One Night with His Wife(19)

‘What was wrong with that?’ Luc practically whispered his incredulity at that response, black fury emanating from him in blistering waves. ‘I thought you’d gone off to drown yourself! I had the moat dragged…I put frogmen in the bloody lake!’

She regarded him as if he had taken leave of his wits.

‘If you laugh…if you laugh…’ Luc warned her thickly.

But Star was already picturing the extreme anxiety it would have taken to persuade Luc to embark on such a search. Her stomach turned over sickly. There was no risk of her being amused.

‘Not once did it occur to you that I might be concerned for your welfare. Not once in all those months we were apart did you even phone to tell me that you were all right!’ Swinging away from her, Luc sent the goblet in his hand flying into the fireplace, where it exploded noisily into crystal fragments.

Star studied those gleaming fragments in deep, deep shock. ‘I…I didn’t think—’

‘You don’t ever. You live every day like it’s going to be your last. You don’t look back, you don’t look forward, you just do what you feel like. That’s a luxury some of us have never known,’ Luc stated glacially, his anger clearly spent.

Trembling in the face of all those sins he had piled up into a giant weight with which to crush her, Star was parchment-pale. Irresponsible, selfish, flighty. It seemed she had no redeeming graces. She was guilty as hell, she conceded wretchedly. She had thrown herself at him. She had also allowed him to marry her when she should have confronted her mother and at least tried to persuade her into withdrawing her unjust threats. During their brief time together after their marriage, she had refused to accept rejection. But, surprisingly, it appeared that in Luc’s eyes her biggest sin had been vanishing and failing to contact him in all the months that had followed.

‘You even persuaded Emilie to pretend that she didn’t know where you were all that time,’ Luc concluded grimly. ‘Do you think I didn’t realise that today? Emilie who might have been my mother, had my father had the courage to stand by her!’

Her utter confusion at that allusion made him release a weary laugh.

‘You see nothing but what relates directly to you.’ Luc shook his proud dark head in despair. ‘Why do you think it was so important for Emilie to be there for my father when he was dying? Why do you think her presence was such a comfort? When they were young, they were in love. But my grandfather disapproved because Emilie was a poor relation. My father was afraid of losing out to his younger brother in the inheritance stakes and he gave Emilie up. She went on to make a happy marriage; he didn’t.’

Listening to Luc spell out what she felt she should have sensed or worked out for herself made Star feel even worse. It was like the missing piece in a puzzle, which she had been too self-absorbed to recognise as a puzzle…Emilie’s constant attendance on Roland Sarrazin that winter, her quiet, but undeniably deep grief when he finally passed away.

‘Emilie felt sorry for him, desperately sorry for him, because he never stopped caring for her. After my mother died, my father would have married Emilie, but she turned him down.’

‘You’re right…’ Star mumbled ruefully. ‘I don’t see anything that’s not directly under my nose. I thought I was so perceptive too.’

‘Go to bed…it’s three in the morning.’

Star still hadn’t told him about Venus and Mars. Now the prospect of making that announcement loomed over her like a death sentence. If he didn’t hate her yet, he could only be a hair’s breadth from doing so. She saw that in so many ways Luc had been amazingly tolerant of her behaviour. And she didn’t think tolerance came naturally to him. Indeed, with his legendary reputation for cold rationality and ruthlessness, all of a sudden it was very hard to grasp why Luc had allowed one foolish teenager to cause him so much grief…

‘Just one more thing…’ Luc remarked flatly, breaking into her thoughts. ‘What I said about buying a house here for you? It was a foolish impulse, and I apologise for making the suggestion.’

‘Maybe you wanted revenge…’ Star suddenly felt as if she had been smacked in the face with the ultimate of rejections. His apology was undeniably sincere. Evidently one good long look at the catastrophic results of having her in his life had cured Luc of the smallest desire to continue their relationship in any form. And she really didn’t feel that she could blame him, which felt even worse.

‘I don’t think like that…’

Luc watched Star sidling backwards out of the room with a kind of blind look in her eyes and wondered why he didn’t feel better. He wondered why he suddenly felt like the sort of male who was brutal to small children and animals. He wondered why, when it was natural for him to be extremely tough on those who surrounded him, being tough on Star had demanded the spur of eighteen months of pent-up rage finally breaking its boundaries. But sanity had reasserted its natural sway, he told himself in grim consolation, wincing as Star bashed one slight shoulder on the corner of the bookshelves before finally disappearing from view.

He was amazed that she hadn’t shouted back at him. Strange how dissatisfying an experience that had proved. But then alcohol was a depressant; he had lost his temper and he loathed being out of control. Possibly he had been a little too tough on her. But revenge? Trust Star to come up with that angle! He was above that sort of nonsense.

Upstairs, Star collapsed down on the bedroom sofa without even taking off her clothes. Her life seemed to stretch before her like a desert of grey desolation. Luc just about hated her and had no reason whatsoever to think well of her. Yet she did find herself questioning why Luc had held onto his anger for so long. Flattened by exhaustion, however, she slept for four hours, and woke up feeling unrefreshed.

Luc’s bed was empty, untouched from the night before. It was seven. She headed straight into the bathroom, peeling off clothing as she went. After a frantically quick wash, she donned the black sand-washed silk hooded summer dress which her mother had given her for her birthday. It felt suitably funereal.

With the twins’ birth certificates clutched in one nerveless hand, she went straight downstairs. Her steps getting slower and slower, she entered the imposing dining room. Luc was seated in aristocratic isolation at the far end of the polished table. He lowered his newspaper, revealing hooded eyes and a grim cast to his dark good-looks. Immaculate in a silver-grey suit worn with a silk shirt and a burgundy silk tie, he looked formidable, but he still stopped her susceptible heart clean dead in its tracks.

‘I didn’t expect to see you up this early,’ he admitted with complete cool.

‘I…I needed to speak to you before you left for the bank.’ Star sucked in a deep, deep breath and forced herself to walk down the length of the table towards him.

Luc folded his newspaper and rose with lithe grace. ‘I’m afraid you left it too late. I’m about to leave.’

‘Luc…these are the twins’ birth certificates,’ she practically whispered, pale as milk.

‘Of what possible interest could they be to me?’ Luc didn’t pause even to spare the documents a glance as he strode down the other side of the table in the direction of the door.

Star turned again, her rigid backbone tightening another painful notch. ‘The twins were born more than six months ago, Luc. They’re twelve months old…they just don’t look it because they were premature—’

Luc swung back with a frown of complete exasperation. ‘Why are you unloading all this stuff on me?’

‘Venus and Mars are twelve months old, you see,’ Star continued in a fast fading voice. ‘That night…you know, when I “slunk”, as you put it, you-know-where…well, that night had consequences. I’m really sorry.’





CHAPTER SEVEN

LUC studied Star, absently noting that she was wearing a nightie that resembled some sort of mourning apparel and that she lacked her usual glow.

His brain had shrieked to a sudden halt on her second reference to the age of her children. Twelve months…twelve months old? What were they? Miniature babies? What was she trying to tell him? Premature? Born too early, he rephrased for his own benefit. Was there something wrong with the twins? Were they ill? A momentary image of those helpless little creatures under threat gripping him, Luc paled as if a spooky hand had trailed down his spine.

‘They’re your kids,’ Star framed unevenly. ‘I should have put you right the minute I realised you thought otherwise. But I was shocked, and annoyed that you could think that they were some other man’s. Since you didn’t seem that bothered by the idea, I didn’t contradict you.’

‘My kids…’ Luc echoed in the unreacting manner of a male who had not yet computed what he was being told. ‘What’s the matter with them? Are they sick?’

Now it was Star’s turn to look confused. ‘No, of course not. They’re fine now, and catching up great. Luc…do you understand what I’ve just told you?’

‘You said they were my children,’ Luc repeated back to her, still without any change of expression, although his winged ebony brows were beginning to pleat.