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It seemed that everywhere he went there were reminders of her. A poster for a show she’d wanted to see. A view of Tower Bridge and the memory of the dress she’d worn to dinner that night. A tiny backstreet Italian restaurant that was never Lola’s, but often looked close. A pelican staring balefully at him in St James’s Park.
He seemed to be, inexplicably, spending a lot of time walking through St James’s Park these days. He couldn’t even remember how he used to get from one place to another, before Faith introduced him to the pelicans.
The most embarrassing part was that he kept thinking he saw her. All across London, any time he spotted a woman in a red cardigan, or wild dark hair, his brain screamed ‘Faith!’ Several times, he’d found himself halfway to accosting a curvy stranger before he realised that, even if it was her, she’d betrayed him, she’d run away from him, and they were done.
He had a list of things he wanted to say to her, though. A mental list he added to each night when he couldn’t sleep, remembering the feel of her body against his, under his.
It started with the obvious. Why couldn’t you just do as I asked you for once? If she’d just stayed, he could have fixed things. She knew that, surely? How desperate must she have been to get away from him that she ran anyway?
Just one night. That had been the agreement. Which led to the second item on his list. Why didn’t you want to stay?
Except that sounded too desperate, as if there were a hole in his life waiting for her to fill it, even after all that she’d done, so he always mentally scratched that one off again.
The list went on and on, through anger, pain, loss and outright fury. But the last question was always the same. Why couldn’t you have just left me alone in that airport bar?
Because if he’d never met Faith, his life wouldn’t be so disordered, so confused. And people wouldn’t be discussing his private life again, the way they had after the revelations about his mother’s affair.
And that, he had to admit, was the part that made him angriest of all.
But the dark-haired woman across the street, or the park, or the shop was never Faith, so he never got to ask her any of the things on his list.
No one seemed to know where she was, but Dominic assumed she’d skipped abroad again. The reporters had staked out Fowlmere for a few days after he checked out of the Greyfriars and it became clear she was no longer there with him. He’d read a brief statement from Lord Fowlmere saying that his daughter was just fine, thank you, but taking a little time off. No hint on where she might be doing that. Dominic couldn’t even be sure that the man really did know where Faith was.
The search for the runaway heiress had reached a dead end.
* * *
Until, unexpectedly, one evening, at a charity ball Sylvia had insisted he attend, the woman across the room really was Faith, and he didn’t even recognise her.
‘Look!’ Sylvia nudged him in the ribs, hard, just in case he’d missed her not-at-all-discreet attempt at a stage whisper.
Dominic straightened his dinner jacket. ‘Where, exactly, am I looking?’
‘Over there! Cream dress. Gorgeous skin. Hair pinned back.’
He followed her also-not-discreet pointing finger with his gaze. ‘Still not getting it,’ he said. Except he was. There was something. Not in the polite expression of interest on the woman’s face as she listened to some bore drone on. And not in the high-cut evening dress, complete with pearls. But underneath all that...
‘It’s Faith, you idiot!’ Sylvia prodded him in the ribs again. ‘You need to go and talk to her.’
Around him, the room was already starting to buzz. Whispers of his name and hers. Those looks he thought he’d left behind years ago, the ones that said: We know your secrets.
What was she doing here? Shouldn’t she be in Italy or Australia or anywhere by now? Not standing next to her father at the most glamorous, most publicised and photographed charity ball of the year.
Had she really gone home? The journalists must have grown bored of staking out a crumbling estate in the middle of nowhere pretty quickly not to have noticed. But if her big plan was to go home anyway, why couldn’t she have just stayed long enough for him to fix things?
He had to leave. He’d drop a large enough donation to the charity to excuse his absence at the ball, and he’d be gone. No way he was providing entertainment to a room full of gossip hounds by actually talking to Faith.
‘People are starting to stare,’ Sylvia pointed out, as if he hadn’t noticed.
‘Let them.’ Dominic slammed his champagne flute onto a passing waiter’s tray. ‘I’m leaving.’
