The Dark Side of Desire (16 page)

‘How … how did you find it?’ she faltered.

Her first joy at seeing Leon—the rush of pleasure in running into his arms—had gone. When he had put her aside it had been like a douche of cold water. Now she realised that she had no idea how it was he came to be here.

He doesn’t know anything about Harford! Doesn’t even know it exists, let alone that I live here!

Yet here he was, standing right in front of her. And with an expression on his face that was sending cold all the way through her.

‘The courier company you used to fetch your passport gave me the address,’ he said.

His voice was distant. Dark eyes rested on her. She could not read their expression, and that of itself made the chill in her veins deepen.

‘Why didn’t you tell me about Harford, Flavia? Why the big secret?’

She swallowed. ‘I … I was going to tell you,’ she began, then could go no further.

‘But you didn’t, did you? Did you think it would scare me off?’

Before his doggedly impassive gaze he could see a dull flush stain her face. Revealing to him that he had hit home.

The knife twisted in him again.

His eyes swivelled away—it seemed easier than watching her colour in front of him, betraying herself. He looked about him.

‘It’s a gem of a place,’ he said slowly. It was, too—a flawless example of a miniature country house, at one with its landscaped gardens, a beautiful, peaceful haven from the world.

He thought of his own upbringing in the fetid, rat-infested
favela
—an ocean away from here! Oh, Flavia Lassiter came from a different world—a different universe! Bitterness filled him, and anger, and a deep, numbing cold that iced all the way through him.

All masked an emotion that went much, much deeper. That bored into him with every twist of that knife in his side.

Flavia was speaking, her voice low and faltering. He made himself listen, made his gaze go back to her, though her image seemed to burn on his retinas. Her beauty assaulted him. She was dressed as soberly as she had been in London: her narrow skirt black, her neat high-necked blouse lavender, a jet brooch at the collar, her hair back in its chignon, her face bereft of make-up. There were dark circles under her eyes, he noted with a strange pang, as if she were not sleeping well.

He thrust the observation aside, making himself listen to what she was saying so haltingly. Was she trying to find words to counter that revealing flush? Was that it? His jaw tightened.

‘… so sorry. I’m so very sorry I left you like that. But—’

He held up a hand, silencing her. ‘I understand the reason,’ he said.

Urgent family matters
—and now he knew just what those were …

She looked puzzled. ‘You do?’

‘Yes. It’s very simple, after all.’ His voice was expressionless. ‘You didn’t bother to wait for me in Palma because by then you knew there was no need to. Your father had already contacted you about the new white knight he’d flown off to have discussions with. So there was no reason to hang around with me any more, was there? It wasn’t
me
who was going to save his skin—or this place. So you could dispense with me—which you very promptly did.’

She had gone pale. White as a sheet. Leon could feel his emotions lash through him like the tip of a whip.

‘What?’

Her astonishment was convincing. Very convincing.

But not to him. It only made him angry—like a wounded jaguar.

‘Are you going to try and deny it?’ he retorted.

‘Yes! Of course I am!’

‘And what else are you doing to try and deny?’

‘What do you mean?’ Her voice was hollow, strained.

‘Tell me—what was my main attraction to you, Flavia? What made you stop totally ignoring my calls and get in touch with me? Accept my invitations?’ He paused. A deadly pause. ‘Have an affair with me …?’

Her eyes were wide, so wide, as she made herself answer. Emotion was storming through her. Making it hard to speak. Impossible to think.

‘Because … because I couldn’t say no to you …’

Leon’s gaze speared her. ‘Really? Or because you couldn’t
risk
saying no to me …’

That flush came again—a fateful, betraying dull flaring of colour staining her cheekbones. Staining her conscience.

‘I have to explain.’ It was a whisper. A plea.

‘Do you? I don’t see why. Your father gave me all the explanation I need.’ His voice was chill.

Her expression stilled. ‘What did my father say to you?’

Now it was her voice that was chill. Leon’s face hardened. ‘He said quite a lot.’

Flavia’s chin lifted. A cold pit had formed in her stomach. ‘What did he tell you?’

What lies has he fed you—and why are you believing them?

She wanted to shout the words at him—but the cold inside her was taking over, freezing through her veins. Paralysing her.

Leon’s level gaze never left her face. ‘He said that you were determined to hang on to this place—whatever you had to do to keep it.’

She opened her mouth, then closed it again. Leon’s eyes were like the talons of a hawk, tearing into her. Cruel and pitiless.

He was speaking again, and she had to force herself to hear him through her faintness.

‘You wanted to keep me sweet so I would be likely to bail out your father. Until your father told you he didn’t need me any more—then you didn’t either. So you left me.’

She shook her head violently. ‘No!
No
—Leon—listen. That wasn’t why I left!’

She stepped forward, as if to cling to him, but his hands closed over her elbows like a vice. Holding her away from him. His face was dark like thunder.

‘Don’t lie to me!’

‘Leon—listen to me—
please
!’

‘No—
you
listen to
me
. I have one question—
one question
—and it’s a very simple one.’ His eyes skewered into hers,
like stakes. ‘Did you or did you not finally answer my calls to you and agree to go out with me because I was going to rescue your father’s company? Just tell me the truth—yes or no?’

Her mouth opened—then closed. Her face worked.

‘Leon, I have to
explain
—’ She tried to speak but her throat was closed, stricken. Guilt and shame washed through her.

He thrust her back, letting her go, and she swayed.

‘No.’ His voice was cold, and hard as steel. ‘You
don’t
have to explain. Was it to save this place that you came to me? Because I was going to bail out your father? Yes or no?’

‘Leon—please,
please—
’

‘You don’t deny what I’ve asked—that means it’s true. Isn’t it?
Isn’t it
?’

She could feel her teeth start to chatter. ‘Leon, please …’ Her voice was a whisper again, forced out past the agonisingly tight cords of her throat.

His hands on her elbows was like a vice. ‘Tell me it isn’t true. Just tell me that. Yes—no. Very, very simple.’

Her face was working. She was trying to speak. But she was powerless to do so. Powerless to give the answer she so desperately wanted to give him …

‘Yes or no?’ His voice was remorseless, his face implacable.
‘Yes or bloody no, Flavia?’

‘I … I …’ She could get no further. Her eyes were anguished, guilt and shame convulsing her.

Something changed in his face. ‘Your silence gives me the answer.’ His voice was dead. He dropped his grip on her.

‘Leon,
please
—let me explain—’ She reached a hand towards him—begging. She had to find a way—she had to tell him, explain … confess.

But he’d turned away from her, was walking away from her. She watched him go—helpless, stricken. At the edge of the lawn he paused, looking back at where she stood, frozen.

‘There’s a word for you, Flavia, for what you did. What you were prepared to do.’ He looked around him again for a
moment, taking in all the tranquil beauty of the house and its sun-filled gardens, then back at her, his gaze slicing her open, lacerating her. ‘And it doesn’t matter whether you were doing it to try and save this place, because whatever justification you try and come up with the answer is the same. The name for you is the same.’

He paused, and took a ragged, razored breath. ‘I would have given you the world—all I possessed. What we had …’ He paused again, then forced the words out. ‘What I thought we had was—’

He broke off. Then wordlessly he turned, and strode out across the lawn, back into the waiting helicopter.

The rotors started to turn.

Like a giant bird of prey it lifted off into the air.

Leaving her carrion carcass far below.

Somehow—she didn’t know how—Flavia stumbled indoors. Got herself inside her bedroom and threw herself down on her bed. Distraught, fevered sobs seemed to crack her ribs and rack her throat, convulse her whole body.

How long they lasted she didn’t know—couldn’t tell. She only knew that when they had finally emptied her out she could only lie there, staring at the ceiling, feeling as drained and hollowed out as an empty husk of rotten fruit.

Facing the truth. The bitter, shaming truth.

Leon had every right to accuse her—every right to despise her.

I should have told him the truth! I should have told him on Santera just what my father had done!

But she had been too ashamed to do so. Too fearful that Leon would despise her—too fearful that if he’d rejected her for what she’d stooped to then her father would have carried out his threat and taken Harford from her grandmother …

And fearful for more than that. Much, much more. As she lay, staring, tear-stained, up at the white blank ceiling, she faced the truth within her.

I was scared he would reject me for what I’d done—hate me for it. Hate me just when I was falling in love with him …

And now the truth had come out and he had done what she had feared so much. Thrust her from him, despising and condemning her.

And there was nothing she could do about it—because it was true. The truth had condemned her …

I’ve lost him and I can do nothing to win him back. Nothing. He’s condemned me—rejected me
.

Despair filled her.

He hates me now—he hates me and there’s nothing I can do to make him not hate me. Because what he accused me of is true
.

She could tell herself all she liked that she had had no choice but to collude with her father or he would have forced her grandmother to lose her home—that still didn’t take away what she had done to Leon. Deceived him and betrayed his trust in her.

In her head, anguished, she heard his voice, low and intense—’
I would have given you the world …’

She closed her eyes, feeling wave after wave of pain wash over her, crying his name in her head.

On leaden limbs she dragged herself up, forced herself to go downstairs. Out in the garden, the sun had long gone, and twilight was gathering in the shadows. Limply she sat down on a bench looking out over the silent lawns. How often had she seen her grandparents, sitting here, hand in hand, looking out over the gardens? They had loved each other deeply. With needle pain she envied them with all her heart.

Now they were both gone, and only she was left. She had lost them, one by one, and now she had lost the man she knew she loved.

She did not cry—there were no tears left to weep. Instead she heard a small, anguished voice inside her cry out.

What am I to do—what am I to do?

And as she sat it was as if she could hear inside her head the calm, wise voice of her grandmother.

‘When you wrong someone, child, you must put it right.’

She gazed out over the place she loved most on earth. The place she had tried to protect for her grandmother’s sake. But her grandmother did not need her home any more.

The cry from her heart pierced Flavia.

But I need it! I need it—I love it so much and it’s all I have left! I’ve lost everything else—only this is left to me! Only this!

Yet the voice in her head came again.
‘You must put it right, child—whatever it costs you. Then and only then can your conscience be clear again.’

Wind winnowed the hairs at the back of her neck. A last songbird called from the high bushes. The scent of roses caught at her.

‘You must put it right, child …’

She closed her eyes, hearing her grandmother’s voice, bowing her head. A strange kind of peace filled her. Then slowly, very slowly, she got to her feet and went back indoors. She had wronged Leon. And she had lost him. But she
would
put it right—the only way she could.

In her head his voice sounded again.
‘I would have given you the world …’

She did not have the world—but she knew what it was she must give
him
.

‘T
HERE
you go, Mrs Peters. That’s more comfortable, isn’t it?’

Flavia’s voice was cheerful, and she smiled down at the elderly lady in her bed, whose pillows she had just rearranged, even though Mrs Peters only went on staring ahead of her blankly. But that didn’t stop Flavia chatting away to her as she tended her the way she had her grandmother. Carefully she brushed her patient’s hair, gave her some sips from the glass of barley water on the bedside table, which Mrs Peters took docilely, if wordlessly.

Her tasks done for the moment, Flavia bade her patient a kindly leavetaking, and went out of the room. Time to look in on her next charge.

It wasn’t difficult work, though seeing elderly women so similar to her grandmother could make her heart ache with loss at times, but it took energy, and patience, and endless cheerfulness, and a great deal of kindness and consideration to look after her charges. Given all her experience caring for her grandmother, it had seemed the obvious work for her to do, and the job also had the huge benefit of providing live-in accommodation at a residential care home.

Just how long she would go on working here she wasn’t sure—she couldn’t think very far ahead yet. It was enough simply to have a steady job and something useful to do each day.

And to be far, far away from everywhere and everything she’d known. And everyone.

It was what she wanted. All that she could do right now. To get right away from her past and leave it all behind her. Eventually, she knew, she would feel strong enough to lift her head up from the daily round and try and think what to do with the rest of her life.

But that time hadn’t come yet, and in the meantime this was enough.

She was just about to go into the next room on the corridor when one of the other carers spotted her.

‘Oh, there you are. Someone phoned, asking about you.’

Flavia froze
. What on earth …?

Apart from her grandmother’s solicitors, no one knew she was here. Her eyes hardened. If her father were trying to contact her, using them to do so, he would not succeed. She would have nothing to do with him ever again. On that she was adamant. She was free of him now, and he would never harm or injure her again.

Not that he’d made any attempt to contact her before. She’d presumed he’d accepted he had no more hold over her and therefore he could not use her for his own purposes again. So she had ceased to exist for him. What he was up to these days she neither knew nor cared. Presumably Leon had bailed him out, and he was merrily sporting Anita—or her successor—wherever he wanted to be.

She walked down to the office and went inside.

‘Did they leave any message?’ she asked.

The other carer—Maria—shook her head. ‘They just wanted to know if you worked here,’ she told Flavia.

Flavia stiffened. ‘Did you tell them?’

‘Yes.’ The other woman nodded. ‘Shouldn’t I have?’

Flavia gave a quick smile. ‘No, that’s fine—don’t worry.’

But behind the smile she was frowning. Who could it have been if not her father?

She could feel her heart convulse. Heard a name leap in her head. Immediately she crushed it down.

It isn’t Leon! He won’t get in touch! I know he won’t! He’s got no reason to—none at all!

She would never see him again. She knew that. Accepted it. Had made herself accept it.

It’s over—completely over. I treated him shamefully and though I have tried to make amends, it cannot be mended. Because I can’t undo what I did to him. My father pimped me to him and I went along with it. It doesn’t matter why I did it—I did it. So all our time together was a lie! How could it have been anything else?

Anguish filled her. Well, she’d been punished for what she’d done. Punished in a way she had never foreseen. With a perfection of justice that was exquisite in its torment.

I went to him at my father’s bidding and my punishment was to fall in love with him—and for him to know what I’d done and hate me for it …

She was in love with a man who had every reason to hate her and despise her, and that was something she would have to live with from now on. Until surely, she prayed, love withered and died. For it must eventually—it must wither and die without nurture, without hope.

I made amends in the only way I could and I have to leave it at that. I have to
.

She took a razored breath, setting off back down the corridor to go on with her work. As she tended her next charge, washing and bathing her, helping her into fresh clothes, settling her comfortably once again, she almost she found herself envying her patients’ dissociation from the world. Wherever their minds were, they did not have to deal with the emotions that knifed through her so tormentingly. They had gone beyond emotion—gone beyond love …

Beyond loss.

Her hours at work passed swiftly enough, for there was never a shortage of things to do. It was a good care home,
Flavia knew, but seeing its inmates she also knew, with absolute conviction and certainty, that her grandmother would have hated it—however good the quality of care. She had only been contented at Harford—knowing somewhere in the depths of her silent mind that she was at home. Safe.

The knowledge was another layer of torment in the vortex that twisted constantly in her heart now.

I could only keep Gran at Harford by doing what I did to Leon—there was no other way. No other way
.

But, whatever the motive, the deed was the same. Shaming her. Damning her.

So I have to pay the price without complaint, without self-pity
.

‘Flavia!’

The sound of her name broke her reverie of misery. She looked up. Matron was beckoning her. Dutifully, Flavia went over to her.

‘You’ve got a visitor,’ Matron said. ‘Usually I don’t allow such things in working time, but on this occasion I will make an exception.’

There was the slightest ruffled look about her normally brisk manner, but before Flavia could speculate, Matron was ushering her inside her own inner sanctum, which she hadn’t been in since her original job interview nearly four months ago. But she had hardly got inside the doorway before she stopped dead. Frozen.

Leon was inside.

Her first reaction was disbelief, followed by a storm of emotions. She fought for control, clinging to the door handle for stability.

How on earth had he found her?

Had she spoken out loud? She must have, for he was answering her, his face set.

‘I bullied your solicitor into telling me.’

‘Why?’

‘Because he wouldn’t tell me willingly,’ he replied tersely.

Flavia shook her head as if to clear it. ‘No, I mean
why
did you want to know?’

Emotion flashed in his eyes. ‘You ask
why?
Did you think I wouldn’t want to track you down—find you—after your solicitors had been in touch with me?’

She was trying to get control back but her mind was all to pieces. She was speaking without thinking, without conscious volition. All her consciousness was on Leon’s presence here.

So close …

Every sense was leaping in her body, overwhelming her.

I thought I’d never see him again
.

But he was here—now—dragging her gaze to him so he dominated her vision, and she could see nothing else at all except Leon. She could feel her heart going like a sledgehammer, her legs weak with shock. With more than shock.

His face was stark, his cheekbones etched like knives.

‘You gave me Harford.’

His words fell into the silence. A silence she could not break. She could only stand there frozen, immobile, incapable of speech, or thought, or anything at all other than a reeling of her mind that he was here. Leon was here …

‘Why?’
His question bit into the air. ‘Why did you do it, Flavia?’

She took a ragged breath. ‘I had to do it.’

His face darkened. But she did not let him speak.

‘I had to do it because it was the only thing I
could
do. All I could think to do.’ She took another shuddering breath, her eyes anguished. ‘To try and make amends to you for what I did. For deceiving you. Using you. I behaved unforgivably—I know I did. And I am more sorry for my behaviour than you can ever know.’ She could hear her voice catch dangerously, and knew she had to plunge on. ‘Gifting Harford to you seemed to me all I could do to attempt to make amends,’ she said awkwardly. ‘It wasn’t actually much of a gift, because of the debts on the property, but I knew you would clear something
once they’d all been paid, and … and I didn’t have anything else to give you.’

‘Debts?’ His voice was blank.

‘Yes. I knew the taxman would want his share for death duties.’ She took a difficult breath. ‘And that the other claimant would have to be paid back, too.’

His dark eyes were levelled on her. Still expressionless. She bore their weight pressing down on her, trying not to collapse beneath it. She could feel the pulse at her throat throbbing.

Why had he come here? What for? She’d done what she could—all that she could!—to show him how much she regretted what she’d done to him at her father’s behest. So why had he tracked her down. Just to get her to spell it out to him like this?

‘The other claimant?’ His words echoed hers, but heavily, like stones. He paused. ‘You mean, of course, your father?’

Her lips pressed together again. ‘Yes, my father. I’m sorry about that, Leon, because it was a vast amount of money I owed him. But there was nothing I could do. The loan agreement was watertight. I had it checked, and there was no way I could get out of having to repay that final sum because of the rate of interest.’

‘The one set by your father?’ The same blank, heavy voice.

She nodded, swallowing. ‘Yes. I’m sorry.’

‘You’re sorry?’

He seemed to be echoing everything she said—echoing it as if each word weighed a ton.

‘Of course I’m sorry! That debt to him ate into the value of the house hideously.’

‘Yes, it did.’ He paused, and she felt the world still for a moment. Then he spoke again. His voice sounded distant, remote. ‘One might wonder,’ he said, ‘just why your father should have set such a rate of interest in the first place. Considering the loan was to his mother-in-law.’

‘He didn’t care for her,’ said Flavia.

‘So one might surmise, from the terms and conditions of
the loan,’ Leon commented. ‘Had she done something to injure him that he set such terms?’

‘No,’ she answered. ‘But there was no love lost between them.’

‘Evidently.’ Leon’s voice was dryer than the Sahara. ‘And yet one might think it reasonable to suppose—’ his voice was deadpan now ‘—that once his own daughter had inherited Harford that ruinous debt would be instantly lifted. Why would he want his own daughter to owe him money like that? What father would want that? What
devoted, loving
father? Because he is devoted to you, Flavia—he’s told me so himself! Several times! So devoted, he assured me, it was
his
money that kept Harford afloat!’

She didn’t answer. Couldn’t. His eyes were like weights on her, crushing her into the ground.

‘Except that it didn’t, did it? In fact it almost sank like a stone. That debt was hanging round your neck like a lead weight! The house you’d inherited after the death of your grandmother—who
died
, Flavia, forty-eight hours after you left Palma, whose funeral was the day I confronted you at Harford after what your father had told me—’

His voice was no longer dry. It was no longer expressionless. It was filled with a black, murderous rage.

‘You,’ he bit out, ‘are now going to tell me the truth! Finally and comprehensively. And you are
not
going to escape this—do you understand me? Because I have been through months of
hell
trying to find you, and I will not go through one more hour! Not
one
!’

She was staring wide-eyed, stricken. ‘Leon, please …’ Her voice was strained, low-pitched. ‘I’ve done what I can to make amends—it’s all I can do. I did what I did and I can’t undo it. I know it was unforgivable, and I hate myself for it, but giving you Harford seemed to me the only thing I could do! It was because of Harford that I did what I did, and handing it over to you seemed the only way to try and show you just
how sorry I am that I behaved as I did! It was shameful and despicable and dishonest, and you didn’t deserve it!’

He was looking at her. ‘And you did—you
did
deserve it? Is that what you’re telling me?’

There was something in his voice that told her he was keeping himself on a very tight leash. Then he shook his head, giving a short, rasping sound in his throat.

‘God Almighty, Flavia—why didn’t you just tell
me
?’ The question burst from him, tearing into his throat.

She could only go on staring, open mouthed. ‘Tell you what?’

He swore—she couldn’t understand the words, only hear the angry emotion.

‘Tell me just why you got back in touch with me after you’d left London! Tell me how your father was threatening to foreclose on you and sending over an estate agent to scare you! Tell me—’ his voice shook ‘—that you’d been nursing your grandmother, and how frail she was, and how you got called back from Palma because she was near death!
That’s
what you didn’t tell me—and I don’t know why the
hell
you didn’t!’

He took a sharp, biting breath. ‘And I don’t know why in
hell
you thought you had to gift me your home because you felt you
owed
it to me!’

She forced herself to her feet, forced her mouth to open. Forced herself to tell him. Spell it out for him.

‘Leon, I deliberately and calculatingly started an affair with you because I wanted to save Harford. Nothing can make that not true!
Why
I had to save Harford doesn’t matter! How can it? I used … sex—’ she stumbled over the word but made herself say it anyway ‘—to stop my father foreclosing on that nightmare loan he’d made to my grandmother, which he was using to make me do what he wanted: use
sex
to keep you sweet, just as you accused me of doing! He wanted the rescue package from you. He didn’t want anything jeopardising it—so if you wanted me in your bed, my God, he’d see to it that it happened!’