But of course she hadn’t gone. She’d felt she could never return to him, never confront him with that terrible news. Never force him to comfort her when he hadn’t wanted the baby, hadn’t even thought it might exist. He had never even wanted her, so how could he have shown comfort for a loss that only she had known? If she’d told him then he would have made the effort, she had no doubt. He might have expressed a degree of sorrow but it would never have been truly meant and she would have seen the effort he was making in his face, hear it in his words. She would have been broken even further by the insincerity beneath his actions.
‘Your mother must have been the worst kind of person to do that to her children. I can see how it meant so much to you to meet up with Ciara again. You’ll have had a lot of catching up to do.’
There was an uneven delivery to his speech, and the pressure of his hand had altered. He now held the handkerchief still in one place, resting against her cheek, his thoughts seeming to be elsewhere.
‘My sister and I are very close,’ he said slowly. ‘I would do anything for her.’
What had put that darker note into his words? Imogen couldn’t even begin to guess. She could barely cope with the fact that he thought her sorrow was all about her family, her mother’s behaviour and Ciara’s. She couldn’t let him in on the truth. On the fact that it had been at that special moment of reunion with Ciara that the deepest, harshest blow had hit her and it was only because her sister had been there that she had got through it.
She had even let Ciara persuade her to go out on the town way too soon, in a desperate attempt to put the sorrow behind her. Ciara too had been in an emotional state, because of the circumstances in which she’d lost her job, and they had both struggled to accept the way their mother had behaved. The glass of wine they had intended to share that night had turned into another—a bottle—and, totally unprepared for the effects of the alcohol on their systems, they had both staggered out to find a taxi before the evening disintegrated any further.
Now even Ciara had left her life, it seemed, alienated by something she didn’t understand in her relationship with Adnan.
‘Imogen…’
Raoul had moved, sliding down to the floor in front of her, kneeling to take her in his arms.
‘Where is your father? Shall I fetch—?’
‘Oh, no!’
She shook her head. The addition of her father into this emotional mix would be a move too far.
‘He’d be no use at all—he’s given up already and gone to bed.’ With a bottle, she had no doubt. Perhaps, in a way, seeing Raoul’s obvious impatience with her father’s behaviour, she began to understand her mother’s attitude just a little better, to see there might have been two sides to their disastrous marriage.
‘Given up on what? He hasn’t done a thing all day. Couldn’t he have offered to help at least?’
‘It’s his idea of a nightmare, what happened here today.’
‘And not yours?
She hadn’t expected his anger, and that sceptical glance, the narrowing of those penetrating eyes, was too much, too close. Hastily she tried for a diversion in the hope of distracting him.
‘He looked in once and saw you were there.’
She’d seen her father put his head round the door and back away at the sight of Raoul in full organising mode.
‘I suppose he saw that I had some clothes on.’ The twist to Raoul’s mouth was wry. ‘And that was enough.’
Laughter choked in Imogen’s throat at the memory of her father’s awkward command in the middle of the night.
‘He also heard your nickname being bandied about,’ she managed, recalling the way several of the village matrons brought in to serve at the wedding breakfast, and now entrusted with the clearing up, had looked as if their eyes were out on stalks at the sight of Raoul, sleeves rolled up to expose tanned forearms as he hefted bundles of starched linen tablecloths or the boxes packed with food to go to the hospice. His hair had tumbled forward over his wide brow and he had had the look of the untamed bandit the scandal papers had named him.
‘The Corsican Bandit?’ A lift of his broad shoulders dismissed the familiar title. ‘I’ve heard worse. And considering the stories that have been spreading…’