Tangled Destinies

‘No. I’d rather you didn’t,’ she agreed with enough frost injected in her voice to burn peach-blossom.

Strength, suppleness, stamina. She thought of the ease with which he’d lifted her when they’d met outside the castle and then more wistfully of the occasions in the past when he’d tossed her in the air to banish her tears. He’d barely tolerated her following him on his lonely walks like a devoted puppy. Yet if ever she got stuck in a bog on the moorland or fell into the river he’d always be there, whisking her up, tending to her injuries and heaving her on his shoulder with a half-irritated, half-amused sigh and bearing her back to where her sisters played together, oblivious to her adventures.

But she’d been younger then and it was before his domination of the Evans family had begun in earnest. Which reminded her.

‘Are you here to make trouble?’ she persisted, while he jiggled a heavy iron key in the brass lock of a room labelled ‘Madách’.

‘Of course!’ he said airily, as if that went without saying. ‘Ring a few bells, expose old wounds to the air——’

‘Break a heart or two,’ she ventured apprehensively.

He paused and thought for a moment. ‘Break into one, perhaps,’ he acknowledged slowly and she felt her spine become a pillar of ice at the thought of the vulnerable Lisa and her dear, lovesick brother. ‘You’re honoured. I have a feeling this is one of the best rooms in the hotel,’ István went on in a conversational tone and opening the door, ‘because it’s named after a famous writer——’

‘Whose heart?’ she said huskily, not interested in a lecture on Hungarian notables.

There was a brief silence while he appeared to be considering his words. In placing her cases on the rack provided a raven lock of hair fell on to his high, smooth forehead. Tanya almost reached out to lift it back in an affectionate, sisterly gesture but clenched her fist instead, recognising angrily that he was deliberately spinning out his answer to torment her.

Nervously she strolled around the spacious room, pretending to be admiring the period furniture: the heavy four-poster bed with its fairy-tale stack of duvets and outsize pillows, fit for any Princess and the Pea illustration; the polished floorboards; the expensive white silk drapes at the high floor-length windows. Lavish was the only word that described it all. John’s prospects would be wonderful if it weren’t for István.

‘Whose heart?’ she repeated harshly, unable to bear the wait any longer. This was like pulling teeth!

‘That rather depends on how many bells I get to ring. Some people,’ said István in a voice so rich with sensuality that she was forced to grip the swagged bed-curtains to stop herself from turning around, ‘hide their feelings with such success that no one knows whether they’re in anguish inside or merely wondering if it’s going to rain. Others opt for the danger of total openness——’

‘Not you,’ she whispered, attempting to control the rapid beat of her pulses by breathing deeply. Odd how nervous she was, she reflected.

‘No. Not me,’ agreed István, coming to stand inches away from her and sending her pulses haywire again. His eyes glowed as dark and as warm as a black stallion’s coat. ‘I play my cards close to my chest till I know I can come up trumps.’

Disconcerted, she moved to her cases and flipped them open. ‘Some would question whether you had a heart at all,’ she muttered.

He’d broken the hearts of their father, mother, Lisa and herself as if no blood, no ties bound them together. Only her sisters, bound up in each other, had been partly protected from István’s brutal determination to dominate and crush everyone around him.

‘Is it broken?’ he enquired softly.

For a moment, fooled by his sympathetic tone, she thought he’d meant her heart. She spun around so fast in alarm that she teetered briefly on her high heels, and he reached out to save her from falling.

‘Take your hands off me!’ she rasped, horrified by the electric shock that had passed through her. Why? Why? she thought frantically.

‘OK, I apologise for saving you from landing on your neat little bottom!’ he drawled. ‘I merely thought you’d want to preserve that oh-so-dignified, nose-in-the-air haughtiness you’ve acquired. Is it broken?’ he murmured. ‘Have I…cracked it?’

He was laughing at her! Deep in the molten pools of his damnable eyes she could see glints of amusement! And once again there was a wealth of meaning in his words. More than she could fathom. ‘If you mean my present to Lisa, no, it isn’t.’

‘I’m glad. Want to know what I’m giving her?’ he asked with a sinister, iazy drawi.

At the implication, her heart seemed to stop beating and then it roared into life again, double-quick, as a protest. ‘No!’

‘It’s not silk underwear.’

Clenching her teeth, she said through them, ‘I should hope not! Stop hinting that you’re going to stir up trouble!’

‘You used to be so intensely curious. Are you indifferent to what I’m giving Lisa, or afraid I’ll say something you don’t want to hear?’ he asked, satin-smooth.

‘Indifferent,’ she lied angrily. ‘And I should have thought that even you would have had the good taste not to give Lisa and John a present. They won’t want to be reminded of you during their marriage. And while we’re about it, it’s tactless in the extreme for you to lurk about at a time like this—rather like a spectre at a wedding feast!’

Glittering lights danced from under his lowered lashes. ‘You think I should leave before I do any harm?’

‘Yes,’ she bit out.

‘Ask me nicely.’

She checked a rude retort. This was her chance to plead on behalf of the young lovers. ‘I——’ She bit into her full lower lip. The plea stuck in her throat.

‘Beg me,’ he drawled lazily. ‘I’d love to see that pride of yours dented with humility. It might remind you of your more appealing gentleness when you were more——’

‘Malleable?’ she suggested icily. ‘Good grief, István! All you want is for women to be obedient and adoring! Everyone has to play second fiddle to you, don’t they? Just because I don’t——’

‘Follow me like a dog?’ he supplied helpfully.

She coloured up angrily, her mouth grim. ‘Any flash young man who can do circus tricks on horseback would gather admirers, especially in a sleepy village like Widecombe-in-the-Moor in deepest Devon!’ she cried hotly. ‘As soon as I learnt discrimination, I realised that anyone who tried to go further than skin-deep with you would find that there wasn’t anyone at home!’

‘Amusing, acerbic, bitchy. Quite a change from the Tanya I knew, the woman beneath. What’s making you so vicious?’ he said in quiet disapproval.

‘Bitterness,’ she rasped. I hate myself! she thought helplessly. What’s happening to me? What’s he doing to me?

‘It’ll ruin you,’ he said shortly. ‘Take it from one who knows. Feel it by all means, then put it aside and get on with your life. I don’t like——’

Tanya let her eyes harden. ‘Good,’ she said miserably, wanting to be the exact opposite of anything he liked. ‘Suits me. You want to know what’s changed me? In a nutshell, you!’ The words began to flow again; everything she’d felt and thought over the years and had been ashamed to admit. ‘I can’t bear the way I feel, I wish I could change, but you’ve soured my life and made me bitter!’ she cried jerkily.

‘Then tell me how,’ he breathed, his face hard, his body tense.

Her chin lifted high. ‘I became bitter when Mother died. She was distraught when you vanished. I don’t need to point out the connection with you and her death again, do I?’

‘She knew where I’d gone,’ he said gently.

Tanya rounded her eyes in outraged disbelief. ‘What?’

‘She knew,’ he repeated firmly. ‘And you must be careful about jumping to conclusions as far as her death was concerned. You see, Tanya, she was dying when I left her.’

His compassionate expression at her stunned reaction hit her with a knee-weakening force, making it hard for her to collect her thoughts. ‘No!’ she wailed. ‘If that were true, it means she told you—but not us…!’ Her voice trailed into nothing. A nagging thought had struck her. If true, this would be another secret he alone had shared. Tanya felt deeply hurt that her mother might have put her trust only in him.

‘Ester didn’t want to burden any of you with her illness till it was impossible to hide it any longer. At the time I left, she was dying of cancer and it was too late for surgery,’ he continued relentlessly. ‘Now you must realise that I couldn’t have known the cause of death unless she’d told me before I left. I never saw her again, did I?’

‘Lisa could have told you——’ she said, desperate to prove him wrong.

‘No,’ he said quietly, and something in his eyes convinced her.

Tanya pressed a hand hard against her cheek to ease the pain there. ‘Father didn’t know till almost the last week—none of us did! Why on earth would she confide in you?’ she croaked.

‘To persuade me to stay.’