was a lie by omission,’ he repeated with quiet force, his face a blur of rage. ‘In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever met a woman who doesn’t lie. It seems to be stamped into their very DNA. I learnt it first from my own mother, almost as soon as I’d left the cradle, and I’ve been having it reinforced on a regular basis ever since.’
Lucy heard a note of triumph which edged the cynicism in his voice as their meal was brought to the table, and she watched in excruciatingly tense silence as the meat was carved into neat slices and heaped onto their plates.
‘I guess in a way this has made you happy?’ she ventured, once the waiter had gone.
‘Happy?’ he echoed. ‘Are you out of your mind?’
‘Not at all. This must be a self-fulfilling prophecy for you,’ she said slowly. ‘You don’t like women and you don’t trust them—you never have. And I’ve just given you yet another reason to hate us as a sex.’ She sucked in a deep breath. ‘The only thing I can say to you, Drakon, is that I’m sorry. And if I could have the time back, I would do it differently.’ She could hear her voice starting to wobble. ‘Except that then you might never have wanted me and I would never have become your wife and learned to love you as I do.’
‘Love?’ he queried disdainfully. ‘You think I want your tainted love, Lucy? That I want to spend the rest of my life with a liar?’
Lucy recognised that their marriage was hanging precariously in the balance. That a delicate line as fine as a spider’s web was all that lay between happiness and loneliness. One clumsy move and it would all be lost. Yet surely what they had discovered together was worth fighting for. Fighting with every single breath in her body. ‘But we’re all capable of lies by omission. Of fashioning reality to look like something quite different,’ she pointed out quietly. ‘Even you, Drakon.’
‘What the hell are you talking about?’
‘I’m talking about your close friendship with Amy. So close that even your godfather told me he thought the two of you would get married and so did everyone else. And before you remind me that Amy’s gay—surely that’s all part of it. She hasn’t come out, for whatever reason—so it probably suits her very well to have people speculate on the true nature of her relationship with her business partner.’ She took a sip of her cocktail and felt the champagne and peach juice foam against the dry interior of her mouth.
‘That’s different,’ he snapped.
‘Is it?’ she questioned quietly. ‘Oh, Drakon.’ Her voice was filled with a deep sadness which she couldn’t seem to hold back. ‘Can’t you ever forgive me? Can’t we just put all this behind us and start over—now that everything’s out in the open?’
But she got her answer instantly as he rose to his feet, towering over her and the table, his muscular shadow seeming to swallow her whole.
‘I’ll tell you exactly what’s going to happen now,’ he said quietly. ‘I’m going to pay the bill and leave. And then I’m going outside to catch a cab. You can take the car.’
‘I don’t want your damned car!’
‘Really? Then how are you proposing to get back to Milton tonight?’
‘To Milton?’ she repeated blankly, blinking her eyes at him in sudden confusion. ‘You mean, back to my cottage?’
‘Of course that’s what I mean! Where else did you think you’d be spending the night, Lucy? Do you really think I want you in my home in the light of what I’ve just learned?’
‘Drakon…’ Lucy felt as if she had fallen down a deep well only to discover there were no footholds to allow her to get back up again. She had expected his censure, yes, and his condemnation, too. Deep down she’d felt as if she deserved both those things. But surely not such an instant and outright rejection, which felt so final and so permanent.
‘What did you think was going to happen after this astonishing revelation, Lucy?’ he demanded cruelly. ‘That we would just go back to Mayfair and pretend nothing had happened? That we would make love and carry on as normal?’
She shook her head as a pair of dark eyes and a silky head swam into her mind. ‘But what about Xander? What’s going to happen to our son?’
‘Xander has a nanny—and a father,’ he said coldly. ‘We don’t need you, Lucy. Perhaps we never did. I will arrange to have your stuff sent to the cottage—’
‘Please don’t bother. Keep it!’ she said furiously. ‘I won’t be able to wear those kinds of clothes in Milton, anyway!’
‘That’s entirely your decision. Oh, and I don’t think I have any further use for this, do you?’ he added contemptuously. She saw him twist his gold wedding band from his finger before letting it fall with a tiny clatter onto an unused side plate and fixing her with a final withering look. ‘Obviously I will make sure your settlement is generous, provided you agree to a swift, no-claim divorce. I don’t think there’s anything else, do you? Other than to say goodbye.’
He turned and made his way through the restaurant, oblivious to the curious eyes which followed him, and Lucy wondered if she would be able to manage that same degree of insouciance. But most of all she wondered just how long she would be able to keep the hot flood of tears at bay.
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