had once ignored the reality that his pregnant former employee might need more than financial support from him?
It would have been uncomfortable for Angel to overcome his own feelings back then and offer Merry his support, and he had been unable to force himself to go that extra mile for her benefit. In the same way being honest about his relationship with Roula would have put paid to any hope of Merry marrying him and sharing their daughter. Was that why he had kept quiet? Or was it possible that he believed the relationship with Roula was at an end? But then wouldn’t Roula know that? Had Angel lied to Merry to get her to the altar? Was he that ruthless?
Oh, yes, a little voice chimed inside her head.
‘MRS VALTINOS INSISTED that she had to make an immediate departure from the airport,’ Angel’s driver repeated uneasily. ‘I did tell her that you were expecting her to join you for lunch before she left London but she said—’
‘That she didn’t have time,’ Angel slotted in flatly.
‘I took her to Foxcote Hall at two and then an hour later dropped her off at her aunt’s house. She said she’d call when she needed to be picked up again,’ the older man completed.
Angel breathed in slow and deep. Something was wrong. His wife had flown back to London with their daughter and mounds of luggage even though she had only been expecting to remain in the UK for forty-eight hours at most. She had blown him off for lunch. She wasn’t answering his calls or his texts. Such behaviour was unlike her. Merry wasn’t moody or facetious and she didn’t play games. If something had annoyed her, she was more likely to speak up straight away. His growing bewilderment was starting to give way to righteous anger and an amount of unfamiliar apprehension that only enraged him more.
What could possibly have happened between his departure and her arrival in London? Why the mounds of luggage? Wasn’t she planning to return to Greece? Was it possible that she was leaving him and taking their daughter with her? But why would she do that? He had checked with the staff on Palos. Merry had had only one visitor and that was Roula, and when he had phoned Roula she had insisted that Merry had been perfectly friendly and relaxed with her. His lean brown hands knotting into fists, his tension pronounced, Angel resolved to be waiting at Foxcote when Merry got back.
* * *
Merry emerged from the rambling country house that she had not until that day known that Angel owned and climbed into the waiting limousine. She had left Elyssa with Sally, deeming it unlikely that her mother was likely to be champing at the bit to meet her first grandchild because Natalie had never had much time for babies. Furthermore, if Natalie was likely to be chastising her daughter and creating one of her emotionally exhausting scenes it was better to keep Elyssa well away from the display because Merry always lost patience with the older woman. What did it matter after all these years anyway? Natalie hadn’t even made the effort to attend her daughter’s wedding. But then she hadn’t made the effort to attend Merry’s graduation or, indeed, any of the significant events that had marked her daughter’s life.
Obsessed with the recollection of Roula’s sleazy allegations, Merry was simply not in the mood to deal with her mother. Landing in London to discover that Angel had arranged to meet her for lunch had been unsettling. Merry was determined to confront him but only in her own time and only when she had decided exactly what she intended to say to him. Not yet at that point, she had ducked lunch and ignored his calls and texts. Let him fester for a while as she had had to fester while she’d run over Roula’s claims until her head had ached and her stomach had been queasy and she had wept herself empty of tears.
Angel hadn’t asked her to love him, she reminded herself as the limo drew up outside Sybil’s house. But he had asked her to trust him and she had. Now that trust was broken and she was so wounded she felt as though she had been torn apart. She had trailed all her belongings and her daughter’s back from Greece but she still didn’t know what she would be doing next or even where she would be living. While she had been getting married, life had moved on. The cottage now had another tenant and she didn’t want to move in with her aunt again. Nor did she want to feel like a sad, silly failure with Angel again.
‘So glad you made the time to come,’ Sybil gabbled almost nervously as Merry walked through the front door into the open-plan lounge where her mother rose stiffly upright to face her. Natalie bore little resemblance to her daughter, being small, blonde and rather plump, but she looked remarkably young for her forty odd years.
‘Natalie,’ Merry acknowledged, forcing herself forward to press an awkward kiss to her mother’s cheek. ‘How are you?’
‘Oh, don’t be all polite and nice as if we’re strangers. That just makes me feel worse,’ her mother immediately complained. ‘Sybil has something to tell you. You had better sit down. It’s going to come as a shock.’
Her brow furrowing in receipt of that warning, Merry sank down into an armchair and focused on her aunt. Sybil remained standing and she was very pale.
‘We have a big secret in this family, which we have always covered up,’ Sybil stated agitatedly. ‘I didn’t see much point in telling you about it so long after the event.’
‘No, you never did like to tell anything that could make you look bad,’ Natalie sniped. ‘But you promised me that you would tell her.’
Sybil compressed her lips. ‘When I was fifteen I got pregnant by a boy I was at school with. My parents were horrified. They sent me to live with a cousin up north and then they adopted my baby. It was all hushed up. I had to promise my mother that I would never tell my daughter the truth.’
Merry was bemused. ‘I—’
‘I was that adopted baby,’ Natalie interposed thinly. ‘I’m not Sybil’s younger sister, I’m her daughter but I didn’t find that out until I was eighteen.’
Losing colour, Merry flinched and focused on Sybil in disbelief. ‘Your daughter?’
‘Yes. Then my mother died and I felt that Natalie had the right to know who I really was. She was already talking about trying to trace her birth mother, so it seemed sensible to speak up before she tried doing that,’ Sybil explained hesitantly.
‘And overnight, when that truth came out, Sybil went from being my very exciting famous big sister, who gave me wonderful gifts, to being a liar, who had deceived me all my life,’ Merry’s mother condemned with a bitterness that shook Merry.
‘So, you’re actually my grandmother, not my aunt,’ Merry registered shakily as she studied Sybil and struggled to disentangle the family relationships she had innocently taken for granted.
‘It wasn’t my secret to share after the adoption. I gave up my rights but when I came clean about who I really was, it sent your mother off the rails.’
‘Lies...the gift that keeps on giving,’ Natalie breathed tersely. ‘That’s part of the reason I fell pregnant with you, Merry. When I had that stupid affair with your father, I was all over the place emotionally. I had lost my adoptive mother and then discovered that the sister I loved and admired was in fact my mother...and I didn’t like her very much.’
‘Natalie couldn’t forgive me for putting my career first but it enabled me to give my parents enough money to live a very comfortable life while they raised my daughter,’ Sybil argued in her own defence. ‘I was grateful for
