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‘I couldn’t,’ he told her starkly. ‘I couldn’t admit to you that I was jealous of it.’ He took hold of her arm. ‘Let’s walk,’ he told her. ‘There’s a lot I need to tell you.’
* * *
Eleanor listened to him in silence.
‘You were jealous of Vanessa…! But I thought…’ She shook her head. ‘I thought you were irritated because I couldn’t cope with her. I felt you blamed me for her aggression. I felt you were comparing me with another woman who might have been able to reach her and establish a real bond with her. I felt such a failure, Marcus. And not just with Vanessa but with the boys as well. They were so unhappy, and I hadn’t even realised it.’
As she looked at him, Eleanor recognised how hard it must have been for him to examine his own feelings, to exhume the painful memories of his own childhood and face up to his deep-rooted fear of being displaced in her affections for his own child. Now, having heard him talk about his own suffering and his real feelings about it, she could understand him so much more clearly; understand why he had felt it necessary to withhold this part of himself from her.
‘When I was listening to Piet, I recognised what I’d been trying to conceal from myself, and that was my own fear of being rejected, of being found wanting for being the wrong sex.
‘It sounds so simple, doesn’t it? So obvious,’ he added ruefully.
‘People’s emotions are never simple,’ Eleanor comforted him. ‘It can be very hard to accept certain aspects of ourselves; we’ve both been guilty of not having enough faith in each other or in ourselves to admit to our vulnerabilities. I was afraid of losing you… of…’
‘You could never lose me,’ Marcus told her gently, turning her round to face him.
Eleanor searched his face slowly and then told him quietly, ‘I saw you at the airport with Sondra. I came to tell you I was sorry… about our argument. I rang you at your hotel that first night. There was no answer.’
‘No, I was in the shower… I’d just got back from seeing Piet. I thought you might be Sondra,’ Marcus admitted wryly. ‘It seemed safer not to answer…’
She wasn’t going to ask him any more, Eleanor acknowledged; not now, and maybe not ever. Not because she was afraid of the answer, but simply because it was no longer of any importance.
* * *
‘Are you sure you don’t mind… about the house, I mean?’ Marcus asked her later that night.
‘No,’ Eleanor assured him. ‘It’s served its purpose; helped me to see… to understand… to face up to what I am and what I can never be. I wanted to be so perfect for you, Marcus.’
‘You are,’ he assured her. ‘You always have been. Even more so now,’ he murmured, as he bent his head to kiss her.
It was unfamiliar and very precious, this feeling of absolute freedom and lightheadedness it gave him, knowing that she knew all there was to know about him; that he had revealed to her all the dark places within him and that she had acknowledged and accepted them… That she loved him with them.
Contentedly, Eleanor leaned her head against him. He was so precious to her, even more so now that he had told her what he really felt, allowed her to see the pain he had suffered; a pain Vanessa must not be allowed to endure, they were both agreed about that.
‘What can I do?’ Marcus had asked her, when he had explained to her his own ambivalent feelings towards his daughter.
‘Just love her, Marcus,’ Eleanor had told him gently. ‘Love her and show her that you love her. She needs that more than anything else.’
It wasn’t going to be easy, but somehow they would find a way. Jade had offered her the use of her flat as somewhere to work; she didn’t want to let it until she was sure she was going to stay permanently in New York, she had told Eleanor.
They would still have to move, but this time, this time they would be searching for a house, instead of merely her frantically trying to fulfil a dream.
What would happen to Broughton House? she wondered. She hoped it would find someone who loved it, someone who would cherish it and bring it back to life. It needed and deserved that. She smiled faintly to herself, her mind busily engaged on all that she had to do, and then she looked at Marcus and firmly banished them.
‘Let’s go to bed,’ she whispered to him.
He looked startled. ‘It’s only just gone nine o’clock…’ And then, when he saw the look she was giving him, he too started to smile.
‘Why not?’ he agreed. ‘I could do with an early night. All that travel weariness.’
‘Mmm… you poor thing,’ Eleanor murmured against his mouth. ‘You must be totally exhausted.’
‘Totally,’ Marcus agreed, laughing, as he started to kiss her.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
TODAY was her day off and Zoe had the flat to herself. There was so much constraint between Ben and herself these days that she was actually glad he had already left for work, she admitted miserably.
