Painted the Other Woman

by Julia James

  She swallowed. ‘After I fled London, telling Ian it was because I couldn’t go on hiding in the shadows, and he got a new job without your patronage, he became determined not to go on concealing such an important part of his life from his wife. It was a new start for him, and however difficult it was going to be he didn’t want any secrets from Eva any more. Even the secret of my existence,’ she finished bitterly.

  Athan was silent a moment. Then he spoke. His voice was heavy—as heavy as the lead that seemed to be weighing him down, crushing him.

  ‘I thought Ian was like his father. Incapable of fidelity. I’ve always thought it—feared it. I never approved of his marriage to Eva. Thought him lightweight. Superficial. Unworthy of my sister. And I thought that she was doomed to follow the same path as her mother-in-law, whose life was made a misery by her faithless husband.’

  He paused, glancing briefly at Marisa and then away again, because it hurt too much to do otherwise. ‘When my suspicions became aroused I took out surveillance on him. I found out about your existence—that you were living in an apartment he was paying for. There was no doubt about it. There were photos of you and him in a restaurant. Intimate photos that showed you and he billing and cooing over each other.’ He paused again. ‘And one of the photographs showed Ian giving you a diamond necklace.’ Another pause, briefer this time, then words broke from him—harsh and hard. ‘What the hell was I supposed to think? My brother-in-law was giving another woman a diamond necklace!’

  Marisa stiffened.

  ‘It was Ian’s grandmother’s. Our father’s mother’s necklace.

  He wanted me to have it. He wanted me to have all the things that our father had denied me—wanted to lift me out of the poverty that my father had condemned my mother to.’ She looked away—far away—back into the past to her childhood. ‘She knew she should never have given in to my father. Knew she was at fault. Knew she was a fool to love him. Knew she deserved what she got from him—rejection and short shrift. It was a lesson, she taught me well,’ she said heavily. Her eyes came back to Athan. ‘Which is why it was so unbearable to realise you thought I’d stoop to carrying on with a married man. Why I was so angry that evening Ian told Eva about me.’

  Athan’s face was drawn. ‘You had every right to be.’ His voice was sombre. ‘I misjudged you totally. Thought the very worst of you.’

  She could hear the self-laceration in his voice, and something twisted inside her.

  ‘I hated you for it!’ she burst out. ‘I thought I hated you for what you did to me—deliberately seducing me. But when I realised … realised that what you thought of me was a million times worse than simply trying to latch on to my wealthy brother and mess up his family … oh, then I hated you a million times more than I did before.’ She felt her hands fist in her pockets. ‘When I threw in your face what I truly was to Ian—what our relationship actually is—oh, it felt so damn good. Wiping that condemning contempt off your face. And slapping you felt even better!’

  She jerked to her feet, yanking her arm free of him. Standing there, buckling with emotion, she swayed in the wind, her face convulsed.

  Why had he come here? To torment her again? What for?

  It was over now—all over. Nothing more to be done, or said. It was all a mess—a hideous, insoluble mess. But she knew she had to accept that in the end, it wasn’t his fault. Heavily, she turned around to face him again. He hadn’t moved. Was just sitting there immobile, looking at her.

  His expression was …

  Was what? she thought, finding thoughts skittering across her mind inchoately, incoherently.

  Wary—that was what it was. But there was more than wariness in it. His eyes—his dark, gold-flecked eyes, whose glance had once turned her to jelly—were now regarding her with …

  Such bleakness.

  That was what was in his face. His eyes.

  She took a scissoring breath. ‘There isn’t any point to this—there really isn’t. It’s just a mess—a total mess all round. I can see … understand … why you jumped to the conclusion you did. I can see why you wanted to protect your sister. You did what you thought best at the time. But now … now that it’s all out in the open—the actual truth, not your assumption—it just makes it impossible for me to have anything more to do with you, or Eva—or even Ian, really. I can’t ever see you again—you must see that. What you did to me will always be there, poisoning everything.’ She looked at him. Looked into those dark, wary, bleak eyes. ‘I can’t get over what you did—I will never be able to get over what you did.’

  For one long, unbearable moment they just gazed at each other across everything that divided them. An impossible divide.

  A huge, crushing weariness pressed down on her. Her head bowed. She knew she should head for home, back to the sanctuary of her cottage. But her legs were suddenly like lead.

  Then behind her she heard a movement. Hands lightly—so lightly—touched her hunched shoulders, then dropped away.

  ‘And nor will I.’

  Athan’s voice was low. Conflict filled it. Filled his head. Was she right? Should he never have come here? Never have followed the crushing imperative to find her—talk to her? Because he had to talk to her. He couldn’t just leave it the way it had been—with her denouncing, punishing slap ringing across his mind. His soul.

  Punishing him for what he had thought about her. Punishing him for what he’d done to her. Punishing him for getting her totally, utterly wrong …

  ‘It will be like a brand on me all my life,’ he told her. ‘What I did to you.’

  She gave a little shrug. It was all she could manage. ‘It doesn’t matter. I understand why you did it. It was a … misunderstanding, that’s all.’ Her voice gave a little choke as she said the word that was so hideous an understatement. ‘A mess up. But it doesn’t matter. In the end it doesn’t leave any of us worse off, does it? If anything, Ian and Eva’s marriage is stronger than ever, so that’s surely some good out of it. He finally has a job where he feels he can not only make a real contribution to the world, in a way he never could before, but he can stand on his own two feet—out from under your shadow. Plus, of course—’ her voice twisted ‘—he has finally won your trust—convinced you he’s not cut from the same corrupt cloth as our father. So that’s all to the good, isn’t it?’

  She spoke negligently, carelessly. As if nothing mattered any more—just as she was saying.

  ‘As for you and me—’ She swallowed. There was a stone in her throat. Making it hard to speak. Impossible almost. But she had to force the words all the same.

  She stared out ahead of her, towards the granite tor beyond. Rocks that had thrust up out of the burning earth so deep below, then cooled and congealed in the air. Hardened and set. Unchangeable now. Only the wind and the rain would weather them, wear them down over aeons of time. Aeons that mocked the brief, agonised flurry of human lives. Just as the vanished ghosts of the dead village they stood in haunted those who came after them.

  ‘As for you and me,’ she said again, ‘what does it matter? What happened was … a mistake. An error. Regrettable, but understandable. It can’t be mended, but—’ The stone was harder now in her throat, but she had to get the words past it all the same. ‘It can be ignored.’

  She heard his intake of breath behind her. Then, carefully, he spoke.

  ‘No—it can’t. It can’t be ignored. It has to be faced. I have to face it.’

  The hands came again—lightly, briefly, on her shoulders. She could barely feel them, yet it was like electricity shivering within her as he turned her around to face him. Face what he was going to say.

  His expression was sombre. The bleakness in his eyes was absolute.

  ‘I wronged you. I wronged you and I will regret that all my life—however unintentioned it was, the wrong remains. But if you ask me to regret what happened, then … I won’t. I can’t. I came here to you afterwards wanting only one thing. Thinking that because you were now no longer a dange
r to my sister I could indulge myself—take from you what I wanted so, so badly. Have you back for myself again.’

  He gazed down at her, and behind the bleakness in his eyes something else flared. Something that was dangerous to her. That threatened her. That sought to set aside the aeons of time that formed the moors, the millennia that separated them from the people who had once dwelt here in the shadow of the tors. That sought to mock the effect of time on human lives.

  Something that was stronger than time. That would outlast all things.

  ‘To have you back,’ he said. ‘To have you as you were in that brief, precious time we had—a time that enraptured me. And tormented me. Tormented me because I knew it was only a fleeting bubble—a bubble I would have to burst, cruelly and callously, when I denounced you.’

  Emotion came to his eyes again, but it was stormy now. ‘I hated what I had to do—hated what I thought you were. It made me even harsher to you than I had to be. And when I followed you down here, saw how you lived, I could see how Ian must have turned your head, beguiled you … led you astray.’ He paused again, then said what needed to be said. ‘Just as his father led your mother astray.’

  Her eyes fell. She could not answer him. He answered for her.

  ‘We’re human, all of us, Marisa. We make mistakes. Your mother made hers. I made mine—misjudging you. Misjudging Ian.’

  He paused and her gaze flickered back up to him. The bleakness was back in his eyes.

  ‘We make mistakes and then we pay for them. Your mother paid for hers. I shall pay for mine.’ He paused. ‘Mine … my payment … will be doing without you.’ He took a razored breath. ‘I won’t impose upon you by giving a name to why that will exact a price from me, but be assured it will be a heavier price than I ever imagined possible.’ His mouth twisted. ‘A price I didn’t know existed until I started paying it.’

  He lifted a hand as if to bid her farewell, as if to bid farewell to many things.

  ‘I’ll go now,’ he said. ‘I wish you well—it’s all I can do, isn’t it? All that you could possibly want me to do. I wish you well and leave you be.’ He looked around him, across the wide, sunlit moorland, ablaze now with gorse and new growth, at the blue sky above arcing from east to west. A wild bird was singing somewhere as it rose on currents of air. Then his eyes came back to her.

  Looked their last on her.

  He felt the knife slide into his heart as he tore his gaze away again, and set it instead on the lofty tor beyond, piercing the sky with its dark, impenetrable mass. He started to walk towards it, following the path that led there, leaving her behind.

  She watched him go. Watched his figure start to recede. Watched him walk out of her life.

  There was a haze over the sun. Which was strange, because there were no clouds in the cerulean sky. Yet the haze was there, like a mist in her vision. She blinked, but it did not clear.

  Only the wind stung her eyes, beading her lashes with a misty haze.

  Thoughts crowded into her head. She could make no sense of them. They jumbled and jostled and each one cried for space. Then one—only one—stilled the others. Formed itself into words inside her head. She heard them, made herself hear them, even as she stood there, watching him walk away from her …

  The words came again in her head. Athan’s words.

  ‘We make mistakes. Your mother made hers. I made mine … ‘

  They came again, circling like a plane. Bringing more words in their wake.

  What if I’m making my mistake now?

  Her mother had ruined her life, giving her love to a man—a man who had proved utterly unworthy, totally deceitful and uncaring—instead of telling him to leave her alone, get out of her life before he could destroy it.

  But what if my mistake is the opposite one?

  The thought hung blazing in her mind.

  What if my mistake is to let go of a man I should never let go? A man I should clutch to me and hold tight in my arms?

  A man it would be—will be—an agony to lose?

  Her eyes held to the figure striding away from her, getting further and further away. The air in her lungs seemed to turn to granite. Impossible to breathe. Impossible.

  ‘Wait!’ The word tore from her, freeing her breath. ‘Athan! Wait!’

  He stopped. Stopped dead. Froze. Then, as she stood, heart hammering in her chest, he turned.

  She didn’t speak, didn’t cry out again. She had no thoughts, or words, or breath. She started forward, stumbling at first over the uneven ground, then found her balance, running now, faster and yet faster. The wind whipped the haze to her eyes, blinding her, but it didn’t matter. She knew where she was going. Knew it with every fibre of her being. Knew the only place she would ever want to be.

  He caught her as she reached him. Caught her in an embrace that swept her off the ground, swept her round and round as his arms wrapped her to him. She was crying, sobbing, but it didn’t matter—nothing mattered. Nothing at all would ever matter—only this … this.

  Being in his arms.

  Loving him.

  Loving him so, so much!

  He was saying her name. Over and over again. Kissing her hair, clutching her to him. She was crying, and then she was laughing, and he was lowering her down so she could feel the ground beneath her feet again, but her arms were still wrapped around him so tightly, so close she would never let him go—never let him go … ?.

  ‘Oh, my darling—my darling one!’

  Was that her speaking or him? It didn’t matter—nothing mattered but this. The joy surging through her, the love …

  Then he was loosening his arms around her, cupping her upturned face with his hands, his eyes blazing down into hers.

  All bleakness was gone.

  Only love—blazing.

  And slowly, beneath the towering tor, which had no power to mock what stood so far beyond the power of time, circled by the ghosts of those who had lived and loved here so long ago, he lowered his mouth to hers and kissed her.

  ‘This is love,’ he said. ‘This is my love for you. For all that I did to you, this is why I cannot regret it. Because it gave you to me.’ He took a painful breath, his eyes full. ‘I didn’t realise what it was … what was happening to me … until I lost you. Lost you, my dearest one, over and over again. So many times. I lost you when I said those cruel, denouncing words to you. Lost you when, eaten by jealousy of Ian, I chased you down here. I wanted to grab you back like a spoilt child deprived of what he wanted. I lost you when you threw the truth about yourself in my face at that nightmare dinner. Lost you when you walked up to me and vented all your anger for what I’d thought about you. Lost you over and over and over again.’ His hands cupping her face pressed more urgently. ‘And with each loss it hammered home to me more what was happening. That I was falling in love with you.’

  He shuddered, and she felt his pain and clung to him more closely.

  ‘Falling in love with you … even as I was losing you … over and over again … ‘

  She gave a little cry, kissed him again to obliterate the pain she saw in him.

  ‘I feared loving you,’ she said ‘Feared it so much. When I saw you sometimes on St Cecile, looking at me when you thought I couldn’t see you, you looked so … so remote. I thought it was because you knew I was falling for you when you only wanted something passing that would end when we returned. That’s what I thought when you said you needed to speak to me. I was steeled for it—ready for you to tell me it was over. I had the strength to bear that.’

  Her expression changed. ‘But when you threw at me what you did—oh, God, I didn’t have the strength for that. How could I have? What you hurled at me—what I thought you were accusing me of—I could not defend myself against that. Because I knew … knew that what I’d wanted so much was to be taken into my father’s family, not to be rejected by them any more. But you made me see it was impossible—that I was just a sordid little secret from Ian’s father’s past … ‘

&nb
sp; Athan groaned and held her away from him, only the better to talk to her. His hands slipped to her shoulders.

  ‘I would never have objected to you for that reason alone. Yes, Ian’s mother suffered—but that was not your fault. How could it be? Nothing has been your fault. Only mine.’ His voice was heavy. ‘Only mine.’

  She heard the self-accusation in his voice and hated it.

  ‘No.’ Her negation was fierce. ‘I will not let you say that. I will not let you … or me … look backwards now. I let anger blind me—blind me into rejecting you.’ She clutched him suddenly, clinging to him urgently. ‘Oh, I so nearly let you walk away from me. Don’t ever, ever let me be so blind again!’

  ‘Every time you look at me,’ he promised her, his voice warm and rich and full of all he felt for her, ‘you’ll see my love for you. It will be your mirror for all time. A true mirror. That I promise you.’

  Her gaze was troubled suddenly. ‘It hurt,’ she said. ‘It hurt so much to realise that all the time you knew me in London, all the time we had on holiday, it was just … fake. The whole thing. When I thought it was real … ‘

  Now the negation was his—and fiercer.

  ‘It was—it was real! That was the whole torment of it all! Knowing that if it weren’t for Eva, for what I thought I was doing to save her marriage, I would be spending that time with you without that hanging over my head. That’s why I so arrogantly thought I could get you back again—get that time back again. Oh, God, Marisa, to hold you in my arms again—to have you for myself this time, only myself. With no other reason to get in the way of us.’ He gazed down at her, emotion pouring from him. ‘And now … finally … after all this time … there truly is nothing to part us … to confuse and confound and blind us. Now—oh, my most beloved girl—there really is only this … ‘

  He kissed her. Tenderly. Carefully. Lovingly.

  ‘Only this,’ he murmured.

  He eased her away from him, changing his hold on her to put an arm around her shoulder, holding her hand in his across his body as he started to walk her along the path again. Side by side.