Virgin Princess's Marriage Debt by Pippa Roscoe

Author:Pippa Roscoe
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2019-07-10T13:09:04+00:00

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Theo was watching the sun rise slowly over the forest surrounding the estate, the scent of pine and earth slowly unfurling from the ground in the gentle heat of the early morning. He relished that almost sappy resin taste and he tried to combine grape lineages in his mind in an attempt to distract himself from Sofia’s revelation only an hour before.

He could tell that she had been giving him some truths. There was definitely something she was holding back, but...tiny tendrils of doubt about that night were corroding his fierce belief that she had purposefully set him up. They spread through his chest and tightened around his heart. Because just beneath that erosion was something deeper. Something darker and much more painful. Something that spoke of grief and the acrid taste of loss, one he remembered from years before meeting Sofia. This odd sense that he’d lived with almost all his life...a barely audible whisper from an inner voice...abandoned, again.

Usually Theo could go for months without thinking of the man who had run from his mother, run from him. But ever since he had set out on this path of revenge he had always been a shadow at the periphery of Theo’s vision, hovering, waiting. He remembered thinking as a child that it was only natural to think of his father and had half convinced himself that when he became a man, when he was eighteen, he’d somehow magically stop thinking of him. And to a certain extent that had been true. But only because of the damage limitation he’d been forced into following Sofia’s actions. But here, in Iondorra, a place that—as far as Theo knew—his father had never set foot, a phantom pain was tingling, burning back into a life he thought he’d long snuffed out.

The creak of the large doorway at the top of the stone steps to the estate cut through the early morning air, and the moment he saw Sofia all thoughts fled his mind.

She looked...devastated. And it was horrible. Because he recognised that look. It was the look a child wore, no matter their age, when something truly awful was happening to a parent. He had seen it the moment he’d looked in the mirror after his mother had been taken to hospital.

He went to take a step towards her but held himself back. He wanted to take her in his arms, to hold her in the way that no one had held him that day. But he couldn’t. Whether for her, or himself, he didn’t know.

‘Sofia?’

She descended the steps as if in a daze, her eyes unseeing, a numbness almost vibrating from her. This woman who had come alive in his arms, to his touch and his need only hours ago, was now hollow and absent. She came to stand before him, her head barely reaching his shoulders, so that he had to bend almost, to try and catch her sightless gaze.

‘Sofia...’ Her name almost a plea on his lips.

‘Take me away, Theo.

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