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‘It wasn’t you,’ she said in Greek. ‘He doesn’t...’ She shook her head sadly, as if trying to find the words. ‘He never got over it. The way his father left. I tried...to give him everything, to be everything for him. But,’ she said with a shrug of her shoulder, ‘he is a man. A man needs a father. For a while in Switzerland...’ Sofia didn’t need Aggeliki to fill in the gap—clearly her boss, the man who had paid for Theo’s education, had been a father figure to him. ‘But look at him now,’ she said, calling Sofia back to the present, to look at him through the window. ‘And look at what you both have. It is a joy to me, Sofia. Efcharistó.’
For the first time since they had arrived, Sofia began to wish that she hadn’t come. That she hadn’t seen the pain and the struggle that Theo had been through since he had been expelled from the boarding school. Because finally Theo had got his wish. She was learning about the consequences of her actions.
CHAPTER TEN
SOFIA LEANED BACK in the plush cream leather seats of Theo’s private jet, hating the way that her stomach dipped and swayed with the plane. The single air stewardess made her way down the short aisle on very long legs and retrieved the empty glasses and plates from the table between her and Theo.
‘Efcharistó,’ she said, forcing a smile she didn’t feel for the woman.
‘You didn’t tell me you could speak Greek,’ he said, the curve of his lips a rueful smile.
‘You didn’t tell me that your mother had had a heart attack,’ she replied, shocking them both. She hadn’t meant to say the words. Hadn’t meant to bring up the subject she had hardly forgotten for a moment from the night before. Hadn’t meant for the smile on his lips to die away.
‘No. I didn’t.’
Several times, Sofia tried to let loose the words that clogged her throat and failed. But she couldn’t leave it at that. She had to know.
‘Is that...was that one of the consequences you felt I needed to learn?’
He studied her, half-lidded eyes masking a whole host of emotions she desperately wanted to see the truth of.
‘It was not your fault.’
‘That is not what I asked.’
‘I don’t hold you responsible for what happened to my mother, Sofia.’
‘But did you?’
The silence that fell between them was enough of an answer that she thought he would not speak of it again. Instead, she turned to look out of the small round window as the sprawling emerald-green stretches of Iondorran land came into view. Her country. Her home. The decisions she’d made to protect them now illuminated under the cost of her actions.
‘Neither of us has had it easy, Sofia. The decisions we felt forced to make, each for other people. But this?’ he said, the gesture between them drawing her gaze back to his. ‘You and me? Our marriage? This is a decision that we make now, for ourselves,’ he said. And she wondered at the vehemence in his tone, wondered who he might have been trying to convince...her or himself. ‘It is one that I want very much,’ he added, and his words soothed some of the ache that had taken up residence in her heart as he reached for her hand and drew the cool skin against the warmth of his palm.
She felt the rough calluses on his skin, marvelled at the texture as they spoke more of the hard work Theo had done than he admitted to. She knew that the fact he no longer resented her for the past should be enough, but despite the admittance she could feel a hurt emanating from him. A deeper, harder one than before.
‘Do you remember my first prank? Do you remember what caused it?’
‘I didn’t think you needed a cause, Sofia, I thought you enjoyed playing Puck.’
‘You thought me “shrewd and knavish”?’
‘I thought you many things back then, Sofia. But yes, your first prank—on Benjamin Reneux, I remember. It was the first time that I saw you. Holding back tears of laughter as he howled in horror when he opened the door to his locker to find everything covered in honey—his blazer, his books, his homework. You looked at me, and all I could see was you. You shone, in the dim corridor beside the Great Hall.’
Sofia nodded. ‘It was not the first time I had seen you though.’ She smiled, a sad smile. ‘I had seen how the others treated you. How Benjamin treated you. The names he called you, the way even the teachers expected you to cause trouble, to be the first to throw a punch—’
‘Well, I usually was the first to throw a punch...’
‘No. You always threw the second one. I watched. I saw.’
Theo looked away as if no longer wanting to take this trip down memory lane. Unconsciously he rubbed his chest, seemingly trying to soothe an age-old ache.
‘I hated it. The way they behaved towards you.’
‘It was hardly less than what I had already experienced at the hands of my cousins, or...’
‘Or the people who should have cared for you most.’
‘Sofia, I don’t want—’
