‘I knew you’d understand.’ Then, releasing the scarf, he led the way to a bench that overlooked the lake and, with his arm around her waist, drew her close to keep her warm.
‘So, Princess, tell me about Prince Charming.’
‘I hoped you’d forgotten.’
‘That bad?’
No more secrets…
‘James did nothing wrong.’ She sighed. ‘He took all the flak from both families when it fell apart, but it was my fault, Max. All my fault.’
‘Tell me,’ he said.
She glanced at him. He raised his brows, an invitation to spill it all out. Get it off her chest.
‘Trust me, Lou.’
‘You won’t sell my secrets to the Courier diary correspondent?’ she said, in an attempt to make a joke of it.
‘Trust me,’ he repeated. No smile. No sexy little twitch of his eyebrows. He was in deadly earnest, now. Asking her to bare her soul to him. Expose her heart. Leave herself without anywhere to hide.
To put her heart where her mouth had been half an hour earlier and demonstrate that she trusted him not to hurt her.
Maybe to prove that she wouldn’t hurt him. That was an unexpected thought. She’d never seen Max as vulnerable in that way. His family had hurt him, but he’d never appeared deeply touched by any of his own romances…
No more secrets…
‘It wasn’t that I didn’t try,’ she said, looking across the lake, afraid to see the panic in his eyes as he realised what she was telling him. ‘I wanted it to work. James really was perfect. Not just because there was a title in the offing, that the family owned half the county. He was really nice. Good. Kind. And he loved me.’
She turned to Max then, because she had to see his reaction. Had to know…
‘We were going to announce our engagement on my birthday. Major party. Crates of champagne on order. My mother was ecstatic; my father was strutting around as if he owned the entire world.’
‘So?’
‘I tried, Max. I did all the right things, said all the right things and I thought it was going to work but in the end he said…James said…’
She felt trapped, laid bare in a way that simple nakedness could never expose her, but Max took her hand, held it, gave her his strength.
No more secrets, but it was so hard…
‘He said that he loved me, wanted me to be his wife. He said he knew that I didn’t feel those things as strongly as him, but that he’d accepted that. That he accepted that in a relationship there was always one person who loved more-’
‘He must have had it bad,’ he said, but not without sympathy.
‘But not, apparently, fatally. He said that he could accept all that, but he was beginning to suspect that there was someone else.’
He turned to her. ‘He thought you were cheating on him?’ he said, with a deadly calm.
‘No! No. He said…He said that when he was holding me it felt as if I was looking over his shoulder, scanning the horizon, waiting for someone just out of sight to ride to my rescue. He wanted me to talk about it. Reassure him, I suppose.’
‘But you couldn’t?’
‘No. He was wrong, Max.’ She stared at their hands, locked together. ‘He was wrong to accept less than my whole heart under any circumstances, but I was wrong, too. I should never have let it go so far. I hurt him and I deeply regret that. A partnership should be an equal passion, don’t you think?’
‘I would hope for that.’
‘Would you accept less?’ she asked.
‘If there was no other choice, if only one person will do, then there must be the temptation to accept what’s on offer, hope for more in time,’ he said, frowning. ‘But it’s not a deal I could live with. Not the kind of foundation for the kind of marriage I’d consider. The kind that will last a lifetime.’
‘That was the point. He didn’t have to work at loving me while I…’
While she had been settling for second best.
When she realised that Max was waiting for her to finish the sentence, she shook her head. ‘Whatever I was doing, he deserved better than I was giving him.’
‘Tell me about the other man. The one out of sight.’
She looked away, but he caught her chin, forced her to face him. And she didn’t have to say the words. He knew.
‘That’s why there’s been no one else?’ he persisted.
‘What would have been the point?’
‘What indeed?’ He got up, pulled her to her feet, tucked her arm firmly beneath his and continued walking.
That was it? She’d just performed open heart surgery on herself and he shrugged it off as nothing. She glanced at him. He wasn’t looking at her, but straight ahead, and all she had was his chiselled profile against the cold blue of the sky.
‘So, this affair we’re having is your way of getting me out of your hair, is it?’ he asked.
‘That’s a rather cold way of putting it.’
‘But I’m right? I get you and your talent until the fourteenth. After that, you’re going to move on?’
‘That was the plan,’ she admitted, miserably.
‘And is it working?’
She lifted her shoulders in the smallest of shrugs. ‘Not yet.’
‘No. I had much the same outcome in mind, but the truth is there’s nothing cold about what’s between us, Louise. There never has been. It’s always been fire, never ice. So the question we have to ask ourselves, you and I, is where do we go from here?’
‘I’m rather enjoying “here”,’ she said.
She wasn’t so certain about Max.
‘Isn’t that the point? We aren’t “here” any more, are we? No more secret affair. Everyone knows about us now. That already takes us somewhere else.’
‘It must have been Patsy, don’t you think?’ she said, unable to give him a direct answer. She didn’t know where they were going. Only that he was right. With exposure, the mutual admission that they were both on an escape mission, came a change of direction.
One that she wanted.
Watching her father and uncle reach out for each other had shown her the futility, the waste of hiding one’s feelings. If what she and Max had was to grow, it needed light, air…
‘She must have been the one who spilled the beans to the Courier,’ she prompted, a little desperately, when he didn’t answer.
‘I imagine so. She had us pegged from the minute she saw us together and she does have something of a runaway mouth.’ Then, ‘Are you angry with her?’
‘Why would I be angry? We left your father and mine having lunch together, taking a trip down memory lane and laughing about it. That’s something I thought I’d never see.’ And she smiled, because that was wonderful. ‘Without her, it might never have happened.’ Then, ‘Without you, Max.’
He looked at her. ‘Me? What did I do?’
‘You refused to let me go.’
He didn’t come back with some major declaration, merely said, ‘So, now we’ve been outed, I guess you’re going to expect a little more by way of entertainment than supper in bed?’
On the point of saying that she couldn’t think of any more entertaining way of spending her evenings with him, she thought better of it. It was time to move on, be open.
‘Infinitely more,’ she said. Then, ‘Are you going to be free tomorrow evening?’
‘What’s happening?’
