‘When I’m struggling with something, I always find it helpful to have another point of view.’
She felt the blood drain from her face as she recognised her own words.
Watching her reaction, he clenched his jaw. ‘It was quite eerie, actually. Hearing your words come out of his mouth. It was a faultless performance. You must have rehearsed a lot.’
‘N-no...’ Prudence stammered. ‘No. It wasn’t like that.’ She shivered as the temperature in the room plummeted.
‘It was exactly like that, Prudence. Or are you telling me he told you to stand by your man?’
Looking at her paper-white stricken face, he felt suddenly sick inside.
‘No. I thought not.’
A muscle flickered in his jaw and he regarded her for a long, excruciating moment.
‘You should have waited to hear what I had to say. But you didn’t. You chose to listen to someone who’d never met me. Who despised the very idea of me.’
Laszlo leant forward, his face dark with fury.
‘Do you know he called me a liar and a charlatan? Told me he knew all about my “sort”.’
He gave a humourless laugh and Prudence felt her cheeks burn. She shook her head desperately.
‘He didn’t mean because you’re a Romany,’ she mumbled.
Laszlo smiled derisively. ‘Please! Do you think I’m stupid?’
Miserably, Prudence shook her head. ‘No. But I know he wasn’t talking about that. He was just worried about me. About where it would all end. I think he thought I was turning into my mum.’
She looked away, fighting tears; fighting memories.
‘You’d been gone for ten days, Laszlo. I didn’t know what to think. I’d left so many messages, and then Edmund came home from work and found me crying.’ She gave a small strangled laugh. ‘I think it really scared him.’ She drew a jagged breath. ‘Especially because I hadn’t really told him and Daisy much about us. Just that I was seeing someone I’d met at the fair.’
Prudence stared blankly around the sitting room. ‘I did talk to Edmund, and he gave me advice. But he didn’t change my mind,’ she said slowly. ‘When I came looking for you—after I’d spoken to him?
??I still wanted us to work. I would have done anything to be with you.’ She paused and shivered, her lip trembling. ‘But, like I told you before, you didn’t even try and reassure me.’
Her voice petered out and Laszlo frowned. It was true. He hadn’t tried to reassure her. And he saw now that the repercussions of her parents’ bigamous marriage had affected not just Prudence but her aunt and uncle too. They had looked after her, brought her up. His breathing was suddenly harsh. How must it have felt for Edmund to see the girl he thought of as a daughter weeping hysterically over a man? A man who seemed in many ways to resemble her perfidious father?
Prudence took a breath and looked up at him sadly. ‘Edmund told me what he thought I should do. But he also said that the decision must be mine.’ She bit her lip and her eyes felt suddenly hot with tears. ‘And it was. You didn’t seem to care one way or another. That didn’t seem to be a good basis for a relationship. So I ended it.’
Her stomach was contorting, as though her misery was actually alive inside her.
‘Edmund didn’t wrong you. All he and Daisy have ever done is try and protect me. You can think what you like. The truth is our relationship ended not because of other people or their opinions but because the sum of what we held back was greater than what we shared. We only really shared our bodies.’
Laszlo stared at her in silence. She had never looked more beautiful or vulnerable. But for once he couldn’t lose himself in the soft beauty of her face. His skin was prickling with what he knew to be guilt. Guilt and regret. Having grown up in the shadow of her mother’s disastrous love affair, she’d met him before she’d had a chance to realise that she wasn’t her mother but her own person.
Now he understood just how lonely and frightened she must have felt when confronted by his baffling absences and moodiness. His head jerked up, his cheeks burning. He had told her he would never forgive her for what she’d done. Now he saw that it was he who needed forgiveness. He had been her lover and, in his mind at least, her husband. The one man who should have restored her faith in men and, more importantly, in herself.
And what had he done to reassure her?
Nothing.
No wonder she had sought comfort from the one man who had always been there for her and never let her down.
‘You must love them very much,’ he said finally.
He saw the flicker of emotion in her grey eyes.