ANATOLE STOOD BY the open window in his bedroom, looking out over the walled garden of the White Hart. Dawn was stealing in, heralding the new day. But not new hope.
His expression was sombre and drawn. His journey here had been in vain. It was pointless to have made it. She had refused him again. Had told him she would always refuse him.
She does not want me.
That was what it came down to. Her rejection of him. She had rejected him when she’d left him to marry Vasilis. She was rejecting him still.
A bitter twist contorted his lips as he stood staring bleakly. He should be used to rejection. Should have got used to it from a young age. He had been rejected by his own parents—who had never wanted him, never loved him.
His mind sheared away from ancient pain. Why was he thinking about that now? He’d always known he wasn’t important to them. Had learnt to insulate himself from it. Learnt to ignore it. Discard it. Do without it. He had always lived his life without love. Without wanting love.
He frowned. Why waste his thoughts on his parents? They were not important to him. It was Tia who was important. Tia and her son Nicky.
His expression softened, the twist of his lips relaxing, curving into a fond, reminiscent smile that lit up his eyes as he recalled how wonderful it had been to be greeted by his young cousin so eagerly, to spend the evening with him, absorbed in his world. As Nicky had hurtled towards him, and as he’d caught him up into his arms, an emotion so fierce had swept him, rushing through him like a freight train. Overwhelming him.
What was it, that emotion that had possessed him? A joy so intense, a lifting of his heart that he felt again now, even in recalling it? What was that emotion? He’d felt nothing like it before—never in his life.
And it had stayed with him, intensified, curving right through him as his eyes had gone to Christine—so beautiful, so lovely, and so very dear to him.
How can I live without her? Without them both?
He couldn’t. It was impossible.
I can’t live without them. I need them to breathe, to keep my heart beating!
His expression changed as he rested his gaze on the deep-shadowed garden.
Why? Why did he need them to breathe, to keep his heart beating? Why did that fierce, protective emotion possess him when he hefted Nicky into his arms? When he gazed at Christine? What was it that he felt with such burning intensity?
On the far side of the garden, towards the east, the sky was lightening, tipping the outlines of the ornamental trees and the edges of their silhouetted branches with light. He stood staring at them, feeling inside that same emotion building again, filling him, confusing him, bewildering him.
He heard his own voice calling silently inside his head.
Tia, tell me! Tell me what it is I feel about you. About Nicky.
And in his head he heard her, answering him with the words she’d said that had so confused him, bewildered him.
‘You would know it—’
He heard the words that completed what she’d said. What she had not said.
If you felt it.
Slowly, oh-so-slowly, as if the whole world had turned about, the two phrases came together—fused.
You would know it if you felt it.
And suddenly, out of nowhere—out of an absence in his being that had been there all his life—he was filled: filled with a rush, a flood of realisation. Of understanding, of knowledge.
That was why he needed her to keep his heart beating! That was why he needed her to breathe!
That was the emotion that he felt—the emotion he knew because he felt it.
It was an emotion he had never known in his life, for no one had ever felt it about him—no one had ever taught him how to recognise it.
Accept it.
Feel it.
That was the emotion he felt when he thought about Christine, about Nicky. That was what had brought him here to be with them, to beg her to let him stay with her and Nicky all his life. To make a family together.
That was the emotion that filled him now—filled him in every cell in his body—the emotion that was turning his heart over and over and over as realisation poured through him.
He stood there breathless with it, stunned with it. Stood stock-still as he gazed out into the garden which was filling now with gold...with the risen sun.
As he stood there, with the world turning to gold around him, turning to gold within him, he knew there was only one thing to be done right now. To find Christine and tell her.
‘You would know it—’ she had told him.
Triumph and gratitude, wonder and thankfulness seared him. Well, now he knew—and it was time to tell her. Oh, time to tell her indeed!
Pulling away from the window, he hurried to dress.
* * *
Christine was having breakfast on the little stone-paved terrace beyond her sitting room, with Nicky seated opposite her. Nanny Ruth was upstairs, packing for her weekend away to visit her sister. The morning was warm already, the garden filled with sunshine and birdsong, rich with the scent and colour of flowers.
Nicky was chattering away, talking to her about what they would do when Anatole arrived. ‘Can we go to the holiday park again? Can we? Can we?’ he asked eagerly.
‘I don’t know, munchkin—let’s wait and see,’ she temporised.
Her mood was torn. Hammered down under a barrier as impenetrable as she could make it, battering to be let out, was an emotion she must not feel. The raw, overpowering eagerness to see Anatole again, to let her eyes light upon him, drink him in. But she must not let that emotion break through. If it did—
I might crack, and yield. Give in to what I so long to do, which would bring me nothing but misery and anguish.
No, all she could do was what she was trying so hard to do now—crush down that desperately dangerous longing, suppress it tightly, keep it leashed so that it never broke through.
I’ve got to be careful! Oh, so careful!
She had to learn how to school herself, how to manage what would from now on be the routine of her life. She had to learn to face seeing Anatole on and off, whenever he visited Nicky through all the years ahead—years that stretched like a torment before her. Wanting so much...yearning for what she could not have. What she had always yearned for but had never had.
She reached for her coffee as Nicky munched his toast, still happily chattering. Lifted her cup to her mouth to take a sip. And stilled in mid-lift.
Anatole was striding across the gardens towards her.
He’d come from the direction of the boundary wall, and the woodland beyond, and a dim part of her mind wondered why. But the rest of her consciousness was leaping into ultra-focus, her gaze fastening on him, that emotion leaping within her that she must not feel but could not suppress as he drew closer. Her clinging gaze took in his ruffled hair, the soft leather jacket he was wearing over a dark blue sweater, his long, lithe jeans-clad legs covering the dew damp lawn in seconds.
He came up to them. Nicky, sitting with his back to him, hadn’t noticed him.
Anatole’s eyes went to her in a sudden, flickering gaze that was only brief, but she felt a tingle of shock go through her. In it had been something she had never seen before—but an instant later it had gone...gone before she could even wonder at it. She only know that as his gaze flicked away she felt a sense of empty desolation in her so strong she almost sobbed.
Then a grin was slicing his face, and his hands were sliding around Nicky’s eyes. ‘Guess who?’ he said.
Nicky squealed in delight, grabbing Anatole’s hands and clambering down to rush around the chair to hug his legs and greet him deliriously.
Then he pulled away sharply. ‘You’re all wet!’ he said indignantly.
Anatole hunkered down beside him to hug him. His heart was pounding, and not just from the long walk he’d had. ‘I came on foot,’ he said, ‘and there’s a lot of long damp grass in those fields!’
Christine stared weakly. ‘But it’s five miles!’ she exclaimed.
He only shrugged, for a second making that flickering eye contact with her again that left her reeling and then desolate when he broke it, and laughed.
‘It’s a glorious morning—it was a joy to walk!’ He pulled out one of the ironwork chairs at the table and sat himself down. ‘I could murder a coffee,’ he said.
Like an echo, piercing and sibilant, memory stabbed into Christine. He’d used those same words five long years ago, when he’d taken her to his London apartment.
Numbly, she got to her feet. ‘I’ll... I’ll go and make some fresh,’ she said, her emotions in turmoil at his unexpectedly early arrival.
In the kitchen, she tried to calm herself. What use was it for her heart to leap the way it did when she set eyes on him? What use at all? What use to feel that dreadful, desolate ache inside her?
Forcibly, she took deep breaths, and when she went back out with a fresh cafetière of coffee, plus toast and some warmed croissants, she felt a little less agitated.
But it only took the sight of Anatole sitting with Nicky at the table, laughing and smiling, to make her feel weak again, to know how useless her attempts to cope with this would be.
‘We’re going to the beach! We’re going to the beach!’
Her son’s excited piping made her turn her attention to him.
‘Beach?’ she echoed vaguely, her mind still churning.
‘We can make a day of it.’ Anatole grinned. Then his expression changed. ‘If that’s acceptable to you?’
She nodded. Now that the magic word ‘beach’ had been uttered it would be impossible to withdraw it without tears from Nicky.
‘I’ll need to get our beach things packed up,’ she said.
Getting away from him again would give her respite, allow her to steady her nerves, arm herself against his presence.
But his arm reached out. ‘Don’t rush off,’ he said.
He took a breath. Met her eyes. That same strange, unreadable flicker was in them that had caught at her so powerfully. She felt herself tense. Something had changed about him, but she didn’t know what.
Then he was turning to Nicky. ‘Why don’t you run upstairs and tell Nanny Ruth we’re going to go to the beach?’ he said, making his voice encouraging.
Excited, Nicky hared off.
Anatole turned back to Christine. For a second—less than a second—there was complete silence. It seemed to fill the space, the world between them. Then he spoke.
‘I need to talk to you,’ he said.
There was an intensity in his voice, in his expression, that stilled her completely.
‘What is it?’ she asked, alarm in her words.
There was something in his eyes that was making her heart suddenly beat faster—something she’d seen in that brief second when he’d arrived.
‘Can we walk across the garden?’ he asked.
Numbly, she nodded, and Anatole fell into place beside her.
An intense nervous energy filled him. So much depended on the next few minutes.
Everything depends on it—my whole life—
‘Anatole, what’s wrong?’
Christine’s voice penetrated his hectic thoughts. There was a thread of anxiety audible in her tone.
He didn’t answer until they’d crossed the lawn into a little dell of beech trees dappled with sunlight, where there was a rustic wooden bench. She sat down, and so did he, wanting to take her hand, but not daring to. His heart was slugging in his chest.
Christine’s eyes were on him, wide with alarm. ‘Anatole...’ she said again, faintly.
Something was wrong—the same dread that had assailed her that nightmare morning when she’d had to tell him she thought she was pregnant was rising up to bite in her lungs.
‘Christine...’ He took a breath, a ragged one, wanting to look at her, but not wanting to, instead fixing his gaze on the beech mast littering the ground. ‘Last night...’ He paused, then forced himself on. ‘Last night you said you would never marry me just because it made sense to do so, just to make a family for Nicky. And the time before—that morning after,’ he said, daring, finally, to steal a glance at her, seeing in a brief instant how still her face was, how taut with tension—how beautiful.
Emotion sliced through him, but he had to blank it. Had to get the words out he needed to say.
‘You said you would never marry me just because...because of how good we are together.’
He did not spell it out further—the flush in her cheeks showed him he did not need to.
‘You told me...’ He drew another breath, ‘You told me that there was only one reason you would marry again. And that I would know it...’
He paused again, hearing birdsong in the trees, rustling in the undergrowth. The sounds of life were going on all around him and the world was stretching from here to eternity, all in absolute focus—while he was putting to the test the single thing that would mean everything to him for the rest of his life.
‘I know it,’ he said quietly.
At his side he felt her still—still completely, as if her very breathing had ceased.
‘I know it,’ he said again.
And now his eyes went to her, his head turning. Her face was a mask, the pallor in it draining all the blood from her skin. Her eyes were huge. Distended in her face. And in them was something he had never seen revealed before. He felt it like a sudden stabbing of his heart.
But it was there, and he knew it for the very first time in his life—because for the very first time in his life it was in his own eyes, in his face, in his very being as well.
‘It’s love, isn’t it, Tia?’ He said her old name without conscious thought, only with emotion. An emotion he had never felt before, never recognised, never believed in.
Until now.
‘Love,’ he said again. ‘That’s what you said we needed. The only reason to marry.’
He lifted a single finger to her cheek, felt the soft silk of its texture.
‘Love,’ he said again.
It was strange...the tip of his finger was wet, and he lifted it away. There was the faintest runnel of moisture on her cheek, below her eye. Another came from the other side. He saw her blink, saw another diamond catch the light and spill softly, quietly.
‘Tia!’ His voice was filled with alarm. ‘Oh, Tia—I don’t mean to make you weep!’
But it was too late. Far too late. A cry broke from her—a cry that had been five long years in its engendering. A cry that broke the deadly, anguished turmoil of her heart.
His arms swept around her, hugging her to him, holding her close until she wept no more. Then he sat back, catching up her hands and pressing them with his as if he would never let them go.
He would never let her go—never again.
‘I ask you to forgive me,’ he said, his eyes searching hers, fusing with hers. ‘For not understanding. For not knowing. For being so hopeless at realising what you meant.’
His hands pressed hers more tightly yet. Entreaty was in his eyes, his face.
‘Forgive me, I beg you, but I didn’t recognise love because I’ve never known it till this moment! Never in all my life experienced it.’
His eyes flickered for a moment, old shadows deep within them.
‘They say,’ he said slowly, ‘that we have to be taught to love. And that it is in being loved that we learn to love.’
His gaze broke from her, looking past the trees around them, looking a long way past.
‘I never learnt that essential lesson,’ he said.
His eyes came back to her and she saw in them a pain that made her heart twist for him.
She pressed his fingers. ‘Vasilis told me a little of your parents,’ she said carefully, feeling her way. ‘It made me understand you better, Anatole. And you yourself sometimes dropped signs about how unloving your parents were. Still are.’ She gave a sad smile. ‘Vasilis let me see how I’d wanted more from you than you could give me. He helped me to accept that you could not feel for me what I felt for you.’
‘Felt?’ The word dropped from his lips, fear audible.
She crushed his hands more tightly yet. Emotion was streaming through her, pouring like a storm, a tidal wave, overwhelming her with its power. But she must find her way through it—find the words to tell him.
‘Oh, Anatole, I made myself fall out of love with you! I had to! I had no choice. You didn’t love me. You could not love me! And I had to save myself. Save—’
She broke off. Then, with a breath, she spoke again, her eyes clinging to his as she told him what had been in her heart for so long.
‘I fell in love with you, Anatole, when I was new to you—when I was Tia. I knew it was unwise—but how could I have stopped myself when you were so wonderful to me, like a prince out of a fairytale?’
She looked away for a moment, her eyes shadowing, her voice changing as she looked back at him knowing she must say this too. However difficult.
‘Anatole, I give you my word that I never deliberately sought to get pregnant. But...’ She took a sharp breath, made herself say it. ‘But when I thought I was, I knew that I hoped so much that it was true! That I was going to have your baby. Because...’ She took another breath. ‘Because then surely you would realise you were in love with me too and would want to marry me, make a family with me.’
She felt her hands clenching suddenly, spasming.
‘But when you spoke to me—told me to my face that if that was what I was hoping it would never happen, could never happen, that the only marriage you could ever make would be an unwilling one, then... Oh, then something died within me.’
A groan of remorse broke from him. ‘That gruesome lecture I gave you!’
Anatole’s voice was harsh, but only with himself. He held her gaze, his eyes troubled, spoke again.
‘Tia—Christine—I make no excuses for myself, but...’ He paused, then continued, finding words with difficulty. ‘I can only tell you how much I dreaded being made to be a father when the only one I knew—my own—was so totally and absolutely unfit to be one! Fatherhood was something I never wanted because I feared it so much. I feared that I would be as lousy a father as mine had been. But I’ve changed, Tia! I’ve changed totally!’
His voice softened.
‘Meeting Nicky—feeling that rush whenever I see him, that incredible kick I get when I’m with him—oh, that’s shown me just how much I’ve changed! Shown me how much I want a family of my own.’
She nodded slowly, her face working. ‘I know—I do know that. Truly I do. But, Anatole, do you understand now why I had to refuse you when that was all you were offering me? I wanted to accept—dear God, how I longed to accept you!—but I did not dare.’
Her hands slipped from his now and she shifted her position, turning her shoulders away, her body language speaking to him of what speared him to the quick.
‘I loved you once, Anatole, and lost you. I married Vasilis—not out of love, but... Well, it suited us.’
Did he hear evasion in her voice? She hurried on.
‘All I knew was that to marry you simply to make a family for Nicky would have become hell on earth for me. Hell to know that I had fallen in love with you all over again and that all I was to you was a mother for Nicky, and a partner in your bed...’ Her voice twisted. ‘To be so close to heaven and yet outside the door still...’
He turned her to him, his hands warm on her shoulders. His voice was firm and strong, filled with a strength that came from the heart.
‘I will make heaven for you, Tia. My adored Tia. My Christine—my beautiful, beloved Christine. My love for you will make heaven for you—for us both.’
Tears broke from her in a heart-rending sob and she was swept against him again. She clutched him and kissed him, his cheeks, his mouth, long and sweet and filled with all that she’d had to hold back from him. All that she need never hold back again.
He held her tight, returned her embraces, then sat back a little.
‘Heaven for us all,’ he said. ‘You and me and Nicky.’ His breath choked him suddenly. ‘Nicky whom I will love as if he were my own.’
She stilled as if every cell in her body were turning to stone. Keeping her as silent as she had been for five long years. Then, beneath his gaze, she spoke. Said what she had to say.
Slowly, infinitely slowly, she picked each word with care. ‘I have to tell you why I married Vasilis.’
She saw his features twist. Heard him make his own admission. So long denied.
‘It hurt,’ he said. ‘I did not realise it, thought myself only angry with you. But that was because you’d left me for him—rejected me when I still wanted you. On my own terms, yes, but I wanted never to let you go.’ He swallowed ‘You wanted to leave me. And what he could offer you, I now understand, was more than I could offer.’
He took a ragged breath, met her troubled gaze.
‘You wanted a child and so did Vasilis. It was that simple.’
She shook her head. A violent, urgent shaking. ‘No—no, it was not that simple! Oh, God, Anatole, it was not that simple at all!’
Her voice was vehement, stormy with emotion.
‘Anatole... That nightmare morning, when I told you I was not pregnant and you lectured me on how I must never let that happen, well...’ Her throat closed, but she forced the words through. ‘I was so terrified that I... I used the pregnancy test I’d been too scared to use before! I knew I didn’t need to—that I had got my period—but I was so distraught that I wanted every proof I could grasp at! So I did the test—’
She stopped. Silenced by the truth she must tell him now. Her heart was like lead within her.
‘It showed positive.’
There was silence. Silence all around. Even the birds were silent. Then...
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Neither did I.’ Her voice came as if from far away. ‘Apparently it’s not that unusual, though I had no idea at the time. There can still be a show of blood. Even when you’re pregnant.’
His eyes were on her—staring, just staring. She went on—had to—had no choice but to do so.
‘I was beside myself with terror. I knew I would have to tell you when you returned. How horrified you would be. And that was how your uncle found me,’ she said, and swallowed, ‘when he arrived for lunch with us.’ Her face worked. ‘He was so kind...so incredibly, wonderfully kind! He sat me down, calmed me down, got the whole dreadful tale out of me. How I’d fallen in love with you, but you hadn’t with me, how you’d have felt you had to marry me, and how that would have condemned me to a lifetime’s misery—condemned you too, ruining your life! How I loved you and knew I’d be forcing you to have a child you did not want, forcing you to marry me when you did not want to. And then...’ she half closed her eyes ‘...then he made his suggestion.’
Another deep breath racked through her.
‘He said that in the circumstances I needed time—time to think, to accept what had happened. Time to come to terms. To make my decision. Whether to tell you or to raise the child myself. So, as you know, he took me back to London, where I had more doctor’s appointments to confirm that, yes, I was, indeed pregnant. And then...’ She looked at Anatole. ‘And then, knowing what I’d told him, and knowing you as he did, he offered me one other possibility.’
From far away she heard Anatole speak.
‘To marry him so he could raise my son—the son I did not want. Marry the woman I did not want to marry.’
The accusation in his voice—against himself—was unbearable for her to hear. The pain was like a spear in her heart.
Her eyes flew to him. ‘He did it for you, Anatole! To give your son a home, a loving and stable family, to provide for him and for me as his mother, in a way that was the very best way to do it!’
Her expression changed, infused with sadness now.
‘He knew he would not live to see Nicky grow up, that he could only be a temporary figure in his life. That’s why, as I told you, to Nicky he was his pappou. And for that very reason...’ she swallowed again, making herself look at Anatole, hard though it was ‘...he knew that one day he would not be here. That one day—’ she took a painful, harsh breath ‘—I would have to tell you. When the time was right.’
She was silent for a moment.
‘And now that time has come, hasn’t it, Anatole? Please, please tell me it has?’ Her voice dropped to a whisper. ‘Can you forgive me, Anatole, for what I did?’
His eyes were bleak. ‘I am to blame,’ he said. ‘I brought it on myself.’
‘You could not help the way you felt—the way you didn’t feel!’ Her negation of his lacerating self-accusation was instant.
He caught her hands. ‘You are generous, Tia, but the fault is mine. That you did not even dare to tell me—’ He broke off, anguish in his face.
She crushed his fingers in hers. ‘Anatole, please! I understand. And maybe I should have told you. Maybe I should have had the courage, the resolution to do so. I’ve deprived you of your son—’
He cut across her. ‘I didn’t deserve him.’
His eyes clung to hers and she saw them change from self-accusation to something new.
Hope.
She said the words he needed to hear. ‘But you deserve him now, Anatole,’ she said quietly, from her heart. ‘You have come to love him, and that is all a child needs. All that you were never given. And now,’ she said, and her voice was choked with the emotion running through it, ‘now Nicky is yours. Your son to love as he should be loved. As he is loved!’
She got to her feet, drawing him with her though she was so petite against his height. She gazed up at him, never letting go of his hands.
‘And you will have a wife to love you too,’ she said.
She lifted her mouth to his and his eyes softened, with a tenderness in them that lit her like a lamp.
‘And you will have a husband to love you back,’ he said gently.
His lips were a brush upon hers. His hands holding hers fast.
‘Nicky is my son.’ It was a statement—a truth that seemed to him to be opening the sky in a glory of brightest sunlight, blazing down on him. ‘Nicky is my son!’
He gave a sudden great exclamation of joy, sliding his arms around her waist, lifting her up and twirling her round and round, laughing, exclaiming until he put her down again, breathless with joy.
‘Dear God,’ he said, ‘can such happiness exist? To have discovered my love for you, for Nicky—and now to discover that you love me back, that the boy I’ve come to love is mine!’
His expression changed. Grew grave.
‘But he is my uncle’s child too. I will never forget that, Christine. I owe him that. And I will always be thankful to him for what he did for Nicky and for you.’
She felt her eyes fill with tears. ‘He was a good man, my dear Vasilis. A good man.’ And now her gaze was full upon him, ‘Though he was never my husband in anything but name—he would not have wanted anything else, nor I.’
He was looking down at her, taking in the implications of what she’d said.
She gave a sad little smile. ‘Did you never wonder why your uncle remained a bachelor? He was in love once, you know, when he was a student. But the woman he wanted to marry did not come from your world, and his parents objected. He resolved to get his teaching qualifications and marry her, be independent of the Kyrgiakis wealth. But...’ Her voice became sadder. ‘But, unbeknownst to him, while he was studying in England she found she was pregnant and developed eclampsia. They both died—she and the baby with her.’
She took a pained breath.
‘I think, you know, that is partly why he offered to make me his wife—because he remembered how alone the woman he loved had been.’
Anatole folded her to him. ‘Let us hope and pray,’ he said quietly, ‘that they are all finally together now. He and the woman he loved, and his own child.’ He held her back, his eyes pouring into hers. ‘As we are together, Tia—my beloved, my dearest adored Christine—as we are together now. You and me and our most precious son—together for ever. Nothing can part us now.’ His voice seared with emotion. ‘Nothing!’
He kissed her again, sweetly and passionately, warmly and lovingly, and the world around them turned to gold.
It was Christine who drew back first. ‘This is all very wonderful...’ she said.
And there was a smile in her voice even as tears were in her eyes—tears of the radiant, unbreakable happiness and joy that swelled her heart until it was bursting within her at the miracle that had happened, at the gift she had been given that she had never hoped to have: the love of the man she loved...
‘All very wonderful,’ she repeated, her eyes starting to dance, ‘but I really think we have to get back to the house. We have a trip to the beach to undertake! Or our son, Anatole—’ did her voice choke over the word ‘our’? She thought it did, and rejoiced in it ‘—our son will never forgive us!’
He gave a laugh as warm as the fire of happiness blazing within him and laced an arm around her. They walked back to the house—shoulder to shoulder now, and in all the days to come—ready to start their family life together.