She turned to find him pouring himself a drink from the small bar area and felt oddly disquieted by the way he seemed to feel so at home in a room she had never really liked. As if it was his. As if he had the right. It was such a contrast to the almost humble man she had come to know. The arrogance somehow made her feel embarrassed on his behalf as Konstantin took in the same action with something like disdain.
‘Would you care for a drink?’ The simple request had come from her guardian’s housekeeper, not her husband, making it almost impossible for Ella to ignore that something was wrong. Very wrong.
‘I think that would be a good idea,’ came a gravelly voice behind her. ‘I have a feeling she’s going to need it.’
She turned to find her guardian looming in the shadows cast from the doorway to the hall. The smile on her lips wavered at Vladimir’s proclamation. Even though he was nearing eighty, her guardian had always stood tall and proud. Stocky rather than softly rounded, and always shockingly dark-featured compared to her pale skin and blonde hair from her mother’s side. He had always seemed formidable to her but now, here, he felt almost menacing.
‘So this is the man you have married?’ he demanded as he stepped into the room. The Russian words were harsh against her heart in comparison to the month spent with the softer, warmer French of her grandmother.
‘Yes,’ she said, looking back at her husband, hoping to have him stand by her side, but feeling an unbreachable distance between them across the room. ‘Please let me introduce Roman Black. My husband.’
‘Black?’ queried her guardian. ‘Not a surname I’m familiar with.’
Vladimir’s gaze bored into Roman’s unrelentingly. And Ella wondered why the man who had charmed her, who had eased her grandmother’s concerns aside with smooth words and confidences, was not now attempting to do the same with her guardian. Instead, he appeared as if carved from stone, holding fast against the battering winds being thrown in his direction by Vladimir Kolikov.
It was as if the temperature in the room had dropped, a hostility she had never before felt covering her skin in goose bumps.
‘I would like a moment with your new husband, Ella.’
The dismissal was perhaps not unusual, but most unexpected. She was about to protest, but one quick glare from Vladimir cut the words before they could form. Roman had yet to take his eyes from her guardian and Ella felt as if she were at sea, being pushed and pulled by invisible currents that she let carry her from the room.
But she refused to be so easily dismissed and instead paused in the hallway, leaving the door ever so slightly ajar.
‘You said you would be back.’
Ella frowned from where she stood, hidden in the shadows beside the door. Roman knew her guardian?
‘I did,’ Roman replied, his voice almost unrecognisable.
‘And you have married my ward.’
‘I have.’
‘To what end?’
‘That is entirely dependent on you, Kolikov.’
Ella struggled to understand what was going on. The words she could hear as easily as if had she been in the room, but the meaning? It was completely lost on her. The shifting sand beneath her feet made her feel nauseous as she struggled to wrap her head around the conversa
tion taking place through the door. Her heart beat fiercely against the invisible threat that hovered above her like a sword.
‘Why Black?’
‘What?’
‘The name. Why Black?’
‘It was the colour my heart turned when you kicked me off your property. It was the depth of the darkness my heart became when she died.’
‘I see you are just as fanciful as that girl.’
‘That girl was your daughter!’ Roman raged and in that moment an overwhelming force of horror struck Ella hard and fast. Roman was Vladimir’s grandson?
‘She stopped being my daughter the day she chose you over me,’ the old man spat.
‘Well, now this is your choice. Your reckoning.’
‘Really? Pray tell.’