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The low-pitched exchange of Italian had an odd edge of urgency that made Catherine glance in their direction. The older man gave something to Luc, withdrew a handkerchief to mop his perspiring brow and, by his manner, was clearly apologising. He looked as though he was reporting a death. She stifled a yawn, and her attention slewed away again.
‘Who was that?’ she asked as they boarded the jet.
‘One of my lawyers.’ His intonation was curiously clipped.
She hated take-off; always had. She didn’t open her eyes until they were airborne. Luc wasn’t beside her. On the other side of the cabin, he was scanning a single sheet of paper. As she watched he scrunched it up between his fingers and snatched up the newspaper lying on the desk in front of him. He signalled to the steward with a snap of his fingers. A large whiskey arrived pronto. Draining it in one long, unappreciative gulp, he suddenly sprang up, issuing a terse instruction to the steward who left the cabin at speed.
‘Catherine…come here.’ He moved a hand in an oddly constrained arc.
Releasing her belt, she got up. His set profile was dark, brooding. He indicated the seat opposite. ‘Sit down.’
When she collided with his eyes her heart stopped beating and her mouth ran dry. The suppressed violence that sprang out at her from that hawk-like stare of intimidation was terrifying.
‘I will not lose my head with you,’ he asserted in a controlled undertone. ‘There must be an explanation. I still have faith, but it hangs by a thread.’
‘You’re scaring me.’
He continued to study her, a kind of flagellating stare that threatened to strip the skin from her facial bones. ‘Last week, Rafaella told me something I refused to believe. After your disappearance five years ago, she stayed in the apartment we shared for some weeks. I didn’t want it to be empty if you phoned or chose to return.’
Uncertainly she nodded.
‘And last week she informed me that during her stay a call came from some doctor’s surgery, asking why you hadn’t been back for a check-up.’
She bent her head and studied the desk-top, gooseflesh prickling at the nape of her neck, an impending sense of doom sliding over her.
‘From that call and certain trivia she subsequently uncovered in the apartment,’ Luc continued in the same murderously calm tone, ‘Rafaella deduced that you were pregnant at the time of your departure.’
She flinched, froze, watched the desk-top blur.
‘She assumed—that is, if her story is true—that you had decided on an abortion. She told me that at the time she saw no good reason to share this knowledge with me. So she cultivated a short memory.’
Catherine wanted God to pluck her out of the sky and put her somewhere out of Luc’s reach. Her vocal cords were in arrest. Her brain had stopped functioning.
‘Naturally her assumption was that, if there was a child, it was not mine. Halston figured largely as the culprit,’ he extended, his tone quieter and quieter, every word slow and precise and measured. ‘Perhaps you can now understand why I was so angry with her. After this length of time the story struck me as fantastic and wholly incredible. I didn’t believe a word of it. I defended you.’
The weight of the world’s sins seemed to sit on her bowed shoulders. She was shrinking inwardly and outwardly.
‘This is now your cue to tell me that not a word of her story is true. You see, Rafaella is persistent. When I refused her calls, she communicated with one of my lawyers in Rome, giving him the details of what she apparently discovered in England,’ he spelt out. ‘Antonio spent a most troubled night before rousing the courage to bring those facts to me. He was hastened to a decision when an article purporting to relate to you was printed in an English newspaper.’
‘I…I didn’t think of it coming out like this!’ she burst out strickenly. ‘I intended to tell you when we arrived in England…’ Her voice trailed away.
‘Look at me.’ He ground out the command fiercely. ‘Are you telling me it is true? That you were pregnant? That there is a child?’
Like a puppet she nodded twice, shorn of speech by the violent incredulity splintering from him in waves.
‘And…you…married…me?’ He was rising slowly from behind the desk, having trouble in getting the question past his compressed lips.
‘What did you expect me to do?’ she muttered frantically.
‘What did I expect? What did I expect?’ he roared at her, a hand like a vice closing round her wrist to trail her bodily out of her seat.
‘You’re hurting me!’
‘He’d better not be mine!’ he bit down at her rawly.
The tension broke her and she sobbed, ‘Of course he is. Of course he’s yours. Why would you want anything else?’
He punched a fist into the palm of his other hand with a sickening thud and swung violently away from her. Barbaric fury throbb
