Holding his eyes, she forced herself to smile. ‘You didn’t coerce me. I didn’t have to—comfort you that day. And if I had denied your paternity...’
‘Ah, but you didn’t, God knows why. Anyone less worthy to be a father would be hard to find. Anyone less worthy to be a husband... And yet, if you hadn’t admitted it, if I had found out later that you were carrying my child...’
He would have been angry? Yes, she knew he would have been, and was sometimes very surprised by how responsible he seemed to feel. She desperately wished they could have spoken about it, discussed it, but because of her own feelings of guilt it always seemed impossible. And yet perhaps, after all, it was safer not to.
‘How would you have found out?’ she queried with a lightness she did not feel. ‘You no longer had ties with Beckford, and as far as you knew I could have had any number of boyfriends, any one of whom could have been the father...’
‘Maybe; water under the bridge now...’ With an odd laugh, he straightened. ‘Not exactly your normal run-of-the-mill husband, am I?’
‘No,’ she agreed with a forced smile, ‘but then, run-of-the-mill might be a bit boring, don’t you think?’
‘And wouldn’t you, if you were honest, not wish for boring now and again?’ he asked whimsically. ‘Like knowing where I was at nights? Or even days, come to that...?’
‘But then you would never have won this house at poker; I would never have met Jean-Marc. Would never have ogled the rich and famous at the American Film Festival...’
‘Ah, now, be fair, you could have ogled them any time. They hold the festival here every year.’
‘But I couldn’t have ogled them as a guest!’ she insisted. ‘Couldn’t have ogled them from the arm of the most sought-after bachelor around. Anyway, I quite like being the wife of racehorse owner; the wife of a casino partner, famous yachtsman...’
‘Hardly famous,’ he derided, his mouth turned down at the corners.
‘Well known, then,’ she substituted. Staring at him, examining that strong, attractive face as he gazed pensively at the table, she wondered how much he was regretting it. Had he taken one too many gambles and lost? Had he been expecting her to refuse his proposal? He would never say, even if she asked, yet she knew this wasn’t the lifestyle he had planned for himself. He’d been quite honest about it, about never intending to marry. So really he was someone else who had to lie in a bed of their own making. ‘You lost more than I ever could,’ she added quietly in a foolish desire to be reassured. ‘Your freedom to choose.’
Raising his eyes, and shaking off whatever thoughts he had been thinking, he smiled. ‘Choose what? Women? Women were never that important to me, Melly, despite what the gossips say. I like them, enjoy their company, and I don’t say I’ve never bedded them,’ he added with his engaging grin, ‘but not to the degree those same gossips would have you believe, and the truth of the matter is I don’t feel tied. I enjoy being married to you, didn’t you know that?’ he queried lightly.
‘Do you?’ she smiled, knowing it for the lie it was.
‘Yes, of course. It’s also an excuse I can use when I want to leave somewhere that bores me; an excuse for importuning women...’ With a laugh that mocked himself, he added more seriously, ‘No, the only regret I have is that I might hurt you. I’m on a course of self-destruction, Melly, always have been, you know that. I seem to have this need for danger; to pit my wits against the world. Constantly test my abilities. A need to win... I’ll make the best provision I can for you and the child, and then if anything happens...’ With a little shrug, his mood changed again. ‘What shall we do today? Choose the pram?’
Shaking off her own feeling of despondency that his words had brought, she shook her head. ‘No, mustn’t tempt fate. I won’t choose the pram, or cot, or anything until the last month...’
‘But that’s ages!’ he protested.
‘Only eight weeks—it will soon go.’
‘I suppose. But I want to do things!’ he exclaimed comically. ‘Get the nursery ready! Choose outfits for him, it, her...’
‘Designer?’ she asked with a teasing grin.
‘Of course designer!’ Looking down, he traced an invisible pattern on the tablecloth. ‘It frightens me, Melly,’ he confessed quietly. ‘Being a father. I can’t picture it. Don’t know how I will be.’
‘I do,’ she said softly. ‘You’ll be protective, caring—and fun. What more could a child ask?’
‘For his father to be there, I should think!’ With an abrupt move that took her by surprise, he got to his feet. ‘I have to go and see someone about the horses. I’ll be back in an hour or two; we’ll go out then.’ Almost at the door, he halted. Turning, he regarded her with a frown. ‘Don’t you have to go to the clinic today?’
‘Mm, but not till two.’
‘OK, I’ll be back well before that. See you later.’ And, with that, he was gone.
Abandoning her attempt to eat, she leaned back and gave an unhappy sigh. Oh, Charles. It was getting harder and harder to appear relaxed, friendly—for him, too, she suspected—but if any intensity was to creep into her voice, any hint of how she felt, she would drive him away. He would feel threatened, and he would leave. She had always known that; she just had not known how desperately hard it would be—or had not wanted to admit it, yet she must have suspected how doomed it would be, with both of them pretending to be something they weren’t.
Clenching her hands tight on the napkin, she took slow, deep breaths to let out the tension that his mood had brought. Self-destruction... He would do the craziest things on a seeming whim: race his yacht; ski down routes that were marked hazardous; stake a fortune on the turn of a card... And she did not know why, why he had this need to push himself to the limits, punish himself. It wasn’t because of Laurent’s death, or for making her pregnant; his course of destruction had started long before those two events. Was it because of his upbringing? Because of Beckford? They both had their share of secrets. She didn’t know his, and, hopefully, he would never find out hers, for, although he suspected that their meeting wasn’t one of those odd coincidences that occurred from time to time, he didn’t know. Not for certain, not that she had known he was here, and that her desire to visit her grandfather’s grave had just been an excuse. A reason for being in the same place as Charles.
Throwing down her napkin, she got awkwardly to her feet and wandered out on to the small terrace. Settling herself in the cushioned chair that Jean-Marc always put out for her, she gazed out over the town spread below.
Charles. He’d coloured her life, given it magic, and every other man paled into insignificance beside him. He was her fantasy, her dream come true. And he had no idea—at least, she hoped he didn’t, hoped that he thought she regarded him, as he did her, as an old and valued childhood friend. So, always there must be this need to keep the reins loose, never give him reason to feel trapped, because, without him, life quite simply would not be worth living. She needed him near, and he needed to be free, like a wild horse, but if she was careful, and clever, perhaps he would always come back.
Her eyes unfocused, she thought back to that day over six months before when they had met near the harbour. Correction: when she had engineered the meeting. Although, as in all things, fate had played its part. Had, on that one occasion,
