way she should have done first time around.
I should never have let Ian persuade me to go up to London to tell Eva about me. Because of what Athan did—because I can’t tell Ian what he did—I can’t have anything to do with him and Eva anyway. I can’t ever look at Athan again—I can’t bear to!
Emotion seared in her, hot and scalding.
How can I ever have anything more to do with a man like that? A man I hate with every fibre of my being.
Because of course she hated him. What else was it possible to feel about Athan Teodarkis now? Nothing. Only hatred. Black and venomous.
All consuming.
All destroying.
She trudged on. The rising slope had peaked, and now she was on the low crest looking down onto the half-buried remains of the Bronze Age village below the tor. Someone was standing in the middle of the site, which wasn’t fenced off—there was very little damage walkers could do to such meagre remains.
At first when saw the solitary figure from the distance she was at she took no notice. On a warm day like this, in full Dartmoor spring, fellow walkers and ramblers on the moor were commonplace. But as she headed along the path that would take her past the site she stilled. There was something very familiar about the motionless figure.
He was looking towards her. Hands in his jacket pockets, legs slightly apart. The wind was ruffling his hair. His eyes were slightly narrowed against the sun behind her.
In a kind of daze—a mental suspension that kept one foot moving after another—she carried on down the slope towards the ancient village where once a whole community had thrived—living, loving, dying …
Now not even their ghosts remained to haunt the sunlit, windswept air.
He moved towards her, intersecting her path. Waiting for her.
She came up to him. Said nothing. Did nothing. Only stood there, her hands plunged into her anorak pockets, her face a mask.
Like his.
‘Ian told me you were back here.’ His voice was terse. Low.
Strained.
‘I gave you time,’ he said. ‘I gave us both time. But now we have to talk.’
She looked at him. Just looked at him. ‘There is absolutely nothing to say,’ she stated.
She was calm. Very calm. Amazingly calm, considering the seething tumult that had been inside her only moments ago, racking through her with all the unbearable impossibilities of the situation, the destructive morass of it all.
‘You know that’s not true,’ he contradicted her.
Something flared in her eyes, then died again. Quenched.
‘Well, what is there to say, then?’ she threw at him, hands digging deeper into her pockets.
This was unreal—unreal to be standing here, beside a place where people had once lived and loved and died, nothing more than shards of bone in the earth now, who could feel no pain or loss any more, no emotions—nothing. Unreal to be standing in such a place and confronting the man who had driven her back here.
‘What is there to say?’ she demanded again. She stared at him, unblinking. Unflinching. ‘You thought I was Ian’s mistress, so you seduced me to take my mind off him while he went back to his wife—your sister. Now you’ve discovered that actually I wasn’t his mistress after all. I’m his sister. And because I can’t stomach having any more contact with you, it means I can’t have anything to do with Ian or Eva, so telling Eva about me actually turns out to be have been a totally pointless exercise all round! There.’ She took a sharp, incising breath, glaring at him. ‘Does that just about sum up why there isn’t the slightest thing more to be said on the subject?’
Expressions worked in his face and his jaw tightened. ‘No, it doesn’t.’ He gave a heavy sigh. ‘You know it doesn’t. It doesn’t even begin to get to the reason why we have to talk.’
He took her arm. She tried to shake it off, but he simply led her to a nearby lichen-covered drystone wall and sat her down on it, lowering himself beside her. She edged away and she knew he could see she’d done it, and she was coldly, savagely pleased. She was still calm—still amazingly, icily calm. It was like being inside an iceberg, and it suited her fine—just fine. She waited for him to drop his grip on her, but he didn’t. She wouldn’t flatter him by shaking herself free. She would just endure that tight, hard clasp. It would remind her of how much she hated him.
He turned to look at her. She closed her face. She wanted to close her eyes, but again that would have shown him that she was affected by him. And she wasn’t affected—not at all.
She never would be. Never again.
He spoke abruptly. ‘This is what I don’t understand. That you didn’t realise I’d thought Ian had set you up as his mistress. Surely to God you must have done?’ His face worked. ‘Why the hell else would I have done what I did—said what I said? Why else would I have done or said those things to you? Just because you were Ian’s sister? Why the hell did you and Ian hide your relationship from everyone?’
Marisa’s eyes widened. ‘How can you even ask that? You know how close Eva is to Ian’s mother—her godmother. How she’s become like a second mother to her, taking her own mother’s place. That’s why we were so reluctant to tell Eva. Because it would have torn her loyalties in two. How could she have anything to do with her husband’s sister when that sister was living proof of just how much Sheila Randall was hurt and betrayed by her husband?’
She swallowed. ‘After I fled London, telling Ian it was because I couldn’t go on hiding in the shadows, and he got a new job without your patronage, he became determined not to go on concealing such an important part of his life from his wife. It was a new start for him, and however difficult it was going to be he didn’t want any secrets from Eva any more. Even the secret of my existence,’ she finished bitterly.
Athan was silent a moment. Then he spoke. His voice was heavy—as heavy as the lead that seemed to be weighing him down, crushing him.
‘I thought Ian was like his father. Incapable of fidelity. I’ve always thought it—feared it. I never approved of his marriage to Eva. Thought him lightweight. Superficial. Unworthy of my sister. And I thought that she was doomed to follow the same path as her mother-in-law, whose life was made a misery by her faithless husband.’
He paused, glancing briefly at Marisa and then away again, because it hurt too much to do otherwise. ‘When my suspicions became aroused I took out surveillance on him. I found out about your existence—that you were living in an apartment he was paying for. There was no doubt about it. There were photos of you and him in a restaurant. Intimate photos that showed you and he billing and cooing over each other.’ He paused again. ‘And one of the photographs showed Ian giving you a diamond necklace.’ Another pause, briefer this time, then words broke from him—harsh and hard. ‘What the hell was I supposed to think? My brother-in-law was giving another woman a diamond necklace!’
Marisa stiffened.
‘It was Ian’s grandmother’s.
