Page 56 of Forgotten Mistress, Secret Love-Child
Then, as he approached, Alessandro saw the way her hands gripped the arms of her chair, the stiffness in her small frame as she sat up. And in her eyes, what looked like shock.
‘You’re kidding.’ Even her voice sounded different. Light and breathless. ‘Why would you do that?’
He shrugged, refusing to put into words the suspicion that without such a financial incentive, she might one day walk out on Leo. And him.
‘You need to dress as befits my wife.’ Even to his own ears it sounded unconvincing. ‘But you know all about it. You signed the agreement before we married. That set it all out.’
The sight of her gaze sliding guiltily from his, the way her hands tightened even more till they resembled talons clawing at the padded chair arms, brought him up short.
Instinct honed over years of business dealings told him something was wrong. Something important. The hairs at his neck rose and he stilled.
‘Yes. Yes, I signed it.’
Alessandro’s gaze strayed from her mouth, distorted as she bit hard into her bottom lip, to her knees, now pressed up to her chest. She looked so vulnerable. What on earth?
Eventually he followed the direction of her stare, to her folded newspaper and glasses. It was a prestigious Englishlanguage paper, open at the international news. He recognised the large picture of the United Nations Secretary General in one corner.
The same page she’d been reading over half an hour ago when he’d arrived.
‘Carys?’ He took a step closer till she turned to face him. Her expression was closed, rigid with something that looked like fear.
‘What is it?’ He glanced again at the newspaper. It was impossible that, even with the noise in the pool distracting her, it could take so long to read a single page.
Then he remembered the way Carys had hesitated over some passport control forms as they’d travelled.
‘You did read the prenup,’ he said to himself as much as her. ‘I saw you.’ He watched her swallow, almost wincing as the motion looked so difficult.
‘I…started to.’ Still she didn’t face him. ‘But in the end I decided it was just saying I’d get nothing of yours if we divorced.’ She lifted her shoulders in a jerky shrug. ‘So I signed. I didn’t know anything about a big allowance.’
‘Liar,’ he whispered. ‘I saw you. You were reading the last page just before you signed.’
Her head whipped around and he saw high colour flag her cheeks. Yet her face was chalky pale.
An appalling notion smote him. An unbelievable one.
‘You can read, can’t you?’
Had she been sitting there all this time, pretending to examine an article that made no sense? His stomach plunged heavily as an alien emotion kicked him hard.
‘Of course I can read!’ She drew herself up straighter in her chair, eyes brilliant with fury. ‘How do you think I did my job if I couldn’t read? Just because I…’
‘Just because you…?’ Alessandro stepped forward to stand before her, hands planted akimbo.
He watched her wrap her hands around her bare legs, rocking forward in the age-old motion of someone seeking comfort.
‘I didn’t read your precious papers.’ She almost spat the words at him, they came out so fast. ‘I began to but I was exhausted and stressed and…’ She paused so long he thought she wouldn’t continue. ‘And I have dyslexia,’ she said on a surge of breath. ‘That’s why I wear tinted glasses; they help me focus. But sometimes, especially when I’m tired or when the text is a solid mass, it’s almost impossible to read, because whole lines keep disappearing and the words turn into a jumble. Legal papers are the worst.’
Silence. A silence ringing with the echo of her defiant tones.
Alessandro’s heart twisted in his chest as he saw what it had cost her to share the truth. He wanted to reach out and soothe the hurt so evident in her drawn features, but guessed his touch wouldn’t be welcome.
Her lips trembled into a heart-wrenching parody of a smile. ‘It’s not something I tell many people about.’
‘But you told me, didn’t you? When we were together before?’ He knew it, sensed it, even though he didn’t remember.
‘I…Yes. You knew. Of course you did.’
Of course he did.
They’d been that close, sharing secrets as well as passion. Once again Alessandro had that sickening sense of taking a step straight into a yawning abyss. His damned memory loss had robbed him of so much. Robbed them both.
He took a deep breath, trying to make sense of what Carys had revealed.
‘But you’re reading the international news page.’ In a paper renowned for in-depth, incisive journalism. It was no lightweight read.
