perceptible scorn. ‘Then Sybil interfered and stole you away from me.’
‘It wasn’t like that!’ Sybil protested. ‘You needed help.’
Merry’s mother settled strained eyes on Merry’s troubled face and said starkly, ‘What do you think it was like for me to see my birth mother lavishing all the love and care she had denied me on my daughter instead?’
Merry breathed in deep and slow, struggling to put her thoughts in order. In reality she was still too upset about Roula’s allegations to fully concentrate her brain on what the two women were telling her. Sybil was her grandmother, not her aunt and Merry had never been told that Natalie was an adopted child. She abhorred the fact that she had not been given the full truth about her background sooner.
‘The way Sybil treated you, the fuss she made of you, made me resent you,’ Merry’s mother confessed guiltily. ‘It wrecked our relationship. She came between us.’
‘That was never my intention,’ Sybil declared loftily.
‘But that’s how it was...’ Natalie complained stonily.
Merry lowered her head, recognising that she saw points on both sides of the argument. Sybil had only been fifteen when she gave Natalie up to her parents for adoption and she had been barred from admitting that she was Natalie’s birth mum. Merry refused to condemn Sybil for that choice but she also saw how devastating that pretence and the lies must’ve been for her own mother and how finding out that truth years afterwards had distressed her.
‘You say you want a closer relationship with me and yet you still had no interest in coming to my wedding or in meeting my daughter,’ Merry heard herself fire back at her mother.
‘I couldn’t afford the plane fare!’ Natalie snapped defensively. ‘Who do you think paid for this visit?’
‘How do you feel about this?’ Sybil pressed anxiously.
‘Confused,’ Merry admitted tightly. ‘Hurt that the two of you didn’t tell me the truth years ago. And I hate lies, Sybil, and now I discover that you’ve pretty much been lying to me my whole life.’
In actuality, Merry felt as if the solid floor under her feet had fallen away, leaving her to stage a difficult balancing act. Her grandmother and her mother were both regarding her expectantly and she didn’t know what she was supposed to say to satisfy either of them. The sad reality was that she had always had more in common with Sybil than with Natalie and that, no matter how hard she tried, she would probably never be able to replicate that close relationship with her mother.
‘All I ever wanted to do was try to help you still have a life as a single parent,’ Sybil told her daughter unhappily. ‘You were so young. I never wanted to come between you and Merry.’
‘I’d like to meet Elyssa,’ Natalie declared. ‘Sybil’s shown me photos. She is very cute.’
And Merry realised then that she had been guilty of holding her own unstable childhood against her mother right into adulthood instead of accepting that Natalie might have changed and matured. ‘I will bring her over for a visit,’ she promised stiffly. ‘How long are you staying for?’
‘Two weeks,’ Natalie told her. ‘But now that Keith’s gone and we’ve split up, I’m thinking of moving back to the UK again. I’d like to meet your husband while I’m here as well.’
Tears suddenly stinging her hot eyes, Merry nodded jerkily, not trusting herself to speak. She understood why her mother had wanted the story told but wasn’t at all sure that she could give the older woman the warmer relationship she was clearly hoping for. But then too many of her emotions were bound up in the bombshell that had blown her marriage apart, she conceded guiltily. Roula’s confession had devastated her and at that moment having to turn her back on the man she loved and her marriage was still all she could really think about. It was the thought, the terrifying awareness, of what she might have to do next that left room for nothing else and paralysed her.
She shared photos of the wedding and Elyssa with both women, glossed over Sybil’s comment that she seemed very pale and quiet and returned to Foxcote Hall as soon as she decently could, having promised to bring Elyssa back for a visit within a few days. The limo travelled at a stately pace back up to the elegant country house that had the stunning architecture of an oversized Georgian dolls’ house. Informal gardens shaded by clusters of mature trees spread out from the house and slowly changed into a landscape of green fields and lush stretches of woodland. Foxcote was a magnificent estate and yet Angel had not even mentioned that he owned a property near her aunt’s home.
She had originally planned to go to a hotel from the airport, but when she had yet even to see and speak to Angel such a statement of separation had seemed a tad premature. Walking into the airy hall with its tall windows and tiled floor, she heard Elyssa chuckling and stringing together strings of nonsense words and she followed the sounds.
Several steps into the drawing room, she stopped dead because Angel was down on the floor with Elyssa, letting his daughter clamber over him and finally wrap her chubby arms round his neck and plant a triumphant noisy kiss on his face. He grinned, delighting in the baby’s easy trusting affection, but his smile fell away the instant he glimpsed Merry. Suddenly his lean, darkly handsome features were sober and unsmiling, his beautiful dark eyes wary and intent.
‘You never mentioned that you owned a house near Sybil’s,’ Merry remarked in a brittle voice as he vaulted lithely upright with Elyssa clasped to his chest.
‘My father bought the estate when he was going through a hunting, shooting, fishing phase but he soon got bored. Angelina used it for a while when she was socialising with the heir to a local dukedom. It should really be sold now,’ Angel contended, crossing the room to lift the phone and summon their nanny to take charge of their daughter.
A current of pained resentment bit into Merry when Elyssa complained bitterly about being separated from her father. That connection, that bond had formed much sooner than she had expected. Elyssa had taken to Angel like a duck to water, revelling in his more physical play and more boisterous personality. If her father was to disappear from her daily life, their daughter would miss him and be hurt by his absence. But then whose fault would that be? Merry asked herself angrily. It certainly wouldn’t be her fault, she told herself piously. She had played by the rules. If their marriage broke down, it would be entirely Angel’s responsibility.
‘So, what’s going on?’ Angel enquired, taking up a faintly combative stance as Sally closed the door in her wake, his long powerful legs braced, shoulders thrown back, aggressive jaw line at an angle. ‘You blew me off at lunch and all day you’ve been ignoring my calls and texts...why?’
Merry sucked in a steadying breath. ‘I’m leaving you...well, in the process of it,’ she qualified stiffly, her face pale and set.
‘Why would you suddenly decide to leave me?’ Angel demanded, striding forward, all brooding intimidation, dark eyes glittering like fireworks in the night sky. ‘That makes no sense.’
Anger laced the atmosphere, tensing every defensive muscle in her body, and she cursed the reality that she was not mentally prepared for the confrontation about to take place.
‘Roula told me everything.’
Angel looked bemused. ‘Everything about...what?’ he demanded with curt emphasis.
‘That she’s been your mistress for years, that you always
