‘You didn’t tell them the truth?’ The truth was that he had used his marriage to her as a weapon against her brother, nothing more.
A shake of Ronan’s dark head declared the idea was impossible.
‘They had enough to cope with already. I thought I’d handle things myself.’
‘And by “handle things” you mean you went all out for vengeance?’
This time his nod was grim-faced, emotionless.
‘I wanted to hurt the man responsible, destroy him as he’d destroyed my family. But I couldn’t find Davey. He’d gone into hiding as soon as Rosalie was taken into hospital. But I knew there was another way.’
‘Me.’ She had to force herself to say it.
‘You,’ Ronan confirmed harshly.
If he could have denied it, he would. But he had promised her the truth, however much it cost him.
And what did it matter now anyway? He had lost her, as he had known he would. It was there in her eyes, in the shadows that darkened them, and in the cool, distant sound of her voice.
Lost her. He almost laughed out loud at the bitter irony of it. What did he have to lose? Lily had made it only too plain how she felt. She had spelled it out to him no more than a week ago. He might be able to touch her body, to bring it to quivering, demanding life beneath his hands, but he had never been able to reach her mind, which was totally closed against him. She hated him for what he had done, and who could blame her? Right now he detested himself.
‘Davey had talked of you often. What you did, where you lived. I thought that if I couldn’t get to him in any other way I could do it through you. I looked on it as poetic justice. Not an eye for an eye, but a sister for a sister. That way I could wander into your life as carelessly as Davey had done into Rosalie’s…’
‘And destroy my happiness? Destroy me?’
At least he had the grace not to dodge the question. He looked her right in the eyes as he answered.
‘Yes. That was what I planned.’
‘And are you happy now?’
‘Happy?’ Ronan echoed as if he hadn’t understood the word. ‘No, to tell you the truth, I’m not. Happiness doesn’t come into it.’
‘You’re not? Well, what will make you happy?’
She flung the word at him in a mixture of pain, defiance and sheer horror at the thought that even now he still wasn’t satisfied. What Davey had done was terrible, but he at least had the conscience to feel bad, to be racked with guilt about what he had done.
‘What will it take to put an end to this twisted campaign of hatred of yours? When you’ve completely destroyed my life? Because you have! When you’ve made me hate you more than any other human being on earth? When you’ve…’
With each accusation she took a step forward, towards him, and found to her astonishment that Ronan was actually backing away from her, his hands coming up as if in defence against her.
The idea that Ronan might need protection in any form from her was so preposterous that it almost burned away the anguish she was feeling. Almost but not quite.
‘When were you going to get out of my life, Ronan? When were you going to go and leave me in peace for good? Just how far were you prepared to go, I wonder? Was it Davey you wanted to destroy completely, or did you want to see me dead, like Rosalie?’
That stopped him, freezing him in his tracks as he stared at her, every trace of colour leaching from his face.
‘God, Lily, no! Never that! I never thought…’
‘You never thought at all!’ Bitterly she echoed his own fraught words. ‘You never thought to tell me what Davey had done, to give me a chance to show you that I felt as badly about it as you could ever do. You never thought to find out what I would have done…’
‘You couldn’t—’
‘I couldn’t have done anything? Did you even give me a chance? I would have done anything, anything at all to put it right!’
‘Anything?’ It had an odd intonation, as if he couldn’t quite get his tongue round the word. ‘You care for your brother that much?’
‘I love my brother every bit as much as you ever loved your sister. There, does that answer your question?’
It did, but there was no way he liked what he’d heard. If he’d ever wondered why she had ended up in bed with him after saying she’d rather die, then now he knew.
‘You have to let me help my brother!’ she had said. And he had come back at her with the declaration that he knew how loving someone with all your heart could drive you to do something desperate, something that in a more rational frame of mind you would never even consider.
And Lily had done just that. She had offered herself up as a sacrifice for Davey’s sake, believing it might help his cause. She had slept with him because she thought it might go some way towards appeasing the anger he felt towards her brother.
There was no way back now. No chance of ever healing the wounds he had inflicted on her. He had done too much to hurt her, so that now the only thing he could do was to do exactly as she asked and leave her in peace.
It struck home with the blackest, most bitter of ironies that in the same moment he had actually realised he loved this woman, he also knew that the only way he could prove it was by turning and walking away from her.
‘Yes.’ He forced the reply past lips that seemed so stiff he might almost believe they were carved from wood. ‘I think that answers my question perfectly. And so now I’ll give you the answer to yours.’
‘My…?’ Lily tried to make herself think, remember what she had asked. But her brain wouldn’t function. It seemed to have turned to ice, like the blood in her veins, frozen by the wintry tone, the glacial disdain in his eyes.
‘You asked when I was going to get out of your life—go and leave you in peace for good, was the exact phrase you used.’
‘But…’
She couldn’t force her tongue to form the words to tell him that she had only spoken in anger and in pain. That the last thing she wanted was for him to go out of her life. That she loved him and she would die if he left her again.
But to do so would be worse than useless, not to mention totally unfair. Ronan didn’t love her. He had only seen her as the instrument of his revenge against Davey, nothing more.
And what Davey had done would always come between them. Her brother had hurt Ronan and his family so badly that she couldn’t bring herself to add to that distress by putting pressure on him to maintain links with the family he so detested.
She loved Ronan more than life itself, but she knew with a terrible irony that she could only show that love by letting him go, by setting him free to find someone else in the future, someone who might help him heal the scars of the loss of his sister.
And so she stood silent, listening without saying a word, though her heart cried out an anguished protest as Ronan continued.
‘The answer is that I’m leaving now. Just as soon as I can pack I’ll be out of your life and you needn’t worry that I’ll ever come back. This time I really will leave you in peace for good. In fact, I’ll do more than that. I’ll set you free. The minute I get back to London I’ll get my solicitor to start work on the divorce papers.’
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
AUTUMN was definitely on its way, Lily reflected sadly as she stared out of the window, not really seeing the view before her. The warmth of the summer had lasted right through September, but now the nights were drawing in so much more quickly, and there was a distinct chill in the air.
The garden which had been her salvation when Ronan had left, keeping her mind busy and tiring her physically so that at least she had a chance of sleep, was now faded and drab and preparing for the onset of winter. The leaves on the trees were already beginning to fall.
‘Stop it!’ she reproved herself, swinging away from the depressing sight. ‘Stop reckoning everything from the date when Ronan left!’
It only emphasised the fact that he had gone, and how, true to his word, he clearly meant to stay away, never even contacting her. It forced her to confront the huge, gaping hole in her life and in her heart, stabbing at her afresh with the anguish of her loss, the months of heartbreak she had endured.
But then it was difficult not to do so, she thought wryly as her eyes were caught by the way that her movement was reflected in the mirror on the opposite wall.
A faint smile curved her lips as she considered the image of herself that she could see there, absently smoothing the blue material of her dress over the gentle swelling of her abdomen that declared her condition to the world.
Obviously she had to date her pregnancy from the time when Ronan had been with her during the summer. She had probably conceived her baby during that first passionate night they had spent together after the trip to Leeds, when they had both been so hungry, so desperate for each other, that they hadn’t paused to consider such practical matters as protection.
Certainly she had first been made aware of it by the way that the nausea she had taken as a nervous response to the stress of Ronan’s departure had lingered persistently until it had finally become evident that it was more than that. A hurried check on dates had left her with only one possible conclusion.
The sound of the doorbell jolted her out of her melancholy reverie and sent her hurrying across the hall.