‘In this case it was more illuminating.’ The forceful dark gaze that met hers contained not an ounce of remorse or apology. In the opulent hall of his apartment he left her standing and strode through a doorway. She followed him at a slower pace, her mind buzzing with conjecture and uncertainty.
Nikolai withdrew the file from the safe. Had she not challenged him again he might have retained it while he considered both his timing and his options, but he felt that she had a real right and need to know what he had discovered.
‘Jeffrey was a wonderful man!’ Abbey told him stridently. ‘I don’t care what is in that file. It won’t change my mind about my husband! I loved him and he loved me. Nothing can alter those facts.’
Nikolai extended the file. ‘Don’t be so sure.’
Abbey snatched it off him. ‘I hate you-I’ll never forgive you for this! Don’t you have any morals?’
‘More than your husband had when he picked a naive little schoolgirl to be his bride.’
Abbey sank down in an armchair by the door and began to scan the close lines of print. There was nothing untoward or new to her in the facts of Jeffrey’s childhood and education. Then a female name that Abbey recognised leapt out at her-Jane Morrell, who had read law at Oxford with Jeffrey and who had worked in the same close circle of leading barristers. According to the enquiry agent, Jeffrey and Jane had been lovers at university, something which Abbey had not known for sure but had once suspected from the tenor of the older woman’s rather acidic comments at her wedding.
Jane had married a judge, given birth to a couple of children and become Lady Jane Dalkeith long before Abbey even met Jeffrey. But what appalled Abbey as she read was the bald declaration that Jeffrey had restarted his affair with Jane while he was still in his twenties and that the couple had then continued as secret lovers for almost fifteen years. She flipped the page to be greeted with the staggering statement that Jeffrey had spent the weekend before his wedding to Abbey holed up in a Paris hotel with Jane.
‘This is vile stuff and nothing but filthy lies!’ Abbey spat in disgust, leaping upright. ‘I don’t believe any of this rubbish for one moment. I have total faith in Jeffrey.’
‘Their liaison was widely known among their peers,’ Nikolai informed her. ‘It’s a shame that nobody had the decency to tell you what was going on. Silence was cruel in the circumstances, particularly after his death.’
Abbey was shaking with rage and barely able to vocalise or think. ‘How dare you hand me this filth and try to destroy Jeffrey’s reputation? How low can you sink?’
‘I’ve never sunk as low as he did with a woman. I am always honest about what I offer and I don’t cheat,’ Nikolai countered drily.
‘I’m not staying here discussing this with you,’ Abbey told him furiously, her eyes blazing above her flushed cheeks as though someone had lit a fire inside her. ‘I’m going home.’
Nikolai noticed how pale she was behind the anger. She was very loyal to her husband’s memory. He thought it a great shame that the man who had inspired that deep love and loyalty had been in no way her equal. He wondered how she would feel when she was finally forced to accept the truth. Concern, a most unfamiliar sensation, gripped him on her behalf.
With trembling hands, Abbey unhooked the diamond earrings and set them down on the marble hall table. She couldn’t manage the clasp on the necklace and Nikolai moved forward to help her and undid the fastening for her. ‘Why are you taking them off? They’re yours now.’
‘You must be joking. I’m not going to accept a king’s ransom in diamonds from you. I’m not one of your kiss ’n’ tell girls out for everything I can get. I may hate your guts at this moment but I won’t take anything from you that I’m not entitled to,’ Abbey declared feverishly. ‘Pay your bills to Support Systems on time and you owe me nothing.’
Nikolai surveyed her with glinting appreciation and lifted the phone. ‘My driver will take you home.’
Abbey got back into the limousine like a woman sleepwalking. She studied the file afresh, fear and doubt touching her in private as she had not allowed them to touch her in Nikolai’s presence. In a sudden decision she dug out her mobile phone and rang Caroline.
‘Can I come and see you? I know it’s late and I’m sorry but I could really do with someone to talk to,’ she admitted when her friend answered her call.
‘What’s happened?’
‘I’ll tell you about it when I get there.’ She opened the partition to ask the driver to take her to Caroline and Drew’s home instead of her own.
‘I watched you arriving at the premiere on television!’ Caroline gushed as Abbey entered the lounge. ‘You were in the same shot as the movie star leads. You looked amazing. But what happened to the fantastic jewellery?’
‘It was only on loan and I gave it back to Nikolai.’ Abbey held out the file to Caroline. ‘Take a look at this and tell me what you think.’
‘What on earth is it?’ Jeffrey’s sister questioned in lively surprise, and then when she opened it and saw the first paragraph, she exclaimed shrilly, ‘Oh, my goodness! Where did you get this from?’
‘Nikolai.’ In the silence that followed, Abbey was so tense she could hardly breathe. She had total trust in Caroline and it was inconceivable that Caroline would not have known if her older brother was having an affair for so many years, for the siblings had always been close.
‘Good heavens!’ The slim blond woman in the wheelchair gasped as she read. ‘How could anyone give this to you?’
Abbey’s throat was so tight she didn’t think she could extract a voice from it. Her entire concentration was focused on her friend and she was so tense that her knotted muscles were actually hurting her. She could not credit that doubt had entered her mind so quickly and she was ashamed that she had given way to it. She was desperate for Jeffrey’s sister to tell her that the claims in the file were a pack of contemptible lies.
But as Caroline looked up, her expression appalled, Abbey felt sick and her knees gave way, forcing her to drop heavily down onto the sofa behind her. ‘Tell me it’s not true,’ she begged.
‘I only wish I could,’ her friend whispered with unconcealed regret.
The silence lay thick and heavy, and Abbey felt as if she had been catapulted into a living nightmare in which everything familiar became threatening, because even her best friend could no longer look her in the eye.
‘Jeffrey was having an affair…for all those years? The whole time he was with me as well?’ Abbey cried.
Caroline nodded confirmation, her shrinking discomfiture with the topic painfully apparent.
Abbey felt as though a car had run over her and her very bones were being smashed to pieces inside her skin. The shock of the other woman’s corroborative nod and her silence tore her apart. Caroline was her best friend and Jeffrey’s sister: denial of the facts was no longer possible.
‘But why did he want to marry me then?’ Abbey whispered shakily. ‘That doesn’t make sense.’
‘Jane wouldn’t leave her husband and the affair was ruining Jeffrey’s life. Jeffrey wanted a wife and family of his own and he could see no prospect of a future with Jane.’
A shuddering breath raked through Abbey’s rigid frame; all her romantic illusions were falling apart at once. Suddenly the whole history of her love for Jeffrey was shattering before her eyes: Jane, not she, must have been the love of Jeffrey’s life. ‘Why didn’t you tell me? Didn’t I deserve a warning?’
Caroline gave her a look of anguish. ‘Jeffrey swore the affair would end before he married you and that he would be faithful-’
‘Their dirty weekend in Paris only a couple of days before the wedding doesn’t make the end of the affair look like it would have been a very likely development,’ Abbey breathed tartly. ‘Obviously Jeffrey couldn’t stay away from her, so I doubt if he’d have been able to give her up entirely for my benefit.’
‘You loved him so much. That drew him to you-’
‘No, let’s be blunt about what drew Jeffrey. I was young and foolish and I didn’t know his friends or colleagues, so there was no chance that I might have heard rumours about him and Jane. I didn’t ask awkward questions or expect much attention so that suited him as well. Our whole relationship was a lie, a nasty, sordid fraud, and I was the victim-’
‘No…Jeffrey cared about you!’ her friend protested vehemently.
‘I was just the means to an end. I was to be the little housewife and mother to his children while he got his excitement, his
‘No. Drew had no idea, but I think your father suspected something,’ Caroline admitted ruefully. ‘You asked me why I didn’t tell you. You were crazy about my brother and he was offering you what you appeared to want. I
