‘Not a word.’
Her tone was low, regretful, and it made Raoul scowl darkly to hear it.
‘What sort of a sister is she?’
‘Oh, don’t!’
Imogen’s head came up sharply, the wine glass jerking in her hand. The raw note in her voice, an unexpected sheen on her eyes, caught on something uncomfortable deep inside him and stilled the cynical comment he had been about to make.
‘Why not? She’s your sister. Family matters. I know I would do anything for my sister.’
It was part of what had brought him here after all. The way Ciara had behaved with his sister’s husband. And because…
For a moment his vision dimmed as he recalled the photograph he had seen in the newspaper. The way Imogen had been leaning on her sister’s shoulder. The slightly glassy smiles they had shared.
The Scandalous O’Sullivan sisters.
‘Not for very long,’ Imogen said now. ‘We barely know each other.’
Raoul froze with his glass halfway to his lips again and then lowered it slowly to rest on the wide arm of the chair.
‘Why not? I know your mother took Ciara with her when she left, but surely… No?’ he questioned as she shook her head slowly, black hair falling loose from the tie she had it fastened with at the back, tumbling around a face that he could now see was pale and shadowed with stress.
‘If you’re trying to say that surely we were still sisters—well, of course we were, but we never got to see each other.’
‘Never?’
Raoul became aware of the way his grip had loosened on the stem of his wine glass so that it almost tipped over. Hastily he closed his fingers round it, pulling it back, but still a small spill of wine slipped over the edge and onto the furniture.
‘Pardon…’ He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed it on the offending stain.
‘Oh, don’t worry.’
Imogen’s smile was reassuring, though slightly weary, and to his consternation he found that caught on his over-tight nerves, leaving him feeling uncomfortable and unsettled.
‘That chair—the whole suite—is so old it’s practically vintage. In fact, I think it was the same sofa that was in this room when my mother took off with her lover. Papa could never bring himself to replace it. In fact…’
One long-fingered hand moved over the well-worn velvet, smoothing the nap one way and then stroking it back the other way.
‘He used to say he could remember his two little girls playing together on it.’
‘Two little girls,’ Raoul echoed, crumpling the white cotton into his hands and clenching his fingers tight over it.
That gleam in her eye was stronger, brighter. Tears? Now? Why tears for this when she had been so strong through all the rest of the day? The shift from the admiration he’d felt to a disturbing twist of sympathy was not an easy one.
‘How old were you when your mother walked out?’
‘Seven.’ And already crazy about the horses, lost in the world of the stud, the beautiful animals bred there. ‘Ciara was not quite three.’
The memory of the day she had woken up to find that not only her mother but also her beloved little sister had disappeared into the night was almost more than she could take. As she had grown up, she had tried so hard to keep this home for herself and her father—and now that Ciara had returned to the family, that had been so much more important. But Ciara had vanished, allying herself with Adnan, and the house and stud would soon belong to someone else. So what had alienated her sister?
‘I know what it’s like to live without a mother,’ Raoul stated now, and her startled glance into his face caught the burn of darkness in his hooded eyes. ‘My mother died of cancer when I was nine.’
‘That must have been so horrible for you. At least I had had the chance that my mother might come back one day. You had no such hope. How on earth did you cope?’
‘My father was determined to help us through. He was always there for us—and my older sister took on the mothering role as well as she could.’
‘I would have loved to do that for Ciara.’
The unevenness in her voice was put there by the thought of him as child of nine. Her own memories told her how he must have felt.