by Lynne Graham
Merry swallowed hard at that unlikely hope. ‘What’s in this weird arrangement for you?’ she asked bluntly.
Roula vented a laugh and tossed her head. ‘I have a share of him. I’m willing to settle for that. I’ve loved him since I was a girl. He rescued my father from bankruptcy and financed the set-up of my beauty salons. When I was younger I hoped that he would eventually see me as a possible wife, but of course that hasn’t happened. Marrying the mistress isn’t in the Valtinos genes.’
Nausea stirred in Merry’s tummy. Swallowing her coffee without choking on it was a challenge. Roula managed to make it all sound so normal, so inevitable. She loved Angel, unashamedly did what it took to hold onto her small stake in his life while accepting that there would be other women and eventually a wife she would have to share him with.
But such acceptance was nowhere within Merry’s grasp. She was an all-or-nothing person. She had told Angel before she agreed to marry him that he could have no other women in his life and that she expected complete fidelity. He had agreed to that boundary. Had he lied? Had he expected her to change her mind? Or had he been planning to be so discreet that she never found out that he sometimes slept with Roula Paulides?
Shock banging through her blitzed brain, Merry struggled to relocate her reasoning powers. Did she simply accept that the blonde was telling her the truth? Why would Roula lie about such a relationship? Could she simply be trying to cause trouble in Merry’s marriage? But what would be the point of that unless she was already engaged in an affair with Angel with something to gain from his marriage breaking down?
And then, according to Roula, Angel had not been with her recently? Or simply since his marriage? Merry’s head was spinning. She wanted to pack her bags, gather up her daughter and run back to the UK to establish a sane and normal life where a blonde beauty did not calmly stroll into her home one morning to announce that she was in love with Merry’s husband and keen to continue having hassle-free sex with him.
Stark pain sliced through Merry, cutting through the numbness of shock. She had been happy, she registered wretchedly, hopelessly, helplessly happy with Angel and their marriage as it was. She had seen nothing to question, nothing to rouse her suspicions. She had believed his promise of fidelity, believed that they had a future, but if she believed Roula her future with Angel could only be a deceitful and fragile farce because she would never ever accept him betraying her with another woman. Nor would she ever share him.
‘Well, you’ve said your piece. Now I think you should leave,’ Merry told Roula quietly, her self-discipline absolute because wild horses could not have dredged a more vulnerable reaction from her.
‘I do hope I haven’t upset you,’ the Greek woman said unconvincingly. ‘I suspected you didn’t know and that wasn’t right.’
As far as Merry was concerned there was nothing right about Roula’s attitude to either Angel or his marriage or even his wife. Roula had developed her own convictions based on what she wanted. Roula, it seemed, lived to please Angel. Merry loved Angel but she had never been blind to his flaws. Had he discounted his intimate relationship with Roula in the same way as he had once ignored the reality that his pregnant former employee might need more than financial support from him?
It would have been uncomfortable for Angel to overcome his own feelings back then and offer Merry his support, and he had been unable to force himself to go that extra mile for her benefit. In the same way being honest about his relationship with Roula would have put paid to any hope of Merry marrying him and sharing their daughter. Was that why he had kept quiet? Or was it possible that he believed the relationship with Roula was at an end? But then wouldn’t Roula know that? Had Angel lied to Merry to get her to the altar? Was he that ruthless?
Oh, yes, a little voice chimed inside her head.
CHAPTER NINE
‘MRS VALTINOS INSISTED that she had to make an immediate departure from the airport,’ Angel’s driver repeated uneasily. ‘I did tell her that you were expecting her to join you for lunch before she left London but she said—’
‘That she didn’t have time,’ Angel slotted in flatly.
‘I took her to Foxcote Hall at two and then an hour later dropped her off at her aunt’s house. She said she’d call when she needed to be picked up again,’ the older man completed.
Angel breathed in slow and deep. Something was wrong. His wife had flown back to London with their daughter and mounds of luggage even though she had only been expecting to remain in the UK for forty-eight hours at most. She had blown him off for lunch. She wasn’t answering his calls or his texts. Such behaviour was unlike her. Merry wasn’t moody or facetious and she didn’t play games. If something had annoyed her, she was more likely to speak up straight away. His growing bewilderment was starting to give way to righteous anger and an amount of unfamiliar apprehension that only enraged him more.
What could possibly have happened between his departure and her arrival in London? Why the mounds of luggage? Wasn’t she planning to return to Greece? Was it possible that she was leaving him and taking their daughter with her? But why would she do that? He had checked with the staff on Palos. Merry had had only one visitor and that was Roula, and when he had phoned Roula she had insisted that Merry had been perfectly friendly and relaxed with her. His lean brown hands knotting into fists, his tension pronounced, Angel resolved to be waiting at Foxcote when Merry got back.
* * *
Merry emerged from the rambling country house that she had not until that day known that Angel owned and climbed into the waiting limousine. She had left Elyssa with Sally, deeming it unlikely that her mother was likely to be champing at the bit to meet her first grandchild because Natalie had never had much time for babies. Furthermore, if Natalie was likely to be chastising her daughter and creating one of her emotionally exhausting scenes it was better to keep Elyssa well away from the display because Merry always lost patience with the older woman. What did it matter after all these years anyway? Natalie hadn’t even made the effort to attend her daughter’s wedding. But then she hadn’t made the effort to attend Merry’s graduation or, indeed, any of the significant events that had marked her daughter’s life.
Obsessed with the recollection of Roula’s sleazy allegations, Merry was simply not in the mood to deal with her mother. Landing in London to discover that Angel had arranged to meet her for lunch had been unsettling. Merry was determined to confront him but only in her own time and only when she had decided exactly what she intended to say to him. Not yet at that point, she had ducked lunch and ignored his calls and texts. Let him fester for a while as she had had to fester while she’d run over Roula’s claims until her head had ached and her stomach had been queasy and she had wept herself empty of tears.
Angel hadn’t asked her to love him, she reminded herself as the limo drew up outside Sybil’s house. But he had asked her to trust him and she had. Now that trust was broken and she was so wounded she felt as though she had been torn apart. She had trailed all her belongings and her daughter’s back from Greece but she still didn’t know what she would be doing next or even where she would be living. While she had been getting married, life had moved on. The cottage now had another tenant and she didn’t want to move in with her aunt again. Nor did she want to feel like a sad, silly failure with Angel again.
‘So glad you made the time to come,’ Sybil gabbled almost nervously as Merry walked through the front door into the open-plan lounge where her mother rose stiffly upright to face her. Natalie bore little resemblance to her daughter, being small, blonde and rather plump, but she looked remarkably young for her forty odd years.
‘Natalie,’ Merry acknowledged, forcing herself forward to press an awkward kiss to her mother’s cheek. ‘How are you?’
‘Oh, don’t be all polite and nice as if we’re strangers. That just makes me feel worse,’ her mother immediately complained. ‘Sybil has something to tell you. You had better sit down. It’s going to come as a shock.�
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Her brow furrowing in receipt of that warning, Merry sank down into an armchair and focused on her aunt. Sybil remained standing and she was very pale.
‘We have a big secret in this family, which we have always covered up,’ Sybil stated agitatedly. ‘I didn’t see much point in telling you about it so long after the event.’
‘No, you never did like to tell anything that could make you look bad,’ Natalie sniped. ‘But you promised me that you would tell her.’
Sybil compressed her lips. ‘When I was fifteen I got pregnant by a boy I was at school with. My parents were horrified. They sent me to live with a cousin up north and then they adopted my baby. It was all hushed up. I had to promise my mother that I would never tell my daughter the truth.’
Merry was bemused. ‘I—’
‘I was that adopted baby,’ Natalie interposed thinly. ‘I’m not Sybil’s younger sister, I’m her daughter but I didn’t find that out until I was eighteen.’
Losing colour, Merry flinched and focused on Sybil in disbelief. ‘Your daughter?’
‘Yes. Then my mother died and I felt that Natalie had the right to know who I really was. She was already talking about trying to trace her birth mother, so it seemed sensible to speak up before she tried doing that,’ Sybil explained hesitantly.
‘And overnight, when that truth came out, Sybil went from being my very exciting famous big sister, who gave me wonderful gifts, to being a liar, who had deceived me all my life,’ Merry’s mother condemned with a bitterness that shook Merry.
‘So, you’re actually my grandmother, not my aunt,’ Merry registered shakily as she studied Sybil and struggled to disentangle the family relationships she had innocently taken for granted.
‘It wasn’t my secret to share after the adoption. I gave up my rights but when I came clean about who I really was, it sent your mother off the rails.’
‘Lies...the gift that keeps on giving,’ Natalie breathed tersely. ‘That’s part of the reason I fell pregnant with you, Merry. When I had that stupid affair with your father, I was all over the place emotionally. I had lost my adoptive mother and then discovered that the sister I loved and admired was in fact my mother...and I didn’t like her very much.’
‘Natalie couldn’t forgive me for putting my career first but it enabled me to give my parents enough money to live a very comfortable life while they raised my daughter,’ Sybil argued in her own defence. ‘I was grateful for their care of her. I wasn’t ready to be a mother.’
‘At least, not until you were born, Merry,’ Natalie slotted in with perceptible scorn. ‘Then Sybil interfered and stole you away from me.’
‘It wasn’t like that!’ Sybil protested. ‘You needed help.’
Merry’s mother settled strained eyes on Merry’s troubled face and said starkly, ‘What do you think it was like for me to see my birth mother lavishing all the love and care she had denied me on my daughter instead?’
Merry breathed in deep and slow, struggling to put her thoughts in order. In reality she was still too upset about Roula’s allegations to fully concentrate her brain on what the two women were telling her. Sybil was her grandmother, not her aunt and Merry had never been told that Natalie was an adopted child. She abhorred the fact that she had not been given the full truth about her background sooner.
‘The way Sybil treated you, the fuss she made of you, made me resent you,’ Merry’s mother confessed guiltily. ‘It wrecked our relationship. She came between us.’
‘That was never my intention,’ Sybil declared loftily.
‘But that’s how it was...’ Natalie complained stonily.
Merry lowered her head, recognising that she saw points on both sides of the argument. Sybil had only been fifteen when she gave Natalie up to her parents for adoption and she had been barred from admitting that she was Natalie’s birth mum. Merry refused to condemn Sybil for that choice but she also saw how devastating that pretence and the lies must’ve been for her own mother and how finding out that truth years afterwards had distressed her.
‘You say you want a closer relationship with me and yet you still had no interest in coming to my wedding or in meeting my daughter,’ Merry heard herself fire back at her mother.
‘I couldn’t afford the plane fare!’ Natalie snapped defensively. ‘Who do you think paid for this visit?’
‘How do you feel about this?’ Sybil pressed anxiously.
‘Confused,’ Merry admitted tightly. ‘Hurt that the two of you didn’t tell me the truth years ago. And I hate lies, Sybil, and now I discover that you’ve pretty much been lying to me my whole life.’
In actuality, Merry felt as if the solid floor under her feet had fallen away, leaving her to stage a difficult balancing act. Her grandmother and her mother were both regarding her expectantly and she didn’t know what she was supposed to say to satisfy either of them. The sad reality was that she had always had more in common with Sybil than with Natalie and that, no matter how hard she tried, she would probably never be able to replicate that close relationship with her mother.
‘All I ever wanted to do was try to help you still have a life as a single parent,’ Sybil told her daughter unhappily. ‘You were so young. I never wanted to come between you and Merry.’
‘I’d like to meet Elyssa,’ Natalie declared. ‘Sybil’s shown me photos. She is very cute.’
And Merry realised then that she had been guilty of holding her own unstable childhood against her mother right into adulthood instead of accepting that Natalie might have changed and matured. ‘I will bring her over for a visit,’ she promised stiffly. ‘How long are you staying for?’
‘Two weeks,’ Natalie told her. ‘But now that Keith’s gone and we’ve split up, I’m thinking of moving back to the UK again. I’d like to meet your husband while I’m here as well.’
Tears suddenly stinging her hot eyes, Merry nodded jerkily, not trusting herself to speak. She understood why her mother had wanted the story told but wasn’t at all sure that she could give the older woman the warmer relationship she was clearly hoping for. But then too many of her emotions were bound up in the bombshell that had blown her marriage apart, she conceded guiltily. Roula’s confession had devastated her and at that moment having to turn her back on the man she loved and her marriage was still all she could really think about. It was the thought, the terrifying awareness, of what she might have to do next that left room for nothing else and paralysed her.
She shared photos of the wedding and Elyssa with both women, glossed over Sybil’s comment that she seemed very pale and quiet and returned to Foxcote Hall as soon as she decently could, having promised to bring Elyssa back for a visit within a few days. The limo travelled at a stately pace back up to the elegant country house that had the stunning architecture of an oversized Georgian dolls’ house. Informal gardens shaded by clusters of mature trees spread out from the house and slowly changed into a landscape of green fields and lush stretches of woodland. Foxcote was a magnificent estate and yet Angel had not even mentioned that he owned a property near her aunt’s home.
She had originally planned to go to a hotel from the airport, but when she had yet even to see and speak to Angel such a statement of separation had seemed a tad premature. Walking into the airy hall with its tall windows and tiled floor, she heard Elyssa chuckling and stringing together strings of nonsense words and she followed the sounds.
Several steps into the drawing room, she stopped dead because Angel was down on the floor with Elyssa, letting his daughter clamber over him and finally wrap her chubby arms round his neck and plant a triumphant noisy kiss on his face. He grinned, delighting in the baby’s easy trusting affection, but his smile fell away the instant he glimpsed Merry. Suddenly his lean, darkly handsome features were sober and unsmiling, his beautiful dark eyes wary and intent.
‘You never mentioned that you owned a house near Sybil’s,’ Merry remarked in a brittle voice as he vaulted lithely upright with Elyssa clasped to his chest.
‘My father bought the estate when he was going through a hunting, shooting, fishing phase but he soon got bored. Angelina used it for a while when she was socialising with the heir to a local dukedom. It should really be sold now,’ Angel contended, crossing the room to lift the phone and summon their nanny to take charge of their daughter.
A current of pained resentment bit into Merry when Elyssa complained bitterly about being separated from her father. That connection, that bond had formed much sooner than she had expected. Elyssa had taken to Angel like a duck to water, revelling in his more physical play and more boisterous personality. If her father was to disappear from her daily life, their daughter would miss him and be hurt by his absence. But then whose fault would that be? Merry asked herself angrily. It certainly wouldn’t be her fault, she told herself piously. She had played by the rules. If their marriage broke down, it would be entirely Angel’s responsibility.
‘So, what’s going on?’ Angel enquired, taking up a faintly combative stance as Sally closed the door in her wake, his long powerful legs braced, shoulders thrown back, aggressive jaw line at an angle. ‘You blew me off at lunch and all day you’ve been ignoring my calls and texts...why?’
Merry sucked in a steadying breath. ‘I’m leaving you...well, in the process of it,’ she qualified stiffly, her face pale and set.
‘Why would you suddenly decide to leave me?’ Angel demanded, striding forward, all brooding intimidation, dark eyes glittering like fireworks in the night sky. ‘That makes no sense.’
Anger laced the atmosphere, tensing every defensive muscle in her body, and she cursed the reality that she was not mentally prepared for the confrontation about to take place.