‘But why would my mother lie now, when she has kept my father’s identity a secret for almost thirty years?’
The healthy bronze of his skin was steadily retreating, to leave him ashen pale. But his eyes blazed. ‘You weren’t going to tell me.’
‘I shouldn’t have told you—’
‘Why? Am I a little child to be protected?’ Rafael raked back at her in raw condemnation, and it shook her because it was the first time she had seen him openly betray anger.
‘No. But what is the point in both of us feeling as we do now?’ Harriet whispered, in an agony of regret that she had failed to withstand his pressure. ‘We can’t change anything.’
Rafael stared down at her with fulminating intensity and then, without warning, he looked away from her again. He sucked in a stark, ragged breath. His stubborn jawline clenched hard; his beautifully moulded mouth flattened into a grim line. He was in severe shock. She recognised that. She could see him battening down the hatches and holding back on saying anything. She wanted to reach out and hold him, and knew she could not. In every fibre of her being she felt the pain that she had caused by failing to keep silent—and she despised her own weakness. He was as appalled and as utterly unprepared for that genetic bombshell as she had been.
‘I have to deal with this…’ Rafael breathed in a roughened undertone.
Jerkily she nodded, her eyes filled with tears, her hands clenched so tightly in on themselves that her fingers were numb. How could she have told him when there was no need for him to know?
‘Are you OK?’
Again she jerked
her head.
‘Of course you’re not.’ He sprang back into the saddle and she swung away to gaze out to sea at the breakers rolling in, for she did not trust herself to watch him ride back across the sand.
*
His half-sister. Rafael asked himself how he could deal with the unimaginable. He had never allowed himself to hate Valente. Hatred, like most uncontrolled emotion, was anathema to Rafael. He had despised Valente, and from adulthood on had triumphed over his father with superior intellect and self-discipline. But it seemed that Valente might have the last laugh after all. For his father was dead and untouchable and the past was unalterable. Rafael had to ask himself why Harriet’s mother would choose to tell such a lie after so many years. He discovered that he could not come up with one good reason.
The bottom line was simple: he could not have Harriet. He should never have had anything to do with Harriet, and he would never be able to be with Harriet again. Harriet was forbidden fruit. She could be his business partner only. How often would he see her in a business line? As a friend? Could he do the friend angle? If he had been the sort of guy who fell in love Harriet would have been the one, he acknowledged bleakly. He was so lucky he didn’t do love. At that point he went down to the cellar and dug out a bottle of brandy. He felt seriously weird, and thinking was making him feel worse. He decided that he would feel much better when he had drunk enough to blot out all rational thought. It was the first and last decision he made for some time.
*
Tolly called on Harriet that evening. He wasted no time in getting to the point of what had etched the furrows deep in his brow. ‘Rafael’s drinking and he’s a man who doesn’t drink. Is there something I should be knowing?’
Harriet went white and bent her head. ‘No.’
‘But it’s all off between you…?’
‘Yes.’
‘And obviously you’re both very happy about that.’
‘We have no choice,’ she said chokily, for she could not bear the idea that Rafael was alone and upset.
‘There’s always a choice.’
‘No. Sometimes it’s made for you and it’s very cruel!’ she bit out, and, excusing herself, fled into the office to hide her distress.
*
On the third day Albert the rooster wakened Rafael with a more than usually loud chorus. Rafael groaned. The previous forty-eight hours were a blur of nightmares and desolation. Enough was enough. He hauled himself out of bed and into the shower. Harriet. The thought of her hit him like a punch in the gut. Strong black coffee awaited him when he returned to the bedroom. Tolly was always one step in advance, he thought ruefully, grimacing at the ache in his head.
‘Breakfast…all your favourites,’ the old man promised him from the back of the hall, treading softly, as though he knew that only fierce will-power was keeping Rafael from resorting back to the fleeting oblivion offered by alcohol.
Rafael stared out at the beautiful timeless view that now had the folly as a central focus. He wondered what Harriet was doing. He pushed away his plate, all appetite fading. ‘After my parents divorced, how often did Valente visit Flynn Court?’
Tolly gave him a bemused look. ‘He didn’t.’
‘I know I have no memory of him visiting. But perhaps he came to the village and stayed somewhere else?’