That Vidal should make such an admission caused Fliss’s heart to ache for the pain she could tell he felt.
‘You were a child,’ she reminded him. ‘My mother told me that she felt your grandmother had her own suspicions about her and my father anyway.’
‘Yes, she told me the same thing when I first visited her—after my grandmother’s death. Her kindness was balm to my guilt.’
‘When you first visited her?’ Fliss questioned. ‘When was that?’
She could see from Vidal’s frown that he had said more than he’d intended. His voice was clipped, his words sparing, as though he was being forced to say more than he wished to say, when he told her, almost reluctantly, ‘After my grandmother’s death I visited your mother. As head of the family it was my duty to … to do so—to ensure that both you and she—’
‘You came to England to see my mother?’ Fliss interrupted him.
‘Yes. I thought she might want to have news of your father. The manner in which they had been parted had not been … kind, and there was you to consider—their child. I wanted your mother to know that you and she would be made very welcome if she were to choose to bring you to Spain. I thought she might want your father to see you, and you to meet him.’
Vidal was trying to choose his words very carefully. Felicity had suffered so much pain already. He didn’t want to inflict still more on her.
Fliss, though, had guessed what Vidal was trying to shield her from.
‘My mother didn’t want to go back to Spain? She didn’t want me to meet my father?’ she guessed.
Vidal immediately defended Fliss’s mother. ‘‘She was thinking of you. I’d had to tell her about Felipe’s breakdown, and she was concerned about the effect that might have on you.’
‘There’s more, isn’t there? I want to know it all,’ Fliss insisted.
For a minute she thought that Vidal would refuse. He turned away from her to look towards the window.
‘I have a right to know.’ Fliss persisted.
She heard Vidal sigh.
‘Very well, then. But remember, Felicity, all your mother wanted to do was protect you.’
‘Nothing you can tell me will change how I feel about my mother,’ Fliss assured him truthfully. And nothing could change how she felt about Vidal either, she knew. He had misjudged her, and it seemed she had misjudged him, but her love for him remained as true now as it had been all those years ago.
Vidal turned back to look at her. Fliss held her breath. Could he somehow read in her eyes her love for him? Quickly she dropped her lashes to conceal her expression.
‘Your mother told me that she did not want there to be any contact between you and the Spanish side of your family,’ Vidal began. ‘She asked me to give her my promise that there would not be. Initially she was afraid that it might lead to you being hurt. You were a young girl, with perhaps an idealised vision of your father that she recognised he could not match, and then later she was equally afraid that you might—out of daughterly love—sacrifice your own freedom to be with your father. I gave her the promise she asked for, so when your letter to your father arrived—’
‘You kept it from my father. Yes, I can understand that now, Vidal. But why didn’t you simply destroy it? Why did you bring it to England and … and taunt me with it?’
The pain in her voice cut into Vidal’s heart.
‘I thought it best to discuss the situation with your mother in person. I didn’t intend to taunt you, as you put it, I merely wanted to ensure that you did not write to your father again.’
‘You came all the way to England just to discuss that?’
Vidal made a small dismissive gesture with one hand, as though to sweep her question away, and immediately Fliss knew.
‘You didn’t just come for that, did you? There was something else.’
There was another pause whilst Vidal once again looked towards the window before turning back to tell her, ‘As I said earlier, as head of the family I felt it my duty. Your mother had had a very difficult time, enduring the loss of the man she loved, and the totally unacceptable financial hardship she had to suffer before.’
‘Before she inherited all that money,’ Fliss said slowly. ‘Money from an aunt who Mum had never once mentioned to me and who I never met. Money that Mum often said she was grateful to have because of all that it would do for me. Money to buy us a lovely house in the country that she said was especially for me. Money that meant Mum didn’t have to work so that she could be there for me. Money to send me to a good school and then university.’