What if she said no? What if she said she could never forgive him for how he’d got her here and the threats he’d made?
Why did he even want her forgiveness? He’d never sought forgiveness before.
Recalling the intimidation he’d put her under to get her acquiescence made him feel tight and compressed inside, and his skin felt as if claws were digging into it. Ruthless behaviour when necessary was nothing new to him, but it had a different taste when you had spent the previous night in bed with the recipient of that behaviour. It tasted different when you knew you would maim anyone who would dare even dream of hurting a hair on the head of that person.
It suddenly struck him that he would give his life to protect this woman.
And as the shock of that revelation filtered through him she continued to speak, cross-legged beside him, naked, the sheet twisted on her lap.
‘Whatever the initial circumstances, I can’t help thinking coming here is the best thing that could ever have happened to me.’
‘Why?’ His voice sounded distant and his head was spinning, his pulse racing so hard nausea gripped the lining of his stomach.
‘Because being here has given me the time and space to see things clearly.’ She dipped her head and gnawed at her bottom lip before speaking again. ‘One of my psychiatrists told me outright that he thought I didn’t want to be fixed. He was wrong. I...’ Her voice caught. When she looked at him her eyes were glassy. ‘It’s not that I didn’t want to be fixed...it’s that I didn’t think I deserved to be fixed.’
Talos ran a hand over his jaw, at a loss as to what he could say. She was unbuttoning herself to him, ready to spill her secrets, and all he wanted to do was shout out and beg her to stop.
He didn’t want to hear them. He didn’t want to feel anything else for her. Not pity, not empathy. He would take his guilt like a man, but nothing more.
‘Maybe you can understand the early part of my life,’ she said, oblivious to the turmoil going on within him. ‘You’ve always been public property too. Before I’d reached the age of ten I’d played for the President of France, had taken part in a celebrity-led anti-poverty concert that was beamed around the world to a billion people...’
All of these facts were things he’d learned when he’d first discovered her in that practice room and known she was ‘the one’. It had made her refusal to perform at the gala all the more ridiculous to his mind.
‘I was a household name, a child prodigy, and it was easy for me.’ She shook her head ruefully. ‘I loved performing and I loved the applause. But then I turned ten. I found the reviews my parents had kept of my performances and realised that people had opinions about my music—that they weren’t just enjoying it but dissecting everything about it. They were dissecting me. All the joy I’d experienced on stage evaporated.’
She snapped her fingers.
‘Gone. I’d never experienced fear once, and all of a sudden I was crippled by it. What if they found me wanting? What if the way I interpreted a particular piece compared unfavourably to another violinist? So many thoughts and fears, when before there had been nothing but the joy of playing. It all came to a head on my mother’s birthday, when I was twelve.’
She broke away and reached for the glass of water on the bedside table.
‘What happened?’ he asked, once she’d placed the glass back. She’d stopped talking, clearly gathering her thoughts together.
‘She had a party at our holiday home in Provence. I’d spent two years begging not to play in public any more, begging to go to school and make friends, begging for a normal life—but she wouldn’t allow it. I was special, you see, and, in my mother’s eyes I belonged on the stage, receiving the plaudits she took for granted in her own career.’
Her voice dropped.
‘I love my maman, but she can be very manipulative. She was not ashamed to use emotional blackmail to get me to play. She’d had a stage built at the bottom of the garden. I remember standing on it and seeing all those eyes upon me—there were at least a hundred guests, most of them international household names—and I froze. And then...’
‘And then?’
Her eyes were huge on his. ‘I wet myself. In front of all those people. They all saw it. All of them. They stopped talking amongst themselves and stared at me—and, God, the horror in their eyes. The humiliation was excruciating.’
Talos’s throat had closed completely. He thought back to the clip he’d found on the internet, of her at her last public performance, before she’d retreated from the limelight. It could only have been months before the party she’d described. She’d been a scrap of a girl at twelve, without any of the knowing precociousness of preadolescence, and small for her age. She’d been a child.
Amalie sighed and visibly gathered herself together, tucking her hair behind her ears.
‘Maman was mortified, but she swore it was just a blip. I was booked to play at the Royal Albert Hall a week later, as part of a Christmas celebration, and she insisted I still play. My father tried to get her to see reason but she couldn’t—really, she couldn’t. I was her protégée; she’d created me. Minutes before I was due to go on stage I had a panic attack, bad enough that a stagehand called an ambulance. When I was released from hospital my father collected me alone. Maman had refused to listen to reason so he felt he had no choice but to leave her and take me with him for my own protection.’
She blew out a long puff of air and gave a laugh that was full of bitterness rather than humour.
‘He loved her, but he knew that by staying with her he would be condoning her treatment of me. Since then I’ve watched my mother rebound from relationship to relationship, knowing that if I’d been stronger they would still be together—’
‘No,’ he cut in, finally finding his voice. ‘No, it was your mother—not you. You were a child.’
Her eyes caught his and she jerked her head in a nod, relief spreading over her features that he understood.
‘That’s what I mean about it being good for me here in Agon,’ she said. ‘It’s given me the space and perspective to see reason and the time to think. You see, even though my father was awarded custody of me, given sole responsibility for my welfare, I still spent holidays and weekends with her. He never stopped me seeing her. He never stopped loving her but he felt he had to put my well-being first and take any decisions about my welfare out of her hands. I watched them both suffer apart and all I could see was that it was my fault. I felt as if I’d destroyed their lives. I’ve been punishing myself because subconsciously I didn’t think I deserved to have the future I’d dreamed about. I created a nice, safe life for myself and thought it was enough.’
‘And now?’ he asked. ‘You’ve come so far already. You’ve played for me, which in itself was a huge hurdle to overcome. Your orchestra will be here tomorrow, so we will see how successful we have been, but I have faith. You can do this, my little songbird. But you need to want this for yourself, regardless of any repercussions.’
Her head tilted. ‘Do those repercussions still exist?’
‘I don’t know,’ he said honestly. ‘I would prefer not to find out.’
‘So would I.’ A sad smile spread over her face. ‘It is hard for me to reconcile the man I’m sharing a bed with with the brute who forced his way into my home.’
‘They’re one and the same. I make no apologies for being the man I was raised to be. When it comes to my family and my country I fight—and when necessary I fight dirty.’
‘That you certainly do,’ she said with a sigh, before reaching for his hand and threading her fingers through his. ‘Why is this gala so important to you? I understand a nation’s pride