‘Why should she? This is her…’ He faltered on the word ‘home’, but his sister was too busy waving his objection away with an impatient gesture to notice.
‘That’s not the point. Even if I can drum up another man for tonight, I’ll have to totally rearrange the seating. And the caterers are going to-’
‘No.’
‘No? You mean she won’t be joining us for dinner?’ She relaxed. ‘Well, thank goodness for that. To be honest, she did look a mess, but I’ve no doubt people would run around, pull out all the stops for her. One smile and people just fall over themselves-’
‘No!’ He so rarely raised his voice, and never to her, that she was shocked into silence. ‘You won’t have to rearrange the seating because tonight’s dinner is cancelled.’
‘Cancelled?’ Her laugh, uncertain, died as she saw his face. ‘Ivo…?’ Then, ‘Don’t be ridiculous. I can’t cancel this late. The Ambassador, the Foreign Secretary…What possible reason can I give?’
‘I neither know nor care, but if you’re stuck for an excuse why don’t you tell our guests that my wife has just announced that she’s leaving me and I’m not in the mood to make small talk. I’m sure they’ll understand.’
‘Leaving you? But she can’t!’ Then, flushing, ‘Oh, I see. Who-’
‘Manda, please,’ he said, cutting her off before she could put into words the thoughts that had flashed through his mind. Thoughts that shamed him. Belle had never been less than forthright, honest with him. She’d wanted security; he’d wanted her…‘Not another word.’
He heard the door close very quietly and finally he sat back, abandoning the documents that moments before he’d insisted were too important to wait. Nothing was that important but, in the instant when he’d looked up and seen Belle, he’d known what was coming. It was in her eyes, the look he’d been waiting for, dreading, had always known would one day come. Security, for a woman of such warmth, such passion, was never going to be enough.
His first thought had been to postpone it, delay it, do anything to give himself time.
Another hour. Another day…
Each and every day of his working life he took a few precious minutes out of his morning to watch her as she lit up the television screen in his office. Each day, while she’d been away, he’d seen the change in her, had felt her moving away from him, had recognised the danger. Maybe it had begun even before she’d left; he just hadn’t wanted to see it. Maybe that was why he had tried so hard to stop her going on the trip.
He opened the desk drawer, pushing aside the ticket to Hong Kong, bought on the day he’d watched, agonised, as she’d talked into the camera, smiling even though there was blood trickling down her face. Plans he’d been forced to abandon when a crisis had blown up over a project he’d embarked upon.
He’d told himself that it didn’t matter. That he would drive down to the airport and meet her flight. Give her the necklace he’d had made for her with the diamonds his mother had worn on her wedding day.
Wrong on both counts.
Belle didn’t bother with the shower; she didn’t want to spend one minute more than necessary in this house. What she did need were clothes, and since she was due back at work first thing on Monday morning that involved rather more than a change of underwear and a pair of jeans.
She stared helplessly at the dozens of outfits that had been carefully chosen to provoke the desire in the red- blooded male to wake up each morning to her presence on the television screen, the wish in every female breast to be her best friend.
It was a difficult trick to pull off. Between them, however, the designers and the image consultants had managed it. Everything about her that the public recognised as ‘Belle Davenport’, her life, her marriage, had been airbrushed so thoroughly that she’d forgotten what was real and what was little more than a media fabrication.
Maybe that was why, for so long, she had felt she was running on empty. That if she stopped concentrating for a second the floor would open up beneath her feet and she’d disappear.
Suddenly losing it, unable to keep up the pretence for another minute, she turned her back on them and tossed the bare essentials in a holdall-underwear, shoes, a few basics, the first things that came to hand.
What else? She looked around. Make-up…
She grabbed for a gold-topped glass pot but her hands were shaking and it slipped through her fingers, shattered, splashing pale beige cream in a wide arc over the centuries-old polished oak floor, an antique rug. With a cry of dismay, she bent to pick up the pieces of glass.
‘Leave it!’
Ivo…
‘Leave it,’ he said, taking her hand, pulling it away from the glass. ‘You’ll cut yourself.’
Her skin shivered at his touch; his hand was cool and yet heat radiated from his fingers, warming her-as he never failed to warm her-so that the siren call of everything in her that was female urged her to let him lift her up into his arms, to hold him, tell him that she didn’t mean it. That she would never leave him. That nothing else mattered but to be here with him.
He touched her cheek, then pushed back her hair to look at the graze on her forehead, regarding her with eyes the colour of the ocean, a shifting mix of blue, green, grey that, as with the sea, betrayed his mood. Today they were a bleak grey, her doing she knew, and she forced herself to turn away from his touch as if to gather up the rest of her make-up. It was easier to cope with his reflection in the mirror than face to face.
‘Is this because I didn’t want you to go away, Belle?’ he asked, his hands on her shoulders, his thumbs working softly against the muscles, easing the tension as they had done times without number in a prelude to an intimacy that needed no words.
His touch shivered through her, undermining her will. She’d lingered too long. He’d taken it as a sign that she was just having a bit of a strop, throwing her teddy out of the pram, was waiting for him to come up and make a performance of appeasing her.
‘No,’ she said. That he didn’t want her to go away was understandable, but she couldn’t allow him to use her weakness to stop her from leaving. ‘It’s because we don’t have a marriage, Ivo. We don’t share anything. Because I want something you’re incapable of giving.’
In the mirror she saw him blench.
‘You’re my wife, Belle. Everything I have is yours-’
‘I’m your weakness, Ivo,’ she said, cutting him short. This wasn’t about property, security. ‘You desire me. You have a need that I satisfy.’
‘And you? Don’t I satisfy you?’
‘Physically? You know the answer to that.’ When he held her, the flames of that desire were enough to warm her, body and soul. But when he turned away she was left with ice. ‘You have given me everything that I asked of you. But what we have is not a marriage.’
‘You’re tired,’ he said, his voice cobweb-soft against her ear. The truth was it didn’t matter what he said, her response to his undivided attention had always been the same; she was a rabbit fixed in the headlights of an oncoming car, unable to move, save herself and her body responded as it always did, softening to him. He felt the change and, sure of his power, he turned her to face him. Instinct drew her to him and she leaned into the haven of his body, waiting for him to tell her that he’d missed her, to ask her what was wrong, to do what she’d asked and talk to her.
Instead he took something from his pocket. A strand of fire that blazed in the light as he moved to fasten it about her neck.
‘I had this made for you for our anniversary next month.’
‘It’s not our anniversary…’
‘The anniversary of the day we first met.’
Belle felt as if she were being split in two. The physical half was standing safe, protected, within the circle of Ivo’s arms. But all of her that was emotion, heart, the woman who’d dug deep and, with the help of her friends, found the strength to confront her past, stood outside, looking on with horror as she was drawn in by this glittering proof that he had thought of her, cherished the memory of the moment when their lives had first connected.
‘No…’
She barely whispered the word as the gems touched her throat. A single thread of diamonds to circle her neck. Beautiful.
