‘But you’ve done fine for yourself since then.’
‘Fine?’
One dark brow lifted in cynical mockery as he echoed her tone with deliberate accuracy.
‘If you mean working every hour God sends to earn enough to support my mother and keep her in the way that she needed, give her some comfort and enjoyment when she was desperately ill, then yes, we’ve done “fine”. But that in no way excuses your father for what he has done or puts me under any obligation at all to help him with anything.’
‘No—no you’re not,’ she admitted. ‘But don’t you think that you might have played some part in what had driven him to push you into exile and kept you there afterwards?’
‘And what exactly do you mean by that?’
The silence that greeted her question was appalling, dark and dangerous, bringing her up sharp against what she had said. What she had risked.
Oh, dear heaven, she had really opened her mouth and put both feet right in it there! All she had meant was that it had been his own irresponsible behaviour, the wildness of his ways, that had contributed to her father’s reaction against him and his family. But now she had opened a very ugly can of worms, one she could never put the lid back on ever again. Alexei’s behaviour at court had been one thing. There had been another, darker scandal that had cast a black shadow over his existence once he had settled in England.
‘No—I’m sorry. Obviously...’
‘Obviously?’ Alexei echoed cynically. ‘Obviously you think you know the answer to your question so why ask it?’
‘I didn’t mean to rake over the past.’
‘You would be wise not to—not if you want me to do anything to help your father, because I’ll see him in hell first.’
And that cold-blooded declaration was just too much. It wrenched the top off her control, taking her temper with it.
‘Well, you’ll be right there with him—won’t you?’ she flung at him. ‘After all, what has my father done that compares with letting his baby die?’
It was as if the whole room had frozen over. As if the air had turned to ice, burning in her lungs and making it impossible to breathe. The cold was like a mist before her eyes but even with the swirling haze she could still see the blaze of his eyes, searing through the blurring clouds and scouring over her skin like some brutal laser.
‘What indeed?’
She’d gone too far, said too much, and put herself in danger by doing so. Not physical danger because, no matter how darkly furious she knew that Alexei was, she also had a fiercely stubborn conviction that there was no way he would hurt her.
But mentally...that was another matter entirely. And just the thought of it had her taking several hurried and shaken steps backwards, away from him, putting the width of the polished wooden desk between them for her own safety.
‘I wouldn’t be too sure of that.’ The image of the jewel-eyed serpent was back in Ria’s mind as she heard the vicious hiss of his words, felt the flicking sting of their poison. ‘There are more ways than one to destroy a child’s life.’
That brought her up sharply, blinking in shock and incomprehension as she stared into his dark shuttered face, trying to work out just what he meant. Had he known—or at the very least suspected—just what her father had planned? Was that why he had always been so aggressively hostile to the older man back in Mecjoria, so defiant, rejecting everything the Chancellor had tried to teach him? It was nothing but oppression, bullying, he had declared, and she had always come back with the belief that her father was doing it for their own good, and for the image of the country. At least that was how she had seen it at the time. Now, recognising the side of her father that had shown itself more recently, she was forced to see it in such a very different light, and the sense of betrayal was like acid in her mouth. But had Alexei, with the advantage of extra years, been able to interpret things much more accurately?
Because how could she deny the relevance his words had for her now, coming so close to the secret she had vowed she would keep from him at all costs?
‘I didn’t mean to rake over the past,’ she said hesitantly, trying for appeasement.
‘But nevertheless you have done just that.’
Black eyes blazed against skin drawn white across his slashing cheekbones and he slung the words at her like pellets of ice, each one seeming to hit hard and cold on her unprotected skin so that she flinched back, away from them.
‘I’m sorry,’ she tried but the icy flash of his eyes shrivelled the words on her tongue.
‘Why apologise? Doesn’t everyone know that I was once a useless, irresponsible drunk? The type of man who left my child alone while I went on a bender? Who drank myself into a stupor so that I didn’t even know that my baby daughter had died in her cot?’
‘Oh, don’t!’
Her hands came up before her sharply in a gesture of defence. She didn’t understand why it hurt so much just to hear the words. She’d known about it after all—everyone had. The scandal had exploded into the papers like an atom bomb, shattering lives, destroying what little reputation Alexei might still have had. Most of all it had ripped apart any hope she had clung on to that he might still be the boy she had loved so much—the friend who had once been her support and strength through a difficult, lonely childhood. It had certainly kept her from trying to contact him again when she had been tempted to do just that.
‘Don’t what?’ he parried harshly. ‘Don’t acknowledge the truth?’
CHAPTER FIVE
HE’D BEEN HOLDING it together until she’d said that, Alexei acknowledged. Until she’d ripped away the protective wall he had built between himself and the dark remembrance of the past. And now the red mist of aching memory had seeped out and flooded his brain, making it impossible to think or to speak rationally.
Belle. One tiny little girl had changed his life and made him pull himself up, haul himself back from the edge of the precipice he had been rushing towards. But not soon enough. He had failed Belle, failed his daughter, and her death would always be on his conscience.
Looking into Ria’s face, he could almost swear that he could see the sheen of moisture on those beautiful eyes and found that some inner of stab of jealousy actually twisted deep in his guts. He had never been able to weep for Belle, never been able to fully mourn her loss. He had been too busy trying to deal with the fallout from that tragedy.
But Ria... How could she have tears for a child she had never known, for a baby she had no connection to? He envied her her ease of response, the uncomplicated emotion.
‘Why should I deny the facts when the world and his wife know what happened?’ he demanded. ‘And no one would believe a word that’s different.’
‘What possible different interpretation could there be?’
Was that what she was looking for? Hoping for? The questions thundered inside Ria’s head, shocking her with their force, the bruising power of the need it startled into wakefulness. Was this what she wanted? That he could provide a different explanation for the terrible events of three years before? That he could explain it all away, say it had never happened—or at least that it had never been the way it had been reported? Was this why it tore at her so much, pulling a need she hadn’t realised existed out of her heart and forcing her to face it head-on?
If that was it, then she was doomed to disappointment. She knew it as soon as she saw the way his face changed again, the bitter sneer that twisted his beautiful mouth, distorting its sensual softness.
‘None, of course,’ he drawled so softly that she almost missed it. ‘That is unless you can tell me that you believe it could have been any other way. Can you do that, hmm, sweetheart?’
He went even more on to the attack, driving the savage stiletto blade of his cruelty deeper into her heart. And it was all the more devastating because it was still spoken in that dangerously gentle tone.
‘Can you find a way to change the past so that the devil is transformed into an angel? A fallen angel, granted, but not the fiend incarnate that the world sees?’
Could she? Her mouth opened but no sound came out because there was no thought inside her head she could voice but the knowledge that what he spoke was the bitter, black truth.
‘No...’
‘No.’
The corners of his mouth curled up into a smile that ripped into her heart, it was so strangely gentle and yet so at odds with the fiendish darkness of his eyes.
‘Of course. I thought not.’
‘If there is any explanation...’
For the sake of their past, the sake of the friend he had once been, she had to try just once more, though without any real hope.
‘No. There is no explanation that I want to give you.’
It was a brutal, crushing dismissal, accompanied by a slashing gesture of one hand, cutting her off before she could complete the sentence.