‘I didn’t mean to...’ Andy gave Darius a searching glance, noting the shadows in his eyes, the pallor to cheeks so tightly drawn they might have been etched by a sculptor. ‘This morning, when I asked your mother about Xander, she didn’t seem to think there were going to be any complications with his recovery.’
‘From the ribs or broken leg, no.’ Darius sighed heavily. ‘Unfortunately, as you are already aware, Xander has emotional wounds that may take longer to heal.’ He grimaced. ‘But we’re jumping ahead of ourselves,’ he continued briskly. ‘I still want to know what that Bellamy woman was doing here, and why she’s upset you so much.’
Once again Darius displayed that dogged persistence Andy found so unnerving. A persistence she found she couldn’t withstand. ‘I don’t know if your mother’s told you, but I’ve decided to dance at the gala next month, after all.’
‘She did.’ His eyes glowed his approval. ‘But I thought I would wait for you to tell me before saying anything. I hope this doesn’t sound in the least patronising, because it isn’t meant to—’ he smiled warmly ‘—but I am so proud of you.’
Andy’s breath caught in her throat. ‘You are?’
‘Oh, yes.’ He grinned. ‘To the point that I’ve already told my mother I’ll be joining her and Charles in their box at the theatre that night.’
Her heart skipped a beat at the thought of Darius being part of the audience watching her perform in public for the first time in four years. ‘Tia wants me to withdraw from the performance.’
Darius shook his head. ‘And what the hell gives her the right to ask you to do anything, let alone something as important as this undoubtedly is?’
‘She didn’t ask, Darius, she threatened.’ Andy lowered her lashes, unable to look up at Darius right now.
Darius became very still as an icy calm settled in his chest. ‘Her visit today is only half the story, right?’
Andy drew in a shaky breath as she nodded. ‘If you would like to sit down, I’ll tell you the rest of it.’
Darius wasn’t sure he wanted to sit down—in fact, he knew that he didn’t—but Miranda seemed to need him to. And if that was what she needed right now, he wanted to give it to her.
And so he sat and listened, his hands tightening into fists as Miranda told him what had really happened four years ago. How her injury had allowed Tia, as her understudy, to take over the lead in Swan Lake. And how Tia had repeated the threat, just now, of further violence if Miranda didn’t withdraw from the gala.
Andy couldn’t fail to notice the chilling anger in the rigid pallor of Darius’s face as she told him Tia had admitted to having deliberately caused her accident four years ago. His eyes took on a cold and dangerously amber glitter as she told him of Tia’s renewed threat if she didn’t withdraw from the gala.
She took a step back now as Darius surged angrily to his feet the moment she had finished talking. ‘I’m not going to withdraw, Darius,’ she assured him quickly.
‘I wouldn’t let you even if you tried,’ he bit out harshly, a nerve pulsing in his tightly clenched jaw. ‘My God, when I think of how close that woman came to killing you...!’ He drew in a shuddering breath as he obviously sought to control the coldness of his temper. ‘You have to go to the police with this, Miranda.’
‘And tell them what? I have no proof that any of it actually happened, and it will be my word against hers.’
‘Don’t you see, Miranda? The woman has no conscience, no sense of remorse, no barometer of what’s right or wrong.’ He stepped forward to grasp both of her hands tightly in his as he looked down at her intently. ‘If she was capable of doing this to you to further her own ambitions, then there’s no reason to suppose that she hasn’t done something similar to others in the past. Or that she won’t do so again to others in the future. And possibly next time she won’t just ruin someone’s career, she might actually succeed in killing them!’
Andy hadn’t looked at it in quite that light before. And Darius was right: the Tia who had spoken to her today, threatened her, was totally without conscience, and more than capable of doing whatever it took, whatever was needed, to ensure her own ambitions, whatever they might be.
‘We’ll do this together,’ Darius encouraged huskily. ‘And I guarantee that the police will at least listen if I confirm that she threatened you today,’ he added grimly. ‘Enough to speak with Tia Bellamy, at least.’
‘Why would you want to do that for me?’
That moment of truth again, Darius realised.
Except he still hadn’t told Miranda about his own past...or explained the continuing repercussions of that past. And he owed it to Miranda to do that, before he dared even think of broaching any sort of future together for the two of them. There was always the possibility she might not want to have anything more to do with him once she knew exactly what a messed-up family he had!
He would get to that in a moment; for now he was still so stunned by what Miranda had just told him. ‘I still can’t believe anyone could deliberately do what Tia Bellamy did to you four years ago.’ Reaction was starting to set in now, at the realisation of how close he had come to never meeting Miranda at all. Never knowing her. Never kissing her. Never making love to her. Never falling in love with her...
Because Darius had realised after these few days of forcing himself not to call her, to see her, to be with her, that he did love Miranda. More than anything else. More than his twin. More than any of his family. More than life itself.
His hands clenched at his sides. ‘I want to strangle that Bellamy woman with my bare hands for what she did to you!’
‘But you won’t.’ Andy gave a firm shake of her head. ‘I’ve made something else of my life now, Darius. Something I enjoy just as much.’ Andy realised even as she said it that it was the truth; she did enjoy teaching ballet—still had the dream of one day discovering her own future Margot Fonteyn or Darcy Bussell. She had a life. ‘And I’ve decided that there’s absolutely no reason why I can’t dance again, just not professionally. But definitely at galas like your mother’s—if I’m asked.’
‘Oh, don’t worry, my mother will ensure that you are,’ Darius drawled dryly.
She nodded. ‘It’s enough.’
‘Is it?’ Darius looked down at her searchingly, knowing that he wanted more than that, for himself, as well as for Miranda. If she would have him.
It really was time for that moment of truth.
His mouth tightened. ‘It’s your turn to sit now, and listen to what I need to tell you.’
Andy continued to look at Darius as she made her way slowly over to the sofa and sat down. She could see he was under severe strain, by the dark shadows in his eyes, and the lines grooved beside his eyes and the grimness of his mouth as he restlessly paced the room.
‘What is it, Darius?’ she finally asked gently when she couldn’t stand the suspense any longer. ‘Whatever it is, it can’t be as bad as the things I’ve just told you!’ she added in an attempt to tease him out of his tension.
‘It’s worse.’ He gave a rueful grimace. ‘And it involves the conversation you heard a part of last Sunday at the hospital.’
‘Ah.’ Andy had wondered if he would ever talk to her more fully about that. She had wondered this week if he would ever talk to her again!
Darius nodded grimly. ‘In particular, my bastard of a father.’
Andy was aware of Xander’s distress last Sunday, regarding Lomax Sterne, and she had also realised that Catherine’s marriage to the man hadn’t exactly been a happy one. She just wasn’t sure that Catherine or Xander would thank Darius for discussing that husband, or father, with someone outside their family.
At the same time as she knew that if Darius wanted to talk to her about his father then she would gladly listen.
How could she not?
Darius
was a very private man, to the point of obsession. Not cold, as Andy had originally thought him to be—she would never think of him as being cold again, after the way the two of them had made love together so heatedly the previous weekend!—but nevertheless he was a man who kept himself totally self-contained, and he did that by placing a barrier about his emotions.
A barrier that seemed to crumble, and be about to fall, the more time the two of them spent together.
A barrier he now seemed to be willing to drop completely in order to share something from his past with her.
A barrier that she now realised had come into existence because of that past?
How could Andy not listen if it gave her an insight into why Darius was the way that he was?
She settled back on the sofa, waiting patiently as she watched Darius gather his thoughts together before he began speaking.
‘I took your advice last Sunday evening and made Xander tell me everything. I now realise...’ He paused, shaking his head. ‘I should really start at the beginning, not the end.’ He sighed. ‘My mother and father met at some business conference: he was CEO of his own company; she was PA to one of the other men attending the business conference. The attraction was instant, and the two of them had a brief week-long relationship. Two months later my mother had to go to him and tell him that she was pregnant with Xander and me. My father had forgotten to mention that he was already engaged to marry someone else at the time, the only daughter of a close business associate, so he wasn’t exactly overjoyed at the news of Catherine’s pregnancy.’
No, Andy could see that might have been a bit awkward.
‘My mother refused to have the abortion Lomax instantly offered to pay for,’ Darius continued harshly. ‘And Lomax refused to marry her. But he did offer, in exchange for her silence, to pay her off. His intention being, I suppose, to carry on with his engagement and marriage. Except pregnancies, especially twins, have a way of showing themselves.’ He grimaced. ‘The fiancée’s father was also a friend of the man my mother worked for and— Well, I’m sure you can guess the rest. The father found out what sort of man Lomax Sterne was, the daughter broke off the engagement, and my father decided to marry my mother after all.’
Andy hadn’t realised she had been holding her breath until she had to draw air deeply into her lungs before she could manage to speak. ‘Because he had realised he loved her?’
‘Because he wanted to make her life and the lives of her two sons a living hell for having screwed up his own life!’
Andy’s stomach gave a sickening lurch. ‘And did he manage to do that?’
‘Oh, yes,’ Darius confirmed grimly. ‘He really was bad news. By the time my mother realised her mistake she was already married to him and too frightened of him and what he might do to Xander and I to even think of daring to leave him. I look a lot like him, you know,’ he added bleakly.
Andy had guessed that Darius must favour his father in looks; after all Catherine was extremely fair, and Xander had his mother’s colouring, so Darius had to have got his dark hair and those mesmerising topaz eyes from someone else.
He sighed. ‘To cut a long and miserable story short, on the night my father died Xander was once again in hospital. He was being kept in overnight, and my mother was staying with him. He had a broken collarbone and concussion, after supposedly falling off his horse.’
Andy’s lips felt numb. ‘Xander didn’t fall off his horse?’
Darius gave a shake of his head. ‘My father had beaten him.’ He drew in a ragged breath. ‘Maybe if he had laid into me a few times he wouldn’t have made my mother’s and Xander’s lives such hell. And I would gladly have taken some of those beatings in Xander’s stead.’
Andy could hear a wealth of guilt behind his words. The same guilt she had heard in his voice the previous Sunday when he had spoken so unguardedly with Xander.
‘Instead, I think,’ Darius continued heavily, ‘because I looked like him, my father thought I was like him too, and that he could mould me into his own image.’
‘He didn’t succeed,’ Andy assured him forcefully.
‘No.’ Darius’s smile was bleak. ‘I may have looked like him, but my nature is much more like my mother’s; she has the same ability to shut people out, to present a cold and unemotional front to the world. Whereas Xander looks like my mother, but...’
‘I’ve only met Xander twice, both briefly, but even that was enough to tell me he isn’t in the least cruel or physically violent.’ Andy frowned; there was no way the easily charming man she had met at the charity dinner was anything like the monster Darius was describing as his father.
‘You’re right, he isn’t.’ Darius looked at her approvingly. ‘The problem is that he thinks he is. Or, perhaps a better way of describing it is that he now fears that he might become like him.’
‘You can convince him that he won’t,’ Andy said with certainty.
‘Once again, I appreciate your confidence in my abilities,’ Darius drawled. ‘And I’m doing my best to do that, I assure you.’
Andy looked up at him searchingly. ‘There’s more, isn’t there...?’ she guessed softly.
He nodded grimly. ‘What I didn’t realise, until Xander made that comment last Sunday evening, was that all these years my mother and Xander have believed that I pushed my father down the stairs the night he died, rather than that he fell down them in a drunken stupor. Which is not to say I hadn’t thought of it—many times, in fact—for the way he treated my mother and Xander,’ he acknowledged bleakly. ‘But something always stopped me from following through on the idea.’
‘Because you are nothing like your father,’ Andy said with certainty. ‘Because you simply aren’t capable of the violence that he so obviously was.’
Darius drew in a sharp breath, even as he looked down at her searchingly, and saw only sincerity in the clear green of her eyes as she gazed back at him unflinchingly. ‘Thank you for that,’ he breathed huskily.
‘It was never in question,’ she assured him firmly. ‘We inherit our genes from our parents, yes, but that isn’t all that we are. A lot of what we are we make of ourselves. Look at me; no one else in my family was ever interested in ballet, or becoming a dancer of any kind. My sister is an accountant, for goodness’ sake!’
‘Your sister who doesn’t approve of me,’ Darius drawled ruefully.
‘She doesn’t know you,’ Andy dismissed. ‘Do Xander and your mother know the truth now?’ she added softly.
‘About my father’s death twenty years ago? Yes, I’ve talked to both of them on the subject this week,’ he confirmed as she nodded.
‘And has it helped to heal the breach between you and your mother?’
He smiled at Miranda’s perception in realising that was the reason for those years of estrangement between them. ‘We’ll get there, eventually. Unfortunately my mother and I are too much alike—we tend to close ourselves in emotionally. My mother has spent the last twenty years deliberately not asking me for the truth, because she was afraid of hearing it, which in turn caused the emotional disconnection between the two of us.’
‘And Xander? Was his accident last weekend really an accident?’
Darius drew his breath in sharply. ‘He says it was.’
‘And do you believe him?’
‘Yes, up to a point I do believe him.’ He nodded. ‘The truth of the matter is that I’ve been worried about Xander for a while now, without knowing why. He’s been playing even harder than he works, recklessly so, and he works ten-hour days.’
‘Like you do.’
‘Yes, like I do.’ He smiled slightly. ‘You know, I thought Xander and I were close, but I had no idea of the torment going on inside his head all these years. This fear that he might one day turn into a monster like our father.’ He gave a pained grimace.
‘He nee
ds someone to believe in him. Not just you and your mother; that’s a given, because you both already love him unconditionally.’ She smiled. ‘Xander needs someone outside your family, a woman maybe, to love and believe in him.’
Darius eyed her curiously. ‘How did you get to be so wise?’
Andy wasn’t wise at all; she was talking from personal experience!
Her sister Kim and brother-in-law Colin had been nothing but supportive of her over the past four years, but it was because of Darius, because of his expressed belief in her, that she had found the courage to dare to dance in public again. She would never be as good a dancer as she had once been, and it was going to take the next few weeks of serious training before the gala for her to achieve even an acceptable level for her to appear on a public stage again. But she would never have found the courage to do even that without Darius’s belief in her.
A small glimmer of hope had begun to burn inside Andy as Darius talked to her of his parents’ marriage, his father’s violence, his traumatic childhood, the reason for the emotional breach between himself and his mother all these years and his brother’s emotional turmoil now.
A glimmer of hope that Darius, a man she knew never shared his emotions with anyone, had to have told her those things, shared those things with her, for a reason...
CHAPTER TEN
‘YOU MUST BE wondering why the hell I’m bothering to burden you with all of this unpleasant family history,’ Darius said.
Andy was more than wondering—deep inside, where her hopes and dreams had long been buried, a rainbow of possibilities, which had begun to blossom with her decision to dance again, was now bursting into an array of colours!
‘Actually, I was a little concerned initially that you might be going to confess that those rumours about your exotic tastes for whips and paddles in the bedroom were true after all.’
‘What?’ Darius eyed her incredulously.
She eyed him innocently. ‘You mean they aren’t true?’
The Redemption of Darius Sterne Page 15
