was.’ He reached into his backpack. ‘Time for food—or is that too prosaic?’
‘Nope. I’m starving. And this looks idyllic—if a little damp.’
‘I’ve brought a blanket, and if we spread it here, over this branch, we can perch on it.’
‘Perfect.’
She accepted the wrapped sandwiches.
‘Goan green chutney,’ Frederick informed her. ‘I promised Ashok to tell you the exact ingredients. Coriander leaves, coconut, chili and a little sugar and salt.’
Sunita took a bite. ‘Glorious. That boy is talented.’ She surveyed him. ‘So you went to the kitchen yourself? I’m surprised that was allowed.’
‘Meaning?’
‘Meaning your staff seem to think you shouldn’t lift a finger for yourself.’
‘I’ve noticed. I am trying to re-educate them—in fact I’ve given them all the day off today. The problem is my father expected to be waited on hand and foot, and that is what all Lycander staff seem conditioned to do. I even have someone who chooses all my clothes.’ He grinned. ‘Though, to be fair, Kirsten does a better job of it than I could.’
‘Well, for the record, no one is choosing my clothes for me. That would drive me nuts. I need to fit my clothes to my mood.’
They ate in companionable silence and then Frederick leant forward, unsure why he felt the need to say his next words, but knowing he had to take heed of the urge to show her that their hopes and dreams didn’t have to be built on an altar of falsehood and misunderstanding.
‘Sunita?’
‘Yes.’
She turned her head and his heart did a funny little jump. Dressed in simple khaki trousers and a red T-shirt, with her hair pulled back in a high ponytail, her features make-up free, she looked absurdly young and touchingly vulnerable.
‘I understand why you want to go back to your career, and I understand your need for independence, but let’s not go into this marriage expecting the worst. We’ll be OK,’ he said, even as he realised the ridiculous inadequacy of the words.
‘You can’t know that.’ She lifted her shoulders in a shrug. ‘But I appreciate the sentiment.’
‘There are some things I do know, though. I won’t turn into my father.’ Please God! ‘I won’t fall in love with someone else and take Amil away from you.’
‘You can’t know that either.’
‘I don’t do falling in love, and that will not change. As for Amil, I will not take him from you. You have my word.’
‘Words are meaningless.’
Her fierce certainty told him that someone had lied to her with devastating consequence, and increased his need to show her that he would not do the same.
‘Sunita, I couldn’t do it.’ The words rasped from his throat. ‘I would have done anything to have a mother. I witnessed first-hand what my father did to his wives, how it affected my brothers. I could not, I will not let history repeat itself.’
Her whole body stilled, and then she rose and moved towards him, sat right next to him, so close a tendril of her hair tickled his cheek.
‘I’m sorry—I know what it’s like to lose a mother through death, but for you it must have been pain of a different type...to know she was out there. And your poor mother...to have lost you like that—I can’t imagine how it must have felt. Not just your mother but Stefan’s and the twins’.’
For a moment the temptation to let her believe the fiction touched him. To let her believe the false assumption that his mother had been wronged, had spent years in grief and lamenting, that his mother had loved him. After all, he had no wish to be an object of pity or allow the ugly visage of self-pity to show its face.
But as he saw the sympathy, the empathy on her face, he realised he couldn’t let her waste that compassion. ‘My mother didn’t suffer, Sunita.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘My mother sold me out for generous alimony and a mansion in Beverly Hills. She played my father like a fine fiddle—conned him into believing she would do anything to keep custody of me, would be devastated to lose me. At the time he was still worrying about his popularity—many people hadn’t got over the way he’d married my mother mere weeks after his first wife’s death. He wanted to hurt her by taking me away—however, he didn’t want to come across as the totally cruel husband again, so he offered her a generous settlement and she skipped all the way to the bank.’
‘But...’ Disbelief lined her face, along with a dark frown. ‘How could she?’
‘With great ease, apparently. Hey, it’s OK. I came to terms with it long ago. I didn’t tell you because I want to discuss it, or because I want sympathy. I told you because I want you to know that I could never take Amil from you. I know first-hand that a child needs his mother. From my own experience and my siblings’. Stefan, Barrett, Emerson—they have all been devastated by the custody battles and having their mothers torn from them. I would not put you or Amil through it. You have my word, and that word is not meaningless.’
‘Thank you.’ Shifting on the branch so that she faced him, she cupped his face in her hands, her fingers warm against his cheeks. ‘Truly. Thank you for sharing that—you didn’t have to. And I do believe that right here, right now, you mean what you promise.’
‘But you don’t believe I’ll make good?’
‘I...’ Her hands dropped to her sides and, leaning forward, she dabbled her fingers in the soil of the forest floor, trickled it through her fingers and then sat up again. ‘I don’t know.’
She shrugged.
‘Perhaps it’s my turn to share now. I told you how my father left when he found out my mother was pregnant. He promised her that he loved her, that they had a future.’ She gestured back the way they’d come. ‘Maybe he said those words at the falls. Hell, maybe they even sat here, in this very forest. But that promise meant nothing. And, you see, that wasn’t the only promise he made.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘He came back.’ Her eyes were wide now, looking back into a past that he suspected haunted her. ‘When my mother found out she was terminally ill she managed to track him down. She had no one else. And he came, and he agreed to take me in. He explained that he was married, with two other daughters, but he promised—he swore that I would be welcomed, that I would have a family, that he would love and cherish me. He said that he was sorry and that he wanted to make it up to her and to me.’
The pain in her voice caused an ache that banded his chest and he reached out to cover her hand in his own, hoped that somehow it would assuage her hurt.
‘So, after she died...’ Her voice caught and her fingers tightened around his. ‘He came to bring me to England—to my new family.’
Perhaps he should say something, Frederick thought. But he couldn’t
