by Liz Fielding
‘I don’t think he was alone in that. I remember thinking at the time that if I heard his name connected to one more string of glowing adjectives I’d punch a hole in the wall.’
She managed a smile. ‘I used to feel the same way when you were dating Sophie Blakiston. Whatever happened to her?’
‘I didn’t turn up once too often and she married an earl.’
‘You don’t learn, do you?’
‘I didn’t have much of an example in my old man.’
‘No, it’s not that. It isn’t other women that tempt you away. You just love Bella Lucia more.’
‘Now you’re just trying to change the subject.’
Maybe, but he hadn’t denied it.
‘Of course I am,’ she replied. ‘No one likes to talk about their mistakes.’
‘And what about James Cadogan? Was he a mistake?’
Louise, wanting him to let it go, said, ‘Yes.’ Then realising that this wasn’t any better, ‘No.’ Then just shook her head.
‘So why did you two break up?’ Max persisted. ‘Whatever happened then changed you. After Cadogan there’s no one. It’s like your personal life entered an ice age.’
‘Stop trying to make it out to be such a big deal, Max. It came to a natural end. That’s all.’
‘No more than a light-hearted flirtation? That’s odd, because, according to my mother, your mother was already drawing up the guest list for the wedding, choosing stationery for the invitations, talking designers for the dress-’
‘Pure fantasy,’ she said, but was unable to meet his steady gaze, couldn’t bear the silence that told her plainer than words that Max was not convinced. She stopped, turned to face him. ‘All right! It wasn’t just fantasy. It was much more than that. Satisfied!’
He took her arm, continued walking. Waited.
‘I was nearly thirty. Way past time for a girl to be married and producing babies, according to my mother, and, as she was quick to tell me, no one better was ever likely to come along. Not exactly the fairy tale, but no girl past the age of sixteen believes in those.’
Not if her Prince Charming of choice had a barbed-wire fence around him hung with warning notices saying ‘do not touch’.
‘So you were settling for the best you could get?’
‘That’s not fair to James. He was any girl’s ideal husband. My mother was out of her mind with happiness; even my father approved.’
‘The man must have been a saint,’ he said, a touch acerbically. Then, ‘Or was it because in the fullness of time he’d have made Daddy’s little girl Lady Cadogan?’
‘Now you’re just being nasty. James was a lovely man. Any father would have been delighted with him as a son-in-law. Any woman would have been lucky-’
‘Methinks the lady doth protest too much.’
She shook her head, shivered.
An ice age…
Max stopped, removed the scarf he was wearing, wrapped it around her neck, but didn’t let go of the ends, holding her within the circle of his arms and instantly she felt warmer.
No ice there…
‘So what went wrong?’ he asked.
‘Me,’ she said. ‘I told you.’
He frowned.
‘What? You don’t believe that? You don’t believe Little Miss Perfect capable of dumping the best prospect for matrimonial bliss ever likely to come her way?’
‘You’re mistaking me for someone else, Lou. I never thought you were Little Miss Perfect.’ His eyes creased in one of those rare smiles that made his eyes seem impossibly blue. A smile that assured her he knew her far better than that. ‘Daddy’s Little Princess is another matter.’
She laughed. He was the one person who’d always been able to make her laugh. Before life, hormones, got in the way. How she’d missed that.
‘Was I that bad?’
‘Appalling,’ he said, but with a smile. ‘All frills, curls, and ponies. Once Jack and I lured you away on adventures, you weren’t too bad. For a girl.’
‘Thank you. I know you meant that as a compliment.’
‘I knew you’d understand.’ Then, releasing the scarf, he led the way to a bench that overlooked the lake and, with his arm around her waist, drew her close to keep her warm.
‘So, Princess, tell me about Prince Charming.’
‘I hoped you’d forgotten.’
‘That bad?’
No more secrets…
‘James did nothing wrong.’ She sighed. ‘He took all the flak from both families when it fell apart, but it was my fault, Max. All my fault.’
‘Tell me,’ he said.
She glanced at him. He raised his brows, an invitation to spill it all out. Get it off her chest.
‘Trust me, Lou.’
‘You won’t sell my secrets to the Courier diary correspondent?’ she said, in an attempt to make a joke of it.
‘Trust me,’ he repeated. No smile. No sexy little twitch of his eyebrows. He was in deadly earnest, now. Asking her to bare her soul to him. Expose her heart. Leave herself without anywhere to hide.
To put her heart where her mouth had been half an hour earlier and demonstrate that she trusted him not to hurt her.
Maybe to prove that she wouldn’t hurt him. That was an unexpected thought. She’d never seen Max as vulnerable in that way. His family had hurt him, but he’d never appeared deeply touched by any of his own romances…
No more secrets…
‘It wasn’t that I didn’t try,’ she said, looking across the lake, afraid to see the panic in his eyes as he realised what she was telling him. ‘I wanted it to work. James really was perfect. Not just because there was a title in the offing, that the family owned half the county. He was really nice. Good. Kind. And he loved me.’
She turned to Max then, because she had to see his reaction. Had to know…
‘We were going to announce our engagement on my birthday. Major party. Crates of champagne on order. My mother was ecstatic; my father was strutting around as if he owned the entire world.’
‘So?’
‘I tried, Max. I did all the right things, said all the right things and I thought it was going to work but in the end he said…James said…’
She felt trapped, laid bare in a way that simple nakedness could never expose her, but Max took her hand, held it, gave her his strength.
No more secrets, but it was so hard…
‘He said that he loved me, wanted me to be his wife. He said he knew that I didn’t feel those things as strongly as him, but that he’d accepted that. That he accepted that in a relationship there was always one person who loved more-’
‘He must have had it bad,’ he said, but not without sympathy.
‘But not, apparently, fatally. He said that he could accept all that, but he was beginning to suspect that there was someone else.’
He turned to her. ‘He thought you were cheating on him?’ he said, with a deadly calm.
‘No! No. He said…He said that when he was holding me it felt as if I was looking over his shoulder, scanning the horizon, waiting for someone just out of sight to ride to my rescue. He wanted me to talk about it. Reassure him, I suppose.’
‘But you couldn’t?’
‘No. He was wrong, Max.’ She stared at their hands, locked together. ‘He was wrong to accept less than my whole heart under any circumstances, but I was wrong, too. I should never have let it go so far. I hurt him and I deeply regret that. A partnership should be an equal passion, don’t you think?’
‘I would hope for that.’
‘Would you accept less?’ she asked.
‘If there was no other choice, if only one person will do, then there must be the temptation to accept what’s on offer, hope for more in time,’ he said, frowning. ‘But it’s not a deal I could live with. Not the kind of foundation for the kind of marriage I’d consider. The kind that will last a lifetime.’
‘That was the point. He didn’t have to work at loving me while I…’
W
hile she had been settling for second best.
When she realised that Max was waiting for her to finish the sentence, she shook her head. ‘Whatever I was doing, he deserved better than I was giving him.’
‘Tell me about the other man. The one out of sight.’
She looked away, but he caught her chin, forced her to face him. And she didn’t have to say the words. He knew.
‘That’s why there’s been no one else?’ he persisted.
‘What would have been the point?’
‘What indeed?’ He got up, pulled her to her feet, tucked her arm firmly beneath his and continued walking.
That was it? She’d just performed open heart surgery on herself and he shrugged it off as nothing. She glanced at him. He wasn’t looking at her, but straight ahead, and all she had was his chiselled profile against the cold blue of the sky.
‘So, this affair we’re having is your way of getting me out of your hair, is it?’ he asked.
‘That’s a rather cold way of putting it.’
‘But I’m right? I get you and your talent until the fourteenth. After that, you’re going to move on?’
‘That was the plan,’ she admitted, miserably.
‘And is it working?’
She lifted her shoulders in the smallest of shrugs. ‘Not yet.’
‘No. I had much the same outcome in mind, but the truth is there’s nothing cold about what’s between us, Louise. There never has been. It’s always been fire, never ice. So the question we have to ask ourselves, you and I, is where do we go from here?’
‘I’m rather enjoying “here”,’ she said.
She wasn’t so certain about Max.
‘Isn’t that the point? We aren’t “here” any more, are we? No more secret affair. Everyone knows about us now. That already takes us somewhere else.’
‘It must have been Patsy, don’t you think?’ she said, unable to give him a direct answer. She didn’t know where they were going. Only that he was right. With exposure, the mutual admission that they were both on an escape mission, came a change of direction.
One that she wanted.
Watching her father and uncle reach out for each other had shown her the futility, the waste of hiding one’s feelings. If what she and Max had was to grow, it needed light, air…
‘She must have been the one who spilled the beans to the Courier,’ she prompted, a little desperately, when he didn’t answer.
‘I imagine so. She had us pegged from the minute she saw us together and she does have something of a runaway mouth.’ Then, ‘Are you angry with her?’
‘Why would I be angry? We left your father and mine having lunch together, taking a trip down memory lane and laughing about it. That’s something I thought I’d never see.’ And she smiled, because that was wonderful. ‘Without her, it might never have happened.’ Then, ‘Without you, Max.’
He looked at her. ‘Me? What did I do?’
‘You refused to let me go.’
He didn’t come back with some major declaration, merely said, ‘So, now we’ve been outed, I guess you’re going to expect a little more by way of entertainment than supper in bed?’
On the point of saying that she couldn’t think of any more entertaining way of spending her evenings with him, she thought better of it. It was time to move on, be open.
‘Infinitely more,’ she said. Then, ‘Are you going to be free tomorrow evening?’
‘What’s happening?’
‘Several things. I’ve got a late meeting so I’ll have to forgo our six-thirty debriefing, but I do happen to have a couple of tickets for the Royal Opera House charity gala. A client sent them to me. I was going to give them away but maybe it’s time to take our relationship on its first real public outing.’ Then, when he didn’t immediately respond, ‘I’m asking you out on a date, Max. If you don’t say yes within the next thirty seconds I might just die of embarrassment.’
‘What time do you want me to pick you up?’
She’d expected more reaction. Didn’t he realise just how big a deal this was for her? Was she being a complete fool? About to ask him, she decided she didn’t want to know and let it go.
‘I’ll have to meet you at the theatre. No later than seven-fifteen,’ she warned. ‘It’s a royal performance so we’ll all have to be seated before the Queen arrives.’
‘Seven-fifteen.’ He nodded. ‘So, what would you like to do this evening?’
‘I’m going to see my mother, remember?’ Weirdly she felt only relief. ‘Want to come?’ she teased.
‘Scared what she’ll say about us? Want some protection?’ he replied, picking up the beat.
‘No!’ Then, ‘Well, maybe, just a bit.’
‘She’ll be so glad to see you, Lou, she wouldn’t care if you’d dyed your hair green. Give her my love.’
‘I will. But more importantly,’ she said, ‘I’ll give her mine.’ She hailed a passing cab, then lifted herself up on her toes, kissed his cold cheek. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow. Seven-fifteen.’
Max watched her go, a mixture of feeling churning around inside him. He’d had to know what the deal was with James. If she was really bouncing back, using the undeniable sexual charge between them, using him to wipe the other man from her mind.
Now he knew the truth. And it terrified the life out of him.
The world seemed like a freshly minted place and the evening positively sparkled as Louise stepped out of the taxi outside the theatre. She had spent the previous evening with her parents, talking about her adoption, about how putting off telling her the truth had gradually, without anyone actually making a decision, become a permanent situation. Because it hadn’t seemed to matter. She was their daughter. Why complicate things?
It had seemed that simple.
But now together, they had faced up to the mistakes of the past and, as a family, were looking forward to a brighter happier future, she thought, smiling as she paid her fare, looked around, certain that Max would be there waiting for her. Or maybe he was already inside, a drink waiting…
Or then again, maybe not, she thought, after she’d fought her way through the crush to the bar and realised he wasn’t there.
She glanced at her watch. It was okay. He had another five minutes. She bought a programme, glanced through it, conscious of being alone in a crowd in which everyone else had someone to talk to.
An announcement asked people to take their seats.
She went back outside. Took out her cellphone, checked for messages. Nothing.
She could ring him, but, actually, what was the point?
On the stroke of half past, she dropped the programme in the nearest litter bin and hailed a taxi.
Gemma put her head around the door. ‘Have you got your mobile turned off, Lou? Max says he’s been trying to get you since last night.’
‘That can’t be right. Max apparently doesn’t know my mobile number.’
‘Louise…’
‘I’ll say one thing for you, Max, you’re consistent,’ she said, not looking up from her desk. She heard the office door close as Gemma left them in private. ‘And I’m dumb. You’ve been standing me up since I was sixteen. A smart woman would have got the message by now. A decent man would have learned not to make dates he didn’t intend to keep.’
She made a careful note on the file in front of her, waited for the excuse. She knew it would be good. He’d had a lot of practice.
‘The Chelsea kitchen flooded.’
Yes, that was good, and no doubt true, since all she had to do was pick up a phone and check for herself.
And she wasn’t unreasonable. It was a crisis. They happened. All he’d had to do was call her. She wouldn’t have been happy, but she’d have understood.
When he didn’t continue, didn’t offer an apology, she finally looked up. A mistake.
Until now, she’d been protected from her feelings, had believed that to love him in this way was wrong. Inside that shell she’d been able to keep up the pre
tence that she loathed him. It wasn’t just a dress that she’d let fall at her feet, it had been the armour plating with which she’d protected herself. There was more than one way of being naked…
‘You want me to use that in the marketing campaign?’ she prompted, attempting to regain that lost ground.
‘You’re angry.’
‘Only with myself,’ she said, with a dismissive gesture. Before she could resume reading the report in front of her, he caught her hand.
‘Please, sweetheart, try to understand.’
She swallowed. His hand was cool, strong, but then he was strong. He’d always been the first one to leap in to take care of problems. Always been there when a broad pair of shoulders was needed. She’d seen him taking care of the staff, concerned about their welfare. Knew he’d paid for private treatment for Martin’s wife. She couldn’t fault his commitment, his kindness. She just wanted a little of that for herself.
‘It was lucky I was there. No one seemed to know where to find the cockstop.’
He sounded so sincere, so reasonable. But it wasn’t reasonable. It was an excuse.
He was the one who’d challenged her over the secrecy of their relationship, implied that she was running scared. But she wasn’t the one with the problem. It was him. All night she’d been going over it. Remembering how, when she’d been alone in defending him, declaring herself, he’d been silent. The only time he’d spoken up was for his precious family. Desperate to hold it together, even though, for him, it had always been falling apart…
He never let the business down. Only her. How many times did it have to happen before she got it through her thick skull.
‘Bad management, Max.’
That got to him. Hit him where it hurt…
‘Walking away to keep a date with you would have made that better? How? The staff carried on, working up to their ankles in water-’
‘Bonuses all round for them, no doubt-’
‘They earned it! We rely on them every night of the year. They have to be able to rely on me, too!’
Of course they did. She knew that. She even understood. But deep down, she knew it was more than that.