‘Do they?’ he questioned thoughtfully. His eyes flicked over the other dresses on the rail. ‘I’m surprised that hardly any of them are white—I thought that’s what brides wore.’
It occurred to Holly that this was a man who knew very little about weddings. ‘Brides have worn different colours throughout the ages—but, yes, you’re right, white was the predominant colour for many years.’
‘But not any more?’
“That’s right.’
‘Now they wear cream?’
‘Ivory,’ she corrected. ‘Which suits most people’s skin tones much better. White can be a difficult colour to carry off.’
‘And its associations are obsolete?’ he suggested drawlingly.
Holly looked at him. ‘Meaning?’
Luke shrugged. ‘Well, white is traditionally the colour of virgins, and most brides these days are no longer virgins. Are they?’
Afraid that she would start stuttering like a starter gun, Holly put the steamer down, took the coffee from him and carried it over to the window. ‘Er, no. They’re not.’ It was tune to change the subject. She really didn’t feel up to discussing the modern decline of bridal virginity—not with Luke, anyway.
She realised that not once had he mentioned his own family—bar his uncle, who had left him this house, and that had been only fleetingly. He was an enigmatic man, that was the trouble. He kept his cards very close to his chest, and of course that made him all the more intriguing. Holly was so used to meeting men who told you their entire life story within the first five minutes of meeting them that she wasn’t sure how to cope with a man who kept his own counsel!
She stood savouring the bitter, strong aroma of the coffee for a moment, before plucking up the courage to say, ‘Are either of your parents still alive, Luke?’
‘No,’ he answered shortly.
She took another sip of her coffee, recognising that a barrier had come slamming down. Fair enough. Her own life had been unconventional and she knew that people prying only made her hackles rise in defence. She smiled at him instead. ‘You know, you’re absolutely right—you do make the best coffee in the world!’
Luke’s mouth softened. So she wasn’t overly inquisitive. The fact that she had correctly picked up the signals and retreated made him far less inclined to clam up about his past. And friendship was a two-way game—she’d told him plenty about herself. ‘My mother was an opera singer,’ he told her, going to stand beside her by the window.
It was not what she had imagined, not in a million years. She let out a low whistle. ‘I’m impressed!’
But he shook his head as he stared mto the middle distance. ‘Don’t be. She wasn’t a soloist, more a jobbing singer. So she had all of the sacrifice and insecurity with none of the glory.’ His smile held a sideways tilt of resignation. ‘But still she carried on singing.’
‘She must have loved it very much to continue,’ commented Holly.
‘Oh, there was ego involved, and certainly passion,’ he commented wryly. ‘Which are the two main motivating forces behind the arts.’
‘Ego and passion? Hmm! Yet another generalisation from Mr Goodwin!’ laughed Holly.
‘Maybe,’ he shrugged. ‘But I think that artists generally have a better time than their unfortunate offspring.’
‘You mean that they don’t make good parents?’ she asked tentatively, aware that the answer was suddenly terribly important to her. Because he thought of her as an artist? And if he damned their parenting skills in general, then surely he would also be damning her?
‘I don’t think they do make good parents, no. Try explaining to a five-year-old why Mummy has to go off for months on end on tour.’ He shot her a swift look. ‘Why the adulation of an audience means more than that of your small child.’
She glanced up at him. ‘And did you have a father anywhere on the scene?’
‘Oh, yes.’ He watched the steam rise from his coffee. ‘He used to care for me during my mother’s absences, even turning a blind eye to her little dalliances.’
Holly’s eyes widened. ‘You mean she had...’
‘Affairs?’ he supplied acidly. ‘I most certainly do. If there was one thing my beautiful, artistic mother excelled at, it was having affairs.’
‘Heavens,’ commented Holly uncertainly.
‘They were necessary to that ego of hers again—to show that she was still a desirable woman.’
‘I see.’ The bitter disapproval in his voice was unmistakable and understandable. Holly put down her empty cup on the window sill and turned to face him. ‘What happened to them? Your parents, I mean?’
There was a pause. His words were like lemon pips. ‘My mother died of an infection abroad, when I was eight—’
‘Oh, Luke,’ said Holly, her heart going out to him. ‘What a terrible thing to happen.’
He was caught in the sympathetic light from her eyes, and something in that emerald blaze started an aching deep within him, but he quashed it as ruthlessly as he would a fly. ‘Yeah,’ he agreed quietly, that one small word telling her more than anything just how bad it must have been.
She wanted to go and hug him, to take him tightly in her arms and enfold him, to soothe all that little-boy hurt away.
He saw the way she was looking at him, and it made him want to lose himself in the velvet softness of her lips, to melt and meld into the shuddering sweetness of her body. But he shook his head in denial, trying to get a handle on his senses.
‘It was .a terrible thing to happen,’ he said quite calmly, as though these were words he had repeated many times. ‘My father never really got over it. He loved her, you see—for all her capriciousness and her fickleness, her inability to accept reality. When she died it was as though a light had gone off inside him—’
‘He gave up, you mean?’
‘Not in the physical sense. He continued to care for me as best he could. A housekeeper cooked my meals and cleaned my clothes, and my father gave me what love he was capable of. Summer holidays were the worst—we lived in London, and the city used to feel like a cage during those long weeks. His brother began inviting me down here during the vacations—and the sense of freedom and space was a real eye-opener.’
Holly stared out of the window again, at the bare-branched beauty of the winter landscape. She imagined those same trees clothed in green, the summer flowers bursting into rainbow radiance. Yes, she thought, this place must have seemed like a paradise to a motherless little city boy. She turned back to him, her eyes full of questions. ‘And?’
Luke looked at her with interest. Most people had usually overdosed on sadness by this stage in his story. Not that he had told it for a long time. Even Caroline had blithely told him that bad memories were best pushed away and forgotten. That cans of worms were best left unopened. He found himself wondering fleetingly whether she was right.
‘My father died just after I finished school. It was as though he had been hanging on until he had seen through his parental responsibility. I was lined up to go to university—it was something my father wanted badly for me. Then, when he died, I suddenly thought, I don’t have to do this any more—in fact, I don’t have to do anything I don’t want any more.’
‘And that’s when you went out to Africa?’ Holly guessed. ‘For even more of the space you had come to love here? And to escape the unhappy associations with England. And the past.’
‘Intuitive of you,’ he observed.