Thirty seconds ago this stranger hadn’t said any of this. That was where she wanted to be. Back in time.
Lara…dead?
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, and something inside her snapped.
‘I’m sorry too,’ she flung at him. ‘I’m sorry about this whole damned mess. I don’t believe any of it. You come here, in your outlandish, stupid costume, like you’re a king or something-which I don’t believe-with your stupid chauffeured car and your tame politician, and you stomp my ants and interfere with my work and tell me Lara is dead…’
‘Lara is dead.’
‘I don’t believe it.’
‘Will you come down?’
‘No.’ She made to pick the drill up again, but his voice cut through her confusion and her rage.
‘Miss Dexter, you need to face this. Your sister is dead. Will you come down from the tree, please?’
She flinched-and she thought about it.
For about three minutes she simply sat on her branch and stared down at him. He stared back, his face calm and compassionate.
It was a good face, she thought inconsequentially, and maybe that was another way of avoiding acceptance of what he’d just said. Kind. Strong. Determined. His eyes were calm and sure, promising that he spoke the truth.
She could accept or reject what he was telling her. His eyes said that the truth was here for the taking.
The minutes ticked on, and he had the sense to let her alone. To allow her time to believe. His face stayed impassive.
His eyes never wavered.
And finally she faced the inevitable. She believed him, she decided at last. Dreadfully, she believed him. Despite the incongruity of the situation-despite the craziness of what he was wearing and what he was saying-what he was telling her was the truth.
And with that knowledge came the first ghastly wash of pain. Her little sister…
Lara had wanted nothing to do with her for years. Lara and their mother lived in a world of their own that Tammy had nothing to do with, but for the first years of Lara’s life it had been Tammy who’d cared, who’d acted as a surrogate mother as far as a child could, because their own mother hadn’t known what was involved in the job of mothering. Before Lara was born Tammy had nothing. When Lara had become old enough to join forces with their mother she had nothing again. But for that short sweet while…
Lara was five years younger than Tammy. Twenty-two.
Lara was dead?
A vision of the little girl she’d loved and cuddled through her childhood lurched into her mind, and with it came a pain that was well nigh unbearable. The colour washed from her face and she put a hand on her branch to steady herself.
‘Come down,’ Marc said strongly, and Tammy took a deep breath and came to a decision. There was no going back. She had to face it.
She swung her legs over the branch, adjusted the harness and slid down.
She came down too fast.
Tammy had been abseiling up and down trees since she was a child. She could do it in her sleep. But now… She was almost past thinking and her hands slipped as she adjusted the rope. She came down faster than she should have-not fast enough to hurt herself, but fast enough for Marc to step in urgently to catch her, to steady her and to take her weight as she hit the ground.
Which left her standing right against him, his hands on her shoulders to balance her, her slight body being supported by his stronger one.
Strong…
Strong described him absolutely, she thought. His whole body was rock-solid. Tammy was five feet six and slightly built, diminutive in the presence of this much larger man. He’d caught her and held her without apparent effort, and now he was staring down at her with the first trace of concern in his face.
‘Are you okay?’
She thought about it. Okay? Okay was a long way from how she felt right now. His hands were gripping her shoulders and she had an almost overpowering compulsion to place her face on his chest and burst into tears.
No. She hadn’t cried for as long as she could remember and she wasn’t about to start now.
‘I’m fine.’ But her voice wobbled.
‘You truly didn’t know your sister was dead?’
She concentrated fiercely on the row of medals pinned to his chest. She even counted them. Six. The fabric of his suit was a fine worsted wool, she thought. Nice. She could bury her face in his chest-hide from the pain that was threatening to overwhelm her.
‘You didn’t know?’ he said gently as he put her away from him, still holding her but forcing her to look up at him. His fingers were under her chin, cupping her face to meet his eyes.
A girl could drown in those eyes. A girl might want to. Anything but face this scorching, ghastly pain.
‘I…my sister and I have been…apart for ever,’ she whispered. ‘We don’t…’
‘I see.’ He didn’t. His voice said he was totally confused, and Tammy made a Herculean effort to make her voice work.
‘My sister and I didn’t get on.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t be.’ She let herself stay motionless for one more long moment, as if drawing strength from the warmth and size of him. Then she hauled herself bleakly together and pulled away. He released her, but the way he did it was curious. It was almost as if he was reluctant to let her go.
Questions. She had to ask questions. She needed to know-but she didn’t want to.
She must.
‘You said…she died in a skiing accident?’
‘Yes.’ His face was still calm. She was standing two feet back from him, gazing up into his eyes as if trying to read him. Trying to find some sort of comfort in his calmness.
‘H…how?’
‘They took out a bobsled.’ His face tightened for a minute, as if in anger. ‘They took it on a black run-a run for experienced skiers only. Bobsledding in those conditions is madness. I’m afraid…I’m afraid they’d been drinking.’
The knot of pain in Tammy’s stomach tightened. Oh, you fool, she thought bleakly. Lara, you fool. It took an almost overpowering effort of will to go on. ‘So…’ It was so hard to speak. It was as if her voice didn’t belong to her. ‘She…Lara was married to your cousin?’
‘Yes.’
‘And your cousin died, too?’
‘Jean-Paul died, yes.’
She couldn’t see what he was thinking. His face was still impassive. Was there pain there? She couldn’t tell.
‘I’m sorry.’
‘I guess we’re both sorry.’
He had a nice voice, she thought dispassionately. Deep and rumbly. It was tinged with what sounded almost like a French accent, but it was very slight. He’d been well schooled in English.
She wasn’t supposed to be thinking about this man’s voice. Or maybe she was still using thoughts to distract herself.
Lara was dead.
What else had he said? They had a baby?
‘I can’t believe that you don’t know about this.’ Marc’s voice was suddenly rough, tinged again with anger. ‘That your mother didn’t tell you.’
‘My mother knows?’
‘Of course your mother knows. I flew her to Broitenburg for the funeral. They were buried with a State funeral last month.’
Her mother would have enjoyed that, Tammy thought inconsequentially, going off on another tangent as her mind darted back and forth, trying to avoid pain. She thought of Isobelle Dexter de Bier as a grieving mother at a royal funeral. Isobelle would have done it brilliantly. She could almost guess what her mother would have worn. It would have been something lacy and black and extremely elegant. She’d have worn a veil, and there’d have been a wispy handkerchief dabbing at eyes that welled with tears that were never allowed to fall.
‘Was…was she alone?’
‘Your stepfather came with her.’