Louise Fuller – Vows Made in Secret (страница 4)

The anaesthetic of shock and bewilderment was starting to wear off and she felt a sudden stabbing surge of irritation. Okay, it was awkward and stressful for both of them to be thrown together like this, but surely she had a far greater reason to be upset than him? Surely she deserved some answers here? Her lip curled. In fact, how could he just stand there and not offer one word of explanation?

Glancing at his expressionless face, she gritted her teeth. Quite easily, it would appear. Her chest tightened. He hadn’t changed a bit. He was still putting the onus on her to resolve everything. As though he were a witness rather than a central protagonist in what was happening.

‘Pretending I’m not here isn’t going to make this go away!’ she said slowly. Willing herself to stay as cool as she sounded, she lifted her chin and met his gaze. ‘We need to sort this out.’

Laszlo stared at her. ‘“Sort this out”?’ he echoed softly. His mouth tightened as he suppressed a humourless laugh. There was nothing to sort out! Except out of which door he would throw her! ‘Is that what we need to do?’ His eyes met hers. ‘So. You’re Seymour’s replacement?’ he said coolly.

Heart thumping against her ribcage, Prudence nodded. Keeping her eyes straight ahead, she cleared her throat. ‘And you’re Mr de Zsadany’s grandson!’

She fell silent and waited for his answer. But he did nothing more than nod. Turning her head, she clenched her fists: the words incorrigible and impossible were ricocheting inside her brain. Was that it, then? No explanations. Not one word to acknowledge the impact and implication of those words.

As though reading her mind, Laszlo sighed. His eyes looked through her and past her as he spoke. ‘My mother was Zsofia Almasy de Zsadany. She was Janos’s daughter and only child.’

It was like hearing a marble statue speak and her heart flinched at the chill in his voice.

‘She met my father, Istvan, when she was sixteen. He was seventeen, a Kalderash Roma. Both their families opposed the match but they loved each other so much that nothing could keep them apart.’

His eyes gleamed and she felt a jolt of pain at the accusatory barb of his words.

‘They were married and I was born nine months later.’

Prudence stared at him numbly. Who was this Laszlo? And what had he been doing living in a shabby trailer in England? Had he been rebelling? Or estranged from the de Zsadanys? Her head was swimming with questions. From knowing next to nothing about him she suddenly had so much information she could hardly take it all in. But her heart contracted as she realised that even the small things he had shared with her had been half-truths.

‘Why were you there? In England, I mean?’

He frowned. ‘After my parents died I spent time with both my families. My grandfather wanted me to go to school. To be educated. So I stayed in Hungary during term-time, and in the holidays I went and visited my father’s family, wherever they happened to be living.’ His eyes gleamed remorselessly. ‘I wanted to be loyal to both my mother and my father.’

She forced herself to meet his gaze. ‘I see,’ she said slowly. ‘But you didn’t want to be open and honest with me?’ She felt a sudden rise in tension as his eyes slid slowly and assessingly over her rigid frame.

‘No. I did not,’ he said finally.

Prudence gaped at him, her pledge to stay calm and detached now completely forgotten. ‘Didn’t you think it might have been better, not to say fairer, to share the whole truth with me?’ she said furiously. ‘You know—the fact that your grandfather was one of the richest men in Europe? And that you lived in a castle surrounded by priceless works of art?’

He looked away from her and shrugged. Prudence felt almost giddy with rage. How dare he just stand there and shrug at her? As if it didn’t matter that he’d lied to her. As if she didn’t matter.

‘What difference would it have made?’ he said flatly. ‘There were lots of facts you didn’t know about me—why focus on that one?’ His face twisted. ‘Unless, of course, it wasn’t the truth you wanted to share. Maybe there were other things you’d have liked to share. Like my grandfather’s money.’

The breath seemed to snarl up in her throat. ‘How can you say that?’ She stepped towards him, her body shaking with anger. ‘How can you even suggest—?’ Her head was spinning, nerves humming with rage and frustration. ‘Don’t you dare try and twist this, Laszlo. You lied to me!’

Laszlo’s face was suddenly as pale and rigid as bone and she had to curl her fingers into her hands to stop herself from flinching at the hostility in his eyes.

‘I didn’t lie,’ he said coldly. ‘I am half-Romany and I did live in a trailer.’

‘Oh, that’s okay, then,’ Prudence said sarcastically. ‘Maybe it was your other half. The half that lived in a castle. Perhaps he lied to me?’

Anger was bubbling up inside her, her breath burning her throat. She wasn’t the one who’d lied about who she was. She winced as her nails dug into her skin. Had he actually told her the truth about anything?

Laszlo met her gaze. ‘You believed what you wanted to believe.’

Prudence shook her head in disbelief. ‘I believed what you encouraged me to believe,’ she said furiously. ‘There’s a difference.’

There was a dangerous silence and then his eyes narrowed.

‘You’re missing the point, Prudence. It doesn’t matter what someone believes if they don’t have faith.’ His voice was ragged, frayed with a bitterness she had never heard before. ‘Without that it’s all just words.’

She sucked in a breath. ‘Yes, it is. Your words. The lies you told me.’ Her heart was pounding; her hands were tight fists against her sides. ‘Don’t try and turn this into some philosophical debate, Laszlo. I’m upset because you lied to me and you took away my choices.’

‘So now we’re even,’ he said coldly.

CHAPTER TWO

SHE STARED AT him blankly. Even? Even!

‘What that’s supposed to mean?’ She flung the words at him, wishing they were sticks or stones or better still bricks. But he didn’t reply. Instead he made an impatient sound and she watched helplessly as his face closed tight like a trap. Her muscles were aching with the effort of not picking up a lamp and beating him to death with it. How could he do that? Just switch off in the middle of a conversation and take himself outside of it?

Feeling a familiar cold, paralysing panic, she wrapped her arms around herself. But of course she didn’t need him to answer anyway. She knew exactly what he was talking about.

An undertow of defiance tugged at her frustration and slowly she shook her head. ‘No, Laszlo. If you’re talking about the fact that I ended our relationship, then we are not even. Not even close to being even.’

Her whole body was suddenly shaking and she wrapped her arms more tightly around herself. Walking away from Laszlo and from her romantic hopes and dreams had been hard—one of the hardest things she’d ever done—and it had taken every ounce of willpower she’d had. But if he’d wanted to, if he’d wanted her, he could have stopped her; she’d given him every chance to change her mind. Only he’d barely uttered a word when she’d told him that she was leaving him. Certainly not the sort she’d craved. He’d let her go and that had been his choice.

A sudden, suffocating misery reared up inside her as, with a shudder, she remembered just how cold and unapproachable he’d been.

She stood rooted to the spot, numbed and struck dumb at her own stupidity. No wonder he’d been so secretive—smuggling her into his trailer and carefully sidestepping her requests to meet his family. Fool that she was, she’d been too dizzy with love, too in thrall to the way her body had softened and transformed beneath his touch, to wonder why. Besides, she’d been flattered at the start, at least, for she’d believed that he wanted her all to himself. He’d stolen her heart and her virginity in quick succession and all the while he’d been living a lie.

She looked at him wearily. But why did this lie matter, really? After all, she couldn’t change the past. Or change the fact that he hadn’t loved her enough to fight for her. Her mouth twisted. This discussion was a dead end. There was no point in trying to talk about their relationship now: it was seven years too late. And besides, she had a new life now. Maybe not the one she’d been hoping for, but a good life, and she wasn’t about to let him pick up her world and smash it to smithereens.

Her pulse fluttered into life and she glanced at the door, wishing she could go back in time to the moment before she’d walked through it. And then, with a start, she remembered that even if that had been possible it simply wasn’t an option. Edmund needed this job. That was why she had come to Hungary. And she needed to focus on that fact and not get sidetracked into a post-mortem of her romantic past.

She took a calming breath. The cataloguing was more important than her feelings. Not that she had any feelings for Laszlo any more. At least not any that should get in the way of what was essentially a job like any other. Their relationship was history and, while clearly she would never have chosen to meet him again, let alone work with him, there was no reason not to treat him like any other client—albeit one who was difficult, bordering on the socially inept.