Indiscretions

by Robyn Donald

  “I...no,” she said indignantly. “It’s the way the game is played—you know that. Caesar’s wife—and daughter— have to be above suspicion.”

  “And that stupid idiot who fell in love with you was too frightened to do anything about it without consulting his fossilized uncle, who still thinks that divorce is enough to keep you out of a decent university, let alone heaven,” he retorted caustically. “Tell me, what did we do when we discovered who you were? Were you sacked? Sent back to New York in disgrace?”

  “McCabe sent you off to woo information out of me!” she flared.

  “I’ll admit we were concerned, but that was simply a knee-jerk reaction. By the next morning we’d decided that your parents’ treachery and death had nothing to do with you. You had an excellent record, and your reason for changing your name was understandable. Your fear, your conviction that you’re marked with the mark of Cain, is irrational, Mariel.”

  “Not so irrational! You sneer at David,” she retorted angrily, “but you left me, too.”

  He looked at her, his eyes half-closed, his mouth a straight, taut line. “You forget that I already knew who you were when I asked you to marry me. I left you at the cottage partly because I was furious that you lumped me in with St. Clair, but also because I could see you were convinced you were a liability—if not the kiss of death—to any diplomat. I realized you weren’t ever going to change your mind. You wouldn’t listen to me. You wouldn’t even entertain the possibility that you might be wrong. I realized something else, too. Until then I’d managed to convince myself that although I wanted you and liked you and admired you, I didn’t actually love you, not ‘to the depth and breadth and height my soul can reach.’“

  Tears welled in her eyes as she recognized the quotation. When she tried to answer, the words tangled on her tongue; blinking rapidly, she fought for composure.

  His smile was lopsided. “Well, your refusal put paid to such arrogance. The prospect of living without you made my heart quail. I had to go, otherwise I’d have been reduced to begging.”

  Her heart turned over in her breast. “Don’t be silly,” she said uncertainly.

  “You could make me do it,” he said almost casually, as though it was a truth he’d long accepted. “After I’d got over my anger and, yes, and the hurt—” he smiled derisively “—I decided to find out exactly what made you so intransigent. To do that I had to go back to New Zealand.”

  She couldn’t look at him. “My aunt did have reason to be bitter, Nicholas. Apart from anything else, she had me dumped on her.”

  “A situation she could have coped with. However, she resigned and disappeared, then set about punishing you for your parents’ supposed sins by making sure you were as marked by the events as she’d allowed herself to be. She could have fought, Mariel. Instead, she ran away.”

  And he would think that the greatest sin. “I don’t think she was deliberately cruel. People were awful to her,” Mariel protested, trying to be objective.

  He said grimly, “She might not have deliberately set out to ruin your life, but she certainly made you the scapegoat. As well as taking you to live in a small country town where everyone would know immediately who you were, she behaved like the Witch of Endor so that the conservative people there viewed her with grave suspicion. Then she made their natural reactions her reason for cutting off all communication with them and retreating into an isolated eccentricity. No wonder you were desperate to leave New Zealand. No wonder you never want to go back.”

  Mariel bit her lip and picked up her cup. “I am going back,” she said. “I’ve booked my tickets for February.”

  “Have you indeed? Why, when you hate the place?”

  “I don’t! Oh, all right, my memories of New Zealand are not exactly glowing ones, but I know that all New Zealanders are not small-minded bigots. I’ve met some charming ones.”

  “What made you decide to go back?”

  “Don’t you ever give up?”

  “Not when it’s important for me,” he said without mercy.

  “I decided to go back because you love it,” she muttered crossly. “After I saw you in New York with Susan...” She set her teacup down with a sharp click. “Just what were you doing with her?” she asked fiercely. “You were at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She stumbled as you were going down the steps outside, and you put your arm around her waist and kept it there until you were out of sight.”

  “Were you jealous?” he asked softly.

  She hesitated, then shot him a defiant look. “I was eaten up with it.”

  “Good.” Straightening up, he smiled without humour. “Now you have some small inkling of how I felt when you compared me to David St. Clair.”

  “I didn’t ever—”

  “Oh, yes, you did. You compared us constantly. You even expected me to reject you as he did. I won’t tell you how angry that made me—I thought, I love this woman with everything I have, everything I am, and she still thinks I’m going to dump her because of what her parents did.”

  She protested, “I can’t accept that my fears for your reputation were as irrational as you seem to think.”

  “Accept it,” he said sternly.

  She bit her lip. “But—”

  “Don’t start wallowing in guilt,” he said, reading her reactions with merciless exactness. “If it’s the last thing I do, I’ll get you to admit that you don’t carry the responsibility for the world on your shoulders. I was with Susan at the museum because there was an exhibition she wanted to see, and because she hoped she could talk me out of leaving the service. She failed. I wish I’d known you were there that day.”

  “I’m glad you didn’t,” she returned. “I was angry and— and desolate.” Keeping her eyes on the florid Victorian pattern that embellished the china, she asked tentatively, “Nicholas, surely—the flaw in your argument that I’m being irrational is that you have left the service. And you wouldn’t have done that if it hadn’t been for me.”

  “I was already thinking of giving up foreign affairs when I met you.”

  She looked at him, trying to see past the handsome mask of his features to the cold, clear, incisive mind within. Could she believe him? Was he trying to make her feel better about his resignation? “Were you?”

  “Mariel, I will never lie to you. Never. I know you have a lot of your life invested in that preposterous conviction, but it’s wrong, implanted in your brain by a woman who was eaten up with a sense of bitter defeat.” He didn’t touch her, didn’t even move, but she felt the powerful force of his will engulf her. His face was like stone, the only sign of life the leaping golden lights in his eyes. “You have to believe me,” he said in a low, tense voice, “because if you don’t, you will never trust me. And I need your trust, my darling.”

  Her pulse beat heavily in her throat. She felt herself being dragged into his gaze, drowning in green, experiencing the gold like sunlight from beneath water, and knew that just as he needed her faith she needed his honesty. With an instinct surer and more certain than the evidence of her senses she realized that she could give him what he wanted.

  “I do trust you,” she said in a low voice. The cup shook in her hand. She put it down in the saucer again and looked at him, her face transfigured. “I do, Nicholas. Truly.”

  His breath hissed through lips almost bloodless with the effort of waiting.”Thank God,” he said. “I knew it would be hard—I didn’t realize just how hard.”

  He took two strides across the room and pulled her into his arms, holding her so tightly clamped against him that she felt the urgent thunder of his heart driving into hers, the great strength unfettered for the first time.

  “Darling,” he said eventually in a muffled voice. “I’ve wanted you so many lonely hours—you’ve put me through hell! Never ever wonder whether I’m telling the truth. If I had to give up everything for you, I’d consider it all worthwhile.”

  “The world well lost for love,” she murmured, really believing him
for the first time, her heart incandescent with joy.

  He picked her up and carried her to the sofa, then arranged them comfortably together, his arms around her, her head on his shoulder.

  “Yes, because I’ve found a much better world, one with you at the centre, in the core of my heart.”

  Shaken, she turned her face into his neck, listening to the soft thud of his heartbeat, breathing in the potent male scent that had haunted her for months.

  “It’s probably only fair to admit that, like you, I’m more influenced by my childhood than I’d realized.” He spoke with a dry self-mockery that told her the insight had caused him more than a little disquiet. “In between checking out your childhood, tracking Svetlanko down and plotting to get you back, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking. When my father died he left me an obscene amount of money, half of which is in a family trust. The rest I set up in another trust, giving the trustees the brief that they were to use the income as venture capital to help people who want to make a difference, people with passion and ambition and intelligence who can’t get money through the normal channels. I tried not to be involved, but over the years I’ve been drawn in. Slowly, almost without my realizing it, diplomacy has been losing its interest.”

  “Why?” she asked, unable to believe him.

  He smiled ironically. “I’ve come to believe I chose it as a career because I wanted to distance myself from my father. I loved him, yet with the arrogance of youth I despised him, too. He was a brilliant man, strong and determined and dynamic. I don’t know how old I was when I understood that my mother used her sexuality and her charm, her wit and intelligence, in a completely calculated manner, keeping him intrigued, playing on, his emotions with all the skill of a major musical talent. Even having me was a career decision for her.”

  “Nicholas—”

  “Mariel,” he returned sardonically, and shrugged. “She told me so. She knew my father wouldn’t divorce his wife, but because there were no children in the marriage, having his son would give her more power. I don’t know how old I was when I decided I wasn’t going to be like my father. No more than twelve, I think.”

  So he’d decided to become a diplomat.

  “He must have loved her very much,” she said.

  “He loved what he thought she was—abjectly, besottedly, without reservations, without any self-defence. He would have given her the moon. Oh, she was clever. And she was surprisingly frank with me—she said I should know how women think.”

  Probably without realizing what she was doing, Nicholas’s mother had corrupted him, destroyed some essential innocence before it even had time to form. No wonder he was cynical about women.

  “Yes,” he said, nodding as he saw the comprehension and the sympathy in her expression. “I grew up convinced that all women had their price, as irrational in my conviction as you were with yours. Then I met you. And suddenly I could see why my father gave his heart so utterly into a woman’s keeping.”

  She shook her head. “No,” she said unsteadily, “you couldn’t have—”

  “I looked at you,” he interrupted relentlessly, “and my heart fell at your feet. I wanted you so much I could feel it like a drug in my veins. Within a few days I knew I’d do anything for you, kill for you, die for you—I fell in love at first sight. Of course I didn’t concede the game, but perhaps you can understand how afraid I was when I acknowledged that nothing was ever going to be the same again. The whole basis I’d built my life on was shown to be a sham. It was a moment of bitter revelation.”

  “I don’t believe in love at first sight,” she said, her brow creasing. “Lust, yes, but love has to grow.”

  “That’s what I thought it was to begin with,” he agreed. “Simple lust—an honest, straightforward emotion, all about power and satisfaction. But by the time we left the resort I knew I had to have you, so I plotted quite cold-bloodedly to get you back there. I thought, I’ll make sure she knows there’s no future in it—that way I won’t exploit her.”

  “Well, you did that all right,” she said crossly, pulling away.

  “After you spelled it out,” he returned, coolly tucking her back against him, “that was when I had the first indication that things were not going to be so easy, because I was furious! I wanted you to protest, to demand more from me— and you were insultingly agreeable to an affair.”

  She didn’t believe him until she tilted back her head and saw the truth in his eyes. “It hurt,” she said slowly, “but I knew there couldn’t be any future for us.”

  “I hated St. Clair.” His voice was excoriating. “I’d only met the man a couple of times, didn’t know anything about him beyond the fact that he had been your lover, but I hated him. Just another indication that I was in too far to be able to get out unscathed—an indication I ignored. But making love to you, being with you, was like finally reaching the doorstep of paradise. I already knew that you were gracious and calm and quick-witted, efficient and intelligent, that you had the compassion to help a woman when she was in trouble.”

  He paused for a breath, then went on, “Arrogantly, I thought I was safe behind my defences, but you stole my heart so secretly that I never even bothered to look for it. I wanted you with an unnerving passion, but what drove me mad was that I wanted so much more. I found myself looking besottedly at you as you slept. I wanted to make sure nothing in your life ever hurt you again. I wanted you to be the mother of my children. I knew I was in too deep to ever get out again when I realized that I enjoyed hearing you laugh as much as I enjoyed making love to you.”

  “And it frightened you,” she said quietly.

  “It terrified me. Those days in the cottage were idyllic, a dream come true. And then I introduced real life—I asked you to marry me—and like faerie gold the dream crumbled into dead leaves and ashes in my hand. I didn’t intend to propose to you, but the words just came because by then I knew I didn’t want to live any more of my life without you.”

  “I really did think having anything to do with me would ruin your life,” she said, still unable to believe that the long nightmare was over, that Nicholas was offering her unreserved happiness and joy.

  “I know. And you didn’t believe I loved you.”

  “How could I? You hadn’t spoken the word, you never even intimated it.”

  “It meant too much—and I feared to put it to the touch.” His mouth curved mirthlessly. “I was shattered and furious that you could believe I’d simply walk out on you, just as bloody St. Clair did. I even wondered whether you were using your parents as a way of keeping me at a distance.”

  She stared at him, her eyes stormy and bewildered. “What on earth do you mean?”

  “Well, it was generally accepted that you left St. Clair flat. He was obviously a mess for months afterward, even rushed into a marriage he clearly didn’t want, and I wondered whether you had got sick of him, didn’t want to marry him, and then given him the coup de grace by telling him about your parents. I wondered whether history was repeating itself, whether you rejected the men who loved you before they could reject you.”

  Angrily she tried to pull away. “That would make me sick!”

  “It made sense,” he countered, scooping her back with effortless ease. “Especially when I tried to persuade you that a generation-old scandal wasn’t going to have much effect on my career and you resolutely refused to believe me. It was obvious that you expected me to say, ‘Well, it was nice, you were good in bed, but sorry, your parents make it impossible for you to be good enough to be my wife.’ It made me too angry to give you the reassurance you needed. I knew then that you would never marry me as long as I was in the diplomatic service. And I wanted to have my cake and eat it, too.” His mouth twisted. “Even though I’d been feeling more and more dissatisfied with my life, I needed time to come to terms with the fact that I’d have to give up the service.”

  She said forlornly, “So it was because of me.”

  “Loving you precipitated a decision
I’d have made eventually,” he corrected, tilting her chin with his finger so that he could look into her eyes. His were true and direct, holding nothing back. “Your aunt was wrong, Mariel. Of all the people in the world, you deserve to be loved as I’m going to love you.”

  She nodded, her smile a little wobbly. “I believe you. It never occurred to me that you felt like that.”

  “I know, darling,” he said, the gentleness in his voice infused with a throbbing intensity that convinced her as nothing else could have. “We seem to be dogged by our parents, you and I. You see, I’m more like my mother than I thought. You called me arrogant once. I suspect you were right, but when I organized this reunion I quite coolly decided that if passion was the only way to make you admit that you love me, that we belong together, then I’d use it.”

  She looked up into blazing green-gold eyes, shivered at the harsh determination in his face, the ruthlessness that lay beneath the civilized surface, and she smiled.

  “No,” she said lovingly, “you’re not like your mother. You’ll never be like her. You plotted and planned, yes, but you did it because you wanted me to be happy, not for your own ends.”

  “Don’t canonize me,” he said, smiling ruefully. “I’m not so altruistic as all that. I foresee you are going to make me every bit as happy as I intend to make you.”

  Her mouth trembled. “Oh, I love you,” she breathed, touching his cheek. “Somehow you’ve made me believe that we belong together.”

  His arms tightened around her with bone cracking swiftness. “About time,” he said, laughing beneath his breath.

  A long time later she murmured, “What made you go looking for Mr. Svetlanko?”

  “After I got over my monumental snit because you’d turned me down—me, the great Nicholas Leigh—I tried to soothe my broken heart by looking into the business. What I found made me very curious. It was obvious you believed your parents to be guilty.”

  “I wish I hadn’t.”

  Effortlessly he pulled her down against the hard warmth of his chest. “You were only a kid, and your aunt did a good number on you.”