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There had been a time when his automatic response to any kind of emotion would have been to obliterate it with some hot, meaningless, commitment-free sex, and back in those days the sultry looks coming his way from the chief bridesmaid would have been extremely good news.
He moved away slightly.
Unfortunately for Tatiana it had been a long time since he had dealt with things that way. A year, to be precise. And as a strategy for emotional avoidance it had to be said that particular night had back fired spectacularly.
Automatically his hand moved across the table and his fingers closed around the stem of his glass, twisting it round while he resisted the temptation to pick it up and drain it. He badly wanted something to take the edge off the torment, and in the absence of a revolver and a single bullet alcohol seemed to offer his best chance, but unfortunately he had to stand up and make a speech in a minute.
Or perhaps that was being optimistic, he thought sourly. If Scarlet’s father continued at his present rate Tristan would have plenty of time to down a bottle and sober up again before it was his turn.
If he leaned forward he could just see Lily’s profile, half hidden by Jamie Thomas’s lean frame. The razor wire wrapped around Tristan’s heart tightened a little and his chest burned with the effort of not getting up, vaulting across the table and snatching her up into his arms.
Dios. Dios mio… Why hadn’t she given him a chance to finish?
Finally Mr Thomas brought his speech to a close and everyone rose to their feet and toasted the bride and groom with enthusiastic relief. Tristan’s hand was like a vice around his glass as he put it to his lips, wondering whether to take this chance to grab Lily and slip out. His head buzzed with the need to talk to her.
Too late. Tom was already getting to his feet as everyone else settled down into their seats once again. Tristan, caged and crucified by his own moral code of courtesy and duty, sat down too, clenching his hands together and resting his forehead on them as Tom started to speak.
‘Ladies and gentlemen…I’ll make this brief.’
Not bloody brief enough, thought Tristan dully, his heart jerking violently against his ribs as he looked at Lily. Not brief enough.
Tom was as good as his word. His speech was short and typically full of wry, self-deprecating humour and as the guests rose to their feet again to toast the bridesmaids they were still smiling.
The vintage champagne burned Lily’s throat like acid as she choked back sudden tears and stared out of the marquee into the melting, strawberry-sorbet sunset. It was nearly over now, she told herself desperately. She only had to hold it together for a little bit longer before she could slip away quietly and howl out her sorrow and frustration and emptiness into the goosedown pillows of her room.
Tristan’s refusal earlier had felt like another loss. Not of a real child this time, but of hope. Of another little bit of her future. She wasn’t sure how much more loss she could take.
It would be so much easier if she could hate him, she thought bleakly, absent-mindedly twirling a sugar flower from the top of the wedding cake between her fingers. She should hate him: this was the man who had delivered the news of their baby’s death in flat, emotionless tones, and then left her alone in the hospital. The same man who had just crushed her fragile dream with a single word.
But then she would remember the pain she sometimes glimpsed beneath the layer of ice in his eyes, the mask of honour and duty she suspected he wore to cover up the loneliness of his upbringing. She remembered the torment on his face sometimes when sleep had stripped away that mask, and she knew that it was hopeless. He touched her in places she couldn’t help responding to, regardless of how sensible that response was, or how healthy. She hadn’t chosen to fall in love with him, just as she hadn’t chosen anything else that had happened to her in the last year, but now it had happened she had to live with it. Minimise the damage.
Around her she felt a frisson of interest stir the syrupy afternoon air. The girls on her table—a mixture of heiresses and models—were all sitting up a little straighter, fluffing up hair that had been flattened earlier beneath extravagant hats. Looking up, Lily immediately saw why.
At the top table Tristan had got to his feet.
Lily had the sensation of being in a lift as it plunged quickly downwards. He was so golden and gorgeous, but as she looked up at him she recognised a new severity in his features that she hadn’t seen before. The intense blue eyes were the same, and the perfect cheekbones and the square chin with its deeply carved cleft, but, indefinably, gone was any trace of that louche, wicked playboy who had stepped out of the helicopter last summer and kissed her so audaciously. Looking away quickly, she saw that the sugar flower had crumbled to dust in her fingers.
‘As a Spaniard this role of ‘best man’ is not one I’m very familiar with…’ Tristan began, and a little sigh of female appreciation went round the marquee as that deep, husky Spanish voice filled the evening. Gazing out across the lawns, Lily felt it shiver across her skin, spreading goosebumps of longing as her poor, ravaged body stirred with feelings she had suppressed for a long time and her head was filled with a picture of a dark church, a handful of people.
‘And when Tom asked me to do it I initially refused on the grounds that he’s clearly a far better man than I am,’ Tristan went on. A ripple of laughter greeted this. He had them all in the palm of his hand, thought Lily pain fully. It was completely impossible to remain immune to that combination of grave intelligence and those killer good looks.
‘However, when he sent me a copy of a book called The Complete Guide to Being a Best Man I discovered that it was not so much a competitive event as a series of clearly defined duties.’
More laughter.
Duties. Lily closed her eyes for a second against the pain.
‘There are quite a lot of them,’ he went on huskily, holding the book up and bending it back so that the pages flick ered out like a fan, ‘but I have learned recently that to do something out of duty is not always the best approach…’
Every word was another turn of the screw. Wasn’t it enough that he had shattered her last hope, she thought numbly, without making her suffer so publicly too?
Tristan gave Tom a lopsided smile and put the book down on the table. ‘Thanks for the thought, Tom, but I’m going to do this my way.’
Outside beyond the silken drapes of the marquee, the blush-pink sun was dipping down behind the trees around the lake, staining the sky the same colour as the roses in Scarlet’s bouquet. In the centre of the lake the tower stood, dark and forbidding, its windows reflecting the sinking crimson sun and making it look as if it were on fire. Tristan’s voice, deep and grave, went on, talking about the perfection of the day. Lily’s head was filled with a sort of roaring, as if she were standing on the top of a mountain in a high wind.
Wishful thinking.
‘…everything a wedding should be…’ Tristan’s voice reached her as if from a great distance ‘…champagne and roses; beautiful dresses and beautiful bridesmaids…’
Back in the real world, all around her, people smiled fondly. But then they couldn’t know that the perfect, proper wedding that the best man was describing was the opposite in every way of his own hasty, hole-in-the-corner one to a woman he didn’t love.
‘It’s about friends and families and laughing and dancing and fun.’
He stopped, looking down for a moment, frowning as if he was wondering how to go on. Everyone waited. The dying sun cast everything in a soft, rosy glow, adding to the sense of enchantment.
‘That’s a wedding. A marriage is a different thing entirely.’ His voice was soft now, and filled with a kind of weary resignation. ‘A marriage is about sharing, talking, compromising. It’s about being honest. Being there.’
Enough.
Lily’s throat burned and her eyes felt as if they were full of splinters as she got up and slipped quietly out from her place at the table. She walked quickly away from the marquee across the grass. The dew was falling and it was damp underfoot, making her heels sink into the soft ground so she paused for a second to kick them off and gather them up before stumbling onwards, blinded by tears. Tristan’s voice followed her, filling her head and seeming to wrap itself around her in the velvety air, in a ceaseless, caressing taunt.
‘Lily…’
She jerked to a standstill for a second as she realised that he was behind her, that what he was saying was her name. Then she carried on, faster than before, almost running down the sloping lawn towards the lake.
‘Leave me alone, Tristan. Go back to your rapturous audience. I think I’ve heard enough.’
‘Have you? I don’t think so.’
She did stop then, whirling round to face him, her face blazing with anger that she no longer had the strength or the inclination to hide. ‘How could you?’ she croaked, and the rawness in her voice was shocking in the perfect, rose-pink evening. ‘How could you stand up there in front of all those people and say that stuff about sharing and talking and…and compromise, for God’s sake? How could you say it in front of me?’
Her voice was rising to a shout and there were tears running down her face. Taking a step towards him, she raised her hands, clenching her fists and pounding them against his chest as the anger and the grief, sealed in for so long, came spilling out.
