the complications that had rendered their marriage null and void. Catherine wouldn’t be looking like a plump, slightly flustered, happy mother hen if he had. But then he wouldn’t, of course, she reminded herself, doing her best to find a smile of sorts. Hadn’t duping his parent into believing everything was blissful been one of his two main priorities?
‘It’s lovely to see you.’ She bent to receive Catherine’s kiss and didn’t look at Jed. He was removing luggage from the boot, just a shadowy presence in the background, and that was the way he had to stay if she was to hold onto her sanity, swallow back the scalding renewal of the pain and rage she’d talked herself into believing was over and done with. ‘I’m sure you’re ready for a drink.’
‘Oh, I’d love one. It’s quite a drive from Jerez airport, isn’t it? But such lovely countryside—oh, what a gorgeous courtyard—all those lilies! And will you just look at those geraniums? They never get that huge at home!’
Barely hearing the spate of compliments on her home, Elena led the older woman into the cool, airy sitting room and watched her plop down into a deep comfy armchair with an audible sigh of relief.
‘Bliss! Now I can take my shoes off.’
‘And I can fetch you that drink.’
Elena escaped into the kitchen. She saw Jed toting luggage up the stairs, clenched her jaw and ignored him, closing the kitchen door behind her firmly. She could have gone after him and demanded to know what the hell he thought he was doing, bringing his mother here when their marriage, so recently begun, was well and truly over, leading the poor deluded woman to believe that she, Elena, had agreed to this visit
But she didn’t. She simply wanted to hide. During the past week she had talked herself into believing she could handle the irretrievable shocking breakdown, that when she saw him again it wouldn’t hurt because sensibly, being an intelligent adult and not a soppy child, and because she’d done it once before, she knew how to cut her losses and go on.
But it did hurt. It hurt like hell.
She reached for two wine glasses and a bottle of white Rioja from the fridge; she needed the stiffening, even if Catherine didn’t.
Catherine did. ‘How deliciously cold. It hits the spot! Isn’t Jed joining us?’
‘He’s taking your cases up.’ And taking an inordinate amount of time about it, she thought edgily, doing her best to sound relaxed—though why should she bother, when Catherine would learn, sooner rather than later, that her new daughter-in-law was shortly to become an ex?
While Catherine chattered about her flight out, Elena, wine in hand, perched on the arm of one of the chairs and wondered whether to break the news now. Catherine would have to know, because following Jed’s orders and pretending the marriage was fine when it wasn’t was something she was not prepared to do.
She was trying to decide whether she should dress it up some way, and how, or whether she should come straight out with it when Catherine stopped her thought processes stone-dead.
‘I have to tell you—your marriage to my son was one of the happiest occasions of my life, Elena. It didn’t make up for losing Sam, nothing could ever do that, but it helped enormously—helped ease the dreadful grief and gave me something good to think about. Since I lost their father, all I’ve ever wanted is happiness for my boys.’
She looked so earnest, her eyes rather too moist, tears not far away, because she was still trying to come to terms with the worst thing that could happen to a woman: the loss of her child. Elena felt her stomach give a sickening lurch. She didn’t want to hear any more, but short of walking out of the room she couldn’t avoid it.
‘Like any mother, I wanted my boys settled with a good woman, happily married with children of their own. I’d begun to despair of it ever happening.’ She gave Elena a soft, shaky smile. ‘Sam—well, he was like a will o’ the wisp, impossible to pin down or keep in a settled place, and Jed—well, he was too settled, too much a workaholic bachelor, wedded to the business. But when Jed invited you to stay at Netherhaye, after the funeral, it was like a blessing. Just to watch the two of you gave me joy—and hope for the future. I could see what had happened, any fool could. I watched the pair of you holding your feelings back—not only because to hurl yourselves into each other’s arms might have seemed crass, in view of the circumstances, but because you were obviously making sure you got to know each other before you made any commitment. Though of course Jed and I already felt we knew you very well, through what Sam had told us.
‘Knowing that my one remaining son had found the perfect love at last was the only thing that kept me going through those dark days. So when he phoned a few days ago, to check I was all right on my own, I asked if I could come on a short visit. I hadn’t meant to,’ she said earnestly, ‘it just came out. I know you’re on your honeymoon, but I suppose I needed to see you both to restore my faith in God, to remind myself He can dish out the good as well as the hard to bear.’
Her smile was now so loving and peaceful it made Elena’s heart bleed. How could she spill out the truth and ruin this good woman’s precarious contentment? Plunge her back into the dark abyss of grief where there was no glimmer of consolation to be found?
Jed had decided on the pretence of marital bliss because he had known what the truth would do to his grieving parent, and Elena could understand that, sympathise. His harsh dictates, so coldly spelled out for her, became more the reasoned decisions of a man who knew his duty.
He would hate the idea of putting on a front as much as she did, but felt, because of the tragic circumstances, that it was the only right thing to do.
She didn’t want to understand, and heaven knew she didn’t want to sympathise. She wanted to cut Jed right out of her life, never see or hear of him again, carry on with the long haul of forgetting the pain, the terrible slicing pain of seeing his precious love turn to hatred.
Not knowing what to say, she refilled Catherine’s glass and took a gulp of her own as yet untouched wine, and Jed said from the doorway, ‘Should you be drinking that?’
The sound of that cool voice with undertones of condemnation made her heart clench, especially when the penny dropped and she realised why he had asked that question. Alcohol and pregnancy didn’t mix. Sam’s baby was another of his priorities, another duty of care.
‘Don’t be so stuffy! It’s almost suppertime. We’re not hitting the sauce before breakfast! Come and join us.’ Not knowing his reason for the criticism, Catherine turned to her son, raising her glass, proud maternal love in her eyes.
Putting her own glass down on a side table, aware that her hands were shaking, that every darn thing inside her was shaking, Elena risked an under-lash look at her husband.
He sauntered casually into the room, with a smile for his mother, hands stuffed into the pockets of his close-fitting dark trousers, the silk of his white shirt falling in fluid folds from his wide shoulders.
Yet there was strain there, there in the deepening of the lines that bracketed his beautiful, passionate male mouth, the tell-tale pallor beneath the olive tones of his skin. The past week had been tough on him, too.
But it was all entirely his own fault. She quelled the momentary surge of compassion. If he had given her the basic human right of being heard. If he’d given her the opportunity to tell him about the clinic treatment then he would have believed her when she’d told him that she and Sam had never been lovers.
‘Now, you two...’ Catherine beamed at them both indiscriminately, and Elena wondered if her mother-in-law was so blinded by what she wanted to believe that she couldn’t sense something was wrong. ‘I didn’t invite myself here just to play gooseberry. There’s something I need to discuss with you both. I could have said it on the phone, or written, but I wanted to see you...’
As the older woman’s voice trailed uncertainly away Elena knew her present contentment was a fragile thing, with dark grief lurking beneath the surface of her courage, waiting for the opportunity to reclaim her.
‘We’re