Virgin on Her Wedding Night by Lynne Graham

Valente was shocked by how much Caroline’s parents had aged since he had last seen them. Isabel had shrunk in stature even more.
    But as Caroline’s mother broke into urgent speech, Valente soon appreciated that she might have become thinner, and her back more bent with her advancing years, but her abrasive controlling personality had not mellowed at all.
    ‘Where were you last night?’ Isabel demanded accusingly. ‘We’ve been worried sick about you.’
    ‘Now, now…’ Joe Hales interposed, striving to give his daughter a reassuring smile from blue-tinged lips as Caroline squeezed his hand affectionately. ‘We don’t want her sitting home every night at her age.’
    ‘I had a meeting with Valente,’ Caroline responded, striving to stick to the truth as far as she could. ‘I knew you were staying with Uncle Charles and I switched my phone off. I’m so sorry you weren’t able to get in touch with me.’
    ‘You went behind our backs to see that Italian?’ her mother hissed, in a tone of furious disbelief.
    ‘But you knew that I was seeing Valente yesterdaymorning,’ Caroline pointed out in a quiet, defensive tone, aimed at reminding Isabel that raised voices could be clearly heard through the rest of the ward. ‘How are you feeling, Dad?’
    ‘Tired, that’s all. Your mother’s been a tower of strength,’ Joe declared, endeavouring to calm his wife down with a change of topic.
    ‘We can’t just let this go. It’s a matter of decency,’ Isabel pronounced truculently. ‘I refuse to have any conversation with you at all, Caro, until you tell us why you didn’t come home last night.’
    A pulsing silence fell while Caroline attempted to come up with a convincing story. Could she pretend that she had been at Winterwood all along and simply hadn’t heard the phone ringing? Shouldn’t she be adult enough to stand her ground and insist on her right to some privacy? It was not the time or the place. The look in her mother’s cold blue eyes cut like glass through Caroline’s frantic guilty thoughts, panicking her, making her feel like the worst daughter in the world, while once again making her painfully aware that she would never know happiness until she had garnered the strength to stand her ground against such domination. The ensuing awful silence, which she did not know how to fill, cut at her nerves like a slashing whip.
    Valente brushed back the curtains and took up position by her side, greeting her parents with a cool and calm that knocked Caroline sideways before saying, ‘Last night I wouldn’t let Caroline go back to an empty house. Winterwood is remote, with your nearest neighbour living a considerable distance away. In your absence, I thought it made more sense for Caroline to spend the night at the hotel.’
    Her eyes fiery, Isabel Hales opened her mouth to speak and closed it again only when her husband leapt thankfully on that explanation, which fitted in beautifully with his old-fashioned outlook. He found it perfectly acceptable that Valente should be protective towards his daughter. ‘That was the best idea in the circumstances. No harm done,’ Joe pronounced with relief, his eyes sliding shut, as if he was struggling to stay awake, and then slowly opening again.
    ‘Of course Caroline protested,’ Valente quipped.
    ‘Y-yes,’ Caroline stammered, overpowered by his intervention and his ready wits. ‘Dad, you look like you need to get some sleep.’
    ‘Let me offer you a lift home.’ Valente addressed Isabel Hales. ‘You must be exhausted if you’ve been here all night.’
    ‘Joe needs me,’ Isabel delivered, with a suspicious look at the tall, broad Italian.
    ‘I’ll be all right. You should come back later,’ her husband urged, reaching out a hand to grasp his wife’s in a reassuring gesture.
    Valente noted the glitter of tears in Isabel’s gaze and registered that she had a human side after all. For all her seeming superficiality and affectation, she was deeply