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‘Then the rest can be delivered along with the painting,’ Guy decided. ‘Show me where your cases are and let’s get going.’
The tears remained clogging the back of her throat as she watched Guy lift her suitcases and carry them to the door. Once there, he turned back to find her standing there, her face white with misery.
‘Guy—?’ she whispered pleadingly, but what she was pleading for Marnie just did not know.
His face darkened, his expression suddenly fierce as he spun away from her. ‘I’ll take these down to the car,’ he muttered, and walked out, leaving her standing there, feeling about as lost and helpless as she had ever felt in her whole life.
He didn’t come back, and Marnie knew why. He was waiting for her to go to him. If he had to come back and drag her out, then it would mean that she was still fighting him for every inch of herself she could keep. If she walked out of the flat of her own accord, then he’d won another small battle. Small, because they both knew she really had no choice.
He was sitting with the car window rolled down, his arm resting on it, his long fingers lying along the thin line of his mouth. He looked darkly handsome and grimly forbidding with his profile turned to her like that, and she felt her heart squeeze on a final clutch of regret at what she was leaving behind.
He didn’t turn his head to look at her as she closed the main door to the Victorian town-house her flat was a part of. Or bother to watch her walk to the car and around it to climb into the passenger seat beside him. Neither did he move while she settled herself, locking home her safety-belt, flicking back her hair from her pale face. When she finally went still, he straightened in his seat, reached out to start the engine, pressed a button which sent his window sliding smoothly upwards, then slid the car into gear.
Marnie swallowed, keeping her own eyes staring bleakly frontwards. They moved into the traffic. And, as they left the flat as she had called home for four blessed years, she finally accepted that her life would never be her own again.
Guy owned it now.
Perhaps more solidly than he had done the first time around.
‘What now?’ she managed to ask once she felt she had her voice under control.
‘Now, we begin,’ he said, and that was all, the words simple but profound.
CHAPTER NINE
IT WAS a perfect time to be arriving at Oaklands. They entered by the East Gate late afternoon, as the June sun hovered high above the hilltop opposite.
‘Guy—stop a moment,’
He glanced questioningly at her, his eyes darkened as he brought the car to a halt and turned to watch the enchantment light her face.
‘I always loved this place,’ she murmured, unaware of just how much of her inner self she w
as revealing with that wistfully spoken statement. ‘Oh, look, Guy!’ she cried, leaning forward in her eagerness. ‘The stream is swollen so wide it could almost be a river!’
‘The weather has been poor in the hills for this time of year,’ he told her, his gaze remaining fixed on her rapt profile. ‘There was a time a few weeks ago when we worried it might burst its banks.’
‘I can see that the lake is full, too,’ she said, gazing down to where the water lapped the rim of the rickety old jetty where Roberto’s small rowing-boat bobbed gently up and down.
The house was there. Big and solid and sure. Standing as it had done for two centuries, surviving everything the years had thrown at it through a succession of owners, not all of them kind to its sturdy walls.
‘You’ve made some changes over there,’ she noticed, pointing towards the stable block where, just beyond and to the right, her artistic eye for detail had picked out a new addition. A small building that looked like a cottage, built to blend graciously in with its present surroundings. ‘A new annexe for your cars?’ she supposed, frowning because it seemed a long way from the other buildings where Guy housed his precious collection.
‘Something like that,’ he answered unrevealingly, then put the car in motion again. ‘My father will have already spotted us coming in the gates,’ he said. ‘If we don’t drive down there soon, he will be striding up here to meet us!’
‘W-what have you told him?’
Guy glanced at her, and saw she had gone pale, even with the warmth of the sun on her face. ‘That we are reconciled,’ he said, returning his attention back to the road. ‘He is, as you would expect, ecstatic about it.’ He sounded a trifle cynical. ‘And I would prefer it, Marnie, if he remain that way.’
‘Of course!’ she cried, hurt that Guy should feel it necessary to warn her like that. ‘You know I would never do anything to hurt your father!’
‘You hurt him when you left us,’ Guy reminded her.
‘That was different,’ she said uncomfortably. ‘Roberto knows I still adore him.’
‘I once believed you adored me, too. And look where it got me.’
‘It got you what you deserved!’ Marnie flashed. ‘And I would think your father knows it!’
