‘He will,’ André confirmed.
‘And you want me to pity him for that? Is that what your expression is saying?’
‘Pity is better than bitterness, cara. And I should know,’ he added heavily. ‘Look what my bitterness did to us.’
So he was actually admitting that he had believed her to be a party to her father’s overall plan? ‘I think I hate you,’ she breathed, turning away.
‘Only think?’
‘Go to hell, André,’ she incised. And with that she walked, shaking, limping—hating herself for that limp because it ruined an otherwise precise exit.
Out on the mezzanine the chandeliers had been lit. As she walked down the stairs she could see the whole ambience of the foyer had begun to pull on its evening cloak. If the piano suddenly began playing behind her she knew she would be truly done for.
‘He went to Australia,’ a deep voice said quietly, stopping her as her foot made the foyer floor. ‘I thought you’d gone with him, so I chased after the pair of you. I went to kill him,’ André admitted. ‘Then I was going to strangle the lovely life out of you. Or at least,’ he added, ‘that was the plan.’ Samantha sensed rather than saw the accompanying grimace. ‘It didn’t quite work out like that. I found him hiding out on a cattle station in God knows where because he knew I would be coming after him.’ He released a short sigh. ‘But it was really you I’d gone for. Except you weren’t with him. So instead of killing him I broke down and wept like a baby… Does that help ease your pain to know that, cara?’ he questioned levelly. ‘It made a man out of Raoul, as twisted as that may seem. He broke down and wept right along with me. Then he told me the truth about what he’d done, and while I was trying to come to terms with the bloody mess I’d made of everything he disappeared again, leaving me alone to deal with the lousy, rotten truth of what the pair of us had done to you.’
Australia. At last she managed to recall where she had heard Australia mentioned before. Stefan Reece had seen André there twelve months ago. ‘You were in Australia when I had my accident.’
‘For two months.’ His voice was coming closer. ‘It took me that long to track Raoul down. And thirty seconds to realise what an unforgivable fool I had been. By the time I got back to London your trail had gone cold, and between wishing you in hell for leaving the way you did, and wishing you would just call me to let me know you were okay, I—lived—I think.’ He sighed. ‘I don’t remember much about the long, empty months in between. Then Nathan Payne called me in New York with news about you, and my life suddenly kick-started again.’
‘And Raoul?’ she asked.
‘Still in hiding in the outback, waiting for redemption to ease his guilt. I hear from him now and then, but nothing that says he has come to terms with the man he discovered himself to be.’ His breath touched her nape and she quivered slightly.
‘You’ve forgiven him.’ She realised.
‘After I had learned to forgive myself.’
‘Don’t touch me,’ she said jerkily, hearing him move behind her. When he touched her she lost touch with her common sense.
‘I’m not going to,’ he replied—because he already knew what his touch did to her, and he was now trying to play fair. ‘I just want you to consider forgiving Raoul some day, even if you cannot bring yourself to forgive me.’
And forgiveness was an essential part of her own healing process; that was what he was trying to say.
Funny that, she mused hollowly. But she had already forgiven André for some though not all of what he’d done—though she hadn’t realised it until now. As for Raoul? She could now feel sorry for him, she discovered. But forgive? He’d scared her, seriously scared her, when he’d pushed her onto his bed. And it was the lies he’d told André about her, in an effort to save his own skin, she couldn’t forgive. Those lies had helped to ruin her marriage—her trust in the one person left in the world she’d felt she could rely on—and had ruined her in a way.
‘He gave me the copies of your deal with my father to hurt you too, you know,’ she murmured.
‘I know,’ André confirmed, and didn’t attempt to justify what Raoul had done.
A throb began to pound at the back of her eyes. A deep, pressure ache, which was trying to tell her she just couldn’t think any more right now. On a slow, weary sigh her shoulders drooped, her body losing the will to want to her upright any more.
‘You’ve had it,’ André murmured huskily. ‘Come on, let’s get you home.’
Home, Samantha repeated silently, and didn’t try to argue. She stepped forward; he followed, still maintaining his no-touch policy, she noticed.
The headache became so bad on the way back to the house that she could barely walk unaided up the stairs. Yet still André did
n’t attempt to help her. It was as if it had become a point of honour for him to make no physical contact without her permission.
But he remained right behind her all the way into the bedroom, and only left again when he’d watched her swallow two of her painkillers he’d produced from his pocket. After that, she pulled off her clothes and slipped beneath the duvet, frowning slightly because she had only just realised that the pills should have been in her bedside drawer; so how had he got hold of them?
She fell asleep thinking about the attractively innocuous puzzle.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
ANDRÉ was sitting behind the desk in his study. Head back, eyes closed, bare feet propped on the desk top, and the soft light from a single table lamp just managing to diffuse the hardness from his weary profile. Since leaving Samantha to sleep away some of the strain of the day he had been working steadily, using it as his way of putting their problems aside, for a short while at least.
But now he’d had enough. Work could go to hell. It was his marriage that really mattered right now, and if he felt like wallowing in his own misery for a while then…why not? Across the room somewhere, Puccini’s La Bohème was quietly filtering through the silence. His mood suited the music’s dark mood, and one set of long brown fingers were idly rotating his black fountain pen to a rhythm he had unconsciously picked up.