by Liz Fielding
‘I’ve got a few recommendations. I’ll see if I can get a table somewhere,’ he said, putting the button in her hand and shrugging out of his shirt.
The boy she’d loved had been a slender, graceful youth but the years had given his body strength, power, maturity. He was everything she had loved and more and it took every ounce of self-control not to wrap herself around him, fall back into bed and let the world go hang.
Self-control was something she’d learned the hard way. She’d had years to work on blocking those memories. Keeping those feelings at arm’s length. Easily resisting the temptation to accept temporary relief when it had been offered. Or so she’d imagined.
Easy to resist when there was only one man who could give her what she wanted. The barriers had come tumbling down when it was that man standing in front of her.
Once, one time...
She’d spent the few minutes in the shower reminding herself of all the reasons that it could not happen again. Shoring up the barriers. Even so, it was a relief when he pulled on his sweater while she sewed on the button.
He was cold, not taking pity on her, she told herself as she hooked her sewing basket out from under the bed and searched for a needle and matching thread.
‘Tea or coffee?’ he asked as the kettle boiled.
‘T-tea, please,’ she replied, sitting on the edge of the bed, concentrating hard to thread the needle with hands that were not quite steady.
His hand fastened over hers, stilling the shake before he took the needle from her and threaded it.
He handed it back without a word, made tea in two mugs, set them on the bedside table and sat beside her.
‘How long will it take you to pack?’ he asked.
‘Pack?’ She jabbed herself with the needle, leaving a tiny spot of blood on his shirt.
He took her hand, looked at it, and said, ‘You’ll live, but I’m not sure you’re up to that.’
He took the shirt from her, swiftly stitched the button in place, and by the time he’d returned the needle to the spool and pulled the shirt back on, she had almost regained control over her breathing.
‘I’m not going anywhere,’ she said.
‘You can’t stay here.’
Yes... Yes, she could. She had to send him on his way. Convince him somehow that what happened was not important. She took a breath...
‘I’m sorry, James. That was a fun trip down memory lane but don’t let’s get carried away.’
‘Look at me, Chloe.’
His voice was low, cobweb soft, but it had an undeniable force and she obeyed without considering the foolishness of such a move. She was shivering and his warmth was tempting her to lean into him, press her lips in the curve of his neck where it met his shoulder. Trembling with the need to put her arms around him, slide her hands down his body, feel the contraction of his muscles, the leap of his response to her touch.
She lowered her lashes so as not to be drawn in by the intensity of his grey-green eyes, but his voice was insistent.
‘Look me in the eyes, Chloe, and tell me again that was just a bit of fun. That it’s something you do every time a man knocks on your door with a bunch of flowers in his hand.’
She whimpered, a wordless denial that betrayed her and he reached out, lifted her chin so that she was looking directly into his eyes.
‘Do you think I didn’t look for you?’ he asked. ‘That I didn’t climb the walls of your family estate? Try every way to get past the security at the London penthouse? Contact all of your friends in an effort to find you?’
She swallowed down the ache in her throat, knowing how that would have gone.
‘I had dogs set on me, a beating from security guards—’
‘They hurt you?’
‘They made their point quite thoroughly, but that wasn’t the worst.’ She closed her eyes as if she could blot out whatever was coming. ‘The worst was the summons to Nick Wolfe’s office where a solicitor informed me that if I didn’t stop “harassing” you, your family and friends, they would go to court and take out a restraining order. Can you imagine how much my stepfather enjoyed being a witness to that humiliation?’
‘You weren’t harassing me!’
‘I was harassing everyone in pursuit of you.’
‘I’m so sorry...’
‘I don’t want your pity. I want you, Chloe. I’ve never stopped wanting you and what just happened, happened to both of us. Come back to London with me.’
‘London?’ She shook her head. ‘No...’
His hand opened to cradle her cheek. She had longed for this moment, yearned for the moment when he would hold her, tell her that the nightmare was over and that they would be together.
It was wrong, she knew that it was never going to be over but, weakly, she surrendered to the warmth of his arms and he drew her close.
‘I never stopped believing that one day you would get in touch, Chloe. I understood that you couldn’t be with me. I just wanted to know that you were okay.’
This was okay. Being held close, being loved...
‘Where have you been all this time?’ he asked.
‘I was sick for a long time, in a clinic—’
He stiffened, drew back to look at her. ‘Sick?’
‘In my head. After they took our baby.’
And this time, when his arms tightened around her, he held her so close that she could scarcely breathe. She knew that pain; a stab through the heart that no words could ever heal.
‘I knew,’ he said. ‘I always knew they would insist on a termination, but somewhere, deep down, I carried an image of you together.’
She pulled back, looked up at him. His cheeks were wet and, as she wiped her fingers across them, he shivered. For a moment she was tempted to tell him what had really happened, but then he would be burdened with her pain, too.
‘I’m sorry, James.’
‘Don’t apologise to me. I’m the one who messed up. I should have been with you.’
‘There was nothing you could have done.’
‘I could have tried. If I’d known where you were, I would have come for you. Done anything...’
‘Do you think I didn’t want to tell you, James? To call your voicemail just to hear your voice? When I was free—’
‘Free?’
‘Better. When I had recovered,’ she corrected herself carefully, ‘the situation was made very clear to me. A reputation is a fragile thing, James. If I tried to contact you in any way it would not just be your life in the crusher, but Sally’s too, and she had suffered enough.’
‘Your parents were that afraid of us being together?’
‘We were too young to know what we were doing.’ She heard herself trot out words that had been repeated over and over. Gently, coaxingly, with increasing irritation at her stubbornness. Hated them but knew in her heart that they were true.
‘Maybe we were,’ he said, with an angry gesture at their surroundings, ‘but I think we would have done better than this.’
‘Would we? Seventeen years old with a baby? Would you be where you are now?’ she demanded, feeding off his anger. ‘My parents had plans for me, and they didn’t include a boy with no family.’
Anger was easier. It was the glue that had held her together, kept her putting one foot in front of the other as she’d refused the soft words, the temptation to accept a comfortable life in return for becoming a coroneted breeding cow...
His body snapped away from hers and cold air filled the gap as he took a long slow look around the apartment, lingering on the crumbling ceiling where the rain regularly came through, and then back at her.
‘I may not have a family that can trace its ancestors back to Adam, but some people are more interested in creating something new than looking back at the past.’
‘I’m not condoning—’
she began, but he wasn’t done.
‘We may not have had wealth or status in the way your family see it, but there was a trust set up by our grandfather to pay for our education, a substantial inheritance from my grandmother. We would have been young, with a baby, and I’m not fooling myself that it would have been easy, but we wouldn’t have been living in a cold room with a leaking roof.’
‘You don’t understand—’
‘What’s to understand, Chloe?’
‘That it was never about the money.’ She sank onto the bed. ‘It was about ambition. Much to Father’s irritation he could never find a link to the Stuarts so he couldn’t actually trace his family back to Adam and hence God—’
‘Well, that must have been a blow.’
‘But it does go back to one of the barons that came over with the Conqueror.’
‘You’re serious...’ He sat beside her, denting the mattress so that she was tipped towards him. She should move, but the struggle to escape the tilt of the mattress would just make things worse so she stayed very still. ‘So why doesn’t your father have a title?’
She shrugged. Her shoulder rubbed against his, soaking in his warmth... ‘The family straddled both sides in the civil war,’ she said quickly. ‘The older brother was a Royalist and lost everything. The younger had been close to Cromwell and was lucky to keep his head at the Restoration.’
‘And yet they have prospered.’
‘They were fast learners. Keep out of politics. Follow the money...
‘My father was offered a knighthood for services to charity but considered it beneath him. A bauble for actors and pop stars. He wanted his grandson to have a real title.’
‘A real title? How did he imagine that was going to happen?’
‘You’ve heard the expression “a marriage has been arranged...”?’
‘What?’ He frowned, shook his head. ‘No.’ Then, when she didn’t say anything and he realised that she was serious, ‘You have got to be kidding. That’s medieval.’
‘Not even close. It was still very much part of the deal at the end of the nineteenth century when the British aristocracy was saved from penury by the arrival of American heiresses in search of a title.’
‘We’ve moved on from Downton Abbey, Chloe.’
‘Not as far as you’d think. I was signed up for the gig when I was still in my pram. The present earl went to school with my father. That’s what schools like St Mary’s and Eton are for, James. Making useful friendships. Connections with influence and money.’
‘I don’t believe I’m hearing this.’
‘Believe it. The earl was invited to be my godfather. It may have started out as one of those half-joking “Wouldn’t it be perfect?” conversations over the font—“My lad, your girl” sort of thing—but the seed was sown and when the earl made some bad financial choices, I became the bail-out option.’
‘The boy had no say in this?’
‘I imagine he saw it as his duty. The upkeep of a stately pile costs money and marrying it is the family business.’
‘Did you know about that? Before we...?’ His gesture filled in the gap.
‘Theoretically,’ she admitted, ‘but it was like some pantomime story that had nothing to do with me.’
‘Pantomime is right, and it’s been ten years, Chloe. I doubt your aristocrat is still hanging onto the glass slipper.’
She shook her head, desperately trying to make him see. ‘My family thinks in centuries and you’d be amazed how patient a man can be when there’s a fortune at stake.’
‘He’s still hoping you’ll go back?’
‘I have no idea what he thinks, but he hasn’t married. I have no doubt that my family know where I am, how I live, and are hoping that a really bad winter will finally bring me to my senses.’
James let out a huff of frustration. ‘What kind of man is that entitled? And I’m not talking about a coronet. You’re an adult, Chloe. No one can force you into a marriage that you don’t want.’
‘There is no force. The pressures are more subtle than that.’ She managed a shrug. ‘It’s all about duty to the family.’
She raised an eyebrow at his emphatic response.
‘I’m sorry, but duty? Really? What about their duty to you? What about love?’
‘In their eyes they were doing what was best for me, James. I’d have been the envy of every girl at St Mary’s, including your sister.’
He shook his head. ‘I’m astonished, under the circumstances, that you were allowed to go to a mixed boarding school.’
‘My mother was a boarder at St Mary’s. She told my father that the connections, the friendships, I made there would set me up for the future. That was something my father understood. Their marriage was...’
‘Arranged?’
‘“Carefully managed” was the phrase she used. People with a lot of money tend to be cautious about letting outsiders near enough to get their hands on it. Maybe she wanted to give me the chance to have a little fun before I settled down to duty.’
‘Was that all I was?’ he asked. ‘Your bit of “fun”?’
‘No!’ She shrugged. ‘Maybe. We were very young. If I hadn’t become pregnant...’ The denial died on her lips and her fingers twitched, wanting to touch him just one more time.
‘It might have burned itself out?’
She dug her nails into her palms. ‘Yes,’ she lied.
‘Then I’m to blame for this.’ A sweep of his arm took in the room, while his eyes didn’t leave her.
‘No!’ She took a slow, steadying breath and forced herself to look straight into his eyes. ‘No, James. We were both there that day. Bad things happened but they were not your fault. I walked away from my family and now I’m asking you to leave and forget you ever saw me.’
‘You think I could forget this?’ he demanded, standing up without warning so that she had to grab onto the edge of the bed to stop herself from tumbling sideways. ‘Do you think I could forget anything that happened between us? I know you were scared but I would have taken care of you.’ When she didn’t answer, he said, ‘Maybe a termination was easier—’
‘No!’ The denial brought her to her feet.
She’d always thought that it would be easier for him to believe that there had been no baby, that what she’d done was a burden she had to bear alone, but he had a right to know the truth. ‘Never... My parents wanted it, but she was all I had...’
‘She?’
The silence was thick in the room and she was struggling to breathe.
‘She?’ he rapped out.
‘There was no termination. We had a little girl, James. I called her Eloise...’
CHAPTER FOUR
THE COLOUR DRAINED from James’s face. ‘A little girl?’ he repeated. ‘We have a daughter?’
‘I held her for a few minutes after she was born. She had a mop of brown hair just like yours, big eyes. She was so beautiful.’
‘Was!’
‘Is...’ she said quickly. ‘I imagine her some days.’
Every day, every waking hour...
‘I see this bright, happy little girl who looks a lot like Sally, with parents who love her, who will always put her first, listen to her dreams...’
He grasped her arms, bringing her back from her fantasy.
‘Where is she, Chloe?’
She shook her head. ‘I don’t know. My father finally agreed to let me have my baby but only if I signed adoption papers before she was born.’
‘Agreed? That wasn’t his decision to make.’ He dragged fingers through his hair. ‘Is what he did even legal?’
‘I don’t know. I was alone, isolated from anyone I knew, and I would have agreed to anything to save our little girl.’ There were tears pouring down her own cheeks now. ‘I didn’t believe, once she was born, once they’d s
een her, held her, that they would force me to go through with it. That they would be able to go through with it.’ She swallowed. ‘My mother might have weakened but my father sent her away before Eloise was born. He never had any intention of letting emotion get in the way of his plans. I was holding her, but I fell asleep and when I woke, our daughter was gone.’
James opened his mouth, closed it again, unable to speak.
‘Afterwards, once I understood that I would never see our baby again, I had a kind of breakdown.’
‘How did they explain that to the earl?’
‘As far as the world was concerned, I was at a finishing school here in France.’
‘But you were in a clinic?’ His eyes continued to drill into her brain for long seconds until she shivered and he pulled off his sweater, dropped it over her head and, taking her arms one at a time, fed them into the sleeves as if she were a child, before tugging it down over her body.
She wanted him to hold her, to warm her, to tell her that he understood, but instead he took a phone from his trouser pocket.
‘I have to get you out of here,’ he said, scrolling through his contacts, his own hand shaking. ‘Start packing.’
‘No. I can’t go to London with you,’ she said, turning away to rescue the flowers that had dropped, unheeded, to the floor, abandoned in their frantic need for each other.
Her heart turned over as she saw that they were white roses. The same gorgeous fat buds that had been delivered to her on her seventeenth birthday. Red would have raised eyebrows, and questions, but the staff had assumed that they were from her mother...
She had long ago learned to wall up her feelings, memories, but that survival technique had been obliterated in the heat of passion and now, as she breathed in the scent of the roses, it took every ounce of that hard-won self-control to force down an emotional torrent that threatened to overwhelm her.
Every instinct was to bury her face in the blooms, to tell James that she loved him, just as she had when the world was new, and anything had seemed possible.