ahead with the divorce as quickly as possible.’
‘So that she can marry the father and make the child legitimate? Her lawyer said that in his letter, didn’t he? And he told you to persuade me to ‘see sense’.
‘I wish he hadn’t said that—’
‘But that’s how lawyers think,’ he said bitterly. ‘Let my treacherous wife have her way, no matter what it does to me. That’s seeing sense, isn’t it?’
‘Don’t be unfair. I don’t see everything like that.’
‘I think you do. After all, you’re a lawyer.’
‘Yours, not hers. If things were different we could try to make her see sense, but she’s pregnant by another man and there’s nothing to be done about it. The best advice I can offer you is to put her into the past and move on with your life.’
Before he could answer, the doorbell rang and he went to collect the delivery of tea and cakes. He laid the tray on a table near the sofa, sat down beside her and poured tea for her.
‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘I needed this.’
She sipped the hot tea, feeling better at once.
‘How come you were standing by the river?’ she asked. ‘Did the taxi drop you there?’
‘I didn’t take a taxi. I walked all the way. And don’t say it.’
‘Say what?’
‘In this weather? Are you mad? That’s what you’re thinking. It’s written all over your face.’
‘Then I don’t need to say it. But you’ve had a terrible shock. You were bound to go a bit crazy.’
‘Like I said before, I was a fool.’
‘Don’t blame yourself,’ she said gently. ‘You loved her—’
‘Which makes me an even bigger fool,’ he growled.
‘Perhaps. But it’s easy to believe someone if your heart longs to trust them.’
He looked at her with sudden curiosity. ‘You talk as though you really know.’
She shrugged. ‘I’ve had my share of relationship traumas.’
‘Tell me,’ he said quietly.
Her disastrous emotional life wasn’t something she usually talked about, but with this man everything was different. The blow that had struck him down meant that he would understand her as nobody else understood. It was strange to realise that, but everything in the world was becoming different.
‘Romance hasn’t been a large part of my life,’ she said.
‘I guess your career comes first. Your car tells me that.’
It was true. The purchase of the glamorous vehicle had been one of her most delightful experiences.
‘But there has been something, hasn’t there?’ he said. ‘The path I’m treading is one you’ve travelled yourself.’
‘Yes. There was a time when I thought things were going to be different. I allowed myself to have feelings for him and I thought he—well, it just didn’t work out.’
‘Didn’t he love you?’
‘I thought so. We seemed good together, but then he met this other woman—she was a great beauty. Long blonde hair, voluptuous figure—I didn’t stand a chance.’
‘And that was all he cared about? Looks?’
‘So it seemed. Isn’t that what all men care about?’
‘Some. Not all.’ He gave a brief cynical laugh. ‘Some of us can see beyond looks to the person beneath: cold and self-centred or warm and kindly. Didn’t this man see your warmer side? I can see it.’
‘He didn’t think it mattered, unless he could make use of it.’
She made a wry face. ‘You said I’d travelled this road before you, and you were right. I don’t normally talk about it, but at least now you know that this isn’t just a lawyer “seeing sense”. I really do have some idea of what you’re going through. I know what it’s like to be lied to, and to wonder afterwards how I could have been so naïve as not to see through it. But if you don’t want to see through it—’ She sighed.
‘Yes,’ he said heavily. ‘If you don’t want to face the truth, there’s a great temptation to ignore it. You have to beware of that in business, and I suppose it’s true of life as well.’
It was the last thing she had expected him to admit, but something about him had changed. He was speaking with a self-awareness that made him seem more pleasant. It was almost like talking to a different man, a kindly one who felt for her own pain as well as his own.
‘I know this is all very hard for you,’ she said.
He shrugged. ‘I’ll get through it.’ But suddenly his voice changed, became weary. ‘Oh, hell, who am I kidding? Can I call this managing? What she’s done has destroyed the world. I wanted to be a father, to have someone who was really mine. My parents died when I was a child. I was adopted by an uncle and aunt who treated me properly but—well, we were never really close. I believed my wife and I were close, but that proved to be an illusion.
‘Now I realise she was already sleeping with another man, but I never thought of it. Then, suddenly she was gone, demanding a divorce on the grounds that we were incompatible. I found out afterwards that she’d set spies on me to see if I had other women. But I hadn’t. I’d been boringly faithful, which must really have disappointed her.’
‘It certainly weakened her case,’ Ellie agreed.
He gave a grunt of mirthless laughter.
‘And she dumps this news on me on Valentine’s Day. She could hardly have timed it more cynically.’
‘Do you celebrate Valentine’s Day in Italy?’
‘A little. Not as much as you do in England, but enough to make me see the irony. The great day for lovers, except that it’s smothered in snow, both physically and—well, there’s more than one kind of snow.’
‘Yes, it couldn’t have worked out worse, could it?’ she said sadly. ‘I don’t suppose she thought of that—’
‘Of course not. She never thinks of anything except what suits her. But her pregnancy made it all different. The world changed. For the first time ever there was somebody who would be mine, connected to me in a way that nothing and nobody could deny. I told her that I couldn’t let her go. She made a dash for it and came to England because she must have thought divorce would be easier, since we married over here.
‘I followed her, determined to keep her, and if not her then at least my child. But now I learn that the baby’s not even mine—’
‘And I’m
