He shook his head, bewildered. What the hell was she talking about?
“The marriage is for convenience only,” she continued. “To enable us to share what it is we both want. What I object to is you pretending to get… closer, simply to—” Her voice faltered.
“We had sex! We made love! Whatever you want to call it, I was not ‘pretending’ to get closer. Wewerecloser!”
Her lips tightened into a narrow line. “Werebeing the operative word.” She stared at him, willing him to contradict her.
He shook his head and sighed. “What the hell are you talking about, Indra?”
At that moment they heard the sound of a vacuum cleaner coming ever closer.
“Let’s talk in my office.”
He closed the door behind him. “No way. I’m not going up to the nursery again.”
Her dark curtain of hair swirled around her as she jutted her chin to face him. “Why? Does it bring back bad memories? Do you regret what happened so much?”
“What the—” But before he could continue, she marched toward the foot of the sweeping stairs. He ran after her and grabbed her hand. “What the hell has got into you? You know I can’t stand that place, and that has nothing whatsoever to do with what happened the other night there. If you want to talk, there’s a perfectly good library here, on the ground floor, with working doors and locks and without a ceiling which makes you feel you’re being incarcerated.”
The defensiveness left her eyes, and she relented as she remembered how much he hated that room. She nodded, but tugged her hand from his, and he followed her into the library. Despite his confusion at her actions, he couldn’t help being distracted by her jean-clad behind. Being petite, she always wore heels and today was no exception. Her booted, decisive footsteps rang out on the parquet floor, and her dark eyes flashed at him as he held the door open for her. She entered and walked over to a portrait of his father. She reached out as if to touch it, but after shooting Sebastian a look, withdrew her hand and rested it on the mantelpiece. He felt a bolt of jealousy and he didn’t have the first idea who he was jealous of. His father for Indra loving him? Or Indra, who’d experienced his father’s love which he, his son, had never had. Before he had an opportunity to figure it out, she looked at him with an expression which wiped everything from his mind.
“He was an exceptional man,” she said.
He went and stood beside her, impossibly drawn to her, unable to stop himself. He wanted to put his arms around her there and then but knew he’d likely receive a push back. So he stood silently, following her gaze to the portrait of his autocratic father.
“I guess ‘exceptional’ is an accurate word. But I’m guessing he was a different kind of exceptional to you.”
“You’ve only told me snippets about your relationship, so it’s hard to guess, but the more I get to know you, the more I think you may be like him.”
“I’m nothing like him!” he exploded.
She smiled. “He used to do that. Burst into anger if one hit upon a truth he didn’t want to face.” She looked back at the portrait. “But it didn’t stop my mother, who would gently push to make him see. And he always did. Because she didn’t have a competitive bone in her body. She was someone who cared for others and had complete confidence in herself. She didn’t need anyone’s approval.”
“That’s unusual.”
“Yes, it is. I think that’s what made Charles fall in love with her. Because she wasn’t someone to fight, and she was someone who you could trust totally.”
“She sounds… impressive.”
She turned her smile to him. “That isn’t a word that you’d have used when you first met her. She was shorter than I am. She measured barely five feet and was slender as a willow. Most people didn’t notice her until things got tough and then she made herself felt by her intelligence and clear-sightedness. She was impressive, and she was awesome and she was also modest to a fault.”
“It’s a wonder my father didn’t have a portrait painted of her.”
She didn’t look at him. “He did.”
“I haven’t seen one.”
“At her insistence, it was a miniature.” She touched the gold locket she always wore around her neck. “I have a copy here, and upstairs, and Charles was buried with the original.”
For some reason, this touched Sebastian like nothing else. He could picture the three of them, a tight unit, and then the two of them, and now it was down to only Indra. And he and his brothers had descended on her like a ton of bricks, destroying everything that had gone before.
“I’m sorry, Indra,” he said.
She turned to him, her arms folded across her stomach as if trying to defend herself. Her eyes were wide and vulnerable and full of pain. “For what, exactly?”
He couldn’t help himself but reached out and touched her hair. “I think I’m sorry for everything.”
“Including what you’ve just done? Your final betrayal?”