes blazing. “That’s probably why you’re attracted to Rick, what with him being a womanizer and all.”

  “I don’t have to listen to this,” Avril declared, downing her brandy in one fell gulp. “I need to talk to Maxwell and the sooner I do it, the better.”

  “Don’t expect him to be civil,” Antonio warned. “Ain’t no man gonna shoulder some serious piece of drama from a woman like you pulled yesterday. Maxwell watched his mother cry, his aunt faint and Armstrong senior has probably put a bounty on your head. And what can I say about Meyrick Armstrong? My guess is he slept like a lamb.”

  “Meyrick doesn’t know how I feel about him,” Avril declared sternly, debating her brother. “I know what I did was wrong. I was backed into a corner and didn’t know how to get out of it. I’m going over to see the Armstrongs and… I’m woman enough to face the consequences, whatever they may be.”

  “Better wear a bulletproof vest,” Antonio chided as he watched his sister leave the room.

  Bertha put a hand to her throbbing temple. “Tony, go with her,” she ordered. “Don’t let anything happen to your sister.”

  Antonio considered. “You’re right,” he agreed, anticipating an attack. “She’s gonna need somebody to watch her back.”

  Chapter 2

  Avril couldn’t shake the dreadful memory of her wedding from her mind as Antonio took the car up the hillside toward the house that was perched in the middle of acreage of countryside. Greencorn Manor was where the Armstrongs lived. The period-styled house built in medieval times was acquired two years ago and had undergone substantial renovation to turn it into a modern retreat from the city.

  Given the current circumstances of the last twenty-four hours, Avril imagined that most of the Armstrong family would be there, contemplating what she had done to Maxwell.

  Theirs was to have been an idyllic country wedding in the small village of Grantchester, where feudal life was still present around them. On the drive from London, with Antonio behind the wheel of his Toyota, Avril could see several romantic rendezvous before they passed a couple of cattle grinds.

  The medieval village was the setting and the old manor house, once a mansion to a lord of the forty-five acres of fields that in the Middle Ages were rented to freedmen and serfs, was the venue for their celebration. As the car drove through the village center, Avril could see the open gate that led up to the house. Close by were horse stables, an old building once used for the servants and two aged barns, one for wheat and one for oats. The stables for cows and oxen were no longer in use, nor were the pig sty or henhouse.

  Within yards of the old buildings was a huge marquee decorated with white avalanche roses, hypericum, peonies and pink hydrangeas. Avril knew that inside were two hundred and fifty tables entwined around an enormous carriage lantern with a rosebud placed on each guest’s chair, one of Maxwell’s many grand gestures.

  It was the place where they were scheduled to have their wedding breakfast. Beyond the marquee were the historic gardens with illuminated statues of woodland creatures, which created an enchanting path to the handmade canopy where she was expected to pose for wedding photographs with the groom.

  But the ceremony had not taken place.

  From the morning she had arrived at the village church with a tiara rather than a veil crowning her head, there had been a sense of expectation with the army of florists, gardeners, chefs and helpers who had toiled to create a day she would never forget. She had heard that locals had crowded at the gate to the Armstrong estate to catch a glimpse of the bride and groom.

  She arrived twenty minutes late, making a grand entrance from the limousine into the church. With the soothing harmony of a string quartet, her best friend and bridesmaids walking behind her, each clutching a basket of rose petals awaiting their instructions from her maid of honor, she had thought she could hold it together.

  But she couldn’t.

  Now Avril could only stare ahead at the marquee where she caught sight of the canopy garlanded with flowers as Antonio’s car pulled into the driveway at Greencorn Manor. She never anticipated that she would make another visit to the mansion as a single woman. At this very moment, she should have been on her honeymoon on a cruise ship in the Indian Ocean touring the Mascarene Islands. Instead, and with tears still in her eyes, she was returning with a huge apology hanging
on her lips.

  “Ready to be slaughtered?” Antonio joked, as he slammed the car door and walked along the graveled courtyard toward the huge oak doors of the house.

  Avril inhaled the morning air deeply. The day was cool, clear and brilliantly sunny. Far too bright for her gray mood. “Don’t do anything and don’t say anything,” Avril returned, ignoring the jibe. “I’ll do all the talking.”

  “That’s fine by me,” Antonio agreed. “I’m only along for the show.”

  “Don’t enjoy it too much,” Avril warned. “Your own drama is just around the corner.”

  Antonio’s face went stone-like. “What’s that supposed to mean?” he demanded, throwing a look of contempt at his sister.

  “Elonwy is planning to see you next month,” Avril revealed.

  “She is?” Antonio was stunned.

  “I shouldn’t be telling you,” Avril breathed, sucking in more air to calm her nerves. “I think she’ll be calling you soon. I imagine she wants to discuss you providing financial support for your young family.”

  “I’ll dance to any tune she wants as long as she brings my son home where he belongs,” Antonio declared, seconds before the oak doors in front of them were thrown open and a furious looking woman stared back at them.

  “You’ve got a nerve,” Maxwell’s mother blurted out loudly at her unwelcome guests.

  She was Lynfa Armstrong, a short, slim, well-dressed Caribbean woman aged sixty-one and a mother who adored everything about her three grown sons. Avril had always found her to be a controlling, interfering busy-body, but was determined Lynfa was not going to stop her.

  “I want to see Maxwell,” she said slowly.

  “He isn’t home,” Lynfa snapped, with eyes that were as cold as the snowy-white streaks of hair that peeked beneath the brown wig she was wearing.

  “His car’s parked out front,” Avril noted, glancing across at the dark blue Saab convertible situated near the small green leaves and sweet-smelling shrubs in the garden.

  “We don’t want you here,” Lynfa rephrased irritably.

  Antonio took a hold of his sister’s arm. “C’mon,” he coaxed.

  “You better listen to him if you know what’s good for you,” Lynfa encouraged, tight-lipped.

  But Avril wasn’t listening. “You let me in,” she ordered.

  “Let you in?” Lynfa asked, offended. “I don’t expect you’ve ever heard that expression ‘A daughter is a daughter for life, but a man is a son until he finds a wife?’”

  Avril fell silent. A soft breeze filtered between them, causing a wisp of brown hair to rise and fall across the elderly woman’s forehead. Unconsciously, Avril folded her arms beneath her breasts, as though protecting herself from the hostility to follow.

  “I let you in, Miss Vasconcelos,” Lynfa continued with eye-rolling depreciation. “Into our home, into my life. And for what?” She snorted as though her nostrils had sensed a bad smell. “Go away. You are not my son’s wife.”

  Avril broke free from her brother’s hold. “I want to see Maxwell,” she repeated. “Let me in or—”

  “What?” Lynfa challenged.

  “It’s okay, Ma,” a voice suddenly inserted as a tall man arrived at the door. “We need to talk.”

  Avril’s heart thudded in her chest as she saw Maxwell tower above his mother.

  He was still wearing the wedding-day suit designed by a close friend of the family. His short dark Afro hair, immaculately trimmed for the occasion, was not ruffled. Nothing had changed about him except for the stubble the night had left on his jawline and the dark tired eyes that suggested he, too, had not slept.

  “Will you be all right on your own?” Antonio immediately questioned.

  “We’ll be fine,” Avril nodded, keeping her eyes steadfast on Maxwell’s mother. “I want to talk to your son, alone.”

  Lynfa Armstrong opened her mouth in protest, but Maxwell tapped her calmly on the shoulder. “Ma!”

  The door widened and Avril swept into the hallway. The oak ceiling was the first thing she recognized as Maxwell lead the way toward the main reception room. He closed the door and offered her a chair. Avril found herself staring at the stone chimney, her curiosity piqued by the broken champagne bottles on the floor beneath it. Carefully perching her handbag on a nearby wooden table, she carefully trained her eyes on Maxwell.

  The white orchid in his left lapel was as wilted as the look on his face. He chose to remain standing, but the hang of his shoulders suggested he was not happy to see her.

  “That was a kick in the guts straight up,” he suddenly launched at her.

  Avril immediately apologized. “I’m sorry.”

  “Knocked the wind right out of me,” Maxwell continued unabated.

  “I didn’t know what else to do,” Avril began to pledge in earnest.

  “Really?” Maxwell seemed surprised. “You just thought, hey, I’ll go along with this wedding and humiliate the man I love in front of his family and friends? Way to go Avril.”

  “I had a reason,” she blurted out.

  “I wonder what that could be?” Maxwell demanded. “You sure made a sucker out of me.”

  “I no longer trust you,” Avril told him soberly.

  Maxwell straightened his shoulders. “What…what did you say?”

  “You heard.”

  “I heard, but…” His brows rose speculatively. “You said you didn’t love me. What I want to know is when did that happen?”

  “It crept up on me,” Avril said lamely

  “Like a cockroach?” Maxwell sneered. “Did this creepy crawly sneak up on you before I got down on one knee and got you the best engagement ring money can buy, or did it tickle you after you moved into my two million waterfront London apartment and charged this extravagant wedding to my account?”

  “I couldn’t live a lie,” Avril tried to explain. “Nobody should.”

  Maxwell’s eyes widened. “Live a lie? Woman, you made a damn fool out of me. What am I supposed to do with all that food back there in the marquee?”

  Avril’s mind spun as she remembered the sherried mushrooms with lemon juice and cream in individual ramekins on granary toast. Scottish salmon with fresh dill hollandaise sauce, new potatoes, vegetables and the dessert—her favorite choice of profiteroles with rich Belgian chocolate sauce, sliced strawberries and mint sprigs—was to follow. She hadn’t a clue what to do about the food.

  “I said I’m sorry” was all she could muster as she felt the first onset of tears.

  “You sure know how to cut a man,” Maxwell spat out. “So sit on your damn apology, because it don’t mean a thing from where I’m standing. In fact, I resent you coming here with a cowardly excuse like that. I did not withdraw my troth. I would’ve given you everything.”

  “Except your love,” Avril retaliated.

  “My love?” Maxwell shrugged, confused. “Woman, you had that.”

  Avril lowered her head. “No, I didn’t.”

  Maxwell’s voice grew an entire octave. “What are you talking about?”

  She shrugged. “Nothing.”

  “If you’ve got something to say, woman, you’d better spit it out,” Maxwell warned, “because this conversation isn’t over with, not by a long shot. Not after what went down yesterday afternoon. You’re not getting off that lightly.”

  “I came over to say I’m sorry and that’s all I have to say,” Avril responded.

  “Bitch!” Maxwell shouted angrily.

  “Don’t you go calling me names,” Avril sighed, wounded.

  Maxwell immediately closed the distance between them and took a strong hold of her left arm. “You play me like a soccer ball, tossed me around for months by making me beg to touch your body and now you want me to be…nice? Do I look like a ghetto snipe?”

  Avril rose to her feet. “Don’t you dare talk to me like that,” she shouted, her finger prodding Maxwell’s chest. “And take your hand off me.”

  “You see that right there.”
Maxwell pointed at the broken champagne bottles. “You should be glad they’re bottles and not your bones. You kicked me so hard, I still don’t know what hit me.”

  “And I didn’t know what hit me.” Avril recoiled, the tears now emerging. “I know about the baby.”

  Maxwell dropped Avril’s arm immediately. “What baby?”

  “Your baby,” she confessed.

  Maxwell did not speak for several long seconds, so long in fact, that Avril began to sense some discomfort. Then he ran disturbed fingers across his forehead. “Who told you?”

  “It doesn’t matter who told me,” she swallowed, fighting back the tears of betrayal. “What matters is you didn’t.”

  “Now…slow your roll,” Maxwell conceded, expecting trouble.

  “Slow my…” Avril took a steadying breath. “When were you going to tell me?” When Maxwell refused to answer, Avril carefully rephrased her question. “Were you ever going to tell me?”

  His face dropped. “Avril—”

  Amid a flurry of tears, she started. “I asked you from the get-go to be honest with me. I begged you,” she added, “but you chose not to. Instead, you lavished me with gifts. I blame myself. I should’ve known something was wrong.”

  “I didn’t want to lose you,” he confessed.

  “You have a secret family,” Avril blurted. “My denying you a marriage is the least of your complications. You’re the one who’s getting off lightly and those broken bottles right there are nothing compared to what I would’ve done to your bones, given half the chance.”

  Maxwell had the grace to look shamefaced. “Avril, I’m sorry.”

  “You’re sorry!” she said, sarcastically. “You sure know how to cut a woman.”

  “Who told you?” he demanded a second time.

  “Nobody told me,” she informed him, sorrowful beyond endurance. “Someone did me a favor and tipped me off.”

  “How?”

  “The postman delivered an anonymous letter on the morning of our wedding day,” Avril sniffled sorely.

  “Oh?”