The Dutiful Wife

‘It is wonderful to see you so happy, Giselle,’ her great-aunt had said. ‘There was a time when I worried that you would deny yourself the happiness of loving and being loved in return, and I can’t tell you how much it means to me to see you so loved and so loving. I am proud of you, my dear, for all that you have had to overcome. When I asked you on your wedding day if you had told Saul everything I was so relieved, I can admit to you now, when you said that you had.’

Giselle had smiled and kissed her great-aunt but, like a thorn in soft flesh, her guilt had festered inside her as she drove home to London. It hadn’t been necessary to tell Saul the ‘everything’ her great-aunt had referred to; there had been no point in releasing the private fear she had locked away. It wasn’t relevant any more, and she’d been afraid of what Saul might think, of it changing things between them, stealing her happiness from her as it had done all those years ago.

She hadn’t truly deceived Saul. He loved her as she was. And, secure in his love and his promise to her, she was never going to change. She would always be as she was now. She would always be safe.

‘Come back. I hate it when you close down on me and go wherever it is that you won’t let me go with you.’

Saul’s soft words shocked her, prompting her to deny it immediately. ‘I wasn’t closing down on you, and there’s nowhere I would want to go without you.’

Saul watched her. He loved her so much that the force of his love for her still sometimes stunned him and caught him off guard. Perhaps it was the intensity of that love that made him so acutely aware of even the most minor changes in her mood.

‘You were thinking about your parents, your family,’ he told her. ‘I can always tell, because when you do your eyes change colour and darken to the intensity of those green malachite columns we saw in the royal palaces of St Petersburg.’

‘My great-aunt said how happy she was for me because I have you in my life,’ Giselle told him truthfully, adding emotionally, ‘I think I would die of the pain if I was ever to lose you. It would be more than I could bear.’

‘You will never lose me,’ Saul told her as he took her in his arms. ‘There is no power on this earth that could come between us.’

They made love again in the deepest hours of the night, their lovemaking slow and sensual this time, a journey of a thousand deliberately lingered over and enjoyed individual caresses that made up their own encyclopaedia of very private pleasure. As they built step by step, touch on touch, the fire that consumed them both set them free from mortality for a few precious seconds of perfect unity.

Afterwards Giselle lay in Saul’s arms, secure and at peace, floating in the mood of heightened euphoria that came with the aftermath of emotional and sexual fulfilment, falling asleep held safe within his love.

Saul was just drying himself off after his shower when his mobile rang, the sound causing him to frown. He had given his PA Moira instructions that he was not to be disturbed during this precious week he and Giselle had snatched from the busy needs of their lives other than in the most urgent and important of circumstances.

Giselle heard the ring of Saul’s mobile from their bed, still warm from Saul’s body and their early-morning relaxed and tender lovemaking. Through the voile curtains she could see sunshine dancing on the water of the infinity pool they had swum in the previous night. She could hear the rise and fall of Saul’s voice from the adjoining dressing room, but was too relaxed and drowsy to concentrate on what he was saying—so it was a shock when he came into the bedroom, his hair still damp, a towel wrapped round his hips, with an expression on his face that had her stomach churning with the anticipation of bad news even before he told her.

‘We’ve got to get back to London asap. There’s been an accident. The full details aren’t known yet, but it seems that Aldo and Natasha and her father have been the victims of an assassination attempt by one of Natasha’s father’s business rivals. There was a bomb in the car in which they were all traveling. Aldo had told me that they were going to England to look at a property Natasha’s father wanted to buy there—a big country estate. Natasha and her father are dead, but Aldo is still alive. He’s in hospital in Bristol. Moira’s arranged for us to be picked up here by helicopter and taken to Barbados, where there’ll be a private jet waiting for us. The helicopter should be here within the hour.’

Horrified, Giselle was already out of bed, going to Saul to hold him tightly as she told him, ‘I’m so sorry—I’ll get ready. It won’t take me long.’

She knew how fond he was of his cousin, even though they lived such vastly different lives, and as she dressed and packed she prayed that Aldo would be all right. Poor Aldo. He was the most gentle and kind of men, and deserved a far more appreciative wife than Natasha. Giselle shivered, as she remembered what Saul had said. Aldo no longer had a wife. Natasha was dead.

She and Saul had just finished packing their cases when they heard the sound of a helicopter arriving. One of the golf-type buggies the complex supplied for its visitors to get around on was already waiting outside their villa. The breakfast they had been served when Saul had rung Reception to tell them that they were leaving remained untouched apart from the cup of coffee Giselle had poured for Saul—black and strong, his weakness and only addiction apart from her, as he was fond of saying.

During the flights from the complex to Barbados, and from there to Heathrow and then on again by helicopter to the hospital in Bristol—the nearest specialist hospital to the scene of the accident—Saul talked about his cousin and Giselle listened. She had met Aldo, of course. Giselle and Saul had first become lovers during a trip to Arezzio when she had accompanied Saul there as an architect seconded to his company by the practice he had been employing with regard to a new hotel complex.

Aldo was nothing like Saul. Where Saul was ruthlessly masculine and charismatically sexy, Aldo was self-effacing, an aesthete and a dreamer. Natasha, Aldo’s Russian wife, had tried to convince Giselle that the reason Saul had sworn never to have children was because he resented the fact that his child could never inherit the role of Grand Duke of Arezzio. Saul, though, had made it plain that his reasons for wanting to remain childfree were based on his own childhood and the fact that his parents had been absent from it and from him, nothing else, and Giselle had seen that he was speaking the truth. Aldo loved the quiet backwater that was his small country, and had been grateful for the help that Saul had given him with its finances. A small price to pay, Saul had told Giselle, for the freedom he had to live his life the way he wished to live it because his father had been the younger and not the elder brother.

Giselle might not have liked Natasha but she would never have wished her dead—and especially not in such a dreadful manner.

The drips of information relayed to Saul whilst they travelled had told them only that because Aldo had been sitting in the front passenger seat of the chauffeur-driven car he had been spared the worst of the blast, but Natasha and her father had died at the scene of the accident.

‘Natasha’s father’s business methods were murky, to say the very least,’ Saul told Giselle. ‘It’s very clear that his deals have made him enemies, and many powerful people do not approve of what he’s done whilst accumulating his fortune. And it’s my fault that Aldo met Natasha.’

‘Aldo married Natasha of his own free will,’ said Giselle, trying to comfort him, reaching for his hand as their helicopter put down in a cleared area close to the hospital.

‘And now she’s dead. Aldo will be devastated. He adored her.’

A senior policeman was waiting to escort them to the hospital, answering Saul’s anxious question about his cousin with a grim, ‘He’s alive, but badly injured. He’s been asking for you.’

Saul nodded his head. ‘And the incident?’

‘We haven’t spoken to him about it as yet. The fact that the car was to some extent bullet-proof tells us something about Mr Petranovachov’s lifestyle and his feelings about his personal safety—bullet-proof but unfortunately not bomb-proof.’

They had reached the hospital entrance now, and were quickly and discreetly whisked down corridors and eventually into an antiseptically clean and sparsely furnished waiting room adjacent to the private part of the hospital, where the Chief Inspector handed them over to a dark-suited consultant, accompanied by what Giselle guessed must be a senior-ranking nurse.

‘My cousin?’ Saul asked again.

‘Conscious and eager to see you. But I should warn you that his injuries are extremely severe.’

Giselle looked anxiously at Saul, and said, ‘If you want me to come with you…’

Saul shook his head. ‘No. You stay here.’

‘I’ll have a hot drink sent in for you,’ the consultant told Giselle, before turning to Saul. ‘Staff Nurse Peters here will show you to your cousin’s room. I’m afraid I can’t allow you to have more than a few minutes with him. We’ve patched him up temporarily, but we need to sedate and stabilise him before we can operate and tidy up the mess made by the bomb.’

The mess made by the bomb. What exactly did that mean? Giselle worried once she was on her own. She hadn’t liked Natasha, but her violent death had reawakened her own memories of the violent deaths of her mother and her baby brother, whom she had witnessed being hit by a lorry. For years she had carried the guilt of being alive when they had died, after sharp words from her mother had resulted in her holding back when she had started to cross the road with the pram. That holding back had saved her life—and filled it with guilt. Only Saul’s love had enabled her to come to terms with the trauma of the accident.

Poor Natasha. No matter how selfish and unpleasant she had been, she had not deserved such a cruel fate.

In the hospital room Saul looked down at his cousin, wired up to machines that clicked and whirred, his head bandaged and his body still beneath the sheets.

‘He’s lost both legs,’ the nurse had told Saul before she opened the door to the room, ‘and there’s some damage to his internal organs.’

‘Is he…? Will he survive?’ Saul had asked her.

‘We shall do our best to ensure that he does,’ she had answered crisply, but Saul had seen the truth and its reality in her eyes.

His vision blurred as he looked at Aldo. His cousin had always been so accommodating, so gentle and good.

‘You’re here. Knew you’d come. Been waiting.’

The words, though perfectly audible, were dragged out and slow. Aldo lifted his hand, and Saul took it between his own as he sat down next to the bed. Aldo’s flesh felt cold and dry. The word lifeless sprang into Saul’s mind but he pushed it away.

‘Want you to promise me something.’

Saul gritted his teeth. If Aldo was going to ask him to look after Natasha in the event of his death then he was going to nod his head and agree, and not tell him that she was dead. Aldo adored his wife, even though in Saul’s mind she was not worthy of that love.

‘Anything,’ he told Aldo, and meant it.

‘Want you to promise that you will look after our country and its people for me, Saul. Want you to take my place as its ruler. Want you to promise that you will secure its future with an heir. Can’t break the family chain. Duty must come first…’

Saul closed his eyes. Ruling the country was the last thing he wanted, and he had always felt confident that he would never have to do so. Aldo was younger than him, after all, and married. He had assumed that Aldo and Natasha would produce children to succeed to the title.

And as for Saul himself producing an heir…That was the last thing he wanted to do. He did not want children and neither did Giselle. For both of them what they had experienced during their own childhoods had left them determined not to have children of their own. That shared decision had forged a very strong bond between them—a bond that was all the stronger because they knew that other people would find it hard to understand. Only with one another had they been able to talk about the pain of their childhoods and the vulnerabilities that pain still caused them.

How could he discuss all of that now, though, when his cousin was dying and with his final breath asking him for his help—and his promise?

What was he to do? Refuse Aldo’s dying plea?