Leila wanted to reach out and touch him, but she didn’t dare. She sat without moving, just watching his taut face.
‘The first address I had was a blank. The bird had flown, years before. But the woman next door had another address for me, a few streets away. So I went there.’ His mouth tightened. ‘It was even shabbier, a place that had shed all pretence of dignity. I couldn’t believe that my mother had ever lived in places like these. Anyway, she wasn’t there, either. Again, there was a woman next door. A woman in the same line of business as the last one.’ He glanced at Leila. ‘By then, of course, I was starting to realise what sort of woman my mother was, and what she did for a living.’
‘Oh, Blaize,’ Leila said, with a little moan of grief for him.
He went on in a flat monotone. ‘The third address was the right one. She lived in an apartment block that was slightly better than the other two I’d visited. She was clearly doing well in her profession. There was even a touch of glamour. The place was almost inviting—all pink plush and velvet curtains, and a view, right over the river. The location was clearly convenient for the factories and the dockyards and the pubs. The places where she could meet her clients.’ He gave Leila a cold smile, but he wasn’t looking at her any more. He was looking into himself, into his own past. ‘Her clients,’ he repeated, in a softer voice. ‘That’s who she thought I was, at first. One of her clients.’
She closed her eyes in pain, his words washing over her like icy water.
‘Like you, I had a moment of instant recognition when she opened the door. It was the event I’d dreamed of for so long—recognising my own features in the face of another human being. Recognising my mother. I couldn’t believe how young she was! She might have been my sister, rather than my mother. And she was smiling, as though she recognised me. Except that recognising strange men was Just one of the tricks of trade.’ Blaize laughed softly. ‘She said she couldn’t quite remember my name, but that she never forgot a face.’
‘Did you—did you tell her who you were?’
‘I was waiting for her to recognise me,’ Blaize answered. ‘I couldn’t take my eyes off her. She had that blank, exhausted look that so many women in her profession get. But, beneath it, she was still beautiful; you could see that.’
Yes, she would have had to have been beautiful, Leila reflected, to have a son like Blaize. ‘Was she like you?’
Blaize took out his wallet, and opened it. There was a photograph in an inside flap. He took it out and passed it over to Leila. ‘I stole that from her. It was on a sideboard, in a little frame. She can’t have been much older than that when she had me.’
Leila stared at the beautiful, oval face. You couldn’t tell the colouring from the black and white photograph which had obviously been taken some years before, but the features of the eighteen or nineteen-year-old girl were exquisite. The only thing that marred the tranquil beauty of the face was a sadness in the eyes, and on the full mouth. A sadness that seemed to reach out of the picture and touch Leila’s heart.
‘She’s lovely.’ Leila looked up at, Blaize. ‘If you had to steal this from her, then you can’t have told her who you were.’
‘ It would have been cruel, at that moment,’ Blaize replied. ‘You see, she’d invited me in, and was talking to me as though I were there for…’ He grimaced. ‘For her services.’
‘But that’s horrible,’ Leila mourned. ‘You must have been in a state of shock.’
‘I was numb, more than anything else. The pain only came later. It wasn’t hard to tell what her problem was, Leila. She never stopped drinking while I was there, refilling her glass before it even got half-empty. I think it was the drink that stopped her from realising who I was. I like to think that, anyway.’
‘Blaize,’ she said quietly, ‘I’m so terribly sorry. I don’t know what to say. What you went through was far worse than what happened to me…’
‘I don’t know.’ Unexpectedly, his fingers were lacing through hers, warm and strong. ‘I had a shock to my delusions. But you had a rejection. That’s far worse. I don’t know how you survived that, as a person.’
Deep green eyes held hers, without challenge or anger for once, just with compassion and tenderness. ‘I don’t think I could have survived it, Leila.’
‘Oh, I’m sure you could,’ she said with a broken little laugh. His fingers tightened round hers. ‘I can see now why you’ve never told anyone this, Blaize. But you know that I understand, don’t you?’
‘I think you do.’ He nodded. ‘Sometimes I think you understand everything about me.’
The quiet words hung in the air for a long while, t drifting with the curls of cigar-smoke. Then Blaize drew back, staring out of the window at the river. ‘In the end, she got impatient with this skinny kid who sat staring at her like a ghost, paralysed and speechless. She said ,she would wait for me in the bedroom.’
Leila winced.
‘When she was gone, I stole the photograph you’re looking at. I left money on the table, everything I had, and just fled. What else could I do?’
‘Nothing: Leila said softly.
‘Nothing: he echoed. ‘Not then, anyway. Later, when I was a man, I was able to do more.’
‘You sent her money?’
‘I had to be very careful.’ Blaize nodded. ‘I didn’t want her to know where it was coming from. I told my lawyers to get in touch with her, and tell her that a distant relation in Devon had died. Why Devon?’ He smiled. ‘I wanted to get her away from Crowther, and out of the profession she was in. There had been pictures of Devon on the walls, so I guessed that she had a dream of going there. Anyway, the “legacy” consisted of a cottage near the sea, in a very pretty little town, and a life-income that effectively made her a well-off woman.’
‘That was generous of you.’
‘Generous?’ His expression was bitter. ‘How old is the girl in that picture, Leila?’
‘Eighteen? Nineteen at the most?’
‘I reckon she was eighteen when that was taken. And she had already borne me by then.’
‘How do you know?’ Leila asked curiously.
‘I can see it in her eyes. She’d already had me, and lost me.’
Leila stared at the picture, and felt her heart constrict.
Yes. That was why sorrow lived in the lovely eyes and mouth. Blaize was right.
‘Something must have put a girl like that on the road she ended up on. She wouldn’t have chosen it willingly. It was my fault, Leila.’
‘What are you saying?’
‘She ended up the way she did because of having an illegitimate child. Me.’ There was pain in his face, an echo of the pain in the photograph.
‘How can you say that?’ she gasped.
‘You don’t know what those little village communities are like. I do. They’d never have forgiven her for having an illegitimate child. She probably fell for some married man, some local swine who seduced her and abandoned her, and ruined her life. I don’t even want to know who he is. There’s no question in my mind, Leila. It was my arrival that destroyed my mother’s prospects. I owed her a life.’
‘Oh, Blaize! Have you tormented yourself with that, all your life?’
‘I’ve tried to make reparations.’ He took back the picture, and put it carefully back in his wallet. ‘She still lives in that cottage. The annuity which mysterious old “uncle” left her has a strange way of growing. By now, she’s quite a wealthy woman; and highly respected by everyone in the village.’ There was a glint of humour in his eyes. ‘It’s rather a posh little place, but not a soul in the town suspects that Mrs Oliver, with the Jaguar and the diamonds, was once a lady of the night, in a slum in Crowther.’
‘And she still doesn’t know who you are?’
Blaize shook his head slightly. ‘No. And no one in my family even suspects that I have a mother. Not even my lawyers know who she is. I’ve never told a soul.’
‘Not even Vanessa?’
‘Vanessa?’ he
snorted in contempt. ‘If I’d told Vanessa about my mother she’d have had a nervous breakdown. No, you’re the first living soul I’ve ever told.’
Leila was silent for a while, emotion forming a lump in her throat. ‘I appreciate that,’ she said quietly, at last. ‘But wouldn’t it be better—?’
‘To reveal all?’ Blaize finished for her, his expression ironic. ‘Tell my mother that her wealth comes from her long-lost, illegitimate son? Tell Tracey and Terry that their granny is alive, after all, and have to explain why I’ve kept it a secret all these years? Explain to Katherine that she’s going to have a mother-in-law, after all? Turn everybody’s life upside-down, including my own?’ He shook his head, the cigar smoking unheeded between his fingers. ‘No, Leila. Things are better off the way they are.’
‘But—your mother doesn’t even know whether you’re alive or dead. It might make all the difference to her to know that you’ve become so successful, and that you care about her!’
‘Now you’re talking the kind of sentimental nonsense that Katherine likes to indulge in,’ he said drily. ‘I’m pretty sure my mother knows where I am, and what my life has become.’
‘Are you?’ She blinked.
‘I traced her.’ He shrugged. ‘If she’d ever had the impulse, it would have been equally easy for her to have traced me. I’m sure she’ll have done it.’
‘In which case,’ Leila said gently, ‘she’ll be very, very proud of you.’
‘Maybe. But she’s never been in contact.’
‘So you both know about the other … but she doesn’t imagine that you’re supporting her?’
‘Yes. And that’s the way I want it. To let her know that she’s been living on my money for the past twenty years, when she probably has a huge guilt complex about me, would not be exactly diplomatic. Nor would it be exactly diplomatic to intrude in her life, if she wants to hide what she was from me. It might spoil all the happiness she’s managed to build up since I got her out of Crowther. No, little one. It’s enough for me to know that she’s alive, and as happy as possible. I don’t want to intrude into her life after all these years.’
She watched his face with gentle eyes. ‘You’re a very strange man,’ she said softly.
‘And you’re a very strange woman. Strange, and dangerous. How the hell did you worm all that out of me?’ His face was changing as he spoke, the shutters coming down. Every line of his grim expression showed her that he was now regretting having opened his heart to her. ‘I must have been mad, telling you all that.’
‘Of course you weren’t mad!’
‘No? Haven’t I just put myself in your power?’ His passionate mouth twisted. ‘If you wanted to, you could use that information against me to very good effect. A little scandal about Blaize Oliver would be worth a lot of money in the City.’
‘Blaize!’
‘Oh, I’d pay a small fortune to stop it getting around,’ he said drily. ‘Not for my own sake, of course. But for the sake of protecting Terry and Tracey, and my mother…’ He looked at her darkly. ‘How do I know you won’t go straight off to Fleet Street with the tale, once your six weeks with me is up?’
‘I can’t believe that you’d think that of me!’ She was so wounded by his lack of trust in her that she was stunned. ‘I’m not like that!’
‘Everyone’s like that,’ he retorted shortly. ‘And, as I told you, I especially don’t trust women.’
‘You have to trust someone now and then,’ she said in a low, urgent voice. ‘Don’t regret telling me about your mother, Blaize. I’m not going to use it against you! It’s as sacred to me as … as my own past.’ She held his eyes. ‘You’re the only person who knows about me, remember. I’ve never told anyone else, either.’
Blaize met her eyes for a moment. He nodded slightly, as though considering what she had said. ‘I don’t regret telling you, Leila. I’d rather have told you than anyone else in my life. But I’ll never tell another living soul. Not even Katherine, when we get married. I don’t want her to know.’
Abruptly, he leaned forward and crushed the cigar into the ashtray.
‘I thought you weren’t meant to do that with a good cigar,’ she heard herself saying, her voice almost normal.
‘When we get married.’ The words were echoing through her mind like a leaden bell. So he was going to marry Katherine, after all. The pain swelled inside her, threatening to burst into helpless tears.
‘You aren’t. But nobody can obey all the rules all the time.’ He summoned the waiter impatiently, then rose to his feet. ‘Come on,’ he said harshly. ‘We’ve got to get back to the La Motta people by four-thirty, and we have some documents to draft. You look as though you’re going to burst into tears at any moment. Don’t be a sentimental fool, Leila. We’re here on business, remember?’
As they flew back to Cap Sa Sal in the late afternoon sunlight, Leila’s mind was throbbing with thoughts of Blaize. So much was now clear to her, so much that had been almost impossible to understand before.
The things he’d told her about his life had suddenly made it all click into place. Why he behaved the way he did with women, for one thing. It was little wonder that he found it so hard to trust them.
For another thing, she understood for the first time just how deeply he dreaded rejection. After discovering what his mother was, after what Vanessa had done to him, it was far easier to stay uninvolved, to keep his relationships to casual affairs, than to risk more pain.
It was one of the keys to his character, she was sure of that! Somewhere deep in his psyche, he felt he had to compensate by being better than others, because of his birth. It was something she could understand.
Her own reaction to being illegitimate had been different, but then, she was not a man. And her life had been much easier than his, she understood that.
That explained the flame that always burned in him, the need to excel, and achieve more than others. And it explained why he was so protective of his children, why he had turned on her so furiously when he’d thought she had hurt Tracey.
Yet, for all the hardship he had had to bear, he was so good to others. Even his treatment of his mother had shown the utmost tact and consideration. He was a man who did good to others, and cared deeply for those who mattered to him. And he asked little in return.
Leila stared out unseeingly at the green landscape of Catalonia, rushing by beneath them. She perceived now that her feelings for Blaize Oliver went much deeper than she could ever have imagined. She’d known him a bare three weeks, and lie was already a part of her life, something so intrinsic to her being that she didn’t know how she was ever going to be able to leave him.
How would she manage without him? She glanced at his face as he concentrated on Dying the helicopter, both tanned hands on the controls, dark glasses shading his eyes. For the first time in her life, for the first time ever, she had felt that she belonged. Belonged to Blaize Oliver, the only man she could ever truly be at one with.
Arid Blaize was going to marry Katherine Henessey.
He was lost to her. He had been lost to her from the start. Men like Blaize didn’t get serious about girls like Leila. His whole career had been a search for wealth and stability. How could he ever love a woman who came from the very kind of background that he had been escaping from all his life?
It was time to start cauterising the feelings in her heart. Burning them out before the ultimate pain of leaving tore her apart …
They landed in the same field, where Blaize gave the controls over to Rick. He and Leila got out, watched Rick take off again to fly the chopper back to its hangar, then drove up to the house in the car. It had been a long, tiring day, and they said little to one another.
When they got back to the house, Jason Tennant, the last of the weekend guests, was preparing to leave in a couple of hours. Relations between him and Blaize were still slightly stiff, and Leila had a brief drink in their company before taking herself off upstairs, guessing that her presence would
not be helping to ease the atmosphere.
She was just about to drop in onTerry when she remembered Blaize’s injunction of last night, that she should stay away from the kids. Presumably that still stood, despite what had passed between them this afternoon.
Anyway, it was better this way. It was time to start curtailing her feelings for the children, too. She didn’t want her heart to be broken into three different pieces when she had to leave …
She walked past the children’s rooms, fighting down the urge to go in and see them, and only gave way to her feelings when she was in the privacy of her own room.
She showered and changed, then lay on her bed, closing her eyes. A little sleep before dinner might not go amiss. Exhaustion would only make the danger of breaking down all the more hard to withstand.
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