He caught her look and gave her a faint smile as he drew up in front of the grand front entrance. ‘It very nearly had to be sold,’ he said. He switched off the car’s engine, looking at her. ‘My grandfather lived very extravagantly, and it was my father who had to battle to save the family fortune. It was touch-and-go all my boyhood. He succeeded, but...’ His expression tightened. ‘It shortened his life...all the stress he was under for so long. That is why, you see, I’m so very keen on making this merger with your father happen. I never want the kind of financial worry I grew up with to affect my family again.’
His expression changed again, and his voice became apologetic.
‘I know that probably sounds...well, insulting to you, given what you and your poor mother had to put up with all your lives—’
She shook her head. ‘No...’ she answered slowly. ‘I think it explains why you’ve been so kind to me—why you don’t want me to be poor again.’
It did, she realised. In his own way he felt a degree of similarity between them, vastly different though their backgrounds had been. And, she thought—and it was a strange thought, given that vast difference—it also made her understand how similarly driven he was, how dogged his determination to achieve the merger he sought by whatever means necessary.
Just as I was determined to lift myself out of poverty by whatever means necessary. Whether that was by working my guts out as a cleaner to fund my studies or by marrying...
Her expression flickered. Was that why she’d married Xandros? The only reason? Truly the only reason...?
The question hovered and she was unwilling to seek an answer. Was grateful that he was now giving a rueful smile to her response.
‘Well, it is kind of you to say so,’ he replied. ‘And I hope you can be as forbearing with my mother.’ His mouth tightened. ‘I need to tell you that Ariadne’s mother was a good friend of hers, and for that reason my mother shared your father’s enthusiasm for my marrying your half-sister. She accepts that Ariadne did not share that enthusiasm, but—’
He broke off. The grand front door was opening, and a butler—or so Rosalie surmised—was emerging. Xandros got out, greeted the stately personage and came round to open Rosalie’s door.
She got out, nerves pinching. This was an ancestral home, by any standards, but it was strange to think of what Xandros had just disclosed—that the wealth he so obviously enjoyed had not always been guaranteed. Strange, too—and more disturbing—to think that Xandros’s mother had wanted Xandros to marry Ariadne, just as her father had, even though Xandros and Ariadne had clearly had no intention of going along with either parent’s wishes.
Butterflies fluttered in her stomach. It wasn’t going to make it any easier to cope with the forthcoming meeting. But at least she had the comfort of knowing that Xandros’s mother knew just how artificial their marriage was.
She was glad she had dressed with extreme care, in a mod
estly styled dress, and had applied equally modest make-up. And she was glad when Xandros gave her hand a reassuring squeeze as the stately butler showed them in to a drawing room whose elegance matched the grand house.
The woman greeting them was equally elegant.
‘My dear...’ Kyria Lakaris said faintly, her smile even fainter, and then she smiled far more warmly at her son when Xandros kissed her cheek.
He made most of the conversation during the visit, sticking to anodyne subjects such as their recent venture into the Peloponnese, and Rosalie was thankful. Though he kept mostly to English, his mother very often replied in Greek.
Is she trying to shut me out, or am I being oversensitive?
She gave a mental shrug, because in the end what did it matter whether Xandros’s mother disapproved of her? Disapproved of her son marrying her? She would be gone out of his life soon enough.
Several times during the laborious luncheon they sat through, in a dining room as elegant as the drawing room, she heard her half-sister’s name from her mother-in-law, and she could tell by his tone of his voice, even in Greek, that Xandros’s replies were terse. He always pointedly reverted to English, making some remark about his boyhood.
It was the only subject that drew a response from his mother—the first sign of animation Rosalie had seen in her yet.
‘This is a wonderful place for a child to grow up—so much space to run around in! And for the next generation, too. I so look forward to seeing my grandchildren here,’ his mother commented, looking at Rosalie. ‘Of course, had Xandros married Ariadne—’
Xandros’s voice cut across her, saying something repressive in Greek. His mother’s mouth tightened, but she did not continue.
Rosalie had got the message, though. Well, Xandros’s mother would have to wait for her grandchildren—wait until her son was free of his current marriage.
Wait until he marries again. To a real wife this time, so they can make a life together...have children...Xandros’s children...
She snapped her mind away. Xandros’s future children were nothing to do with her. There was no point, was there, in her sudden vision of a pair of toddlers running about in the sun-drenched gardens beyond the dining room windows...?
She would be gone from his life by then...
Long gone.
Her gaze flickered out to the gardens again, and she felt an inexplicable tightening of her throat assail her.
She longed for the lunch to be over, and finally it was. It was with a real sense of relief that she drove off with Xandros.