Count Valieri's Prisoner - By Sara Craven Page 0,2

darling, when you said you had something to tell me I assumed you meant that you’d handed in your notice as we’d agreed.’

‘I said I’d think about it,’ Madeleine said quietly. ‘Having done so, I’m not walking away from a job I love without good reason.’ She added, ‘But I have booked out our honeymoon weeks as holiday.’

Jeremy stared at her as if she’d grown an extra head. ‘And I’m supposed to be grateful for that?’ he asked sarcastically.

‘Well, you should be,’ she said cheerfully. ‘After all, you’d hardly want to go to the Maldives on your own.’

‘I’m sorry, but I don’t find this particularly amusing.’

‘And nor do I. In fact I’m perfectly serious.’ She gave him a rueful look. ‘Jeremy, please try to understand.’

‘What’s to understand?’ His shrug was almost petulant. ‘Clearly finding material for minority interest television channels matters more to you than being my wife.’

‘And now you’re talking nonsense,’ Madeleine retorted hotly. ‘It’s the twenty-first century, for heaven’s sake, and most women combine marriage and a career these days in case you hadn’t noticed.’

‘Well, I want you to regard our marriage as your career,’ Jeremy said, his lips tightening. ‘I don’t think you appreciate how hectic our social life will become, or how much entertaining we’ll have to do. And I mean full blown dinner parties, not you rushing in at the last moment with a takeaway.’

She gasped. ‘Is that how you see me? As some ditsy incompetent?’

‘No, my sweet, of course not.’ He was back in placatory mode. ‘It’s just that we’re not sure you realise how much you’ll be taking on, or how stressful you might find it.’

Maddie sat back in her seat, and gave him a straight look. ‘I presume that’s not the royal “we” you were using there? That you’re quoting your father?’

‘Naturally it’s been discussed.’

She bit her lip. ‘Jeremy—the wedding may have got away from us, but this is our marriage, and you must make him see that.’ Her voice deepened in intensity. ‘I have no intention of letting you down, or failing to provide you with the support you need in your career. All I ask is that you do the same for me. Is that so very hard?’

There was a silence, then he said, ‘I suppose—not when you put it like that. I’ll talk to Dad again. Which reminds me...’ He glanced at his watch and pulled a face. ‘I should be going. I’m due to meet him with some people at The Ivy.’

He paused. ‘Sure you won’t come with me? It’s no problem.’

Maddie got to her feet, forcing a smile as she indicated the slim-fitting jeans and white shirt she was wearing. ‘Except I’m not dressed for dinner at a top restaurant, which might create its own difficulty. Another time, darling.’

‘So what will you do?’ He sounded anxious.

She shrugged on her navy and white checked jacket and reached for her canvas shoulder bag. ‘Oh—have a girlie night in, washing my hair, giving myself a manicure.’

And I have just told my fiancé, the man I love, my first deliberate lie. Because actually, I’m going back to the office to do some more work on Floria Bartrando, but I doubt it would be politic to say so at this juncture.

Jeremy pulled her to him and kissed her. ‘We mustn’t fight,’ he muttered. ‘We can work things out. I know it.’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Of course we can.’ And kissed him back.

Outside the wine bar, she watched him hail a cab, then waved goodbye before beginning to walk slowly back towards the street where the Athene television production company was based.

She supposed that the recent confrontation had been inevitable, but knowing that made it no easier to handle. Somehow, she had to convince Jeremy that she could succeed as a working wife, a task handicapped from the outset by his father’s forthright and openly expressed opinions to the contrary.

Maddie had known the Sylvesters pretty much all her life. Beth Sylvester, an old school friend of her mother, had been her godmother, and, as a child, Maddie had spent part of every summer at Fallowdene, the Sylvesters’ big country house.

It had always seemed idyllic to her, but in retrospect she could see there’d been undercurrents which she’d been too young to pick up.

But somehow she’d known instinctively from the first that while her godmother would always be ‘Aunt Beth’, her husband would remain ‘Mr Sylvester’ and never become ‘Uncle Nigel’.

Fallowdene was not in itself a beautiful house, yet to Maddie it had always seemed