Feeling sicker by the minute, Alesia forced her voice to work. ‘I won a music scholarship,’ she croaked. ‘There were no fees.’
He registered that admission by a tensing of his broad shoulders. ‘And, according to my sources, once you were at university you held down no fewer than three jobs. You had two waitress jobs and you played the piano in a bar. How did you achieve your degree? When did you do any studying?’
‘I was often exhausted,’ she confessed with a glimmer of a smile that faded as soon as she registered his blackening expression. He was furiously angry with her. ‘I’m not afraid of hard work.’
‘Well, that, at least, is one thing in your favour,’ he bit out harshly and she shrank slightly. Clearly he didn’t think there was much else.
‘Most students take one job,’ he growled, pacing across the floor like a man at the very limits of his patience, ‘and I can understand that you needed money because you had no parents to provide for you and a grandfather who refused to acknowledge your existence, but why three? What did you do with the money?’ His eyes slid over her in silent question. ‘All the clothes you possess, I bought you with the exception of your wedding dress. You don’t shop and you’re so fragile that you clearly don’t eat much.’
Her gaze shifted from his and she swallowed. ‘General living costs—’
‘General living costs?’ He stopped dead and repeated her words slowly, as if he were struggling with his English, and the tone he used revealed just how ridiculous he found her mumbled statement. ‘Presumably this is why you went along with this deception and agreed to the marriage. Why should you struggle financially when a simpler, more lucrative option was available to you?’
She winced. Once again he made her sound just awful, as though the only thing she ever thought of was money. She wanted to tell him about her mother but she just couldn’t; it wasn’t her secret to divulge.
Sebastien started pacing again, the growing tension in his powerful frame clearly making it impossible for him to stand still. ‘But the question I really want answered is why your grandfather wanted this marriage,’ he growled. ‘As I suspected at the beginning, he was not playing Happy Families by pursuing the idea of a match between us. Clearly he has no concern for your welfare whatsoever. You are merely a pawn in his evil game, although clearly a very willing pawn. And now I want to know what the game is, Alesia. For once I want the truth.’
Alesia stared at him, appalled. Her life was collapsing in front of her eyes. To tell him would ruin everything that they’d built over the last few weeks and she just didn’t want that to happen. She knew now that Sebastien was nothing like her grandfather. He was a responsible man with a strong sense of family and duty and fairness. And above all else he respected honesty. How could she confess that she’d deceived him in the cruellest way possible?
So how did she confess the enormity of her crime to a man like that?
The irony made her eyes sting with tears.
She loved him.
She loved him and she had to tell him probably the worst thing that a wife could tell a Greek man. He would never understand the desperation that had driven her to such a distasteful action. Their short, bittersweet relationship would be over virtually before it had started.
She started to shake so badly that she could no longer stand up. ‘Sebastien—’
‘Just one look at your ashen face warns me that I’m not going to like what you’re about to tell me,’ he bit out grimly, striding over to a small table and pouring himself a large whisky. ‘I knew there was something more behind this “deal” but my father is an old man and was determined to end the feud once and for all. Stupidly, I went against my better judgement and decided to trust him.’
Alesia closed her eyes and wished she was somewhere else. Anywhere else.
Sebastien downed the drink in one and strode back over to her, the expression on his handsome face utterly forbidding. ‘Since he clearly wasn’t bothered whether you lived or died,’ he said harshly, ‘presumably your caring, devoted grandfather never wanted great-grandchildren either. And, since that was his stated reason for desiring this marriage, then I assume that his method of revenge must be somehow linked. Am I right?’
Alesia felt the nausea rise in her stomach. She was going to have to tell him. She was going to—
‘Alesia—?’ His tone was a sharp command and her eyes flew open and she lifted her chin.
This was her crime. Indefensible, but still her crime. She had to stand by what she’d done.
‘The explosion left me badly injured,’ she told him, just hating the fact that her voice was shaking so badly. ‘The doctors said I would never be able to have children.’