‘A large, round, pregnant mermaid?’
‘You look incredible.’
‘Smooth talker,’ she said, gently slapping him on the shoulder, the wet of their skin making the sound louder than she’d expected.
‘Hardly,’ he admitted, his voice gravelly. He reached out a finger to loop beneath the silver necklace that hung between her bare breasts. ‘You are always wearing this.’
‘It is the only thing I have left of my mother,’ she replied. ‘She died bringing me into this world.’
Matthieu’s breath left his chest on a whoosh, and he closed his eyes against her words. ‘Maria... I am so sorry.’
And she gently smiled as if trying to ease his sympathetic ache. ‘Had it not been for me, she would have lived. Sebastian would have had a mother and my father wouldn’t have hidden his grief in apathy, a second wife who would rather spend money than love us, and risky business deals that almost destroyed us.’ She placed a hand on his arm. ‘I don’t blame myself. I can’t. I know that it’s not my fault, that there was nothing I could have done, that I was a baby. She had a medical complication. But I do know something of loss, Matthieu.’
The words came unbidden to his lips.
‘I am glad you have this. That you are able to have it with you. The only thing I have left...’ He paused, the stab of pain stark and foreign yet somehow strangely familiar. ‘The only thing I have that belonged to my parents is the present my mother gave to my father the night they died. It was their twelfth wedding anniversary, and she had given him the gift just before my bedtime.’ His breathing became hard, as he remembered what had happened later, but forced himself back to the present. ‘It’s burned, mostly melted and deeply damaged by the fire.’
Maria frowned. ‘Where is it?’
He shrugged his shoulder as if it were nothing, when it was everything. ‘In my bedside cabinet.’
Matthieu looked at her then and saw what he had feared since the first moment he’d caught sight of her. Somehow he’d known, even then, that she would unearth his grief, his pain...understand it even. That she would be the one to break down the walls around his heart. Walls that he had relied on for the last twenty years. Walls that he didn’t know how to live without. Because that would mean opening himself up...leaving himself vulnerable to the same kind of loss that nearly destroyed him once before.
She kissed him then, one of compassion, one of sympathy and understanding that he feared she might not want to have given when she discovered the truth about the present and what it had cost his entire family. Coward that he was, he lost himself in that kiss, deliberately stoking its fire, rousing the passion between them.
‘Matthieu—’ Her words cut off in a squeal as he picked her up entirely and took them both from the shower. Her cries turned into giggles as he set her on her feet and dried her in the most gloriously fluffy towel she’d ever touched.
‘Maria Montcour, this is absolutely no laughing matter. I take my duties very seriously.’
At his half jokingly stern words, the laughter dimmed in her mind. ‘I know,’ she said, and couldn’t help the vein of sadness running through her words. She knew he did and would. Because of who he was, because of what had happened to him, because that was the man he had become. But perhaps...not because of her.
She pushed aside the thought and reached to caress his jaw. This man who had offered her compassion and understanding for her own loss, when he seemed to hide from his own. She loved the feel of the firm proud line of it, covered by the soft swirls of the short beard he kept. Her heart leapt as he leant into her touch and placed a kiss on the palm of her hand. Then her wrist, and then down the inside of her forearm.
Surely it was wrong to want someone so much so soon after—
Her brain almost short-circuited as his thumb outlined the curve of her breast—her body so extremely sensitive and responsive since the pregnancy.
As he ran the pad of his thumb over her already taut nipple she fought the moan of pleasure that started deep within her. ‘Bed. Now,’ she commanded, wondering when she had become so empowered.
‘As you wish,’ he replied, sweeping her up off her feet and walking them to the bed where he gently laid her down and got in beside her.
Maria would remember that night for the rest of her life. Their lovemaking became just that. Loving, giving and receiving, pleasure almost indescribable as they each reached the heights of an impossible rapture. Neither were held back by doubts, or haunted by what was to come, both instead lost in pure unadulterated, endless unchecked bliss.
CHAPTER EIGHT
MARIA DIDN’T KNOW what she had expected following the night of the gala. Perhaps for her new life to go back to the strange untouched isolation that she had experienced after the wedding...but she couldn’t have been more wrong.
On the first night she’d gone to her room only for Matthieu to stalk in, pick her up off the bed, carry her to his, gently lay her down on the bed and get in beside her. All without saying a word. It happened again on the second night and Maria was too confused to want to break the strange spell that had descended on them with questions or words.
On the third night, when the baby had been unsettled and sleep elusive, he had turned on the dim lighting, lain on his side facing her and asked her how she’d made her first piece of jewellery. He’d peppered her with questions about each and every step until she had fallen asleep in the middle of an explanation about the small forge that she had used in the studio in Camberwell.
Matthieu did it again on the fourth and fifth night until Maria was half convinced that he’d be able to make the perfect bracelet without ever once having touched the tools and materials he’d need.
He hadn’t touched her, though. Hadn’t recreated the intimacies of the night of the gala and that was becoming pure torture for her. Days spent wondering, questioning, doubting... Had she imagined the connection she had felt forged the night of the gala? Had it just been what they’d needed in that moment? But if that was the case, then why would he bring her to his room each and every night...?
Each day, while he retreated to his office in Zürich, Maria walked the forests around the lake, losing herself in the beauty of the surrounding areas, the crunch of leaves beneath her feet, and the soft gentle heat of the departing summer. And each day she marvelled at the changes to her body and the child she carried. Her hands smoothed down the rounded shape hanging low within her, the weight and stretch catching her both by surprise and with something like awe. For the first time in her life, Maria had begun to wonder about her mother—as if her own pregnancy had soothed aside the hurt, and replaced it with a curious yearning ache for something she could never have, and never know.
But the tightening of clothes that had only been purchased a month before made Maria realise that she would need to return to the shops once more, her mind calculating what resources she had in her savings and hating the fact that she would either have to turn to her husband or brother for more money. Neither of which was a particularly pleasant option. For so long she had tried so hard to find her own independence, and now? She felt utterly trapped by a man who was so complicated, so tormented by his own past, yet also by a man she was beginning to see as something more than just the autocratic, albeit devastatingly attractive, isolated man she had married.