Or rather he did. Unfortunately, he had broken both of them for Frankie.
His chest tightened. She wasn’t the first woman he’d dated since Harriet, but with those other women he’d always been, if not happy, then ready and willing to part company after one night. And he’d never taken them home. Those were his unspoken rules.
But not only had he spent more than one night with Frankie, she was also staying at the Hall.
Sleeping in his bed.
An image of her as she’d looked that morning, pale limbs sprawled against the sheets, whipped at his senses and he felt a mix of resentment and relief at his ever-present hunger.
Feeling her gaze on his face, he shrugged. ‘Nothing that exciting, I’m afraid. Just what everyone tells themselves after being on their own in a cold, brutal world. You know...the usual rules about not taking things, people, for granted.’
He’d said the first thing that came into his head but, glancing over at her pale, set face, he suddenly wished he had told her the truth. Silence stretched away from him, sweeping down to the sea like the great, granite cliff, and he swore softly.
‘Frankie...’ Reaching out, he took her hand. ‘I didn’t mean to—’
‘It’s fine.’ Her fingers tightened around his. ‘I know you weren’t talking about me, but you’re right.’ She glanced down, her dark lashes fanning out over her cheeks. ‘We all take so much for granted. I know I did.’
His heart squeezed at the bruised ache in her voice. That was the difference between them. She couldn’t control her pain. She hadn’t learned how to block it out. But then it was all so new for her.
‘It’s a problem most humans have,’ he said slowly.
Before his mother’s illness he had taken so much for granted. He felt his chest tighten, remembering those days out on his great-uncle’s boat. They had been long, tiring days, but being surrounded by his family every hour he had felt magical, blessed. Bulletproof.
It was hard to believe now, but back then he had genuinely thought that they were invulnerable, that his parents’ all-consuming love offered them some magical protection against hurt and injustice—even illness and death.
It hadn’t helped that the bohemian world they’d created had felt so far removed from ‘normal’ life. The life lived by his cousins and his friends from school.
Nobody else’s mother played her cello on the beach. His friends’ fathers didn’t let their sons have a day off school to practise making the perfect martini.
In their enchanted cocoon of love and laughter, anything ‘real’, like letters from the hospital, had got ignored or forgotten.
But cancer didn’t go away just because you ignored it.
It still burned in him now, the memory of his parents’ life together. It was a dull, red fire that he purposely kept smouldering—but not because he was waiting for the right woman to come along and rekindle it. His jaw clenched. No, it was there as a reminder of what happened when you let someone become your whole world and then you lost them and your whole world crumbled.
And that was another difference between him and Frankie.
She was still a believer—still looking to replace like with like, still hoping for something, or someone, to fill the gap in her life.
That someone wouldn’t—couldn’t—be him. What had happened with Harriet had only happened because he, like Frankie, had been young and alone and lost in grief. Yes, he had loved Harriet, but in a couple of months he would have probably loved someone else. And then someone else.
Only his life had just imploded, and his feelings for her had got mixed up with all the loss and the loneliness, and ultimately everything had been a disaster.
But it hadn’t been without purpose. At least he could make sure that Frankie didn’t make the same mistake.
He looked down at her hands, turning them over. They were so small and soft. She was soft—he knew that now. Too soft for a world where you didn’t need to be in Antarctica for life to be randomly brutal and harsh. Too soft to be in that world alone.
And one day she would find someone...someone special.
Blocking out the nip of jealousy at the thought of the faceless, nameless man who would one day hold Frankie close, he tightened his hand around hers.
For now, she just needed support.
‘I find it helps to live in the moment,’ he said slowly. ‘To focus on the real and the present.’
Her eyes found his. ‘Is that why you like sailing so much?’
He considered her question. ‘I’ve never looked at it that way, but maybe yes.’ Lifting her hand to his mouth, he kissed it gently. ‘In vino veritas.’
She grimaced. ‘I haven’t drunk that much.’ Reaching for the bottle, she giggled. ‘Oops... Perhaps I have. I don’t normally like wine, but this is so delicious. All your wines are.’
He laughed then—not just at the wonder in her voice but at his own sudden and startling joy in the ‘real and present’ moment he was living. A moment he could enjoy in good faith, knowing that he was back in control.
‘My father would have been deeply gratified to hear you say so. Wines were one of his three great loves.’
He saw the flicker of curiosity in her blue eyes—eyes that changed from moment to moment like the sea shimmering beneath the cliffs, so that first they were silver, then a dark indigo, and then the colour of amethysts.
‘What were the other two?’ she asked.
She had done it again. Resurrected the past so that he was thinking about his mother. Her face was clearer than Frankie’s, the absence of her no less unthinkable and punitive now than it had been in those terrible first few days after her death.
He let a minute or two of silence tick by, but he could hardly ignore her question.
‘That would be painting... And Helena. My mother,’ he said slowly. ‘Unfortunately for my grandfather.’
Frankie frowned. ‘Why unfortunately?’
‘That’s how my parents met. My grandfather hired Lucien to paint my mother’s portrait for her twenty-first birthday—’
‘And they fell in love!’ She ended his sentence triumphantly, excitement lighting up her face.
He nodded. ‘Correct. And then they eloped. Over the border to Scotland. They planned it all in secret for months. Nobody knew anything about it until they called from Gretna Green.’
Frankie’s eyes were wide and soft. ‘That’s so romantic.’
Leaning back, he studied the play of expressions on her face. Her excitement made him feel old and jaded. But that was a good thing. It meant he was back in control. It meant that moment earlier, when it had felt as if he was losing his footing, had been just a momentary lapse.
Holding her gaze, he shook his head. ‘My grandparents didn’t think so. They were furious. Understandably. Helena was only twenty, and Lucien was hardly ideal husband material.’
‘He was a famous artist,’ she protested.
‘A forty-five-year-old artist with two failed marriages under his belt. And he wasn’t that famous—not then. Plus, they’d already lined up a far more suitable husband-to-be. So, my uncles went and found her and brought her back home, kicking and screaming.’
She blinked. ‘They did?’
He nodded, swept along by the familiar glamour of the story despite himself. ‘And then Lucien turned up at the house with a shotgun, threatening to shoot my grandfather, and got himself arrested.’
‘Then what happened?’
The dazzle of eagerness in her eyes caught him like a punch to the solar plexus and he shrugged. ‘Me. I happened.’ He paused, staring at her steadily. ‘My mother was already pregnant by then, and my grandparents realised they were fighting a lost cause.’
Watching her expression turn hazy, he felt a rush of vertigo. He could see it in her eyes. She was falling in love with the story and it sliced something
open inside him.
‘It’s like a real-life fairy tale,’ she said slowly.
His chest tightened. Most fairy tales ended with a wedding, not death and despair.
‘You think?’ He couldn’t stop the note of bitterness from creeping into his voice.
‘Of course.’ She frowned. ‘What could be more romantic?’
Her softly worded question pulled at his senses and, glancing over at her face, he tensed. She wanted to believe in happy-ever-after. Like most people, the aftermath—what happened when the happy-ever-after ended—didn’t interest her so much.
He shrugged again. ‘I suppose that would depend on your definition of “romantic”.’
There was a small beat of silence and then Frankie looked him straight in the eye. ‘Love conquers all. Every time.’
Turning his head, he glanced away from the open blueness of her gaze. ‘Then I’d have to disagree with you.’
* * *
Frankie stared at him in confusion, separately and vividly aware of both the pulsing tension in his jaw and the distance in his eyes. She’d been having such a wonderful day. And it wasn’t just the excitement of sailing on a real boat or the picnic which had taken her completely by surprise, it was Arlo.
Maybe it had been the freedom of being out on the boat, or perhaps if had been her opening up about her family yesterday, but he had talked more about his life in the last half-hour than he had done over the previous four days.
And that had been the sweetest surprise of all.
Only now it felt as if he had retreated into himself again.
She bit her lip. ‘I don’t understand...’ she said slowly. ‘How can you tell me that story and not believe in love?’
He shook his head. ‘I’m not saying that.’ His grey eyes held hers briefly, then flicked away again. ‘My parents’ love was mesmerising—like watching a magic trick. It was impossible to look away, not to be dazzled.’
She watched mutely as he stared up at the sky, his face expressionless.
‘Their love was so intense and beautiful. It flooded the world around them and the people around them, like me, with this incredible light. It was like standing next to the sun.’
His mouth made a brief curve, painful to watch.
‘But at the end of the day the sun is just a big star. All stars collapse, and when they do, they pull everything into the darkness with them.’
Frankie swallowed. She knew all about the darkness. The terrifying plummet into the abyss. But even though she knew that he’d lost both his parents, she hadn’t thought that Arlo felt that. He seemed so in control, so invincible.
But what did she really know about his life...his past?
She hesitated, and then she took his hand and held it, feeling his tension against her thumb. ‘How old were you when she died?’
He didn’t reply, and for a moment she thought he wasn’t going to, but then he said stiffly, ‘Thirteen. I’d just started my first term at Eton. I didn’t go back. I couldn’t. Lucien was in such a state and Johnny was only two years old.’
Which was why Arlo hadn’t ever been a prefect, she thought, her heart contracting.
‘Didn’t anyone help?’ she asked.
‘Lots of people tried. Family, friends... And the staff were all fantastic.’ He sounded tired. Almost as if he was back in that huge, grief-filled house. ‘But my father didn’t want help. He wanted her. And when he realised he could never have her back he stopped crying and started raging against the world.’
Frankie shivered. He spoke as he wrote, each word chosen with a measured precision that only added pathos to his story.
‘What did he do?’
Arlo’s expression was bleak. ‘He drank a lot. Smashed up his studio. Burned his paintings. Not all of them. Constance rescued some. Then he just gave up. He stayed in his pyjamas...he barely ate.’
‘But who looked after you and Johnny?’ Her voice sounded brittle—accusatory, even—but she didn’t care. All she could think about was Arlo, all alone in the Hall with a tiny brother and a raging, unhappy man.
‘Nannies on and off, at the beginning. They loved Johnny, but my father terrified them, so they never stayed long. Constance helped a lot. Mostly Johnny wanted me, and in the end we just muddled through.’
Her heart felt too big for her chest. Johnny had told her that Arlo had raised him, but she hadn’t really believed him. ‘What about you?’ she whispered.
He shrugged. ‘I didn’t need looking after.’ His beautiful, misshapen mouth twisted. ‘And I wasn’t easy to look after. Not like Johnny.’
Frankie nodded. She could all too easily imagine the awkward, brooding teenage Arlo, silent and trapped in his grief. Of course any nanny would prefer a beautiful, uncomplicated child like Johnny. She gritted her teeth, pushing back against the pressing weight of misery rising in her throat. Why did the world have to be so cruel? So unfair?
‘I’m sorry,’ she said quietly. ‘I’m so sorry there was no one there for you.’
His face tensed. ‘No, that’s not how it was, Frankie. My uncles and aunts were fantastic. They sorted out all the financial stuff and the running of the Hall. But I wouldn’t let them help with Lucien or Johnny.’
He looked up at her, his mouth twisting into a smile that made her hand tighten around his.
‘As you know, I can be pretty stubborn when I want to be.’
‘Why wouldn’t you let them help?’ she whispered.
For a moment he seemed lost in thought, and then his smile twisted tighter. ‘I suppose I was trying to make amends.’
His voice was flat, dull, as if all the emotion had been ironed out of it.
She stared at him numbly. ‘I don’t understand...’ Why would he need to make amends?
His eyes found hers, hearing the question even though she hadn’t asked it.
‘I knew she was ill. We all did. But my parents lived in this fantasy world of love and beauty and art. They ignored anything that was too “real”. And I didn’t want to face the truth on my own, so I let myself be persuaded to do nothing as well.’
The emptiness in his voice made the afternoon feel suddenly cool.
‘I wanted to believe that their love could conquer everything, even though I knew unquestionably that it couldn’t—that it was just a beautiful story.’ He glanced over to where The Aeolus swayed against the tide. ‘I made a choice, and it was the wrong one. I let my feelings override the facts. After the funeral, I made a promise never to do that again.’
And he had kept his promise.
‘So that’s why you became a scientist. And why you don’t believe in love.’
For some reason it hurt, saying those words out loud. Hurt more than it should. Almost more than knowing he’d been so lost and alone.
His eyes found hers, the clear sunlight touching the grey with silver. ‘I didn’t for a long time. But I do now.’
She couldn’t speak. Suddenly her whole body was taut like a bowstring, and even though there was no reason to do so she was holding her breath. The beat of her heart hovered like a diver on the top board as she waited for his next sentence.
‘For other people. Not for me. I could have done something—should have done something...told someone—but I didn’t. I was like a child, watching the fireworks while the house burns down. And I know you’re going to say I was just a child, but—’
‘You were,’ she said hoarsely, watching the tension in the tiny muscles around his mouth.
His jaw was taut, his eyes distant. ‘I don’t expect you to understand.’
But she did. She understood completely.
Love had let him down, failed him. No wonder he had turned his back on the world and chosen to spend his life wandering the icy extremities of the Arctic and Antarctica, putting his trust in science and data and brutal, honest facts.
He had failed to save his mother so now he was trying to save the world. She understood that feeling. She felt the same the way—felt the same need to do penance and the urge to share that common chord—and her guilt was almost irresistible—
Her chest tightened. Who was she trying to kid? Nothing about her self-interested behaviour that night in France had anything to with the way Arlo had acted. And she wasn’t about to burden him with her guilt.
Reaching up, she stroked his cheek. If she closed her eyes she could barely feel the scar. But scars were like icebergs: the damage ran deep.
‘I do understand,’ she said slowly.
If only that understanding came with some unique power to help his invisible scars heal, but she had nothing to offer him.
* * *
After they’d climbed back aboard The Aeolus Arlo turned towards the deck, but Frankie tightened her grip on his hand.
He frowned. ‘I was just going to check in with the crew. Make sure everyone’s okay.’
‘They can manage without you.’
His eyes fixed on her face. ‘Is this a mutiny?’
‘Yes, it is,’ she said softly and, feeling as if her heart was dropping away from her body, she pulled him to her and kissed him softly.
She had been wrong. There was something that would soothe the pain. His and hers. Something that was in her power to give.
‘You took care of me yesterday.’ Her eyes locked with his and he breathed in sharply as she slid her hand between his thighs. ‘Now it’s my turn to take care of you.’
And, turning, she led him away from the deck and down to their cabin.
CHAPTER EIGHT
ROLLING ONTO HIS SIDE, Arlo stared across the room at the open bathroom door. Frankie was in the shower, and over the sound of the running water he could hear her singing. He couldn’t make out the words of the song, but people only sang in the shower when they were happy and that was what mattered.
His shoulders tensed. Although after his performance yesterday she might be forgiven for not believing that.
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