He surprised her by murmuring, ‘Not at all. You are right. Progress does not always happen as you expect it to. Sometimes it is hard-fought, and other times it is overnight, as though a cascade of discoveries slides into place. But without funds neither is likely.’
She nodded, distracted enough by the subject matter to speak naturally. ‘I thought I’d do it for a year. As a way of giving back to the trust that was so supportive to us. But it turns out I sort of have a knack for it.’
‘I can imagine,’ he said. ‘Do you regret not studying law?’
It was on the tip of her tongue to deny it, but the truth came to her first. ‘Yeah. Sometimes. But that would have been about helping people, too. I’m just helping different people now.’
He let the words sink in and shied away from the intrinsic guilt they evoked. After all, her propensity to help others was what had made it impossible for her to walk away from his marriage proposal.
‘And staying at home instead of finding your own place...?’
Her smile was enigmatic. ‘You know... Kenington Hall is enormous. I have my own wing. It’s much like living on my own.’
‘And your parents are your neighbours?’ he murmured, his voice ringing with disbelief.
‘Yes.’ She nodded. ‘But apparently I’m a pretty inattentive neighbour,’ she said with regret. ‘I had no idea about Dad’s troubles.’
His desire to comfort her displeased him. ‘I imagine he was adept at concealing the truth.’
‘Not really.’ She shook her head wistfully.
The waitress appeared with their starters, placing them on the table and then disappearing without a word. Marnie wondered if Nikos had commanded her to stop making conversation when he’d switched to speaking Greek earlier.
Nikos watched as Marnie lifted her fork and speared a single scampi. She put it down again almost instantly, and when she looked at him he felt a wave of guilt emanating from her.
‘I should have seen the signs.’
‘What signs?’ he prompted.
‘He’s been stressed. Angry. He’s just not himself.’
Nikos found it hard to find any genuine sympathy for the man, but he realised he didn’t like seeing Marnie suffer. At all. ‘Tell me something...’
She nodded, toying with her fork.
‘After your father paid me off, were you angry with him?’
Marnie’s eyes flashed with emotion. ‘I didn’t know about that, remember?’
He waved a hand dismissively through the air. ‘Fine. After I left, were you angry with him? With your mother?’
‘I...’ She shuttered her eyes closed, her dark lashes fanning over her translucent cheek.
‘Do not think!’ He repeated his earlier directive and she grimaced.
‘I was furious,’ she said, so quietly he had to lean forward to catch the words. ‘But they’re my parents, and they’d been through so much.’ She swallowed. ‘My father threatened...’ She closed her mouth on the threat she’d been about to repeat. ‘My father was devastated by losing Libby.’
‘And he threatened you?’ Nikos prompted, with a smoothness that spoke of determination.
She thought about lying. But wasn’t there so much water under the bridge now?
‘They made me choose.’
The anticlimax brought about in him an intense sense of disappointment. Right when he’d thought he might finally be going to understand just what had led to Marnie pushing him far, far away, she’d gone back to the old lines.
‘I mean they literally told me they’d disown me if I didn’t break it off with you,’ she added with a look of grief on her beautiful features.
She was back in the past, her mind far from him in that moment.
‘I didn’t care when they said they’d disinherit me.’ She looked at him—and through him. ‘Money meant nothing to me. But they were my link to Libby, and they said they wouldn’t have me in their lives so long as I was with you. That I would never be allowed to return to Kenington Hall.’ Marnie’s voice cracked. ‘The house was—is—all I have left of her...’
* * *
Marnie woke with a start as the plane pitched a little in one direction. She’d dozed off, despite the fact their flight had been a morning one. She stifled a yawn with the back of her hand, her groggy eyes drifting to her husband’s bent head.
He was working.
A smile flicked to her lips with ease, though her stomach churned with a mix of anxiety and an emotion that was so much more confusing.
She didn’t have time to attempt to understand it before the plane shuddered and Marnie’s panic overtook everything. She dug her fingernails into the armrests, her expression showing distress.
Nikos, attuned to her every move, looked up instantly. ‘There is thick cloud-cover over London, that’s all.’
She nodded, but her childhood fear of flying was ricocheting through her. Marnie stared out of the window, trying to distract herself with thoughts of her father’s birthday weekend—anything to curtail the clear picture she had in her mind of the aeroplane spearing nose-first towards the earth.
Their trip had come round quickly—for Marnie, almost too quickly.
After that one night in Athens when they’d shared dinner she felt as if a new understanding had settled between her and her husband and she wanted to hold on to that, to strengthen the understanding that was building between them. Would a trip back to her parents’ unsettle the bridge they’d been building?
They were not a normal couple.
There was no shared love between them—at least not on Nikos’s part. Perhaps not on Marnie’s part either.
She had spent a great deal of her energy trying to decipher and separate her feelings of lust from love; her feelings of past love from present infatuation. Some days she convinced herself that she’d fallen in love with only the idea of Nikos—an idea that bore only a passing resemblance to the ruthless, determined businessman he’d become.
But then he would do something sweet—like bringing her tea in bed when she’d slept late, or calling in the middle of the day to remind her of something small they’d discussed the night before—and her heart would flutter and her soul would know she loved him. Not in a sensible, rational way, but in the way that love sometimes bloomed even when it was not watered or fed.
They barely argued. By tacit agreement each tried to respect the other’s limitations. Marnie accepted the dark streak that ran through Nikos—the side of him that was so hell-bent on making her father see how wrong he was to have passed Nikos off as a failure that he’d blackmailed her into marriage. If she thought about it too much it made her queasy, so she pushed it to the recesses of her mind and clung to a sort of blind hope. Maybe one day he wouldn’t feel that aching resentment so forcefully?
Their truce was underpinned by a sex life that made her toes curl. He had been right about that. Even if it was all they had to go on it would make their marriage worth staying in. Wouldn’t it?
But uncertainty lurked just beyond her acceptance. For they had travelled stormy waters, and weren’t there always eyes in storms? The calm that gave a moment’s respite before the intensity of the cyclone returned with twice its strength?
Was she in the eye of a storm?
Or was this a lasting peace?
Only time would tell, and Marnie had a lifetime to wait and see.
CHAPTER TEN
THE APPLE WAS as sweetly sun-warmed as those she remembered from childhood. Despite the fact the day was cool, the morning had offered just enough heat to darken the flesh of this one more than the others.
Though it wasn’t yet midday, she was tired. They’d been travelling since dawn and the return to Kenington with Nikos by her side had brought with it a sledge-load of emotions.
Juice dribbled down one side of her mouth and she lifted a finger to catch it.
Nikos watched, transfixed.
‘I used to love coming down here to the apple orchard...’
‘I remember.’
Memories. They were his problem. They were thick in the air around them. Memories of how it had felt then. When he’d been young and in love. He would have plucked a matching apple from another branch and enjoyed its fruity flesh alongside Marnie.
She stopped walking and turned around, her back to the heavily adorned fruit trees. ‘I always think this is the best aspect of the house.’ She lifted her free hand and framed the building between her forefinger and thumb. Her smile was born of whimsy. ‘Until I go to the rose garden or Libby’s garden. Then I think that view is preferable.’
She crunched into the apple once more.
‘Perhaps it is the same from all viewpoints,’ he suggested, with a hint of cynicism that was out of place and sounded, even to his own ears, forced.
‘Maybe.’ She shrugged and began to walk back towards the house.
He resisted the urge to ask her to stay with him where they were a little longer.
‘Thank you for coming with me this weekend.’
His laugh was short. ‘I presumed my attendance wasn’t optional.’
She lifted her face to his. ‘I would think almost everything is optional for you.’
His smile was without humour—a relic of his twisted laugh. ‘Not this.’
She didn’t pretend to misunderstand. ‘When are you seeing him?’