Tempestuous Reunion

She carted her exhausted son up to the bedroom where he had slept for the previous two nights. He stirred while she was undressing him, eyes flying open in sudden panic. ‘Where’s Daddy?’

‘Downstairs.’

‘I thought I dreamt him.’ Daniel gave her a sleepy, beguiling smile. ‘He doesn’t know anything about kids but he knows a lot about computers,’ he said forgivingly, submitting to a hug and winding his arms round her neck. ‘I’m sorry I was bad.’

Her eyes stung. ‘I’ll forgive you this once.’

‘Daddy s’plained everything. It’s all his fault we got split up,’ he whispered, drifting off again.

From the bottom of her heart, she thanked Luc for that at least. He had put Daniel’s needs before his own anger, healing the breach between Catherine and her son before it could get any wider. As it could have done. Catherine was well aware that, for the foreseeable future, Luc would occupy centre stage with Daniel. Luc had had the power to swerve him even further in that direction. But he hadn’t used it.

She went down to the drawing-room. For all its size, it had a cosy aspect of comfort, decorated as it was with the faded country-house look she had always admired. The interior lacked a lived-in quality, though. The housekeeper, Mrs Stokes, had gone to considerable trouble with flower arrangements in empty spaces, but it was so obvious that nobody had lived here in years. Mrs Stokes had told her quite casually that Luc had never even spent a night below this roof before.

And he had bought this house for her, had scarcely come near it after the first few months. Luc had had faith in her, she registered painfully. Luc had been convinced that she would return. What she had forced him to face today was that she had not had a corresponding faith in him. She had asked for nothing, expected nothing and, not surprisingly, nothing was what she had received.

‘Is he asleep?’ Luc paused on the threshold, leashed vitality vibrating from his poised stance. His veiled dark gaze was completely unreadable.

She cleared her dry throat. ‘He went out like a light. You must have tired him out. That doesn’t often happen.’

Luc moved a fluid shoulder. ‘He doesn’t have enough stimulation. He was on his very best behaviour with me, but I suspect displays of temper such as I witnessed earlier are not infrequent.’

‘He was upset,’ she said defensively.

‘He’s an extremely bright child. He should start school as soon as possible.’

She paled in dismay. ‘I don’t want him sent away.’

Luc raised a brow. ‘Did I suggest that? He does not have to board. Rome has an excellent school for gifted children. The opportunity to compete with equals would benefit Daniel.’ He took a deep breath, cast an almost wary look at her, but she wasn’t looking at him. Tight-mouthed, she was staring at the floor. ‘He’s a little old to be throwing tantrums. That surplus energy could be better employed.’

‘You’re very critical!’ she snapped.

‘That wasn’t my intention. He’s an infinitely more well-balanced child than I was at the same age, but he needs more to occupy him. Unless you plan to continue letting him educate himself from the television set.’

Catherine reddened fiercely but she didn’t argue, uneasily conscious that he had some grounds for that comment. ‘I did my best.’

‘He’s basically a very happy, very confident child. I think you did a marvellous job, considering that you were on your own and, as Daniel assured me repeatedly, very short of money.’

The compliment only increased her tension. Luc was so distant, so controlled. She didn’t recognise him like this. He was unnerving her. She stole a covert under-the-lashes glance at the vibrancy of his dark golden features, desperate to know how he felt now that he had had time to cool down.

‘Was what you said to me this morning true? Or a fabrication of the moment?’ he prompted very quietly. ‘Did you really believe that I would have demanded that you have an abortion?’

The colour

drained from her complexion. ‘Put like that, it sounds so—’

‘Cruel? Inhuman? Selfish?’ he suggested, his beautiful eyes running like flames of dancing gold over her distressed face. ‘Presumably that is how you saw me then.’

In bewilderment she shook her head at this incorrect assertion. ‘I didn’t…when something gets in your way, you get rid of it,’ she stumbled, conscious that she was not expressing herself very well. ‘I just felt that if that was what you wanted, I mightn’t have been able to stand up to you. That was what I was most afraid of. I might have let you persuade me…’

Every angle of his strong bone-structure was whip-taut. ‘Per amor di Dio, what did I do to give you such an image of me?’

The scene wasn’t working in the way she had hoped it would. Luc was dwelling with dangerously precise intensity on the jumbled mess of imprecise emotions and fears which had guided her almost five years ago. ‘It wasn’t like that. Can’t you understand that the longer I kept quiet about it, the harder it was for me to tell you?’

‘What I understand is that you were very much afraid of me and that you were convinced that I would kill my unborn child for convenience. Yet even when I didn’t know that I loved you, I cared for you,’ he murmured with flat emphasis. ‘And even if I hadn’t loved you, I still couldn’t have chosen such a course of action.’

Tears lashed the back of her eyes. She blinked rapidly. ‘I’m sorry.’ It was a cry from the heart.

A grim curve hardened his mouth. ‘I think it is I who should be sorry. I appear to have reaped what I sowed. And you had no more faith in me yesterday when you married me. You still couldn’t summon up the courage to tell me about Daniel.’