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He shot her a dark look as he rolled away from her, reluctant to face an interrogation while her hands were working such sweet magic—because didn’t that feel like a kind of manipulation? ‘We didn’t exactly see eye to eye on most subjects, but I don’t remember actually using the word hate, Roxanne.’
‘But that must have been an awful situation,’ she continued, even though his grey eyes were flashing out an unmistakable warning. ‘You must have missed your mother like mad. And she must have missed you, too.’
He scowled. What a bloody naive thing to say! ‘Of course I missed her,’ he said. ‘But I saw her during some of the school vacations. And anyway, she remarried when I was ten.’
Roxy sensed another big story behind that flat declaration. ‘And do you get on well with your stepfather?’
‘A question which is thankfully no longer relevant, since my mother divorced him as well,’ he returned caustically. ‘My family’s track record for holding down a long-term marriage isn’t great. Which is probably what makes me view it with as much enthusiasm as I would a trip to the dentist. A necessary duty I’ll one day have to undertake in order to secure a suitable succession to the Dukedom.’
She could hear the caustic note underpinning his flippant comment, obviously trying to put her straight about where he stood. The not-very-subtle warning her off about marriage. Well, she certainly wasn’t fantasising about herself as the next Duchess—she wasn’t that stupid! She just wanted to know him a little better—and why shouldn’t she when they were lying naked in bed together? Surely physical intimacy gave you some rights?
‘Then why didn’t you go up to Scotland with her?’ she persisted. ‘That’s what would normally happen. The woman usually gets custody of the child—especially if she’s the one who’s been “wronged”.’
Titus sighed, but more with exasperation than irritation. Didn’t she realise that the normal rules simply didn’t apply to someone like him? That in his world, the importance of tradition was placed above the close family bonds enjoyed by most people. ‘Because I needed to be here. At Valeo. The estate was my inheritance and I needed to learn how to run it—and I could only do that at firsthand. Not living with my mother was considered a necessary sacrifice in order for me to achieve that.’
She reached over to coil her fingers in the thick tawny hair. ‘Oh, Titus, that’s terrible.’
‘No, Roxy, it is not terrible. It’s just the way things are. My heritage is everything to me. It’s what drives me. My duty is what drives me.’ He saw the softness in her big blue eyes and something made him want to lash out at her. Don’t look at me that way, he thought. Don’t make your voice grow all soft and husky with emotion. Don’t make me examine things which are best kept locked away. His voice hardened. ‘Why, was your childhood the stuff that dreams are made of?’
Roxy realised that she had walked into a trap of her own making. She was usually the one who clammed up when people wanted to know about her upbringing—but she could hardly do that now. Not in light of her own determined line of questioning. She gave a shrug, which didn’t quite come off. ‘Not unless you dream of having a mother who makes repeated suicide attempts—’
‘Oh, God. Roxy, I’m sorry.’
‘Why should you be sorry? It isn’t your fault.’
He knew from the way she’d screwed up her face that she didn’t want to elaborate and normally he would have been only too glad to change the subject, but, inexplicably, he found himself wanting to know. Because he had discovered that Roxy was a woman who kept bits of herself locked away—just as he did. And he was discovering that the elusive was curiously tantalising. ‘What happened?’
She stared at him, wishing that she’d kept her mouth shut. She was unsuitable enough to be sharing his bed as it was, without admitting to having a mentally unstable mother. But she’d known that all along, hadn’t she? She’d known that she was not the kind of woman the Duke would usually be involved with—he had just implied pretty much the same thing himself. So it didn’t matter which of her secrets she told him. It would have no effect on their future, because they didn’t have a future.
‘What happened?’ Roxy allowed herself to remember the patchwork of dramatic incidents which had made up her childhood. ‘My father’s rather liberated behaviour was usually what provoked another failed attempt on the part of my mother. She would discover his latest infidelity and
there would be an enormous scene. Shouts and screams and plates being hurled—finishing up with a call to the emergency services. It was like living on the set of an opera. The doctors kept saying it was a cry for help—and she certainly never took enough pills to kill herself. I used to go with her to the hospital. She couldn’t bear to have my father accompany her because he’d just hurt her again. And more to the point—she hated him seeing her vomiting.’ Her gaze was steady. ‘I became quite good at giving a concise summary of her medical history.’
He flinched at her deliberate candour—the deadpan look on her face as she recited the facts managing to be much more chilling than a cascade of accompanying emotion. ‘So did she kill herself in the end?’
Roxy narrowed her eyes. ‘I don’t remember telling you that she was dead.’
‘You didn’t have to.’ He shrugged. ‘But you speak about her in the past tense.’
Roxy was surprised by his perception. ‘Actually, she died in a way which nobody could have anticipated,’ she said slowly. ‘They were going through one of their kiss-and-make-up phases and she’d gone out to buy a new dress. She was doing that sort of dreamy thing which women do when they think they’re loved. She … she wasn’t really concentrating on the busy London traffic and she walked straight out in front of a taxi. The end.’
‘Oh, God. Roxy.’
‘It was a long time ago,’ she said fiercely. ‘It doesn’t hurt any more.’ And that much was true. The pain had gone away. She’d made it go away in order to ensure her own survival, but it had inevitably left behind its own scar tissue. It had been during those fierce attempts to numb the pain that she’d realised it was easier not to let people close. If you didn’t let people close, then they couldn’t hurt you. Especially men. Up until now, that had never been a problem. She’d never wanted to let anyone close. But now she did. And Titus Alexander was the worst possible man to have chosen.
‘So it was just you and your father?’ he questioned slowly. ‘He brought you up?’
‘Not really. It was me, my father and whoever his current squeeze was. Until he got bored and dumped her. The women always resented me being around because I cramped their style, although they always pretended to adore me when Dad was watching. But they never lasted long.’ She’d seen for herself how badly men could treat women. And how women let themselves be treated badly because they had clung onto some foolish idea of ‘love’.
He heard the cynical note which had entered her voice and part of him rejoiced in it. ‘So, like me you don’t have any illusions about “love”?’ he questioned coolly.
Roxy shrugged—because she recognised it as both a question and a warning. ‘Of course not,’ she said.
‘Good.’ His eyes gleamed as he took her hand and guided it down to his groin. ‘Now, can we please stop talking and do something else?’
She was tempted—oh, how she was tempted. But she was feeling a little bit vulnerable and, more importantly—it was getting late. She pulled her hand away. ‘There isn’t time. Amy will be back from the pub soon.’
‘Damn Amy.’
