AllFreeNovel
Share Us
‘Please. Tell me. I want to know,’ he said slowly.
Some roughness in his voice made her lift her head. And then, after a moment, he reached out and touched her hand, uncurling it with his fingers.
‘I might even be able to help.’
Heart pounding, she took a deep breath. ‘It wasn’t you.’ She gave him another weak smile. ‘Although you didn’t help much.’ Her heart twisted. ‘It was me. I was just waiting for it to happen. Waiting for you to leave and not come back. Like everyone else.’
She felt close to tears again, remembering the waiting, fearing, hoping that it would be different—
‘Who’s everyone else?’ Laszlo frowned, his face darkening. ‘You mean other men?’
Prudence laughed. ‘What other men? There haven’t been any. Not really since us—and certainly not before.’ She shook her head, frowning. ‘No. I mean my mum—and it’s a long story. You won’t want to hear it.’
Laszlo stared at her intently. ‘I do want to hear it. Tell me about your mum.’
His face was focused on hers, the golden eyes calm and dispassionate and yet warm like the sun. She let out a long breath.
‘My mum met my dad when she was nineteen. They got married and had me. And then he left her.’ Her mouth trembled. ‘He came back, though. He always came back after a bit. While he was away she’d be frantic, and sometimes she’d go out looking for him.’ The skin on her face felt suddenly scorched. ‘Or for someone who’d make her forget him. She’d leave me. On my own. For hours. Sometimes all night. I hated it, being alone in the house in the dark.’
She swallowed, lowering her gaze.
‘I always knew when she was going to go out. And I’d try and stop her. Stall her by asking questions.’ She bit her lip; her questions to Laszlo seven years ago had stemmed from the same fear. Letting out a long breath, she shrugged. ‘She nearly always went out, though. Then one day my dad never came back. Just cleared out their bank account and disappeared. It turned out that he was married already—to two other women. So really they weren’t even married,’ she said flatly.
‘And you thought I’d do that to you?’ Laszlo’s voice was neutral but his mouth was set in a grim line.
Prudence couldn’t meet his eyes. ‘I suppose, deep down, I did. I assumed the worst.’
And that was why she’d walked away. Because she’d been scared. Scared that the worst was already happening, and that if she stayed her life would settle, like her mother’s, into a pattern of rows and pleading and disappearances and lies.
Looking up, she met his gaze and they stood staring at one another, the silence between them broken only by the humming of the bees and the faint sound of a tractor on the breeze.
‘I didn’t give you much reason to hope for the best, did I?’ Laszlo said softly.
He scanned her face, seeing what he’d failed to see before: a young woman seeking reassurance. Not once had he stopped and thought to ask himself why she had been so anxious. Instead he’d convinced himself that her constant need for reassurance had demonstrated a feebleness of character unbecoming in his wife.
Reaching out, he pushed an unsteady hand through her hair and pulled her gently towards him. For a moment he imagined burying his face against the doe-soft smoothness of her neck, but then he frowned.
‘You were my wife. I should have known these things about you. And the fact that I didn’t is my fault,’ he said slowly. ‘But you’re right. You did assume the worst. Only I’m not your dad.’ She stiffened at his words and he grimaced. ‘And you’re not your mum, Prudence! From what you’ve just told me, she doesn’t sound like the sort of maddeningly stubborn woman who’d climb over a massive wall to demand her job back.’
Blushing at that image of herself, she looked up at him. He smiled at her slowly, his eyes glittering with an emotion she didn’t recognise.
‘I wasn’t that stubborn until I met you,’ she said carefully, her grey eyes issuing him with a challenge.
Watching the colour return to her cheeks, Laszlo felt a flicker of admiration rise inside him. She was brave. Braver than he’d thought. Braver than himself. He knew just how hard it was to reveal the truth about yourself to anyone.
Loosening a strand of her hair, Laszlo curled it round his finger. If only they could go back to bed, so she could curl her body around his as she’d done at the cottage.
As though she could read his mind, she looked up and sighed.
‘So what are we going to do? You said you’d been thinking about us a lot?’
They were back where they’d started. He frowned. ‘Not us. It. About it. The sex.’
Her shoulders felt leaden and she was suddenly more tired than she had ever been in her life.
‘Of course. My mistake!’ she said wearily. ‘I seem to be making a lot of those. Look, Laszlo. What happened between us isn’t going to happen again. I don’t want to sleep with you—’
‘Yes, you do,’ Laszlo interrupted her, his voice sharp and sure like a scalpel. ‘You want me as much as I want you. And until you stop torturing yourself about that it won’t stop, whether you’re in London or in Hungary, married to me or not. You told me you wanted a divorce so you could move on. But you didn’t even know we were married. Now that’s crazy, Prudence.’
