‘Oh, that’s good to know!’ Chrissie countered with biting sarcasm. ‘He kept your wife away from you when you needed her—very protective, I don’t think!’
Jaul was tempted to remind her that his father had offered her money to walk away from their relationship and forget she had ever known him and that after that meeting with his father she had agreed to do exactly that. But now that he knew that she had been pregnant and had given birth to his children, he saw the past in a very different light. She would very much have needed that money to survive as a single parent and he could no longer condemn the choice she had made.
‘So, you were in a coma,’ Chrissie recounted stiffly, mastering her raging rancour over his father’s behaviour with the greatest of difficulty because she knew that insulting the older man would only cloud and confuse more important issues. ‘When did you come out of it?’
‘Only after three months when they had almost given up hope. I didn’t remember you at first. I didn’t remember much of anything,’ Jaul admitted heavily. ‘I’d had a serious head injury and I was in a very confused state of mind with only fragments of memory all jumbled up inside my head. My memories returned slowly. My father told me that he had seen you and given you the money. He also reiterated his belief that our marriage was invalid and informed me that you would not be coming to visit me.’
Chrissie had turned pale as white paper because rage was storming through her in an almost uncontrollable surge. Had she known that Jaul was in hospital, nothing would have kept her from his side! But while he had lain in that hospital bed, his father had manipulated the situation and played on her ignorance of the accident to destroy a marriage he had abhorred. How could even the most loving son deem that a ‘protective’ act? King Lut’s interference had been wicked, indefensible and cruelly selfish. The effort of restraining the hot temper and hostility mounting inside her made Chrissie feel sick.
‘I hate your father for what he did to us!’ she snapped back at Jaul in a small, tight explosion of raw emotion that could not be suppressed. ‘He intentionally wrecked our marriage and yet you still can’t find the words to condemn him. There you were...needing me and he made sure that I was put out of the picture. How can you forgive that?’
Jaul swung impatiently away from her, his fierce loyalty to his late father strained by her candour. ‘I must be honest with you. At that point in my recovery I didn’t want to see you either. I did initially intend to visit you when I was stronger but by the time I was fit to see you so much time had passed that it seemed like a pointless exercise,’ he divulged, tight-mouthed with restraint.
Inwardly Chrissie reeled as though he had struck her because that admission, that very dismissive terminology, was a body blow beyond her comprehension. ‘I don’t understand how you can say that it would have been pointless. How much time passed after the accident before you were fit to travel?’ she demanded, folding her arms defensively as if she could hold in the emotions still churning inside her. His self-command, his granite-hard hold on control maddened her.
‘It took well over a year for me even to get back on my feet again.’ His lean dark features were taut and pale with the strain of being forced to recall that traumatic period of his life. ‘My spine was damaged. It took further surgery and weeks of recovery before my doctors were able to estimate whether or not I could hope to walk again.’
In point of fact at a time when his whole world seemed to have fallen apart and he was confined to a hospital bed unable to move and requiring help for every little thing, Jaul had felt quite ridiculously unsurprised by the announcement that his new bride had run out on him as well. In truth he had been seriously depressed back then and traumatised by survivor’s guilt because military friends and bodyguards he had known since childhood had died instantaneously in the same accident.
In addition to his deeply troubled state of mind and his belief that his father had bought Chrissie’s loyalty off, he had been painfully aware that he and Chrissie had parted on very bad terms in Oxford. She’d been angry with him for leaving her behind. In so many ways back then Chrissie had been an idealistic dreamer and, while he had loved those traits so very different from his own, he had also seen them as a potential weakness should life ever become tough. What could be tougher for a youthful bride than a husband suddenly sentenced to a wheelchair? Ultimately, his conviction that their marriage was invalid as his father had asserted had played the biggest role in his lack of action. After all, if Chrissie wasn’t even his wife what possible claim could he have on her?