—Roz Fayrer
EVER SINCE SHE had come to France, time had seemed to lose all meaning for Ella. Hours spent with her grandmother passed in a second—as if knowing it was running out, time raced headlong towards an impossible finish line. Yet mere moments spent with Roman seemed to draw out deliciously as if he held as much command over the grains of sand in an hourglass as he did over her body and senses.
But, more than that, in the last month he had become her confidant, her support. She had spoken to Vladimir on the phone, but his lack of interest in her maternal grandmother had left her feeling strangely awkward and isolated. Despite the initial fear for her health, the procedures and operations had gone incredibly well. But that relief had been short-lived as Ella suddenly found herself the only person who could, and had to, make decisions about care homes and closing up Claudette’s long-lived life in the cottage.
Ella would have found it all too much to bear had it not been for Roman. He had listened to her fears, helped her talk through the visiting of various homes, advised her on how to approach her grandmother with the best on offer. Her grandmother’s pension didn’t cover anywhere near the amount needed and Ella had been forced to ask Vladimir for an advance on her trust fund from her parents. At the age of twenty-two, she was three years away from full access to it and the monthly stipend that had seemed more than enough simply wouldn’t stretch to the beautiful care home she had found for Claudette. Only an hour away from Toulouse, it might have seemed like an extravagance—as suggested by Vladimir, who couldn’t understand why ‘the old crone’ couldn’t be left to public health care—but Ella simply couldn’t wrench her grandmother away from the looming view of the Pyrenees that she had seen every morning since birth.
Ella had been surprised when Roman had happily put aside his business interests in the area to focus almost all his fierce attention on supporting her. Never before had she experienced such a thing and if she had been concerned with how quickly and how fast her dependence on him had come into her life she thrust it aside. Daily walks with Roman and Dorcas had kept her sane and forced her out of the cottage she would have sunk into and never left. Those walks had turned into evening meals where Roman would pepper her with questions about her life in seductive tones and with enticing smiles.
‘So, tell me. What was little Ella Riding like?’
She spent hours sharing tales of her boarding school life, her hopes for the future, plans that she had only begun to discuss with her friend Célia. The business they wanted to develop by linking powerful industries and rich investors with charities across the globe. The home that Ella wanted one day. Roman had listened, smiling and laughing, and encouraging her fantasies of what it would look like, how many rooms, bathrooms, and how much land she would like. He had seemed to sense how important it was to her when she had tried to convey how difficult it had been growing up and feeling as if she’d never had a home of her own—her time shared between her boarding school, university, her guardian’s estate in Russia and her grandmother’s cottage here in France. All of which were welcoming and wonderful, but never truly hers and hers alone.
Once her grandmother had begun to rally, she and Roman began to wander further afield than the woods surrounding the cottage. It was only when she had arrived at the small airfield where a private jet waited to whisk them away to Paris for the evening that Ella realised that Roman was more than just a man of means, but someone really quite incredibly wealthy.
She was no stranger to money and had always lived with the knowledge that at the age of twenty-five she would inherit a vast trust fund from her parents. But, until that time, anything she needed had always had to be approved by her guardian or come from the somewhat conservative monthly allowance he had provided for her from that trust fund. And ever since completing her degree, ever since her return to France, Ella had begun to strain a little at the leash, envying Roman his complete freedom and control over his own destiny.
But as they had flown to Paris in Roman’s private plane, as they had sat in the exquisite restaurant encased within the Eiffel Tower, a landmark Roman had mocked her for not visiting before, she had realised that for all that she had shared of herself, she knew very little about the tall, impossibly handsome man who made her heart soar and her pulse race.
‘So, Roman Black. Who are you really?’
He’d explained in broad terms and simple descriptions that he hadn’t always been wealthy, and that he had had to fight to get everything he now had. Her heart had burned with sympathy as he’d roughly told her of his mother’s death when he was thirteen, and they had shared a sense of that impossible to describe feeling that descended when everything you thought you knew changed in a heartbeat. Ella might have been only five when her parents had died, but she knew what it was like to have the rug pulled from beneath your feet, to lose that precious mooring—the absolute conviction that your parents were there and would always love and care for you.
She had been impressed by the man who had managed to turn everything around against all possible hope and grow into a kind and generous, patient man who she couldn’t help but build dreams around. So she could be forgiv
en, perhaps, for failing to realise that, once again, Roman had turned the conversation back to her before it became too focused on himself.
Trips to Paris were soon followed by visits to London and Stockholm, never too far from an easy return to her grandmother should anything have gone awry. But it never did and soon Ella had begun to relax into this strange new world at which Roman was the centre.
Only her friend Célia had provided words of caution—fearing that perhaps it was all a little too soon, too much. ‘What do you know about him?’ she had asked over the phone. ‘Enough,’ had been Ella’s determined reply.
She knew how Roman made her feel, she knew how Roman had made her want. Want more, not only for herself, but for him too. And her untried and untested heart blossomed beneath his every attention. Her feelings were even more assured once Roman had met Claudette, causing Ella to believe that, had her grandmother been several decades younger, she too would have fallen under his spell.
Claudette’s joy that Ella might have found the same fairy-tale romance as her daughter once had with Nathaniel Riding only served to signpost to Ella that she was indeed on the right path. That of happiness and true love. In some small way, it touched Ella that she was echoing her mother’s life. That, like Adeline, she had met and fallen in love with the man of her dreams. It made her feel connected to both her mother and the past in a way that she couldn’t have imagined only a month before.
So when, only a week ago, Roman had revealed that he was needed back in Russia within a fortnight, Ella’s heart had beat and pulsed with a pre-emptive agony and she had vainly struggled to hide the tears that had unexpectedly gathered.
He had swept aside one with the pad of his thumb and pressed the sweetest kiss against her lips. A kiss that had built a storm of need and passion within her as if, so desperate to cling to him, to keep him with her, she would have given him anything. She wanted to give him everything.
However, Roman had been steadfast on this one thing. A deeply traditional man, he believed that only her husband should have that right, and his declaration had served only to make him seem even more perfect in her eyes, no matter how much she wanted to dissuade him of his conviction.
That night, when he had left, she had been bereft. It was as if that simple declaration of what could be between them, but wasn’t, had made her consumed with the desire to be his wife. It invaded her thoughts and heart with an insidiousness that Ella, in her naivety, believed was nothing less than true love.
So that when they had next met, when he had whisked her away to a candlelit dinner in a chateau overlooking the dips and swells of the rolling hillside, peppered with small terracotta towns and church towers and sprawling vineyards, she had seen nothing but the look of love in his eyes as he haltingly, almost hesitantly, admitted that he knew it was soon, knew it was quick, but he couldn’t remain quiet any longer. That he wanted her to be his wife, his love, his companion. She had almost interrupted his proposal with an agreement so ready, so earnest he had smiled and produced the most beautiful ring she had ever seen.
The art deco ring—a ruby encased in diamonds, set on dual silver bands which were, in turn, covered in more diamonds—looked as if it had come from her deepest fantasies. Roman had explained that ever since their first meeting in the woods he had imagined her in red. And it had touched Ella deeply that he too must have felt all that she had, from the first moment they had met.
But still his departure from France loomed over them. It was only when she shared her joyful news with Claudette that Ella saw and felt her every desire was achievable. Her grandmother’s insistence that she be freed from her caregiver duties gave Ella hope. But it also made her want to give something back in return. She knew in that moment that nothing less than having her grandmother present on her wedding day would make her the happiest bride in the world. Hoping beyond all hope that Roman would agree, she hesitantly broached her request to marry before he needed to return to Russia. His agreement was immediate and assured. But he had a request of his own—one that touched her very soul. Knowing how important her guardian was to her, he wished to return to Moscow on the eve of their nuptials and pay respect to the man who had given her so much.
So overwhelmed that he would consider her wants and needs, the small smattering of people she classed as family, soon to be stretched to include one more, Ella didn’t give much thought to what would happen next. Roman had already given her so much that she placed her trust and her future in his hands. A future he seemed to consider a little more than herself, for he presented her with a prenup, insisting her future and her father’s inheritance was and would always be hers, protected by the agreement he wanted her to sign, despite the fact she would willingly have not. It was as if he had thought of everything, and in those thoughts had put her first and foremost. And to a young woman who had always felt as if she owed a debt, to either her guardian or grandmother, it was everything.
And as she stood before the closed wooden door of the church she chose not to focus on the fact she hadn’t called Célia to tell her of the wedding, nor that her closest friend wasn’t even there. Ella felt strongly that Célia wouldn’t have understood, hadn’t even when she’d tried before to tell her how much Roman meant to her. Instead, Ella chose to defiantly remain in this little bubble world that she had created for herself and Roman.
Her pulse picked up as she cast one final glance in the floor-length mirror discreetly tucked away behind a pillar. She ran a hand down the smooth oyster-coloured silk dress that fitted her perfectly, simple but delicate silver and pearl beading detailing the plunging neckline between her small breasts and the fabric sweeping over slightly flared hips down to her ankles.
Ella hadn’t noticed the split in the skirts until she’d first tried it on and walked towards the reflection in the mirror of her grandmother’s cottage. Never before had she worn such a thing, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that somehow a fairy godmother was looking over her. But it wasn’t a character from some long-ago-written fairy tale but her mother who had kept the beautiful gown for her daughter to wear one day. And Ella believed it was yet another sign as she stood in her mother’s wedding dress, about to marry the man of her dreams.
* * *