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‘Don’t worry, Antoinette, it’s—’ Cara began, but Maxim interrupted.
‘Sortez,’ he said, the barked command for Antoinette to leave making both Cara and the maid jump. ‘You are fired. I never want to see you on these premises again.’
The maid nodded and rushed out of the room in tears.
‘Maxim, stop...’ Cara touched his forearm. ‘You can’t fire Antoin—’
He swung round to grip her upper arms.
‘Why? Why did you do this?’ His voice broke on the words. This wasn’t unhappiness, she realised, he looked undone, broken.
‘Maxim, what’s wrong?’ she asked, the tightness like a vice now around her ribs.
Had she made a terrible mistake, confused her feelings with his? Projected emotions onto him that weren’t there—had never been there?
He brushed a frustrated hand through his hair. ‘You had no right.’
‘I just wanted to do something for you, after all you’ve done for me,’ she said, her voice shaking now at the sight of his distress.
‘Any man would do it, to protect their child,’ he said, the words clipped.
But when his eyes locked on hers, his gaze tortured, wild with pain, she knew she had to come clean about her real reasons for organising the celebration.
‘No, they wouldn’t, Maxim,’ she answered, trying to remain calm, trying to quell the riot of emotions pressing against her ribs, thundering in her heart.
Fear, panic, but most of all love.
‘But you’re right. That’s not the real reason I did this,’ she said, the truth pushing against her larynx and making her throat close. The moment had arrived when she couldn’t hide behind that frightened, lonely child any longer.
‘Then why?’ he demanded.
‘I wanted to celebrate your birthday, because I’ve fallen in love with you,’ she said. ‘And I want this to be a real marriage, for this house to be our home.’
He remained rigid, his eyes blank and unresponsive, so she found herself babbling the things he had never asked her about herself. And her past.
‘I spent the whole of my childhood in a succession of foster homes,’ she managed. ‘Some were good, some were okay, some weren’t. But I was never able to stay in any of them for very long. And when I came of age I spent years travelling around Europe, looking for something I finally found at La Maison de la Lune. I thought at first it was my friendship with Pierre, but it was much simpler than that—it was the home I made there. I discovered that I didn’t need anyone else to make a place for me. I could make it for myself. But with you...’ She swallowed down the lump of raw, unadulterated emotion. ‘With you, I’ve discovered I want so much more than just a place to call my own. I want a real home. And I know, even though you’ve never said it, it’s important to you too, or you wouldn’t have reacted so strongly to becoming a father. Been so determined to care for me.’ She could hear the painful hope in her voice, despite the rigid expression on his face. ‘We could make this place into a home, Maxim. Make our marriage into a real marriage. For the baby, and for ourselves. All we have to do is admit that’s what we need.’
She had hoped against hope to make a life for them both, but the last embers of that hope flickered and guttered out as she watched his blank expression harden.
‘This marriage can never be real.’
‘Why not?’ she asked, desperation setting in.
‘Because I will never love you back.’
‘You don’t have to love me, Maxim. Not yet,’ she said, still trying to rescue a dream she knew had already died. ‘All you have to do is open yourself to love.’
‘I can’t,’ he said.
She nodded slowly, carefully, scared she was about to shatter into a million pieces at the finality in his statement. Not shatter, crumble into dust, feeling so insignificant, inconvenient, the way she’d been her whole life.
She hadn’t asked him to love her, all she had asked for was the hope that one day he might. But he didn’t even want to try. Anything she had to offer him would never be enough.
The little girl inside her who had watched her father walk away without a backward glance was screaming in pain. But the woman she had become simply nodded. ‘Okay.’
She needed to leave before he saw her crumble, before he saw how much his rejection hurt. Or she would be nothing again.
It had taken her a lifetime to become somebody. And she couldn’t let any man take that away from her. Not even him.
