The murmur of voices and chink of glasses directed her footsteps up to the first-floor drawing room and when Zara walked in there was a pin-drop silence. But then, maybe that was because she was the only person in the room who was wearing faded jeans and a T-shirt bearing the legend ‘Agricultural Students Do It In Fields'.
All eyes seemed to be fixed on her but she was aware of only one pair. She could see Nikolai on the far side of the room and she couldn’t make out whether he looked shocked, furious, amused—or all three. But suddenly she didn’t care. She had to tell him. Even if it was too late—he had to know how she felt.
She walked right up to him and the blonde woman who had been smiling up at him now looked at him askance, as if an axe-murderer had just muscled in on their conversation.
‘Nikolai?’ she ventured, in a tiny little voice which matched her tiny couture-clad frame.
But Nikolai didn’t appear to have even heard the woman. His narrowed eyes were fixed and intent. ‘Zara.’
‘Yes,’ she breathed as the enormity of what she was about to do hit her.
‘This is a surprise.’
His wry understatement made her draw a deep breath. She supposed she could ask him to accompany her to another room, where they might have some peace and privacy. But Zara was afraid that if she waited a second longer then her nerve would leave her and she would never dare say the words which now bubbled out of her.
‘I love you, Nikolai Komarov,’ she said, in a quiet urgent voice. ‘I’ve loved you for so long that I’ve forgotten what it’s like not to love you—only I was too scared to show it before.’
He didn’t say a word, just continued to stare at her with a steady blue gaze which was as cold as ice.
Zara drew in another deep breath. ‘I was scared that if I started to show you what I felt—that it would open up the floodgates to something so powerful t
hat it would sweep me away on its tide. And I thought you didn’t want love like that.’
For a moment there was a silence so long that it felt as if time had stretched itself out, like a piece of elastic. Say something, she urged silently. Say anything, but at least say something.
But there was no smile and no words. Nikolai just stood there as silent and as unmoving as a block of stone and Zara could see the look of shock and something else which had darkened his eyes. Something which looked a little like fear—from a man who didn’t do fear. But he didn’t do love either, did he? He’d told her that in no uncertain terms.
As Zara listened to the heavy silence she realised that her worst nightmare had come true. The gamble hadn’t paid off. He didn’t love her. Didn’t even care enough to murmur a few placatory words, which might have allowed her to save face. He was standing looking at her as if she were some kind of madwoman—while the rest of the room looked on with a mixture of amused horror.
‘I’m so sorry,’ she whispered. ‘I should never have come here.’
Unsteadily, she turned and stumbled from the room and the silence began to grow into an astonished roar as she made her way downstairs, brushing past the sanctimonious face of the butler and out onto the street.
Shuddering, she gripped onto the iron railing outside the house as she sucked in several deep breaths, but she still felt weak and dizzy—as if she was about to faint.
But she couldn’t afford to do that—not with people still arriving. I have to get away, she told herself fiercely. l have to move away from here before I make an even bigger fool of myself.
Blindly, she made her way to the end of the street, her eyes blurred with tears, the acid taste of dryness at the back of her throat as she tried to swallow down the sobs which were building in intensity. The glimpse of green at the end of the street made her make her way towards it, some instinct propelling her towards the light and space of Primrose Hill. And that was when she heard running footsteps behind her and the sound of someone calling her name.
She would have recognised his footsteps and the sexy lilt of Nikolai’s Russian accent from miles away but Zara didn’t let her own step falter because the last thing she wanted was to face him. What was she supposed to do, turn around and tell him she was fine and that she didn’t care that she’d humiliated herself by telling him she loved him in front of a room full of snooty people?
‘Zara!’
Ignoring him, she tore into the park and then began to run up the hill, past the iconic lamp-posts. It had always been a favourite place of hers for picnics—a long ride on the Northern Line ending in a cute little hill which made you feel you were flying.
But not today. Today her feet felt leaden and she prayed that Nikolai might have taken the hint and gone back to his party. Leave me in peace to nurse my wounds, she prayed silently. Don’t make it any worse than it already is. Don’t let me keep reliving the moment when I confessed my love for you in a room full of people and you stared at me as if I had just offered you a goblet of pure poison.
‘Zara!’
The voice was closer now. Almost upon her, in fact. And then she could feel his hand on her arm and it was holding her and not letting her go. In fact, he was turning her round as if it were a practised dance move and his face was tense, his eyes dark with some unknown emotion. Furiously, she began to pummel her fists against his chest.
‘Let me go!’
‘No!’
‘Let me go or I’ll scream my head off!’
‘I’ll let you go when you’ve heard me out, Zara. Please.’