‘Why should you care what Pauline and Chloe did to my father and me? Why should you give me so fabulous a gift?’
He was looking at her still, and the expression in his face made the hammering in her heart pound in her ears.
‘Why?’
His voice echoed hers. But he gave her no answer. Only strode around her father’s desk, catching at her hand and drawing her to her feet. Her legs were like jelly and she had to cling to his arm lest she collapse, so overpowering was the shock shaking her.
In her head she kept hearing her own voice, saying over and over again—Haughton is mine! It’s mine! It’s mine! Dear God, it’s mine for ever now!
It was a paean, an anthem, ringing in her head like bells. She gazed helplessly up at Max. At the man who had done this, made this happen. Into her head, flashing like a strobe light, came the memory of the moment Max had given her that first wonderful, miraculous gift—the moment when he’d shown her her reflection the night of the ball, transformed beyond recognition. Made beautiful by him.
He freed me from Chloe’s hex—and now, oh, he’s freed me from Pauline’s too!
Emotion overwhelmed her. Gratitude and wonder and so much more.
‘Why?’ His voice came again, husky now. He caught her other hand, held it, cherished it. He towered over her, his strong body supporting her stricken one. ‘Oh, Ellen—my beautiful, lovely, passionate, wonderful Ellen... Have you really not the faintest idea why?’
He held her a little way from him, the expression on his face rueful.
‘Did you not hear me when I told you that the moment I saw this house I wanted to live here? That something about it called to me? That after all my years of wandering, never having had a home of my own, having existed only on sufferance at my stepfather’s taverna and having lived in hotels and apartments anywhere in the world, I had finally come across a place that urged me to stop...to stop and stay. Make my life here.’
Now the rueful expression deepened.
‘That was what drove me so hard to buy it—to make it mine. What drove me to do all I could to achieve that aim. Including...’ his eyes met hers wryly ‘...whisking you off to London to show you how good your life could be if only you would let go of the place I wanted for myself.’
He gave a regretful sigh.
‘I went on and on at you. I know I did. But you see...’ and now a different note entered his voice ‘...I’d sought an explanation for your stubbornness, your refusal to agree to sell y
our share, from your stepmother and stepsister.’ His eyes shadowed as he remembered that scene in the drawing room when he’d made his initial offer for Haughton. ‘And they told me that you’d become obsessed with the house, that you’d never accepted Pauline’s marriage to your father, that you had rejected them from the very first, seen them as interlopers, invaders.’
He gave a shake of his head.
‘I remembered my own childhood—how my stepfather never wanted me, never accepted me into his home, always resented my presence even though he made use of it. I was always the outsider, the unwanted brat of my mother. Maybe,’ he said slowly, ‘that was why I was so ready to believe what Pauline and Chloe told me. So, while I could make allowances for your reaction to your father’s remarriage, all I could see was how that resentment was poisoning you....chaining you to this place. Making you think it was the only way you could punish Pauline for marrying your father, seeking to take your mother’s place.’
He felt Ellen draw away slightly. Her eyes were full of grief. Her voice when she spoke was low and strained, her glance going to her father’s empty chair by the hearth.
‘I was glad when my father told me he was marrying again. So glad! He’d been grieving for my mother and I desperately wanted him to be happy again. If Pauline made him happy, then I knew I would be happy. I tried to welcome them, tried to befriend Chloe...’ A choke broke in her voice. ‘Well, I told you how they reacted. But even then if they’d only made my father happy I could have borne it! But within months of marrying Pauline my father realised that her only interest in him was his money.’
Her mouth set.
‘He was powerless to do anything about it. If he’d divorced Pauline she’d have taken half of everything he had—forced him to sell Haughton and split the proceeds. So he kept on paying out and paying out and paying out. I had to hide from him all the spite and venom that came from them—hide from him how Chloe had tried to make my life hell at school, and how she constantly sneered at me because I’m tall and sporty, told me how repellent I was because of it until I believed her completely...’
Her voice broke in another choke before she could continue.
‘I had to hide it all from my father because he’d only have been hurt all the more, worried about me more, and felt yet more trapped by Pauline. So when he died I was almost relieved, because finally I didn’t have to pretend any longer. I could find my backbone and resolve that even though I knew it was impossible to stop Pauline and Chloe from getting their claws into Haughton eventually I would do everything in my power, for as long as I could, to make it as hard and as expensive as possible for them to force a sale.’
She took another choking breath.
‘I was—just as you said—using Haughton as a weapon against them—my only weapon.’ Her gaze shifted again, became shadowed. ‘But when I came back here after leaving you I knew...’ She paused, then made herself go on. ‘I knew that I’d changed—that you’d been right to say that I was poisoning myself in my battle against them. That it was time...finally time...to let go. They had won and I had lost and all I could do was leave and make a new life for myself somewhere else. Anywhere else.’ She took another searing, painful breath. ‘This—today—was to be my very last visit, my last sight of my home.’
He drew her towards him again and his voice was gentle...very gentle. ‘And now it is yours for ever.’ His eyes poured into hers. ‘No one can ever threaten it again.’ His mouth curved into a smile. ‘Look around you, Ellen—it’s yours, all yours.’
A strangled sound was torn from her throat, and then a sob, and then another, and then tears were spilling from her eyes and Max was wrapping his arms around her, and she was clinging to him, shaking with emotion, with the relief and disbelief that all this was really true, that all the stress and fear and anguish at losing her home was over—over for ever. Because Max—wonderful, kind, generous Max—had made her dream come true. Haughton was hers, and it was safe for ever now.
He held her while her body shook with the tears choking from her, convulsing her, while her hands clutched at him and she was finally purged of all that her stepmother and stepsister had done to her for so long. And when she was finally done he stroked her hair with his hand, murmured things to her in Greek.
She didn’t know what they were, but knew that he was the most wonderful man on earth. And that she had now taken from him something he had wanted from the moment he’d first set eyes on it.