In the Brazilian's Debt(53)

                ‘How could I forget, when your grandmother and Eduardo saved me? When I heard I’d been accused of assaulting your mother, I was staggered at first, and then I was angry. It was as if I was ten years old again with a gun stuck in my back pocket, eager for revenge. And after the fury I felt impotent, because there was no way I could defend myself against the accusations. I wrote to you, confident that you knew me, and would know those accusations were lies, but you never replied. That’s when I learned to close off my feelings.’

                ‘I never got any letters,’ she said in a small voice.

                ‘Your mother,’ he ground out, full of frustration and anger at what had been lost—trust, friendship, together with Lizzie’s peace of mind for so many years. ‘She took them. Your mother must have destroyed my letters. She stopped you having them.’

                ‘We don’t know that for sure,’ Lizzie, always the voice of reason, pointed out quietly.

                ‘She must have done,’ he argued fiercely. ‘Who else would do that to you?’

                Lizzie looked down and thought about this for a moment. ‘Does it matter?’ she said at last.

                ‘To me? Yes, of course it matters,’ he exclaimed with passion. ‘I poured my heart and soul into those letters—’ He saw Lizzie’s lovely face light with indulgence. ‘Okay, my teenage heart and soul, but still...’

                ‘You were right to ask me to speak up for you,’ she said firmly. ‘And of course, I would have done—if I’d known,’ she added, looking at him now with compassion, as if she could feel the weight of his frustration at the time that had been lost between them as keenly as he could.

                ‘Why do you always have to be so understanding, Lizzie?’

                She smiled a little at his passion. ‘Maybe I understand you,’ she said.

                He had always thought Lizzie’s childhood in the big house as deprived as his, until her grandmother had moved back in from the dower house to take over Lizzie’s care. To think what her parents had stolen from her—and he wasn’t just thinking about his letters now, but Lizzie’s innocence, and her freedom to enjoy her childhood and growing up, as every child should. It beat him up inside even now to think how easily she could have become a victim of her parents’ depravity. It didn’t bear thinking about. Neither of them would ever be able to thank Lizzie’s grandmother enough for what she’d done for them.

                ‘If you wait, I’ll come with you when you go back to Scotland.’

                Lizzie looked at him with surprise. She was right to. Sharing his feelings was new to him, but her grandmother’s illness had set him back on his heels.

                ‘I feel a bond with your grandmother,’ he explained. ‘And gratitude. I believe I owe my success to her, and to Eduardo. Your grandmother taught me how to sift the good people from the bad, and I owe it to her to be there now.’

                He could tell that Lizzie’s decision was already made.

                ‘How could you leave now?’ she said. ‘It’s almost Christmas, and when we come back in the new year, it’s our graduation, which you must attend, and then it’s the match. By that time it could be too late. I’m sorry, Chico, but I can’t wait for you. I have to go now. Could I please borrow one of the Jeeps?’

                He frowned. ‘To do what?’

                ‘To drive to the airport.’