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‘How can I?’ She looked up at him with desperation, her clenched fists pushing at his chest. ‘If the reporters trace you here, they’ll crucify you all over again.’
‘For what? Another drink-crazed orgy?’ He grinned at her. ‘It sounded terrific. I only wish I could remember it. Could you arrange an action replay some time?’
‘It’s not funny.’ Her voice was almost a wail. ‘I told that revolting Tully man that we’d just had a brief fling to try and get rid of him. He was threatening to talk to your mother—to tell her about us—and I couldn’t let him do that.’
‘It would have got him nowhere. She already knew.’
She stared up at him. ‘She did? But how?’
‘I told her myself, much earlier that same day. Not long after I woke up and found myself in bed alone, and realised I might be doing that for evermore unless I took positive action. I’d spent the better part of my life avoiding my family’s no-go areas, but with my entire future happiness in jeopardy it was time to call a halt.
‘So I rang my mother, told her we were lovers, and that I intended to bring you down to St Jean de Luz that day on Windhover to meet her. I was half expecting tears, accusations and hysterics, but instead there was the oddest silence, before she said very calmly that it might be best, as there were things that must be said, and that she would see us later.
‘I went to your room to tell you, but you were deeply asleep and I didn’t want to disturb you. However, I saw the photographs beside your bed and decided to have a look at them. And then I was the one to be disturbed,’ he added drily. ‘All this time I’d just accepted what I’d been told about my parents’ marriage. I never questioned it—even when I knew I was falling in love with you. Suddenly my whole perspective underwent a radical change, and I realised what my mother might be waiting to say. So I sent the photographs to her via my computer, and gradually the whole miserable story came out.’
Rhianna shook her head. She said in a low voice, ‘It must have cost her a great deal to tell you—and to come here today.’
‘She says it’s been a relief to speak the truth at last, and not have all that deception hanging over her any longer. She admitted she was always terrified that if I found out I might not be able to forgive her. After all, my father wasn’t the only one to be kept at a distance by her supposed ill-health. But I think she’s been punished enough.
‘So, I told her that I was more concerned with how the whole sorry story had affected you. That I couldn’t forget the lonely, unhappy child who’d come to Penvarnon to live under her mother’s supposed shadow. Or that, with the exception of Carrie, we’d all treated you pretty badly. And I was one of the worst,’ he added sombrely. ‘Especially when I realised what I’d begun to feel for you and tried to end it.
‘Only I never could, Rhianna. In all those five years I couldn’t put you out of my mind, no matter how I tried.’ He grimaced. ‘And I did try. I didn’t want to be torn apart between my need for you and my family’s potential outrage. I still believed, you see, that my mother was too emotionally fragile to cope with the notion of my spending my life with you. My aunt Moira hinted that any nervous strain could lead to another breakdown.
‘When you’d gone, I tried to tell myself I was suffering from a simple case of sexual frustration. That if I’d taken you to bed I’d have got you out of my system. However, eventually watching you as Lady Ariadne didn’t help one bit. And when I saw you again I knew that wanting you physically was only part of what I felt for you. That somehow you were still the scared, isolated girl I yearned to love and protect for ever.
‘And I was going to tell you so—only finding you with Rawlins stopped me in my tracks. The night I spent outside your flat, imagining you with him, was the lowest point in my whole existence. Yet even then I still ached for you. So when I learned you were defying me and coming to the wedding I made my plans accordingly. I tried to tell myself that I was taking you away for Carrie’s sake, but that was sheer hypocrisy.
‘Only then I found myself in bed—not with the practised seductress I’d expected, but the innocent girl I’d longed for and believed I’d lost for ever.’ He gave an unsteady laugh. ‘Dear God, I didn’t know whether to turn a cartwheel or slash my wrists. What I had to do—and quickly—was rethink all my assumptions and win you round to the idea of being my wife. And no past scandals could be allowed to interfere.’
