by Lynne Graham
Before Star’s thoughts could stray on to the devastating disillusioning reality of having been abandoned on her wedding night for another woman, the cold marble beneath her bare feet became uncomfortable enough to dredge her out of her memories. But she still found herself recalling when, later, a minor car smash had put Luc into Casualty with concussion and sent her running panic-stricken to his side. Flatly refusing to be hospitalised overnight, Luc had come home with her. She had just adored fussing round him, insisting he go to bed and getting her crystals out, determined to heal his headache away.
Now she shied away from the recollection of how appallingly immature she had been just eighteen months earlier, and stood up in sudden decision. It might be the middle of the night, but it was time she came clean with Luc about their children at least. Maintaining that fiction was unfair to him.
But when Star returned to the bedroom, Luc was nowhere to be seen. Too worked up now to settle again, Star pulled on jeans and a top and went off to find him. Her troubled reflections marched on. How did she stop craving what Luc could never give? A man couldn’t be forced into loving. So why did she keep on letting her emotions get the better of her? Why had she kidded herself that she was strong enough to spend one last night with Luc? That one night had plunged her back into emotional turmoil. That one night had convinced Luc that she would quite happily settle for sex if she could have him no other way. And Luc, ever the banker, was programmed to take advantage of the best deal he could get. Instead of crying like a drippy wimp, she should have lifted one of those giant ornate lamps in the bedroom and simply brained him with it!
Star had worked up quite a temper by the time she saw the light burning under the door of the library on the ground floor and walked in.
Luc was by the window, a brandy goblet clasped in one lean hand. His hair-roughened chest and his feet were bare, a dark green shirt hanging open over his well-cut chinos. Dressed so casually, and with his jawline darkened by stubble, he looked incredibly unfamiliar to her disconcerted appraisal.
‘Go back to bed,’ Luc advised flatly.
Even though he was standing in the shadows cast by the desk lamp, Star recognised his seething tension and came to a halt several feet away, scanning the fierce angularity of his dark golden features, the warning flash in his eyes before he veiled them and the rigidity of his broad shoulders.
‘Just for once, do as I ask!’ Luc raked with sudden unconcealed fury.
Startled into taking a backward step, Star studied him in honest bewilderment. ‘What have you got to be so angry about? I certainly didn’t ask for this situation with Emilie to develop.’
‘My anger dates back a lot further than yesterday. There was no “situation” until you decided that you were in love with me and refused to back off.’
Her natural colour receded under that surprise attack. ‘But—’
‘Before I married you, I saw only your youth and vulnerability. I didn’t appreciate how far you would go to get what you want!’ Eyes burnished gold with anger sought out and held hers. ‘The first time you approached me I should have squashed you beyond all hope of recovery! But I was reluctant to hurt you. You played on that—’
‘No…’ Star made a tiny awkward movement of appeal with her hand. ‘Not deliberately—’
‘I thought you were sweet, essentially harmless…’ A roughened laugh was wrenched from Luc. ‘But from the minute you came into my life you’ve been as destructive as an enemy tank!’
Star was paralysed to the spot by the shattering effect of Luc casting aside his reserve and getting truly personal. The anger and bitterness he was revealing really shook her up.
‘I’m drunk…’ Luc breathed grimly, as if she had asked a question.
Luc drunk? That struck Star as so extraordinary she just gaped at him. He didn’t look drunk, but he certainly wasn’t behaving with his usual chilling self-command. He had compared her to an enemy tank. She tried to force a smile at that colourful image, but she couldn’t. Shock went on spreading through her, and beneath it only guilt was rising in strength.
‘A lot of men would have taken you up on your invitation that winter.’ Shimmering dark eyes welded to her in unconcealed condemnation. ‘You were very sexy. I was never unaware of your attraction. I was never indifferent, but I kept my distance.’
‘Luc, I didn’t kn—’
‘I went against my father’s wishes when I reunited you with your mother. And how was I rewarded?’
At that unwelcome question, Star’s tummy just flipped.
‘One lousy kiss and I end up having to get married,’ Luc framed jaggedly, pale with sheer outrage at that recollection. ‘But that wasn’t the end of it, was it? You still wouldn’t take no for an answer.’
‘Please don’t say any more, Luc…’ Star urged in desperation. ‘If I could go back and change things, I would, but I can’t! I was obsessed with you…and I’m sorry…but I couldn’t help that, nor could I see how selfish I was being.’
‘You waited until I had a concussion,’ Luc continued between gritted white teeth, his husky accent fracturing audibly. ‘Then you slunk into bed with me when I was asleep. How low can a woman sink?’
Star studied the rug and watched it blur under her filling eyes. Seen through his eyes, framed in his words, her behaviour seemed even worse in retrospect. Yet after that night she had judged herself equally harshly. That was why she had left France. She hadn’t run away; she had simply seen that the very least she could do was get out of Luc’s life and leave him in peace.
Momentarily, she was tempted to mention the role which Gabrielle Joly had played in that final decision. But now that Gabrielle was gone from Luc’s life Star was too proud and still too sensitive on that subject to admit how disillusioned and hurt she had been by the other woman’s apparent hold on Luc. In those days, their marriage had been very much a fake, she reminded herself.
‘And when I finally dared to tell you that no woman was going to trap me into a marriage I didn’t want with sex, what did you do?’ Luc’s dark deep drawl had dropped to a seething whisper of what sounded like near uncontrollable rage.
‘The only thing I could do. I went away,’ she answered heavily.
At that response, Luc shuddered. ‘You went away,’ he echoed unsteadily. ‘You did not just go away!’
In bewilderment, Star stared at him. ‘What are you getting at?’
‘You left me a letter telling me you couldn’t live without me and vanished into thin air!’ Luc shot at her in savage condemnation, devastating her with the force of his anger.
‘What was wrong with that?’
‘What was wrong with that?’ Luc practically whispered his incredulity at that response, black fury emanating from him in blistering waves. ‘I thought you’d gone off to drown yourself! I had the moat dragged…I put frogmen in the bloody lake!’
She regarded him as if he had taken leave of his wits.
‘If you laugh…if you laugh…’ Luc warned her thickly.
But Star was already picturing the extreme anxiety it would have taken to persuade Luc to embark on such a search. Her stomach turned over sickly. There was no risk of her being amused.
‘Not once did it occur to you that I might be concerned for your welfare. Not once in all those months we were apart did you even phone to tell me that you were all right!’ Swinging away from her, Luc sent the goblet in his hand flying into the fireplace, where it exploded noisily into crystal fragments.
Star studied those gleaming fragments in deep, deep shock. ‘I…I didn’t think—’
‘You don’t ever. You live every day like it’s going to be your last. You don’t look back, you don’t look forward, you just do what you feel like. That’s a luxury some of us have never known,’ Luc stated glacially, his anger clearly spent.
Trembling in the face of all those sins he had piled up into a giant weight with which to crush her, Star was parchment-pale. Irresponsible, selfish, flighty. It seemed she had no red
eeming graces. She was guilty as hell, she conceded wretchedly. She had thrown herself at him. She had also allowed him to marry her when she should have confronted her mother and at least tried to persuade her into withdrawing her unjust threats. During their brief time together after their marriage, she had refused to accept rejection. But, surprisingly, it appeared that in Luc’s eyes her biggest sin had been vanishing and failing to contact him in all the months that had followed.
‘You even persuaded Emilie to pretend that she didn’t know where you were all that time,’ Luc concluded grimly. ‘Do you think I didn’t realise that today? Emilie who might have been my mother, had my father had the courage to stand by her!’
Her utter confusion at that allusion made him release a weary laugh.
‘You see nothing but what relates directly to you.’ Luc shook his proud dark head in despair. ‘Why do you think it was so important for Emilie to be there for my father when he was dying? Why do you think her presence was such a comfort? When they were young, they were in love. But my grandfather disapproved because Emilie was a poor relation. My father was afraid of losing out to his younger brother in the inheritance stakes and he gave Emilie up. She went on to make a happy marriage; he didn’t.’
Listening to Luc spell out what she felt she should have sensed or worked out for herself made Star feel even worse. It was like the missing piece in a puzzle, which she had been too self-absorbed to recognise as a puzzle…Emilie’s constant attendance on Roland Sarrazin that winter, her quiet, but undeniably deep grief when he finally passed away.
‘Emilie felt sorry for him, desperately sorry for him, because he never stopped caring for her. After my mother died, my father would have married Emilie, but she turned him down.’
‘You’re right…’ Star mumbled ruefully. ‘I don’t see anything that’s not directly under my nose. I thought I was so perceptive too.’
‘Go to bed…it’s three in the morning.’
Star still hadn’t told him about Venus and Mars. Now the prospect of making that announcement loomed over her like a death sentence. If he didn’t hate her yet, he could only be a hair’s breadth from doing so. She saw that in so many ways Luc had been amazingly tolerant of her behaviour. And she didn’t think tolerance came naturally to him. Indeed, with his legendary reputation for cold rationality and ruthlessness, all of a sudden it was very hard to grasp why Luc had allowed one foolish teenager to cause him so much grief…
‘Just one more thing…’ Luc remarked flatly, breaking into her thoughts. ‘What I said about buying a house here for you? It was a foolish impulse, and I apologise for making the suggestion.’
‘Maybe you wanted revenge…’ Star suddenly felt as if she had been smacked in the face with the ultimate of rejections. His apology was undeniably sincere. Evidently one good long look at the catastrophic results of having her in his life had cured Luc of the smallest desire to continue their relationship in any form. And she really didn’t feel that she could blame him, which felt even worse.
‘I don’t think like that…’
Luc watched Star sidling backwards out of the room with a kind of blind look in her eyes and wondered why he didn’t feel better. He wondered why he suddenly felt like the sort of male who was brutal to small children and animals. He wondered why, when it was natural for him to be extremely tough on those who surrounded him, being tough on Star had demanded the spur of eighteen months of pent-up rage finally breaking its boundaries. But sanity had reasserted its natural sway, he told himself in grim consolation, wincing as Star bashed one slight shoulder on the corner of the bookshelves before finally disappearing from view.
He was amazed that she hadn’t shouted back at him. Strange how dissatisfying an experience that had proved. But then alcohol was a depressant; he had lost his temper and he loathed being out of control. Possibly he had been a little too tough on her. But revenge? Trust Star to come up with that angle! He was above that sort of nonsense.
Upstairs, Star collapsed down on the bedroom sofa without even taking off her clothes. Her life seemed to stretch before her like a desert of grey desolation. Luc just about hated her and had no reason whatsoever to think well of her. Yet she did find herself questioning why Luc had held onto his anger for so long. Flattened by exhaustion, however, she slept for four hours, and woke up feeling unrefreshed.
Luc’s bed was empty, untouched from the night before. It was seven. She headed straight into the bathroom, peeling off clothing as she went. After a frantically quick wash, she donned the black sand-washed silk hooded summer dress which her mother had given her for her birthday. It felt suitably funereal.
With the twins’ birth certificates clutched in one nerveless hand, she went straight downstairs. Her steps getting slower and slower, she entered the imposing dining room. Luc was seated in aristocratic isolation at the far end of the polished table. He lowered his newspaper, revealing hooded eyes and a grim cast to his dark good-looks. Immaculate in a silver-grey suit worn with a silk shirt and a burgundy silk tie, he looked formidable, but he still stopped her susceptible heart clean dead in its tracks.
‘I didn’t expect to see you up this early,’ he admitted with complete cool.
‘I…I needed to speak to you before you left for the bank.’ Star sucked in a deep, deep breath and forced herself to walk down the length of the table towards him.
Luc folded his newspaper and rose with lithe grace. ‘I’m afraid you left it too late. I’m about to leave.’
‘Luc…these are the twins’ birth certificates,’ she practically whispered, pale as milk.
‘Of what possible interest could they be to me?’ Luc didn’t pause even to spare the documents a glance as he strode down the other side of the table in the direction of the door.
Star turned again, her rigid backbone tightening another painful notch. ‘The twins were born more than six months ago, Luc. They’re twelve months old…they just don’t look it because they were premature—’
Luc swung back with a frown of complete exasperation. ‘Why are you unloading all this stuff on me?’
‘Venus and Mars are twelve months old, you see,’ Star continued in a fast fading voice. ‘That night…you know, when I “slunk”, as you put it, you-know-where…well, that night had consequences. I’m really sorry.’
CHAPTER SEVEN
LUC studied Star, absently noting that she was wearing a nightie that resembled some sort of mourning apparel and that she lacked her usual glow.
His brain had shrieked to a sudden halt on her second reference to the age of her children. Twelve months…twelve months old? What were they? Miniature babies? What was she trying to tell him? Premature? Born too early, he rephrased for his own benefit. Was there something wrong with the twins? Were they ill? A momentary image of those helpless little creatures under threat gripping him, Luc paled as if a spooky hand had trailed down his spine.
‘They’re your kids,’ Star framed unevenly. ‘I should have put you right the minute I realised you thought otherwise. But I was shocked, and annoyed that you could think that they were some other man’s. Since you didn’t seem that bothered by the idea, I didn’t contradict you.’
‘My kids…’ Luc echoed in the unreacting manner of a male who had not yet computed what he was being told. ‘What’s the matter with them? Are they sick?’
Now it was Star’s turn to look confused. ‘No, of course not. They’re fine now, and catching up great. Luc…do you understand what I’ve just told you?’
‘You said they were my children,’ Luc repeated back to her, still without any change of expression, although his winged ebony brows were beginning to pleat.
‘I really don’t know where you got the idea that they weren’t—’
‘Emilie’s accountant said the twins had only got out of hospital in the autumn. He assumed that they were newborns men…certainement.’ His usual level diction rose in volume, a dark frown slowly building.
For Star, who was feeling nauseous with
nerves, that silence was unbearable.
‘J’etais vraiment fâché…’ Luc murmured in fluid French.
I was angry as hell, Star translated, watching Luc, bracing herself for a sudden massive explosion, every muscle in her slender length straining taut. Without warning, he moved again, and she jerked, only to look on in utter bewilderment as he headed towards the housekeeper, who was standing about thirty yards away in the hall, positioned by the front door in readiness for his punctual exit.
Luc was engaged in recalling the way Star had used to see him off every morning, no matter how early the hour of his departure, no matter how discouraging his mood. Chitchat at breakfast wasn’t his style. Star had been impervious to the message of his silence. She had torn up his croissant for him in the most infuriatingly invasive and messy manner, poured his coffee, and talked and talked with endless sunny good cheer, deflated not one jot by his monosyllabic replies.
She had been waiting for him when he’d come home as well, surging across the bridge to greet him, always hurling herself at him as if he had been away for at least a month. It had never mattered who was with him either. A party of important diplomats or high-ranking bankers, he mused, all of them had been instantly fascinated by her quicksilver energy, her innate charm, her incredible legs…
Now he was undoubtedly confronting a future of having his croissant mangled…Ah, c’est la vie, Luc conceded with a sigh. Congratulating himself on his self-control, not to mention his remarkable cool in crisis, he informed his housekeeper that he would not be flying to Paris after all. He then strolled out into the fresh air, where he breathed in slow and deep to counteract the infuriating light-headed sensation assailing him.
Had he considered himself to be an emotional individual, he might have wondered if what he was experiencing was shock combined with the most intense relief. But a complete stranger to all such self-analysis, and a male who reasoned solely in practical terms of cause and effect, Luc decided that he was suffering for his alcoholic indulgence several hours earlier.