by India Grey
It was like an Arctic wind in the heat of the soft English afternoon.
‘I think you could be right.’ She stepped back, dropping her gaze. ‘Jamie, have you met Tom’s best man, Tristan Romero? Tristan, this is Jamie Thomas.’
Jamie looked at Tristan and then back at Lily, his mouth opening as realisation dawned.
‘Tom’s…Oh. Right,’ said Jamie awkwardly, clearly wondering whether he should bow in deference to Tristan’s title, apologise for the reptile comment, or punch him for walking out on his sister’s best friend. ‘Well, I was just going to get another drink, so…’
Jamie melted away. And as far as Lily was concerned so did the other guests, the rose-garlanded marquee, the waiters with their trays of vintage champagne, the castle, the lake, the rest of the world. As she stood a few feet away from Tristan, looking into his eyes, nothing else existed but themselves and the history that no one else understood. For a moment, a wonderful, terrible, wrenching moment, Lily thought she saw the pain she carried around secretly inside herself reflected in the intense blue of his eyes.
And then he looked away and the moment was gone.
‘How are you, Lily?’ he said. Courteous, civilised, dutiful.
Of course.
‘I’m fine.’
A lie, but an excusable one. One told with the best of intentions—to save him awkwardness, to protect herself, to make him more likely to consider the question she needed to ask him. And besides, in a relationship built on half-truths and evasions, what difference did one more small deceit make?
‘Good. I’m glad. You’re looking…’ he paused, a frown flickering over his face as his gaze swept over her ‘…as beautiful as ever.’
So he was clearly not averse to lying either. Lily gave a small, painful smile. The connection she thought she had felt a moment ago had completely vanished now and a bleak, frozen continent of unspoken misery lay between them.
‘Thank you,’ she said ruefully. ‘I appreciate your dishonesty. I wish my agent was as good at lying as you are.’
With narrowed eyes Tristan looked out into the distance, away from her. His voice was distant too. Polite.
‘You’re not working?’
She shook her head, holding onto her champagne glass with both hands to keep it steady. ‘Not since the last perfume commercial.’ She laughed. ‘And after that disaster I probably won’t work again.’
‘What happened?’
‘It was the follow up to the wedding one we shot in…in Rome that day.’ Our wedding day. ‘It was the next instalment in the story.’
‘Let me guess,’ he said gruffly. ‘A baby?’
She nodded. ‘I don’t think the director or the crew were terribly impressed with my lack of professionalism.’
‘Dios, Lily—’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said quickly, desperately trying to withstand the annihilating wave of longing that smashed through her as she heard the slight rasp of emotion behind his words. She took a swift mouthful of champagne. ‘I never wanted to be a model anyway. It was something I fell into and I kept on doing it because there was no reason not to. But in the last year everything has changed.’
They both found themselves looking down towards the lake. Tristan felt as if he were tied to a railway track and the train were getting closer. He nodded.
‘Dimitri’s sister,’ she said quietly. ‘I often think about her. Did she have her twins?’
‘Yes. A boy and a girl. Emilia and Andrei.’
She exhaled slowly; a mixture of joy and anguish. ‘Ah. How lovely…’
Tristan’s head jerked round. ‘Lily…’
‘No, really, it’s fine. I’m thrilled for her. I have to get over what happened…move on,’ she said more wistfully. ‘I want to move out of London, try to do something useful. The original charity who asked me to be an ambassador in Africa aren’t keen to proceed at the moment because…because of what happened. They don’t feel I could cope with seeing children suffering just yet, and they’re probably right, but I’m looking into other ways I can be useful to them, and—’
She stopped, aware that she was talking faster and faster in her desperation to get to the point, and finding that now she had she didn’t know what to say. Her head throbbed with dread and hope.
‘Tristan, there’s something else. Something I need your help with.’
He turned back, looking at her blankly. ‘Money? If you’re not working, I’d be happy to help out. We are still married, after all.’
‘No. It’s not that.’ She took a deep breath. ‘Not the money anyway, although the being married part is relevant, I suppose. You see, I want to try to adopt a child. I know it’s very soon after…we lost our daughter…but I feel, deep down, that it’s something I profoundly want to do. I just can’t imagine…the rest of my life…without…’
She was breathing hard, unevenly, trying to hold the tears back. Trying to ignore the voice in her head that whispered, You. I can’t imagine the rest of my life without children and you…
He stood very still, his inscrutable face giving nothing away. ‘How can I help?’ he said tonelessly. ‘Can you do this privately? Can I pay?’
She shook her head. ‘Unfortunately even the Romero billions can’t buy what I want,’ she said ruefully. ‘There’s a process—a long, difficult process to go through with social workers and being vetted for suitability, and approval is by no means certain. I don’t want to get turned down. This is my last, my only chance. I want to make sure this happens for me, Tristan.’
A muscle ticced in his cheek. ‘What do you want of me?’
‘I want us to apply together. I think the chances of success will be greater if I’m part of a couple than if I apply by myself—an ex-model from a single parent family with a broken marriage behind her doesn’t look good. I know our marriage was something you never wanted, and neither did I, but I did it for you. And now I’m asking you to do this for me.’
‘Do what exactly?’
‘Continue the pretence that we’re a normal married couple…’ there was a hard, cold edge to her voice now ‘…very much in love. It won’t be easy, but of course privately we can go on as before. You can live your life, have your freedom and I won’t ask any questions. And then at the end of it we go our separate ways.’
Very slowly he shook his head. ‘It’s impossible.’
‘Tristan, don’t say that—’
‘Lily, you must know that it is,’ he said despairingly. ‘We tried it before and it nearly destroyed us both. Living a lie like that, pretending out of some sense of obligation or duty—I can’t do it again.’
A sheet of ice formed itself instantly over Lily’s heart. She felt the blood leave her face. It wasn’t a lie for me, she wanted to shout. I wasn’t pretending to love you. Light-headed, cold with horror, she began to back away as Tristan’s face blurred behind a veil of humiliating tears.
‘OK. I understand…’ she gasped, holding up her hands in front of her as he opened his mouth to protest.
‘Lily, wait!’ he growled. ‘Just listen—’
But at that moment an arm slid round her shoulders and she looked up to see Jamie had appeared beside her. He was looking at Tristan with unconcealed dislike.
‘They’re waiting for you to start the receiving line,’ he said coldly. ‘Although I think that Lily can be excused that ordeal.’ He turned his attention to her, his face softening with concern. ‘Are you all right?’
She nodded, closing her eyes against the tears.
When she opened them again Tristan was gone.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
HELL, thy name is wedding reception.
Sitting at the top table in the sweltering afternoon heat, Tristan gritted his teeth and looked at his still-full champagne glass. He felt as if he were the victim of some sadistic, protracted torture technique designed to test his strength and endurance and will power in every way possible.
The wedding breakfast was over, and as the guests
dozed over coffee Scarlet’s father turned over yet another page of his speech. Beside Tristan, Tatiana’s slim thigh, encased in duck-egg blue silk, pressed against his.
There had been a time when his automatic response to any kind of emotion would have been to obliterate it with some hot, meaningless, commitment-free sex, and back in those days the sultry looks coming his way from the chief bridesmaid would have been extremely good news.
He moved away slightly.
Unfortunately for Tatiana it had been a long time since he had dealt with things that way. A year, to be precise. And as a strategy for emotional avoidance it had to be said that particular night had backfired spectacularly.
Automatically his hand moved across the table and his fingers closed around the stem of his glass, twisting it round while he resisted the temptation to pick it up and drain it. He badly wanted something to take the edge off the torment, and in the absence of a revolver and a single bullet alcohol seemed to offer his best chance, but unfortunately he had to stand up and make a speech in a minute.
Or perhaps that was being optimistic, he thought sourly. If Scarlet’s father continued at his present rate Tristan would have plenty of time to down a bottle and sober up again before it was his turn.
If he leaned forward he could just see Lily’s profile, half hidden by Jamie Thomas’s lean frame. The razor wire wrapped around Tristan’s heart tightened a little and his chest burned with the effort of not getting up, vaulting across the table and snatching her up into his arms.
Dios. Dios mio…Why hadn’t she given him a chance to finish?
Finally Mr Thomas brought his speech to a close and everyone rose to their feet and toasted the bride and groom with enthusiastic relief. Tristan’s hand was like a vice around his glass as he put it to his lips, wondering whether to take this chance to grab Lily and slip out. His head buzzed with the need to talk to her.
Too late. Tom was already getting to his feet as everyone else settled down into their seats once again. Tristan, caged and crucified by his own moral code of courtesy and duty, sat down too, clenching his hands together and resting his forehead on them as Tom started to speak.
‘Ladies and gentlemen…I’ll make this brief.’
Not bloody brief enough, thought Tristan dully, his heart jerking violently against his ribs as he looked at Lily. Not brief enough.
Tom was as good as his word. His speech was short and typically full of wry, self-deprecating humour and as the guests rose to their feet again to toast the bridesmaids they were still smiling.
The vintage champagne burned Lily’s throat like acid as she choked back sudden tears and stared out of the marquee into the melting, strawberry-sorbet sunset. It was nearly over now, she told herself desperately. She only had to hold it together for a little bit longer before she could slip away quietly and howl out her sorrow and frustration and emptiness into the goose-down pillows of her room.
Tristan’s refusal earlier had felt like another loss. Not of a real child this time, but of hope. Of another little bit of her future. She wasn’t sure how much more loss she could take.
It would be so much easier if she could hate him, she thought bleakly, absent-mindedly twirling a sugar flower from the top of the wedding cake between her fingers. She should hate him: this was the man who had delivered the news of their baby’s death in flat, emotionless tones, and then left her alone in the hospital. The same man who had just crushed her fragile dream with a single word.
But then she would remember the pain she sometimes glimpsed beneath the layer of ice in his eyes, the mask of honour and duty she suspected he wore to cover up the loneliness of his upbringing. She remembered the torment on his face sometimes when sleep had stripped away that mask, and she knew that it was hopeless. He touched her in places she couldn’t help responding to, regardless of how sensible that response was, or how healthy. She hadn’t chosen to fall in love with him, just as she hadn’t chosen anything else that had happened to her in the last year, but now it had happened she had to live with it. Minimise the damage.
Around her she felt a frisson of interest stir the syrupy afternoon air. The girls on her table—a mixture of heiresses and models—were all sitting up a little straighter, fluffing up hair that had been flattened earlier beneath extravagant hats. Looking up, Lily immediately saw why.
At the top table Tristan had got to his feet.
Lily had the sensation of being in a lift as it plunged quickly downwards. He was so golden and gorgeous, but as she looked up at him she recognised a new severity in his features that she hadn’t seen before. The intense blue eyes were the same, and the perfect cheekbones and the square chin with its deeply carved cleft, but, indefinably, gone was any trace of that louche, wicked playboy who had stepped out of the helicopter last summer and kissed her so audaciously. Looking away quickly, she saw that the sugar flower had crumbled to dust in her fingers.
‘As a Spaniard this role of ‘best man’ is not one I’m very familiar with…’ Tristan began, and a little sigh of female appreciation went round the marquee as that deep, husky Spanish voice filled the evening. Gazing out across the lawns, Lily felt it shiver across her skin, spreading goosebumps of longing as her poor, ravaged body stirred with feelings she had suppressed for a long time and her head was filled with a picture of a dark church, a handful of people.
‘And when Tom asked me to do it I initially refused on the grounds that he’s clearly a far better man than I am,’ Tristan went on. A ripple of laughter greeted this. He had them all in the palm of his hand, thought Lily painfully. It was completely impossible to remain immune to that combination of grave intelligence and those killer good looks.
‘However, when he sent me a copy of a book called The Complete Guide to Being a Best Man I discovered that it was not so much a competitive event as a series of clearly defined duties.’
More laughter.
Duties. Lily closed her eyes for a second against the pain.
‘There are quite a lot of them,’ he went on huskily, holding the book up and bending it back so that the pages flickered out like a fan, ‘but I have learned recently that to do something out of duty is not always the best approach…’
Every word was another turn of the screw. Wasn’t it enough that he had shattered her last hope, she thought numbly, without making her suffer so publicly too?
Tristan gave Tom a lopsided smile and put the book down on the table. ‘Thanks for the thought, Tom, but I’m going to do this my way.’
Outside beyond the silken drapes of the marquee, the blushpink sun was dipping down behind the trees around the lake, staining the sky the same colour as the roses in Scarlet’s bouquet. In the centre of the lake the tower stood, dark and forbidding, its windows reflecting the sinking crimson sun and making it look as if it were on fire. Tristan’s voice, deep and grave, went on, talking about the perfection of the day. Lily’s head was filled with a sort of roaring, as if she were standing on the top of a mountain in a high wind.
Wishful thinking.
‘…everything a wedding should be…’ Tristan’s voice reached her as if from a great distance ‘…champagne and roses; beautiful dresses and beautiful bridesmaids…’
Back in the real world, all around her, people smiled fondly. But then they couldn’t know that the perfect, proper wedding that the best man was describing was the opposite in every way of his own hasty, hole-in-the-corner one to a woman he didn’t love.
‘It’s about friends and families and laughing and dancing and fun.’
He stopped, looking down for a moment, frowning as if he was wondering how to go on. Everyone waited. The dying sun cast everything in a soft, rosy glow, adding to the sense of enchantment.
‘That’s a wedding. A marriage is a different thing entirely.’ His voice was soft now, and filled with a kind of weary resignation. ‘A marriage is about sharing, talking, compromising. It’s about being honest. Being there.’
Enough.
Lily’s throat
burned and her eyes felt as if they were full of splinters as she got up and slipped quietly out from her place at the table. She walked quickly away from the marquee across the grass. The dew was falling and it was damp underfoot, making her heels sink into the soft ground so she paused for a second to kick them off and gather them up before stumbling onwards, blinded by tears. Tristan’s voice followed her, filling her head and seeming to wrap itself around her in the velvety air, in a ceaseless, caressing taunt.
‘Lily…’
She jerked to a standstill for a second as she realised that he was behind her, that what he was saying was her name. Then she carried on, faster than before, almost running down the sloping lawn towards the lake.
‘Leave me alone, Tristan. Go back to your rapturous audience. I think I’ve heard enough.’
‘Have you? I don’t think so.’
She did stop then, whirling round to face him, her face blazing with anger that she no longer had the strength or the inclination to hide. ‘How could you?’ she croaked, and the rawness in her voice was shocking in the perfect, rose-pink evening. ‘How could you stand up there in front of all those people and say that stuff about sharing and talking and…and compromise, for God’s sake? How could you say it in front of me?’
Her voice was rising to a shout and there were tears running down her face. Taking a step towards him, she raised her hands, clenching her fists and pounding them against his chest as the anger and the grief, sealed in for so long, came spilling out.
‘I never asked anything of you, Tristan! I didn’t ask to be your wife, I didn’t ask to be taken to a country where I knew no one and left alone there for days on end while you went away…’ She gave a wild laugh. ‘God, I didn’t even ask where you went to! I asked for nothing and that’s exactly what I got!’