Fitting my thumb into the nearly-invisible finger hole, I slid it open.
It took a minute for my eyes to adjust to the darkness inside. There was nothing but piles of old newspapers and in the back corner, a small metal box. I pulled it out and brushed off a coating of dust. The lock on the lid was so rusty it gave way under the pressure of my hands. No one had opened this box in a long time.
Inside were deeds written in French, copies of birth certificates for Simon and Eleanor, keys to a safe deposit box. At the bottom under an old check register was a legal document dated almost thirty years ago.
Nothing about it meant anything to me, except the name typed on the first page: Annabel Brayden. Annabel. The aunt who’d died young of an overdose.
The letterhead was from a London law firm. I glanced through the first few paragraphs, calling up what little legalese I’d learned before dropping out of law school. It had something to do with Annabel’s death – her last wishes, maybe, or instructions for passing on her possessions.
I flipped through the pages impatiently, suddenly tired of the whole thing. What the hell was I looking for, an explanation for this strange detour in my life? A clue to the impossibly complicated man I’d fallen in love with?
I pushed everything back into the box and slid it under the bench out of sight. If only I’d done things differently. If I had resisted Marc from the start, I’d be in New York now, having avoided all the joy of knowing him but all the pain as well. Anything would have been better than this constant limbo.
As I was standing to go, a phrase flitted through my mind. Natural mother.
Natural mother? Where had I seen those words?
I knelt and pulled the box out again, flipping through deeds and photographs with trembling hands. I spread the legal documents in front of me, five wrinkled pages in all. This time, I knew what they were.
Natural mother, Annabel Brayden. Natural father, unknown.
Adoptive mother, Elise Bertrand Brayden. Adoptive father, Simon James Brayden.
The child, male, six months five days old.
Marc Alexandre Brayden.
I re-read the lines to make sure there was no mistake. Carefully putting the pages back in order, I replaced them at the bottom of the box. I made sure the box was all the way under the bench behind the newspapers, and closed the door.
Everything Marc had ever believed about himself was wrong.
It was true, after all. Simon wasn’t his father. But Marc wasn’t even related to the woman he thought was his mother, which meant he wasn’t related to Sade. Everything he found so unforgivable on that side of the family -- none of it was connected to him by blood and never had been. His torment was for nothing, a waste of time based on a deception.
He’d be back from the hospital soon, but I could not tell him what I’d found.
This was too big for me, for us. He’d want to know – he needed to know – but Simon and Eleanor had kept it from him for reasons I might never understand. If I showed him the papers, there was no telling what disaster might result.
I’d be keeping a momentous secret from him, but I had no choice. The secret hadn’t been mine to discover, and it wasn’t mine to share.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
An hour later, Marc stood in the bedroom changing his shirt and telling me about his day at the hospital. Warm lamplight reflected off his bare chest and stomach, making his chiseled muscles gleam. Knowing what I knew now, he looked even more incredible to me.
This brilliant, beautiful man had come from the saddest of circumstances, a blessing out of tragedy.
I was bursting with questions I could never ask. Where was his biological father? Had Annabel really died from an overdose? What had made her so unhappy that she would risk leaving her infant son without a mother?
Marc described Eleanor’s impatience with the nurses and Simon’s delight at being the center of attention. I sat on the edge of the bed wearing a frozen smile.
He had no idea. Surely Eleanor knew, being so much older, but if she’d wanted him to know she would have told him. She couldn’t understand the suffering it caused him – or maybe she did and it didn’t matter.
“I have a gift for you,” I said, taking a piece of paper from the nightstand.
“A gift?” he said, slipping a slim gray t-shirt over his head.
“It’s something I found in the library this afternoon.”
Brow creasing, he walked over to me and took the paper from my hand. He glanced at it, his eyes slowly widening. “Wow,” he said. “Is this for real?”
I feigned excitement. “That’s the letter you’ve been looking for, isn’t it?”
He shook his head in disbelief. “The corner is torn, there’s water damage – it has to be,” he said in a stunned voice. “I can’t believe you found it.”
“I didn’t know what I had at first,” I said, sickeningly aware of the double meaning of my words.
He grinned as if I’d just conjured the past itself from thin air. “Unreal. We’ve been searching for this forever. Where was it?”
“In a biography of your grandfather, on one of the shelves in the library. Maybe somebody used it to mark the page without knowing what it was.”
I hadn’t even been looking for it. I’d opened the book hoping to find more information about Annabel, but it was written before she was born.
“What made you look there?”
“Just a feeling,” I said, amazed at how easily the words rolled off my tongue.
“We’ve never gone through all those books. None of us thought the letter might be there.”
“It’s a great postscript to the article,” I said. “If it’s okay with you, I’ll revise the ending and send it to Katherine tomorrow, along with a photograph.”
He kissed me on the forehead. “Eleanor will be thrilled. It could increase the value of all the documents when they go to auction. Do you mind if I call her now? She’s coming by in a few hours but I don’t want to wait.”
“Go ahead,” I said. “I’ll start dinner.”
I couldn’t believe he didn’t see my secret burned across my face like a mark of shame. I’ve spent the day trolling through Simon’s belongings, discovering something you desperately need to know.
After his call, he came down to the kitchen and thanked me again for finding the letter. He helped me cook and clean up, chatting all the while, unaware of my deception. I made no mention of last night, or the tension that crackled in every word we said. I even laughed – a vibrant sound, so believable – when Marc mentioned his father’s horrified response to the hospital lunch menu.
When had I become such an accomplished liar? Was I really the kind of woman who pried into a family’s past, who stalked suicidal ex-girlfriends and drunkenly threw herself at waiters?
Had a few short weeks with Marc changed me that much?
It was after dark when Eleanor came by in her rented Mercedes to pick up some things for her father. Marc was in the library on a late call with one of his partners, leaving me alone with his sister.
“My father can’t live without his slippers and his crossword puzzles,” she said, coming down from Simon’s room with a small duffel bag. “But I’ll be damned if I’ll bring him the Scotch. We’ve tolerated that long enough.”
“Do you have everything he needs?” I asked.
“I have instructions not to return to the hospital unless I do. I’d love to bring him the letter you found but I don’t dare take it with me. Incredible how you discovered it.”
“It was an accident,” I said. “Dumb luck.”
“Well, I’ll have to look at it when I’m not waiting on my father hand and foot. Please tell Marc I’ll meet him at the hospital tomorrow.”
“I will,” I said. “It was nice seeing you.”
“And you.” She took a few steps across the foyer, and then stopped as if she’d remembered something. “Are you staying in France long, Sophie? I thought you were here for just a week or so.”<
br />
That was before I upended my life to be with your brother. “I’ve been working on two more articles, restaurants and real estate.”
“Interesting subjects to write about, I’m sure.” She slung the handle of the bag over her shoulder. “I should be off. My father will think I’m dead in a ditch.”
Marc was still in the library. This was the time, if I could only find my voice. “Before you go…”
“Yes?”
“When I came across the letter –” I stopped to clear my throat. “Well, I found something else I wish I hadn’t seen.”
She gave me a quick smile. “Sade wrote a lot of outrageous things. You can only read so much before feeling thoroughly disgusted.”
“Well – no, actually,” I said. “This wasn’t something Sade wrote.”
She gave me an impatiently quizzical look. “What was it, then?”
“Something having to do with Marc. Uh, Marc and your aunt Annabel.”
“Annabel,” she repeated. For a long, uncomfortable moment she stared at me in silence.
“The legal documents, I suppose?” she asked.
“Yes.”
Though I braced for rage and defensiveness, she only looked sad. Sad and a little resigned.
“Where did you find them?” she asked.
“In a metal box in the library. Under the bench near the stairs.”
“I see,” she said quietly. “Well, it’s not your fault. I told my father years ago to keep important papers in a safe-deposit box. My mother had only a few letters at her house mentioning it and I got rid of them before Marc came to pack her things.”
She paused, her mouth set as if she were prepared for the worst. “You’re going to tell him, I suppose.”
“No,” I said. “It isn’t my place.”
She scanned my face, obviously trying to discern my intentions. “I’m happy you think so,” she said. “He must never know.”
“Why not?”
“Because then he’d have no one. I’m not sure if he’s mentioned Annabel to you, but she was very defiant. Yes, her parents were strict with her but it’s no excuse. While she was slouching around London taking drugs, she had a child with some lowlife. A neighbor found Marc lying next to her body, sobbing his heart out. He’d been there for two days. Can you imagine? A six-month old child.”
“My God,” I said, putting a hand to my chest.
She nodded curtly. “We have no idea who the father is and no one ever came forward. Certainly that’s worse than being related to a notorious madman, wouldn’t you say? He’s more a fable in our family than anything, and he’s been dead a couple of centuries. If Marc knew the situation he really comes from, it would be terrible for him. He’d be lost.” She spoke with absolute certainty, her eyes a hard, glittering brown.
“Would he?” I said. “How do you know?”
Eleanor looked at me as if I were dense. “We’re all he has. He’s not married. He doesn’t have children. He has his business and that’s hardly a substitute for people who love him.”
I hesitated, searching for a way to soft-pedal the truth. “From what he’s told me, it’s been hard for him to accept things that happened on your mother’s side of the family.”
Her mouth twisted into a smirk. “I suppose you mean love affairs and scandals and all that. These troubles happen in a lot of families. Are they harder to accept than having no family at all? My parents considered telling him about his mother when he was a teenager but he was having trouble enough. He’d probably have disowned us, the only people who’ve ever cared for him.”
“But you’re still his family, even if he was adopted. He’d understand that.”
“Would he?” she said, squinting skeptically at me. “He would believe we’ve deceived him all these years, which we have. His father is his uncle and his mother was his uncle’s wife. I’m his cousin. That knowledge would change everything for him.”
“Maybe for the better,” I said, smiling to temper my words.
“Oh, please.” Her face was sharp in the bright light from the chandelier. My early perception of her as friendly and accommodating had been wrong. She needed control as much as her brother did, but in a very different way. “Forgive me, Sophie, but you know nothing about Marc and this family. It’s too complex to explain.”
“You don’t have to explain,” I said. “I have a good idea already.”
She let out a cold laugh. “If you think I don’t understand your connection with my brother, remember the calls I used to get from his former girlfriend. I’m well aware of the tie Marc sees between his family and his relationships with women.”
“But do you know how much it bothers him? He believes it’s something innate that affects your uncle, your grandfather – ”
“That’s absurd,” she scoffed. “Obviously it’s not because Marc has no blood ties on my mother’s side.”
“But he doesn’t know that.”
She raised her pointed chin. “Even if I were to tell him about Annabel, he’ll still be the same person with the same bizarre ways of relating to women. Nothing will change.”
“Nothing but the way he thinks about himself, Eleanor. That could make all the difference in the world.”
She gave me a condescending smile. “I’m sure you’re well-intentioned, Sophie. You think you have insight into him that the rest of us don’t, and you may be right. But I have my father to worry about. Turning Marc’s life upside down isn’t my top priority right now.”
“It’s up to you, of course.”
“I appreciate you letting this be a family issue.” She patted my shoulder stiffly. “I meant to thank you, by the way.”
“For?”
“The lovely article you wrote about us. Marc forwarded it to me this morning. He told me you were gifted and he was right. I’m sure you’ll go far.”
Her praise sounded false, like a little pay-back for staying silent. “Thank you, Eleanor.”
“You know I’m putting most of Sade’s work up for auction? Even the letter you found today. We’ll include quotes from your article in the brochure that goes out to serious collectors before bidding starts. I think it will really help generate interest.”
“Great,” I said flatly. “When does your father come home?”
“In a few days, I hope. My children are back at boarding school so I’ll stay with him for a while. If I don’t see you again, Sophie, best of luck.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
I lay awake that night listening to Marc breathe calmly beside me. We’d made love, an uneasy stab at vanilla sex that had satisfied neither of us. Every moment had felt like a performance, a story we’d agreed to tell each other. We can be like everyone else if we try hard enough.
I’d spent half an hour pretending I didn’t want to be roped into submission, while he’d pretended he didn’t want to give me what I craved. Our bodies were the same, our desires were the same, but now we lied to each other. We lied without uttering a single word.
What he’d said three days ago was true: he had affected my life, but not in the way he believed. He hadn’t destroyed me, he’d awakened me. He’d shown me what real pleasure was, and now he was taking it from me. And all because he blamed himself for things outside of his control.
I’d been lying to myself for days. But tonight, I wouldn’t do it anymore.
I loved Marc, but could not tell him what I’d found. And there was only one way to give him the peace he wanted so much.
When I got back to New York I’d throw myself into work, build my résumé, launch another blog. My career would thrive, but I’d never feel about another man the way I felt about Marc. At least I’d know I’d done the right thing for the man I loved.
I couldn’t cure him of his desires, but I could take away the one thing that made them so difficult – my presence in his life.
I got up and tiptoed out into the hall with my phone. In ten minutes I was back in bed next to Marc, my heart racing. I turned my head t
o look at him and saw that he was already awake. He was on his side gazing at me, his lips turned into a sweet smile.
“What’s occupying your mind at three-thirty in the morning?” he asked.
“Just having trouble sleeping.”
“Any particular reason?”
He slid up next to me and put his hand on my stomach. I could feel it again, the strain that was tearing us apart piece by piece.
“I’m leaving today, Marc,” I said.
His body went rigid. “What do you mean, today?”
“I got a two o’clock flight out of Lyon.”
He sat up into a patch of blue moonlight. “Sophie, no.”
“Yes,” I said. “It’s already done.”
The sheet dropped from his sculpted body, making my stomach reel. It seemed impossible that this gorgeous, complicated man would soon be part of my past, and another woman’s future.
“I don’t understand,” he said, sounding confused and irritated. “Why the rush?”
“Is it a rush? We both knew I was going home sometime.”
“But this way, without warning? What the hell, it’s the middle of the night.”
I felt the shock in his voice like a sliver to my heart. “What we’re doing now, it’s not working. You know that.”
“Give me a chance,” he pleaded in an agitated voice. “It’s only been a few days.”
“It won’t make a difference,” I said softly.
He didn’t respond. Taking shallow breaths, I waited. Please, I thought, clenching my fists under the covers. Please.
I wanted him to fly into a rage, shout at me and smash the furniture. This was the man who’d made me cuff myself to a bed, who’d tied me, collared me, and changed me. He could fight for me. I knew he could. He had it in him.
But instead of saving us, he lay down and stared into the darkness. When he spoke, his tone was even more determined than mine. “I won’t subject you to this life, even if it means losing you.”
It was over. There was nothing more to say, but I couldn’t help trying one last time.
“I want this life,” I said, grabbing his hand. “I want it more than anything.”
Descended (The Red Blindfold Book 2) Page 14