As soon as she reached the bedroom, Ella stripped out of her evening dress and took off the diamond necklace. Maybe she was oversensitive, but all evening she’d felt as though the glittering gems had screamed the fact that she was Vadim’s mistress, and she had been aware of speculative glances from various predatory women, clearly wondering how long she would hold on to her position.
Recalling that Vadim had dropped the velvet box that had contained the necklace into his bedside cabinet, she crossed to his side of the bed, opened the drawer and deposited the diamonds. She was about to shut the drawer again when something caught her attention.
The rag-doll was clearly old, and cheaply made. Someone had repaired the stitching on the arms and legs with a slightly darker thread, and some of the stuffing must have escaped because the doll was limp and strangely misshapen. Carefully, Ella took the doll from the drawer. Beneath it were two photographs: one of a woman with a mass of brown hair, holding a baby in her arms, the other depicting a little girl of maybe four or five, with an impish smile and a mop of blonde curls. The photos were not of particularly good quality and were curled at the edges, as if they had been held many times. They could only be of Vadim’s wife and child, she realised, her heart thumping as she stared at them in fascination, unaware of the faint sound of footfall until he materialised in front of her.
Flushing guiltily, she quickly dropped the photographs into her lap. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to pry,’ she mumbled. ‘I was putting the necklace away when I saw the pictures…and I was curious.’ Vadim’s silence was unnerving; the expression on his hard face unreadable, and her hands shook slightly as she handed the doll and photos to him. ‘Cute little girl,’ she commented, striving to sound normal as she got up from the bed.
‘Yes.’ He finally spoke, and gave a faint shrug of his shoulders, his eyes veering from her face to the pictures. ‘They’re friends-in Russia.’
Ella nodded. ‘I see.’ She picked up her robe and headed swiftly for the en suite bathroom. She was not one of Vadim’s closest friends; she was the woman he had sex with. There was no reason why he would confide in her, she reminded herself.
In the bathroom she removed her make-up, washed her face and released the pins from her chignon, pulling the brush through her hair with automatic strokes until she could not put off returning to the bedroom any longer. Thank God she’d made the excuse about having a headache earlier, she thought bleakly. She knew she was being stupid, but she could not bear to make love with Vadim tonight, when his lie about the identities of the woman and child in the photographs emphasised how unimportant she was to him.
He had switched off the lamps so that the room was shadowed; fingers of silvery moonlight were glimmering through the windows. Vadim had stepped outside onto the terrace. She could see him sitting on the garden bench, his shoulders slumped in an air of such utter loneliness that instead of sliding into bed she was drawn towards the open doors, her grey silk gown rustling as she hurried down the steps.
He looked up as she approached, and she caught her breath at the expression of haunted agony on his face.
‘The woman in the photo was my wife,’ he said harshly.
Ella’s eyes flew to the photographs in his hands, and her heart contracted when she saw him stroke his finger lightly over the face of the little girl.
‘And this was my daughter-Klara.’ The silence trembled between them before he added in a tightly controlled voice, ‘They’re both dead.’
He passed his hand over his eyes, and the betraying gesture tore Ella’s heart to shreds. She was stunned to see this powerful man suddenly so vulnerable. She wanted to go to him, hold him, but fear that he would reject her sympathy held her immobile.#p#分页标题#e#
‘I’m so sorry.’ She didn’t know what to say, and the words seemed desperately inadequate. When Lena Tarasov had revealed that Vadim had been married, she had been bitterly hurt that he had never spoken about his past to her. But now, as she witnessed his raw pain, she hated herself for having been so childish. He had clearly been devastated by the loss of his wife and daughter, and who could blame him if he found it hard to talk about their deaths?
‘What…what happened?’ she asked huskily.
His throat worked, and his lashes were spiked with moisture when he lifted his head and met her startled gaze. ‘They were killed in an avalanche which hit Irina’s parents’ village,’ he explained harshly. ‘Most of Rumsk was wiped out.’ He stared down at the photos in his hand. ‘My parents-in-law lived on the lower slopes of the mountain, and when hundreds of tons of snow hurtled down the mountainside no one in the house stood a chance. It was three days before the rescue team found Irina, and another two before they reached Klara.’ His voice cracked with emotion. ‘Of course it was too late. When they found Klara she was still holding her doll.’