She was trying to decide whether she should dress it up some way, and how, or whether she should come straight out with it when Catherine stopped her thought processes stone-dead.
‘I have to tell you—your marriage to my son was one of the happiest occasions of my life, Elena. It didn’t make up for losing Sam, nothing could ever do that, but it helped enormously—helped ease the dreadful grief and gave me something good to think about. Since I lost their father, all I’ve ever wanted is happiness for my boys.’
She looked so earnest, her eyes rather too moist, tears not far away, because she was still trying to come to terms with the worst thing that could happen to a woman: the loss of her child. Elena felt her stomach give a sickening lurch. She didn’t want to hear any more, but short of walking out of the room she couldn’t avoid it.
‘Like any mother, I wanted my boys settled with a good woman, happily married with children of their own. I’d begun to despair of it ever happening.’ She gave Elena a soft, shaky smile. ‘Sam—well, he was like a will o’ the wisp, impossible to pin down or keep in a settled place, and Jed—well, he was too settled, too much a workaholic bachelor, wedded to the business. But when Jed invited you to stay at Netherhaye, after the funeral, it was like a blessing. Just to watch the two of you gave me joy—and hope for the future. I could see what had happened, any fool could. I watched the pair of you holding your feelings back—not only because to hurl yourselves into each other’s arms might have seemed crass, in view of the circumstances, but because you were obviously making sure you got to know each other before you made any commitment. Though of course Jed and I already felt we knew you very well, through what Sam had told us.
‘Knowing that my one remaining son had found the perfect love at last was the only thing that kept me going through those dark days. So when he phoned a few days ago, to check I was all right on my own, I asked if I could come on a short visit. I hadn’t meant to,’ she said earnestly, ‘it just came out. I know you’re on your honeymoon, but I suppose I needed to see you both to restore my faith in God, to remind myself He can dish out the good as well as the hard to bear.’
Her smile was now so loving and peaceful it made Elena’s heart bleed. How could she spill out the truth and ruin this good woman’s precarious contentment? Plunge her back into the dark abyss of grief where there was no glimmer of consolation to be found?
Jed had decided on the pretence of marital bliss because he had known what the truth would do to his grieving parent, and Elena could understand that, sympathise. His harsh dictates, so coldly spelled out for her, became more the reasoned decisions of a man who knew his duty.
He would hate the idea of putting on a front as much as she did, but felt, because of the tragic circumstances, that it was the only right thing to do.
She didn’t want to understand, and heaven knew she didn’t want to sympathise. She wanted to cut Jed right out of her life, never see or hear of him again, carry on with the long haul of forgetting the pain, the terrible slicing pain of seeing his precious love turn to hatred.
Not knowing what to say, she refilled Catherine’s glass and took a gulp of her own as yet untouched wine, and Jed said from the doorway, ‘Should you be drinking that?’
The sound of that cool voice with undertones of condemnation made her heart clench, especially when the penny dropped and she realised why he had asked that question. Alcohol and pregnancy didn’t mix. Sam’s baby was another of his priorities, another duty of care.
‘Don’t be so stuffy! It’s almost suppertime. We’re not hitting the sauce before breakfast! Come and join us.’ Not knowing his reason for the criticism, Catherine turned to her son, raising her glass, proud maternal love in her eyes.
Putting her own glass down on a side table, aware that her hands were shaking, that every darn thing inside her was shaking, Elena risked an under-lash look at her husband.
He sauntered casually into the room, with a smile for his mother, hands stuffed into the pockets of his close-fitting dark trousers, the silk of his white shirt falling in fluid folds from his wide shoulders.
Yet there was strain there, there in the deepening of the lines that bracketed his beautiful, passionate male mouth, the tell-tale pallor beneath the olive tones of his skin. The past week had been tough on him, too.
But it was all entirely his own fault. She quelled the momentary surge of compassion. If he had given her the basic human right of being heard. If he’d given her the opportunity to tell him about the clinic treatment then he would have believed her when she’d told him that she and Sam had never been lovers.