by Lucy Ellis
But if he was honest she hadn’t said any of that. She’d been over the moon about the visitors’ centre in Sybella fashion—quietly pleased, and then a little defiant at his complete lack of response.
No wonder she’d lost it with him.
Did he want her to fit into his life instead of making the adjustments to fit into hers?
He knew what a good, healthy relationship looked like. It was the one Deda and Baba had. It was exactly what Deda had been trying to get through his thick skull when he’d arrived down here in January.
‘I’ve found you a girl.’
When had he started thinking he didn’t deserve that? What was it Sybella had said? ‘You’re letting the hatred twist you into something you’re not.’
But deep down he’d always believed that he was that thing. He’d been fighting with this weapon inside him that told him he wasn’t a Voronov, he could do whatever it took to play the world and people like his stepmother at their own game. Only that weapon was currently at his own throat and it probably always had been.
The day he’d left Edbury his brother had rung him. He was in the chapel in the west wing at the Hall and he’d been so frustrated after his argument with Sybella he almost hadn’t picked up.
‘Nice shot of you and Marla Mendez. Deda is furious.’
‘Deda’s the least of my worries.’
Nik had looked around the high vaulted ceiling of the chapel where apparently he’d agreed tourists could pay their kopeck for the privilege and gawp at the stained glass and the slabs on the ground under his feet, where he’d been told sixteenth-century inhabitants of the Hall were buried.
‘He emailed me a photo, you and this woman you’re seeing.’
‘Sybella.’
‘Da. You were carrying this cute little kid on your shoulders.’
‘Fleur. Hang on, Deda emailed you?’
‘Yeah, your Sybella got him up to speed on that. Great tits, by the way.’
Hitting his brother hadn’t been going to promote family unity. Besides, he’d been a continent away. ‘I’ll pretend you didn’t say that.’
‘So you love her?’ Sasha had asked.
Nik hadn’t even had to think about it. ‘Yeah, I do. I do love her.’
There was a pause. ‘Are you going to marry her?’
‘She’s not very happy with me at the moment.’
‘Whatever you’ve done, man, if she loves you she’ll forgive you.’
But Nik knew one thing now as he stood on the perimeter of the road that spiralled down into the dark heart of the Voroncor seam: he had to forgive someone else first.
He needed to make a call and take a flight out to Helsinki tonight.
*
‘What’s happening, love? Has business called him away again?’ asked Catherine, hovering over her as Sybella dragged out her wellies and Fleur’s from the cupboard under the stairs.
It had been a week since Nik had stormed out of her house. A week of pretending, and Sybella was running out of evasions to satisfy her eagle-eyed mother-in-law.
‘I don’t know.’
They’d been at the May Day celebrations since dawn and Sybella had brought Fleur home for a nap because it was a long day with fireworks tonight.
Fleur appeared at the top of the stairs.
‘Ready to go, darling?’
‘You’re going for a walk?’ Catherine demanded peevishly. ‘What if Nik calls? Make sure you take your phone.’
‘He’s not going to call, Catherine.’
‘I’ll stay here in case he calls.’
Sybella handed Fleur her boots and then took her mother-in-law’s face between her hands. ‘Go home, Catherine. I love you to bits but please stop interfering in my love life.’
‘I have to,’ grumbled Catherine. ‘Meg won’t let me near hers.’
‘I want Gran to come,’ said Fleur grumpily, picking up on the adults’ mood.
Sybella sagged but Catherine must have seen something in her face and, instead of arguing, she helped Fleur with her boots.
‘I will see you tonight, pumpkin, at the fireworks.’
Sybella started feeling awful about her behaviour before she even herded Fleur out of the house. By the time she and Fleur were trudging across the field to the high wold she felt wretched. Catherine was the closest person she had to a mother and the older woman’s anxiety over Nik’s sudden departure a week earlier and determination to bring them together was only motivated by a desire to see her happy.
‘Look, Mummy, pretty!’ Fleur had a handful of yellow flowers she’d pulled out of the ground.
‘That’s called oxlip,’ Sybella instructed with a smile, and leant down so Fleur could tuck a piece behind her ear.
As she straightened up she noticed properly for the first time that winter had completely melted away and the countryside was fragrant with wildflowers showing themselves among the new grass.
The village below them gleamed with the local mellow gold stonework that was peculiar to the region and the May sunshine hit the church spire.
From here she could see all the windy yellow roads with their stone walls cutting through the countryside below them and the odd car wending its way.
It wasn’t a bad place to be miserable. And maybe Mrs Muir was right: there were all kinds of ways to be happy, and she would have to find a way by herself.
He wasn’t coming back. And one day it wouldn’t hurt this much.
Then she noticed a dark head bobbing up over the next rise directly before the valley dropped down into the village.
It was Meg.
She was running—well, hobbling, really—and as she closed the space between them Sybella saw why. She was wearing stockings and high heels, which looked odd enough as she picked and wove her way around cow pats and muddy spots. She was also carting something under her arm.
*
‘What are you doing with a laptop up here?’
Meg was panting. Apparently cross-fit classes in a gym did nothing for your ability to run an obstacle course up a Cotswold hill.
She handed the laptop over and Sybella obligingly took it as her sister-in-law bent with her hands on her knees and huffed and puffed to get her breath back.
‘You. Will. Thank. Me.’ She sucked in a few more breaths and then made a gesture at the laptop. ‘Fire it up. I’ve got something to show you.’
‘You know the Internet connection is bad enough in the village. I don’t know if we’ll get it up here.’
‘I broke speed laws to get here. Just open the blinking laptop!’
Sybella settled herself down in the grass and did as she was bid.
Meg had taken off her fancy shoes and was gingerly examining the soles, now sadly scuffed and damp.
‘They’re on the desktop,’ Meg said.
Sybella clicked and the screen filled with two faces, one of them so familiar her throat closed over.
Nik and Marla.
‘Why are you showing me these?’
‘That was taken at last night’s opening of Mendez’s fashion label in Milan.’
‘It went ahead?’
‘That’s not the question I expected. Why wouldn’t it?’
Sybella noted the space between Nik and Marla was filled by a young boy with a shock of dark hair and soulful brown eyes, perhaps around eight or nine. It must be her son.
She could feel her sister-in-law watching her face with barely constrained glee, and then she forgot all about Meg and her entire attention was welded to Nik, and although she couldn’t understand the Italian voice-over, she got a lot out of just watching the camera glide over him as he sat up front with Marla, her son, and all the other VIPs while bored-looking coat hangers strutted down the runway. Only…not all those girls were coat hangers. Several distinctly rounded, curvy girls swept the stage in just enough lace and satin to keep them decent. They looked amazing.
Marla Mendez’s perfect face filled the frame and she said in English, ‘I wanted the girls to fill
out my sexier designs. I remember the day I had this exciting idea. I met up with Nik Voronov’s fiancée, Sybella Parminter, and I, Marla, looked at her and saw all the shape I wanted for my line. She is gorgeous. She is an oil painting. She has the boobs and the hips and the thighs. The definition of womanhood.’
Fiancée? Sybella felt Meg nudge her.
‘So I have the nymphs, the dryads and the Venuses to embrace all body shapes. We women are many things and I want my line to reflect that.’
‘How about off-the-rack pricing?’ commented Meg.
Then Nik was answering questions.
He was definitely out of his comfort zone with women’s lingerie, but then, given his brother was apparently the main driver of the market, he thought he might as well invest.
This brought laughter and more questions.
Then with a faint smile he said, ‘No, I have no interest in living in Milan. I am taking up residency in the UK to be with the woman I love. If she’ll have me.’
Sybella was vaguely aware Meg’s phone was ringing but she couldn’t take her eyes off the screen.
‘It’s Mum,’ said Meg. ‘She wants to talk to you.’
Sybella continued to gaze at the screen.
There was a volley of high-pitched squawking from the phone. Meg jumped. ‘He’s rung! Nik rang your phone. Mum says you have to ring him. She says it’s no time to play coy. He’s shown his hand.’
‘I’m not ringing him.’
‘She’s not ringing him, Mum. Why aren’t you ringing him? That’s from both of us, by the way.’
Sybella had put down the lid of the laptop and was looking up into the sky. There it was, the definite thwack, thwack, thwack. ‘Because he’s already here.’
*
Nik saw the forest first and then the church steeple and finally the village spread out on the cleft of the wold.
His attention wasn’t on Edbury Hall itself, but the grounds where tents and bunting had been erected. One of the lawns was covered in cars. Several weeks ago it would have been unimaginable. He’d have closed the lot down.
As the chopper flew over the village he could see the maypole on the green, no longer the solitary needle without a thread he’d seen it as when he’d driven into Edbury for the first time, but festooned with ribbons and encircled by dozens of little girls in white dresses, running happily, and not so happily as one or two took tumbles, and their parents and families and neighbours and school friends cheered them on.
He saw St Mary’s Church with its glinting spire and the graveyard running up behind it with the tumble of stone markers, large and small. He saw the mass of forest where he and Sybella had first walked together and he’d fallen so completely under her spell it was astonishing he’d been able to walk without stumbling over his feet.
Then he saw her, out on the hill just as Catherine had told him when he’d rung Sybella’s phone. Two small figures, but even at this distance he knew which one was Sybella.
‘Take it over to the west,’ he told his pilot, Max, and as the chopper came in closer the woman next to her began to jump up and down, waving her arms.
Nik was unstrapped and climbing out, the blades still rotating when he saw her coming towards him.
He didn’t know where her friend had gone; he didn’t care.
As he strode towards her he could see all the anxiety on her face and it tore strips from his chest.
‘You didn’t do it,’ she said.
He came as close as he dared without touching her.
She was wearing a pretty floral dress and her hair was plaited but there were flowers threaded through it, probably for May Day, and she looked like a pagan goddess of spring in her wellington boots.
‘I didn’t do it.’ He shoved his hands into the pockets of his jacket because it was hard to be this close to her and not touch her.
‘Why not?’ she asked softly, those hazel eyes as anxious as the first time he’d seen her, when he’d mistaken her for an intruder and been trying to scare her.
‘I worked it all out. I kept thinking about what you said, about it twisting me, about how I use money and privilege as a weapon…’
She lowered her head but she didn’t argue with him.
‘You were right, I’ve known it for a long time, and I kept justifying it because I was angry.’
‘She did a terrible thing, Nik.’
‘She did, but that’s old anger. Frankly, Sybella, I think I stopped expending all that energy on her when I bought back the archive. I did that for my father, by the way. It was my duty by him and then it was done.’
She shook her head. ‘Then who were you angry with?’
‘Deda, for taking me in when he didn’t have to, and Sasha for holding it against me. But it was all me—neither of them felt that way.’ His grey eyes searched her face for understanding. ‘And that’s when I knew I’d decided to be angry with you.’
‘With me?’
‘I didn’t think you loved me.’
The words sounded like paupers, emptying their sacks to show the rich people how little they had. Nik, who had seemed to have everything—money, power, all the confidence in the world—was opening up his heart to her.
She realised right then and there he saw her as the rich one. The one with the love to give and bestow. Just as she had once seen Simon. But she didn’t want to be that person with Nik. Because it was absolutely clear to her now that he loved her, had been trying to tell her for a long time how much he loved her, and she had been deaf.
‘Do you remember what you said about being angry with Simon, for the accident, something that couldn’t possibly be his fault?’ He spoke slowly, as if he might stumble over the difficult words.
‘Yes.’
‘I know you loved him, Sybella, from the bottom of your heart, because that’s who you are. What I worked out since I drove away from your house was why you were angry with me.’
‘Because I love you, you silly billy,’ she said, as if this were obvious.
He smiled then. That slow breaking dawn of a smile, and that he used it so rarely made her think it was only for her. And she knew now that it was.
‘Where have you been?’
‘I went to Helsinki and met my biological father.’
Of all the things he’d say she hadn’t expected that.
‘He’s a geologist,’ Nik added.
‘Of course he is.’ Sybella was smiling so broadly her face hurt as she stepped right up to him.
Nik fisted his hands because the urge to touch her was almost impossibly strong but he needed to tell her the whole story first. ‘He shook my hand, Sybella, and he didn’t ask his billionaire son for a kopeck. That’s the kind of man he is.’
‘He is your dad, then,’ she said softly, ‘because if the positions were reversed wouldn’t you do the same?’ She reached up to smooth back his hair in a gesture he’d seen her use with Fleur. It stopped the breath in his body. ‘He must be so proud of you, all you’ve accomplished.’
‘I don’t know about that. He was interested in you. Do you mind that I talked about you?’
‘It depends what you said.’
‘I asked for his advice. I told him I was in love with this beautiful, brilliant Englishwoman and she had a sweet little girl and she was surrounded by all these people who love her, and I’d stuffed up.’
‘You’re in love with me?’
Nik swallowed down hard. He wanted more than anything to take her in his arms, especially when she sounded so uncertain, but he had to get through this first. He had to give her that certainty they’d once held between them back.
‘He told me thirty-five years ago he’d been in love with my mother but he could see that she loved my father more, and he let her go. He told me if he’d known about me it would have been different, he would have made a different choice. And I thought about that, Sybella. I thought about all the variables in our lives. What if your Simon was still here? What if Deda hadn’t found that picture in Country
Life? And I realised the only element in all of this that I could control was me. I had choices. If I went ahead and punished Galina I would lose you. Because you can’t love the man who would do something like that, because of the woman you are, and that’s the woman I love. That’s the man I want to be for you.’
Sybella wasn’t sure how it happened, but she was in his arms and it felt like coming home. Her whole life with its good and its bad had been leading up to this moment.
More than anything she knew now this was what the fates had had in store for her.
All the bad things that could happen to a person had rained down on her and then Fleur was born and her life had taken on new meaning, until this moment when it all made perfect sense.
Embodied in this one, extraordinary man. Who was hers.
‘Oh, Nik, I’ve been so lonely without you,’ she confessed in a fractured voice as the tears came. ‘I don’t care where we live. As long as we’re with you it doesn’t matter.’
‘Net, it does matter.’ His big hands smoothed over her back possessively. ‘I want you and Fleur to be with me and I’ll do whatever it takes to make that happen.’
She began to cry in earnest and he held her tighter. For once she was happy to give way to his natural dominance.
‘I was so proud of you for going ahead with the show, for not withdrawing the funding.’
He framed her face, wiping away her tears with his thumbs. ‘On that front I thought I’d have a lot of explaining to do.’
‘No, Meg did that.’ She sniffed happily, gulping on all the heady emotion surging through her. ‘She explained everything, bless her.’ Sybella pressed her temple to his bent one. ‘I’m just so happy you’re here.’
He dropped down on both knees in front of her and she heard Meg give a very un-Meg-like gasp of excitement some distance away.
‘Sybella Frances Parminter, will you marry me?’
Sybella’s face lit up with a smile she felt from her toes to her fingertips. ‘Yes, of course I will.’
