'She couldn't provide for me any longer,' he replied in a cold, clipped voice. 'Charlie had made it pretty clear that he was only going to honour his obligations to the letter. A little light on morality, Charlie, isn't he?' he said, watching her pale face with narrow-eyed implacability. 'Can you imagine the desperation that made her step out under that bus? She did it for me, Emmy, so that I could have a home, food, safety—all the things you, sweetheart, have taken for granted all your life.'
She raised her dark-rimmed eyes to his face in startled enquiry. 'Is that why you've decided to ruin my life?' she flung.
He caught the back of a chair, his knuckles white against the dark wood. It made a discordant sound on the stone-flagged floor. 'Melodramatic, don't you think? Especially when all I've done is be incredibly helpful and get lumbered with a sulky neurotic who expects to be waited on hand and foot.'
'What? Is this a case of the sins of the fathers?' she snapped back, her throat aching with the sheer injustice of his casual accusations. 'I wish I'd never allowed you to persuade me to take part in this farce originally!' If she'd known from the outset how far he was prepared to go, she'd have known better than to take his offer of help. How could I have been so stupid? she wondered incredulously.
'About time you decided to take responsibility for your own actions, Emily. You were eager enough to preserve your precious pride, as I recall. It didn't take any persuasion on my part. You always seem willing to take the easy way out.'
At that moment she knew it would be easier to face the indignity of being jilted than endure another second of Luke's company. 'Wasn't that what your mother was doing—paying for the consequences of her own actions? Or is it the money that bothers you? Dad getting the money that should have gone to you.' His fingers dug into her forearms, cutting through to the bone, stilling the impetuous words that had emerged in her desire to challenge his scalding scorn.
She hadn't for an instant meant her acid remarks. In fact the knowledge that her own father was capable of such cold-blooded, corrupt behaviour made her want to weep. Her attack had been more defensive, but her choice of weapons ill-considered. But she wanted desperately to hurt him as much as he had her. To be nothing but a pawn to be manoeuvred by two manipulative men was mortifying.
'The idea of the sins of the father being visited on your head is a concept growing in attractiveness by the instant,' he said grimly. The look of rage in his eyes made her grow defiantly rigid; even though his fingers were making her nerve-endings scream in pain, she would die rather than let him see how truly frightened she was in that instant. 'You are his favourite. As much as Charlie,' he drawled the name with distaste, 'can care about anyone, he cares for you, the baby of the family, cosseted, indulged.'
Confined, stifled, given objects, not love, she wanted to add. 'I can appreciate continuity,' she said instead, her voice shaking with emotion. 'After all, your mother's sins visited on you; why not blame her?'
'You little bitch,' he said slowly. 'You have fewer scruples than I gave you credit for. In some people's eyes it might be considered more a sin to select a breeding line cold-bloodedly than to give yourself without reservation in a moment of supreme passion, giving without a guarantee of anything. But then, you Stapelys think a lot of breeding lines and pedigrees, don't you? My mother only fulfilled expectations—but what can you expect of a stray who can't trace its ancestors back to William the Conqueror?'
She felt dizzy, unable to look away from the contemptuous azure gaze. His initial accusation made her instinctively want to scream denial. It hadn't been like that with Gavin. Perhaps she hadn't felt the blind love that she'd heard such a lot about, but the fact was that she'd given up waiting for a bolt from the blue to strike her. Once she'd nursed the usual fantasies, but they'd stayed just that. The self-inflicted suffering which followed the trauma of an infatuation at the tender age of sixteen had made her distrust her own instincts, shy away from emotional experimentation.
Eventually she had accepted the incident as a one- off. Either she wasn't capable of grand passion or the emotion had been exaggerated beyond all recognition by a kind of mass wishful thinking.
'I think you're talking about sex,' she sneered. Pulling her actions apart pragmatically, she could see that to some Luke's accusations might seem almost justified. What was wrong with friendship, common interest and compatibility as reasons for marriage? It had to be more lasting than a brief chemical explosion—that made for temporary insanity.
'Never the twain shall meet, hey, Emmy?' A sudden mellowness, a huskiness that was caressingly smooth, had entered his voice, and the transition from steely wrath was disorientating.