I can’t bear this—I can’t... I can’t—
She walked out of the room, went downstairs to the hall, pacing restlessly until Anatole drew level with her. She opened her mouth to tell him that he should go, but he spoke pre-emptively.
‘Come back into the dining room—I need to talk to you.’ His voice was clipped, yet it had an abstracted tone to it.
‘Anatole, I want you to go now—’
He ignored her, striding back into the dining room. Christine could only follow. He sat himself down at his dinner place, indicating that she should sit down too.
As if it’s his house, his dining room—
Protest rose in her throat, but she sat down all the same.
‘Well?’ she demanded. Her heart-rate was up, emotions tearing at her. Anatole was looking at her, his gaze veiled, but there was something in it that made her go completely still.
‘You heard Nicky,’ Anatole said. His voice was taut, but purposeful. ‘You heard his answer to my question about taking over from his pappou. You heard it, Christine—heard him say, “Yes, please.” Well...’
He took a breath, and she saw lines of tension around his mouth.
‘That is what I am going to do.’ His eyes flared suddenly, unveiled. ‘I am going to take Vasilis’s place in his life. I am going to marry you.’
HAD THE WORLD just tilted on its side? Had an earthquake just happened? Her vision was blurred...her heart seemed to have stopped.
‘What?’
The word shot from her like a bullet. A bullet that found its target in the blankness of Anatole’s face.
‘Are you insane?’ she shot again.
He lifted a hand. It was a jerky movement, as if designed to stop more bullets. As if to silence her.
‘Hear me out,’ he said. ‘It’s the obvious solution to the situation!’
Christine’s eyes flashed. It felt as if her heart had still not started beating yet. ‘What situation?’ she demanded. ‘There is no situation! I am Vasilis’s widow. He has left me perfectly well provided for and even more so his son—a son who will before long no longer be so sad at the loss of his pappou and who will grow up adored by me and protected by Vasilis’s wealth. What on earth about that needs a solution?’
Anatole’s expression shifted. Something moved in his eyes. But his words, when he spoke, were stony. ‘Nicky needs a father. All children do. With Vasilis gone, irrespective of whether Nicky thought of him as his grandfather, another man must take the role he played in his son’s life.’
His eyes rested on Christine, shifting in their regard.
‘You are not yet thirty, Tia—Christine—and it is impossible to envisage you not remarrying at some point.’ He lifted his hand again. ‘I take back what I said,’ he said stiffly, ‘about your likely dissolute lifestyle as the wealthy widow of a deceased much older husband.’
He felt the fury of Christine’s eyes hurling daggers on him, even for saying that, even with his stiff apology, but he kept on speaking. It was vital he do so. Imperative.
‘But it is inevitable that you will remarry,’ he persisted. Something flashed darkly in his eyes. ‘That neighbour of yours, Barcourt, would be only too eager—or any other man! And I do not mean that as an insult. I mean it as a compliment, Christine.’
He gritted his teeth.
‘I appreciate that you would never marry anyone who would not be a doting stepfather to Nicky. And Barcourt—I give him this freely—is clearly cut out to be an excellent father. But he would not, as I said, make a good husband for you.’
His eyes rested a moment on her, his face taut, his eyes implacable.
‘I would,’ he said.
He took an incised breath.
‘I would make an excellent husband for you. Think about it...’
He leant forward a little, as if to give emphasis to what he was saying—what he had to say to make her hear. Accept what had forced its way into his head and now could not be banished.
Urgently, he forged on. ‘I am the closest relative to Nicky on his father’s side. I discount my own father. He would be as little interested in Nicky as he was in me,’ he said scathingly.
Christine could hear something in his voice that for the first time since he had tilted the world sideways for her with what he had said, stopping the beating of her heart, shifted her to react. There had been dismissal in his voice, but something else too. Something that she recognised. Recognised because she herself had been possessed by it totally and absolutely five years ago.
Pain—pain at rejection...at not being wanted.
But Anatole was speaking still, making her listen to him.
‘Who better to be a father to Nicky than myself—his closest blood kin? And who better to be your husband, Christine...’ his voice changed suddenly, grew huskier ‘...than me?’
His eyes washed over her—she could feel it like a silken brush over her senses.
‘Who better than me?’ he said again, his voice lower, that brush across her senses coming again.
She felt fatal faintness drumming at her again. She desperately wanted to speak, but she was voiceless. Bereft of everything except the sensation of his gaze washing over her, weakening her, dissolving her.
She tried to fight it—oh, dear God, she tried! Tried to remember all the pain he’d caused her.
But his eyes were washing over her now as they had done so many times, so long ago.
‘I know you, Tia,’ he said now, and the name he’d always called her by came naturally to him...as naturally as the wash of his eyes over her. ‘And you know me. And we both know how compatible we are.’
He took another breath.
‘And now we’re much more so. You have matured into this woman you have become—poised, elegant, able to hold your own in company that would have terrified you five years ago! Five years ago you were young and inexperienced. Oh, I don’t just mean sexually...’
He’d said the word casually, but it brought a heat to Christine’s cheeks she would have given a million pounds for them not to have, and she beat it back as desperately as she could,
‘I mean in all the ways of the world.’
His eyes slipped away, stared out as if into the past, a frown folding his brow.
He spoke again—with difficulty now. ‘I didn’t want to marry you then, Tia. I didn’t want to marry anyone. Not just you—anyone at all. There was no reason for me to marry, and many not to. But now...’ His eyes came back to her, sweeping in like a beacon, skewering her helplessly. ‘Now there is every reason. To make a stable family for Nicky, a loving family—’ He broke off, as if that had been hard for him to say.
For a moment Christine could not answer. Too much was pouring through her head—far, far too much. Then, with a scissoring breath, she said, ‘I will not have a husband who despises me.’
It was tersely expressed, vehemently meant.
She saw him shake his head.
‘I don’t,’ he answered. ‘I don’t despise you—’
Her eyes flashed blue fire. ‘Don’t lie to me, Anatole! You called me a cheap little adventuress! You thought me a scheming, ruthless