He heard the hesitation in her voice, the careful way she was phrasing her words to be somewhere between an observation and a question. And, given her relationship to Della, he completely understood her unease.
It would be a daunting enough prospect to come face to face with the wife of your sister’s lover. To do so when you were engaged to the woman’s son...
But he had been expecting this moment ever since she had agreed to marry him—obviously his mother and his wife could hardly avoid meeting one another. So why, then, had it caught him off guard?
She took a breath. ‘It might give us a chance to get past the awkward stuff.’
The awkward stuff.
That was one way of putting it.
He gritted his teeth. The simplest, most obvious response would be to tell her the truth. And he wanted to be honest with her. She had been honest with him, and they had agreed to be honest with one another.
Only as with most truths that had been buried or blurred, it was not simple at all—and in this instance the facts were misleading.
Dora was clearly wondering why he hadn’t introduced her to his mother yet. Logically, she assumed that it was because Nuria was upset about the engagement and he didn’t want to rush his mother, push her into doing something that would upset her more.
Only that wasn’t the reason he was reluctant for them to meet.
He knew Dora would be expecting his mother to be angry—bitter and tearful, even. A part of him suspected that she would almost welcome that kind of reaction.
But even though her husband had cheated on her repeatedly, and fathered an illegitimate child with his mistress, Nuria was still a Lao, and being a Lao came first. And that was why he needed them to meet in public at the party. That way Dora might confuse his mother’s composure with a desire not to embarrass her son.
He felt his stomach knot.
It would be fairer, and kinder to Nuria, for them to meet privately, but once again he had to put the needs of the family above her feelings. To do otherwise would raise too many difficult questions.
How could he explain that he had been taught to lie? That being a member of his family required the adoption of a certain code—his father’s code—and that meant learning to justify distortion and prevarication.
Family reputation came first. It trumped everything—certainly the petty needs of the individual.
I’m not who you think I am, he wanted to tell Dora.
Only he couldn’t unilaterally smash the mirror-gloss perfection of the Lao family...not when so much was riding on it.
After they were married, he would sit down and explain the rules.
And he would do his best to minimise the sacrifices she and Archie would have to make.
Only righ
t now he needed to find a way to answer Dora’s question.
He cast around for something to make her accept the situation. ‘I think she would find that hard,’ he said truthfully. ‘It will be easier for her with more people around.’
He felt her flinch, felt it travel through her fingers into his body.
‘So that’s why she didn’t come to the graveyard with us?’ she said quietly. ‘I’m sorry. That must have been hard for you...not having her there.’
The ache in her voice made his chest tighten with guilt and shame.
His mother had been upset for so long he had barely given it a moment’s thought—and then only in regard to the logistics of organising a second limousine. But he was her son as much as his father’s and he had let her down—not least because he, not Dora, should have been the one to recognise that simple, immutable truth.
‘It’s not your fault, it’s mine.’
For a moment he pictured his father’s lip curling in disdain at his admission. But when he gazed down at Dora his father’s features seemed to blur and dwindle like the smoke in the graveyard.
‘I handled today badly,’ he said. ‘I’ve handled a lot of things badly. Got my priorities wrong. Let down the people who need me most. But I want that to stop now.’