a paper doll onto the edge of the bed, tears of agonised helplessness filling her eyes.
‘What is it?’ Nicolas said tensely.
‘They won’t know—will they?’ she choked. ‘What she likes to eat or how she likes to eat it. She’ll be confused and start fretting. And she’ll wonder why I’m not there with her. She—’
‘Stop it.’ Grimly he came to squat down in front of her. ‘Listen to me, Sara. You cannot allow your mind to drift like that. Children are by nature resilient creatures. She will cope—probably better than you are coping. But you must help yourself by trying not to torment yourself like this or you will not stay the course.’
He was right. She knew it, and made a mammoth effort to calm herself, nodding her agreement, blinking away the tears. ‘Did—?’ Carefully she moistened paper-dry lips. ‘Did they let you hear her again?’
His eyes, usually so coldly tigerish, were darker than usual. Almost as if against his wishes, his hand came up to brush her long hair away from her pale cheek. ‘She is fine,’ he murmured. ‘I could hear her in the background chatting happily.’
‘Did you record it?’ she asked eagerly. ‘I want to hear it.’
‘No.’ Suddenly he was on his feet, the cold, remote stranger he had arrived here as.
‘But why not?’ she demanded bewilderedly. ‘I need to hear her—can’t you understand that?’
‘I can understand it,’ he conceded. ‘But I will not give in to it. It will distress you too much, so don’t bother asking again.’
Stiffly he moved back towards the door, the discussion obviously over. Then he stopped, his attention caught by something standing on the polished walnut bureau. Sara’s gaze followed his—then went still, just as everything inside her went still, even her breathing, as slowly he reached out with a long-fingered hand and picked up the framed photograph.
‘She is very like you,’ he observed after a long, taut moment.
‘Yes,’ was all she could manage in reply, because the facts were all there in that picture. Golden hair, pure blue eyes, pale, delicate skin. Lia was Sara’s double. She bore no resemblance whatsoever to her father.
‘She is very beautiful,’ he added gruffly. ‘You must love her very much.’
‘Oh, Nicolas,’ she cried, her chest growing heavy—heavy with despair for both man and child who had been robbed of their right to know and love each other. ‘As you should love her! She’s—!’
Your daughter too! she had been about to say. But he stopped her. ‘No!’ he cut in harshly—making Sara wince as he rejected both her claim and Lia’s picture by snapping it back onto the polished top. ‘You will not begin spouting those—frankly insulting claims all over again.’ He turned, his face as coldly closed as she had ever seen it, golden eyes slaying her as they flicked over her in a contemptuous act of dismissal. ‘I am not here to listen to your lies. I am here to recover your child. Your child!’ he emphasised bitterly. ‘Whoever the father is, it certainly is not me!’
‘Yours,’ she repeated, defiant in the face of his contempt. ‘Your child, your conception—your betrayal of a trust I had a right to expect from you! Do you think it isn’t equally insulting for me to know you can suspect me of being unfaithful to you? When?’ she demanded. ‘When did I ever give you reason to believe I could be capable of such a despicable crime? Me?’ she choked, ‘Go with another man? I was shy! So shy I would blush and stammer like an idiot if one so much as spoke to me!’
‘Until you learned to taste your own powers over my sex,’ he asserted. ‘The powers I taught you to recognise!’ He gave a deriding flick of his hand. ‘Then you no longer blushed or stammered. You smiled and flirted!’
‘I never did!’ she denied hotly. ‘My shyness irritated you so I strove to suppress it. But I would have had to have undergone a complete personality change to manage to flirt with anyone!’
‘Not while I was there, no,’ he agreed.
‘And not while you were away!’ she insisted. ‘I tried to be what I thought you wanted me to be!’ She appealed to his intelligence for understanding. ‘I tried to behave as the other women behaved. I tried to become the upstanding member of your social circle you kept on telling me I should be! I tried very hard for your sake!’
‘Too hard, then,’ he clipped out. ‘For I do not recall encouraging you to take a lover for my sake.’
‘I did not take a lover,’ she sighed.
‘So the man I saw you wrapped in the arms of was a figment of my imagination, was he?’ he taunted jeeringly.
‘No,’ she conceded, her arms wrapping around her own body in shuddering memory of that scene. ‘He was real.’
‘And in five weeks I had not so much as touched you, yet you still managed to become pregnant—a miracle,’ he added.
‘Your mathematics are poor,’ she said. ‘It was four weeks. And we made love several times that night.’
‘And the next day you got your period which therefore cancels out that night.’
Sara sighed at that one, heavily, defeatedly. She had lied to him that next day. Lied because he had just told her that he was going away and she’d wanted to punish him for leaving her again so soon. She had concocted the lie which would deprive him of her body—and had learned to regret the lie every single day of her life since.
All of which she had confessed to him before without it making an ounce of difference to what he believed, so she was not going to try repeating it again now.
‘No ready reply to that one, I note,’ he drawled when she offered nothing in return.
Sara shook her head. ‘Believe what you want to believe,’ she tossed at him wearily. ‘It really makes little difference to me any more …’ She meant it, too; her expression told him so as she lifted blue eyes dulled of any hint of life to his. ‘I once loved you more than life itself. Now my love for Lia takes precedence over anything I ever felt for you.’
All emotion was honed out of his face at that. ‘Tidy yourself,’ he instructed, turning with cold dismissal back to the door. ‘Then come downstairs. I will go and arrange for something to eat.’
CHAPTER THREE
THE house had returned to its usual smooth running. Mrs Hobbit, the housekeeper, bustled about. Mr Hobbit, Sara noticed when she glanced out of her bedroom window before going down, was busily working on the new play area he and Sara had been planning at the bottom of the garden. It wrenched at her heart to see him rhythmically spreading bark chippings over the specially prepared patch where, next week, a garden swing and slide were due to be fixed—yet, oddly, it comforted her. Mr Hobbit had not given up hope of Lia’s return and neither would she.
When she eventually made herself go downstairs to the dining room she found Nicolas standing at the window watching the old man at his work. It was June and the sun set late in the evenings. You could work outside until ten o’clock if you were so inclined. This evening the garden was bathed in a rich coral glow that cast a warmth over everything, including Nicolas.
