But as they had flown to Paris in Roman’s private plane, as they had sat in the exquisite restaurant encased within the Eiffel Tower, a landmark Roman had mocked her for not visiting before, she had realised that for all that she had shared of herself, she knew very little about the tall, impossibly handsome man who made her heart soar and her pulse race.
‘So, Roman Black. Who are you really?’
He’d explained in broad terms and simple descriptions that he hadn’t always been wealthy, and that he had had to fight to get everything he now had. Her heart had burned with sympathy as he’d roughly told her of his mother’s death when he was thirteen, and they had shared a sense of that impossible to describe feeling that descended when everything you thought you knew changed in a heartbeat. Ella might have been only five when her parents had died, but she knew what it was like to have the rug pulled from beneath your feet, to lose that precious mooring—the absolute conviction that your parents were there and would always love and care for you.
She had been impressed by the man who had managed to turn everything around against all possible hope and grow into a kind and generous, patient man who she couldn’t help but build dreams around. So she could be forgiven, perhaps, for failing to realise that, once again, Roman had turned the conversation back to her before it became too focused on himself.
Trips to Paris were soon followed by visits to London and Stockholm, never too far from an easy return to her grandmother should anything have gone awry. But it never did and soon Ella had begun to relax into this strange new world at which Roman was the centre.
Only her friend Célia had provided words of caution—fearing that perhaps it was all a little too soon, too much. ‘What do you know about him?’ she had asked over the phone. ‘Enough,’ had been Ella’s determined reply.
She knew how Roman made her feel, she knew how Roman had made her want. Want more, not only for herself, but for him too. And her untried and untested heart blossomed beneath his every attention. Her feelings were even more assured once Roman had met Claudette, causing Ella to believe that, had her grandmother been several decades younger, she too would have fallen under his spell.
Claudette’s joy that Ella might have found the same fairy-tale romance as her daughter once had with Nathaniel Riding only served to signpost to Ella that she was indeed on the right path. That of happiness and true love. In some small way, it touched Ella that she was echoing her mother’s life. That, like Adeline, she had met and fallen in love with the man of her dreams. It made her feel connected to both her mother and the past in a way that she couldn’t have imagined only a month before.
So when, only a week ago, Roman had revealed that he was needed back in Russia within a fortnight, Ella’s heart had beat and pulsed with a pre-emptive agony and she had vainly struggled to hide the tears that had unexpectedly gathered.
He had swept aside one with the pad of his thumb and pressed the sweetest kiss against her lips. A kiss that had built a storm of need and passion within her as if, so desperate to cling to him, to keep him with her, she would have given him anything. She wanted to give him everything.
However, Roman had been steadfast on this one thing. A deeply traditional man, he believed that only her husband should have that right, and his declaration had served only to make him seem even more perfect in her eyes, no matter how much she wanted to dissuade him of his conviction.
That night, when he had left, she had been bereft. It was as if that simple declaration of what could be between them, but wasn’t, had made her consumed with the desire to be his wife. It invaded her thoughts and heart with an insidiousness that Ella, in her naivety, believed was nothing less than true love.
So that when they had next met, when he had whisked her away to a candlelit dinner in a chateau overlooking the dips and swells of the rolling hillside, peppered with small terracotta towns and church towers and sprawling vineyards, she had seen nothing but the look of love in his eyes as he haltingly, almost hesitantly, admitted that he knew it was soon, knew it was quick, but he couldn’t remain quiet any longer. That he wanted her to be his wife, his love, his companion. She had almost interrupted his proposal with an agreement so ready, so earnest he had smiled and produced the most beautiful ring she had ever seen.
The art deco ring—a ruby encased in diamonds, set on dual silver bands which were, in turn, covered in more diamonds—looked as if it had come from her deepest fantasies. Roman had explained that ever since their first meeting in the woods he had imagined her in red. And it had touched Ella deeply that he too must have felt all that she had, from the first moment they had met.
But still his departure from France loomed over them. It was only when she shared her joyful news with Claudette that Ella saw and felt her every desire was achievable. Her grandmother’s insistence that she be freed from her caregiver duties gave Ella hope. But it also made her want to give something back in return. She knew in that moment that nothing less than having her grandmother present on her wedding day would
