the doctor’s finished…’
‘He hasn’t finished. He’s explaining something to me that I wish to have explained. He’ll see himself out when he’s done. Please close the door behind you, and if you walk into my bedroom again without knocking I’ll ask the lawyers in Milan to have you removed by yesterday.’
He stared at her and she faced him down.
He left. Fast.
‘Wow,’ Leo said, as Victoir disappeared and the heavy door was tugged closed. ‘Well done. Hey, you really are a Castlavaran.’
‘Don’t. You’ll get me started again.’
‘I’m sorry.’ He sighed. ‘But you’re right. You have far too much on your plate for me to be loading you with more.’
‘Is that all you’re sorry for?’
‘You must know it’s not,’ he said gently. ‘Anna, I’ve been sorry for a very long time.’
And that pretty much silenced her.
The silence stretched on. She was looking at him, seeing strain. She was waiting, but she didn’t know what she was waiting for. What she was hoping?
‘I’m sorry for not explaining,’ he said at last.
‘Explaining your hospital scheme? There’s still time.’
‘No,’ he said softly. ‘For not explaining ten years ago. For being nineteen and being hopelessly in love and then being dumbstruck by learning who your mother was. For not being able to explain it to you then. For being young and stupid and even cruel. For not being able to control my own hurt to ease yours. I still believe that I had no choice, but most of all, Anna, I’m deeply, deeply sorry that I had to walk away.’
The words left her winded.
After all these years…to have him finally say it.
She felt like a long-faded scar had suddenly split, to reveal there was still infection deep within.
Her psychologist had given her strategies for not looking back. Where was her psychologist now, when she was most needed? Strategies… She couldn’t think of a single one.
‘You didn’t want…’ she started, but he shook his head.
‘Anna, you have no idea how much I wanted.’
‘How can I know that? One minute we were planning marriage and then nothing.’
‘I should have asked before. About your mother.’
‘My mother was nothing to do with our relationship. She had very little to do with me. I told you she was a wild child. I told you there was man after man after man. What else was there to say?’
‘That she was a Castlavaran?’
‘As far as I was concerned, she was Katrina Raymond. She’d married my father, even if the marriage ended before I was born. I told you she’d been unhappy at home and her mother had died. I told you everything I knew.’
The only time she’d learned more had been the night she’d introduced Katrina to Leo.
She hadn’t seen her mother for almost a year. Katrina had been in the States, but had breezed back to London and decided to drop in on her daughter.
‘My head-in-her-books daughter has a man? Well, well, let’s meet him.’
She’d been reluctant. To say she and her mother were dysfunctional would have been an understatement.
Anna had always been cared for—sort of. Katrina had access to money. ‘It’s family money, sweetheart—money’s the only thing they’re good for.’ There’d been funds for an apartment with nannies, while Katrina had been off doing what she wanted. There’d been money to support Anna to study. There’d been no mother love.
Neither had there been any sense of history. Katrina wouldn’t talk of home. ‘There’s some sort of Trust set up so my father has to support me,’ she’d told her. ‘That’s all you need to know. He’s an appalling man, Anna. Don’t ask.’
So she hadn’t asked, and the only part of Tovahna she knew was the language, taught to her in the times Katrina returned to the apartment to get over her latest love affair or to escape from whatever disaster she was in.
Anna had tried to warn him. ‘She’s unstable, Leo. She’ll talk too fast. She’ll come across as sophisticated and brittle but underneath…’
Underneath there were scars that Anna could only guess at. And then that night at dinner, the scars were exposed for all to see.
Maybe it was Leo’s gentleness. His kindness. His perception? Even at nineteen he knew how to empathise, and Katrina was captivated.
He spoke to Katrina in Tovahnan and maybe that had been the undermining of Katrina’s defences.
‘So tell me about your father?’ he asked Katrina at last, when the pizza had been replaced by coffee. ‘My father died early, but my mother still lives on Strada Del Porto on the island’s east side. Is that anywhere near where your father lives?’
What followed was a loaded silence, and Anna looked at her mother in astonishment and thought, Is she about to crack? She’d hardly talked of her father, even to her. But then…
‘As far as I know, my father still lives in that great gothic castle he loves so much,’ she said, in a voice that was almost a whisper. ‘It’s the only thing he loves. He sits there and pretends to be a king and he’s cared for nothing and for no one. Not my mother, and not me. And my brother’s just like him. They can rot in their castle for all I care.’
And Leo stared at her in blank astonishment. ‘You’re a Castlavaran…’
‘Don’t say that name.’
‘But he’s your—’
‘Enough.’ Katrina pushed back her chair and walked out of the restaurant.
And that was that. One ring returned. One love affair over.
‘I was so immature,’ Leo said now, and it was so much what she thought that she blinked.
‘Well. Good of you to admit it.’
‘I should have explained.’
‘So should my mother. I’m putting her in the same category. Let’s keep Anna in ignorance and let her face the consequences without warning, without respect, without any acceptance of the fact that I had a right to know.’
‘Anna…’
‘My grandfather and my uncle and then my cousin were all self-serving creeps. I know that now. My mother was a brittle, damaged alcoholic. I know that, too. And you added that
