An even greater urgency fuelled his words. ‘You call it home—but it’s a tomb, Ellen. Your tomb. Don’t you see? You’ve buried yourself in it, clung to it, and you go on clinging to it because you can use it as a weapon against Pauline, who dared to marry your doting father and give him a second chance of happiness—’
A cry broke from her but he did not stop. Could not stop.
Frustration surged in him, boiling up out of the long, sleep-depriving red-eye flight that had taken them from their passion-filled carefree travels together to land them back here.
Ellen—his Ellen—whom he’d freed from her self-imposed mental prison of thinking herself unlovely and undesirable, was now determined to go straight back to the destructive life he’d released her from. He couldn’t bear to let it happen. He had to make her see what she was doing to herself, consumed by bitterness as she was. It was a bitterness that was destroying her. Changing her from the wonderful, carefree, passionate woman she’d been when she was with him. Changing her back into the embittered, resentful, anger-obsessed person he’d first encountered.
He couldn’t let that happen. He couldn’t!
He plunged on. ‘Ellen—look at yourself. You’ve let your anger and resentment eat into you. For years and years. You never gave Pauline and Chloe a chance—you never wanted them to be part of your family. You were fixated on your father—understandably, because of the loss of your mother—but now you’ve become obsessed with punishing them by hanging on to Haughton.’
She thrust him away, lurching backwards. Her eyes were wide and distended. Emotion battered at her. Stress, weariness and anger rushed up in her.
‘It’s my home, Max! Why should I sell it so that someone like you can turn it into a hotel? Or sell it on to some oligarch or sheikh who’ll only set foot it in once a year, if that!’
He shook his head vigorously. ‘That isn’t what I want to do with Haughton. What I want is—’
She didn’t let him finish. Dear God, why was he choosing now, of all times, to lay into her again? Why couldn’t he just leave her alone? Stop going on and on about it?
‘I don’t care what you want! I don’t care because I will fight you to the last—fight Pauline and Chloe to the last. Haughton is my home, and all I want—all I want—is to live there in peace!’
Max’s hand slashed through the air. Exasperation and anger and emotions that were far more powerful than both of them fuelled his outburst. ‘Then do it! Just damn well do it! Stop your venomous, vengeful feud with your stepmother, which is twisting you and poisoning you, and buy them out.’
He saw her freeze, his words stopping her in her tracks.
‘Buy them out...’ It was not a question, not a statement. Merely an echo. Her face was blank—quite blank.
He took a heavy breath. ‘Yes, buy them out. If that is how you feel, Ellen, then simply buy their share from them so they can make a new life for themselves somewhere miles away from you, since I’m sure they feel the same way themselves. And then there’ll finally be an end to this sorry saga. God knows I’ve tried to show you how good your life can be, but while you cling to your vendetta, keep punishing Pauline and Chloe, the poison is destroying you.’
He shook his head. He was beating it against a brick wall, he could see. He turned away, pouring himself a cup of coffee and knocking it back, as if to restore energy levels that were suddenly drained dry. Could nothing make her see what she was doing to herself?
There was the lightest touch on his arm. Ellen was there, drawing his attention. He put down the drained cup and turned.
There was something strange in her expression—something he’d never seen before. And it chilled him to the core.
Her voice, when she spoke was thin...thin like a needle. ‘You said I should buy out Pauline and Chloe’s share of Haughton...’ Something flared in her eyes like a black flame. ‘What with?’ The words were spat at him.
Exasperation lashed from him. ‘Ellen, don’t be melodramatic,’ he said crushingly. ‘You could easily buy them out if you wanted. Pauline told me that you’d inherited everything else your father left—his stocks, his shares, all his other assets. She told me herself he was a very wealthy man.’
He saw her face whiten like a bone. Bleach-white. The hand on his sleeve seemed to spasm. But when she spoke her voice was very calm. Too calm.
‘Let me tell you something, Max.’
Her hand dropped like a dead weight from his arm. There was something odd about the way she was looking at him. Something that made him think of a mortally wounded animal.
‘Do you remember the night of that Edwardian ball? The jeweller who arrived with all that jewellery for hire? Do you remember I chose the rubies immediately?’
There was something wrong with her voice too, and it made Max frown.
‘It was not just because they went with my gown. It was because—’
And now there was definitely something wrong with her voice—with her eyes—with her white face and stiffened body.
‘Because they once belonged to my mother. I recognised them instantly—especially the ring. It was her engagement ring. And it was my great-grandmother’s before that—as was the rest of the parure. My mother liked the old-fashioned setting. But Pauline did not.’
And now Ellen’s eyes had a different expression in them—one that Max found was causing the blood in his veins to freeze.
‘So she sold it. She sold a great deal of my mother’s jewellery, only keeping what she liked. Or what Chloe liked. They both like pearls, as it happens, in particular. The double pearl necklace Pauline was wearing when you came to lunch was my father’s tenth anniversary present to my mother, and the pearl bracelet Chloe wore was given to me by my parents for my thirteenth birthday. Chloe helped herself to it—said it was wasted on me. Wasted on me because I was nothing but a clumsy great elephant, an ugly lump, totally gross. And she never, ever missed an opportunity to remind me of that! Wherever and whenever. She made me a laughing stock at school for it, and has gone on laughing ever since—she’s mocked me mercilessly ever since her mother got her claws into my poor, hapless father!’