Drawing in a deep breath, she lifted her chin and looked into his eyes.
‘Thank you for telling me that,’ she said simply. ‘And thank you for taking me to lunch. It was lovely.’ Remembering the strange tension around the table, those odd pointed remarks, she hesitated. ‘What about you? Did you enjoy yourself?’
Ram stared at her in silence. Her question was simple enough but it stunned him, for he couldn’t remember anyone ever asking him that before.
‘I suppose,’ he said finally. ‘Although they were a little tense. But there’s a lot going on—I mean, with the party coming up—’
She nodded slowly. ‘Thirty years together is an amazing achievement.’
‘Yes, it is.’
He watched her bite her lip, glance up, try to speak, then look away. Finally she said quietly, ‘I get that it’s why you wanted me to meet them.’
His heart seemed to still in his chest. ‘You do?’
She nodded. ‘You wanted me to understand why you want us to marry. And I do understand. I know you want what they have.’
Her blue eyes were fixed on his face, and he stared back at her, his breath vibrating inside his chest.
You want what they have...
He tried to nod his head, tried to smile, to do what his mother had always required of him.
But he couldn’t. Not anymore. Not with Nola.
Slowly he shook his head. ‘Actually, what they have is why I’ve always been so against marriage.’
He watched her eyes widen with incomprehension, a
nd it made him feel cruel—shattering her illusions, betraying his mother’s confidences. But he was so tired of lying and feeling angry. His chest tightened. Nola deserved more than lies, more than his anger—she deserved the truth.
He cleared his throat. ‘You see, Guy has a mistress.’
Confusion and shock spread out from her pupils like shock waves across a sea.
There was a thick, pulsing silence.
‘But he can’t have—’ Nola bit her lip, stopped, tried again. ‘Does your mother know?’
As she watched him nod slowly the room seemed to swim in front of her eyes.
There was another, shorter silence.
‘I’m so sorry, Ram,’ she whispered at last. ‘That must have been such a shock.’
He stared past her, his eyes narrowing as though he was weighing something up.
‘Yes, it was,’ he said quietly. ‘The first time it happened.’
The first time?
‘I—I don’t understand,’ she said slowly. ‘Isn’t this the first time?’
His mouth twisted. ‘Sadly not. That honour went to an actress called Francesca. Not that I knew or cared that she was an actress.’ An ache of misery was spreading inside him. ‘I was only six. To me, she was just some woman in my mother’s bed.’
Nola flinched. Six! Still just a child.
Watching her reaction, Ram smiled stiffly. ‘Guy told me it would upset my mother if I said anything. So I didn’t.’