The Undoing of de Luca (13 page)

Back in the suite, Ellery waited uncertainly in the living room; she had no idea what to do, having never been in such a situation before, and she couldn’t read Larenz’s mood at all. He’d shrugged out of his suit jacket and loosened his tie, but his back was to her and he hardly seemed aware of her presence.

She wished she could sashay up to him and take off his tie, smile sexily and head for the bedroom. She knew she couldn’t. She simply stood there, as tongue-tied and uncertain as a teenager on her first date, wishing she knew the protocol. The expectations.

‘Thank you for the lovely dinner,’ she finally said.

‘Of course. You know it’s my pleasure.’

‘All the same…’ She trailed off, for Larenz had not turned around. He was staring out of the French windows at the view of Knightsbridge, although there wasn’t much to see. The windows of the building opposite were dark.

Ellery stood there for several moments, hesitating, uncertain, before she finally—belatedly—caught on to the rather obvious signal Larenz was sending her. He wanted to be alone. Her presence, she acknowledged with a trace of bitterness, was no longer wanted or required.

Well, that was fine.
Fine.
She was still tired from her sleepless night and, in any case, they hardly had to live in each other’s pockets all week. She was hoping to see Lil some time while they were here. It was fine if Larenz wanted to be alone. She could use a little space, too.

‘I think I’ll turn in,’ she finally said, her voice stiff with dignity. ‘Even with that nap, I’m rather tired.’

She turned around, heading for the bedroom and it was only when she’d reached the door, her hand on the door, that she heard Larenz’s quiet, even sorrowful, answer.

‘Goodnight, Ellery.’

Larenz remained where he was, facing the windows, for several moments. He heard the bedroom door close and then, more distantly, the sounds of Ellery getting ready for bed. He imagined her taking off that awful dress, kicking those decadent heels from her feet, the outfit as much a contradiction as Ellery herself was. Beautiful and uncertain. Frightened and fierce. Brave and shy. He let out a ragged sigh. Even now he wanted to be in there with her, slipping the shoes from her delicate feet and tracing the bones of her ankles, sliding his hands higher…and yet he kept himself from following his base need.

A far more dangerous need had led him to do things he never did with a woman tonight: to ask questions, to want to know. He kept his lovers at an emotional distance for a reason. Larenz did not deceive himself about that. He didn’t want them close because, inevitably, someone would get hurt, and he certainly didn’t intend for it to be him.

Even now, he recalled his mother’s defeated look whenever he’d asked about his father. He’d seen the pain in her eyes, had felt it in himself. And he remembered the blank, brutal look his father had given him, the one time he’d ever seen him face to face.

I’m sorry. I don’t know you. Goodbye.

Muttering a curse in Italian, Larenz pushed open the doors to the terrace and stepped out into the cool, damp night. Why had he washed Ellery’s hair? Why had he asked about her father? Why had he started an intimacy he professed never to want?

And yet, tonight, he
had
wanted it. He’d wanted to be with her, to know her secrets, to allay her fears. It was so unlike him, so unlike anything he’d ever wanted with a woman, and that couldn’t be good. It alarmed him. Scared him, even, if he was to be honest.

He didn’t like it.

He should never have asked Ellery along for the week, he reflected moodily. It had been a sudden impulse, the suggestion taking him by surprise as much as it had Ellery. He’d broken his rules in doing so, and he’d broken another one tonight.
Don’t let them come close. Don’t ask questions. Don’t need.

He’d seen it in her eyes this morning; she’d been expecting him to leave with a thank you and a goodbye.
He’d
been expecting to leave. His car keys had been in his hand. Why had he stayed? Why had he asked?

The answer, of course, was all too obvious. He’d wanted more—wanted Ellery—and a single night wouldn’t satisfy. Well, that was fine; women had certainly lasted longer than a night. He’d been with several lovers for a month or even more. Yet, Larenz knew, that cold fear rippling unpleasantly through him once more, they’d lasted because they had been so undemanding, wanting nothing but physical pleasure and a few trinkets, tokens of his affection, which he carelessly gave away.

They didn’t ask him questions, they never made him think. Want. Need.

Remember.

Ellery did. He didn’t know how those clear violet eyes reached right inside him and clutched at his soul, made him want to tell her things he’d never told another person. When she’d asked about his father, he’d wanted to tell her about the fourteen-year-old boy he’d been, humbled, humiliated,
heartbroken
when his father had turned him away with a flat, forbidding stare. He’d never told anyone—not even his mother—about that. He’d never remotely wanted to.

He doubted Ellery was even aware of her effect on him. And while part of him longed to surrender himself to that want and need, to revel in it even, another larger part knew that would be the most dangerous thing to do.

He wouldn’t do it.

He couldn’t.

Larenz gripped the wrought-iron railings that surrounded the terrace and let a damp wind blow over him. Behind him, he saw the light in the bedroom wink out, and he imagined Ellery lying in that huge bed, uncertain and alone.

He’d go in there, he told himself, and make sweet love to her again. He would do it to reassure her, and to reassure himself that physical pleasure was all they had. A week of pleasure, nothing more. Nothing less.

Wasn’t that why he’d brought her along, after all? Yes, to get enough of her, but also to give her something. He’d felt bad—guilty—for taking her innocence so carelessly, a thoughtless seduction. A week of sex and spoiling, he’d thought, would assuage both his own sense of guilt and any sorrow she might feel over their union.

Besides, Larenz acknowledged with a bitter twist of his mouth, after a week she might get tired of mucking with the lower classes.
She
would tire of
him.

Suppressing the sudden stab of fear that thought caused him, Larenz turned back inside. He headed towards the bedroom with cool determination, only to pause with his hand on the knob. From inside the darkened room he heard an alarming sound, something between a sniffle and a sob.

Larenz cursed again in Italian and whirled away from the door. He paced the living room, restless, anxious and half-wishing he’d never met Ellery Dunant.

Chapter Eight

E
LLERY
woke suddenly, her eyes snapping open. All around her the bedroom was dark and silent. She had no idea what had awakened her but she was now achingly, painfully conscious of the smooth, empty space next to her in the bed. A glance at the clock told her it was two o’clock in the morning and Larenz still hadn’t come to bed. At least he hadn’t come to
her
bed; he might have availed himself of one of the many other beds in the hotel suite.

She lay there for a few minutes, the implications of this unwelcome possibility sinking into her. Why wouldn’t Larenz come to her? This was her first night away with him. Could he have tired of her already? And, if so, why not just tell her to leave? That it was over?

Yet he hadn’t. So, if he hadn’t tired of her, what other reason could there be for keeping himself from her? Ellery found herself thinking back to their dinner conversation and how the questions about his past had sent him into a brooding silence. She didn’t know what memories held Larenz captive; she only knew how painful her own were. Was it the regrets and remembrances of the past that were keeping Larenz from her now? Was he lost in unhappy memories, just as she’d been?

Knowing she could be horribly, humiliatingly wrong, Ellery decided to find out. She slipped from the bed, dressed only in the same fleece nightgown she’d worn at the Manor. She had no other pyjamas, much as she would have liked to don a silk teddy—if she even had the courage to wear such a thing.

She left her bedroom and tiptoed down the hall to the living room. A single light burned by the terrace and she saw Larenz sitting in an armchair, his back to her, his head bent.

Her heart turned over. He looked so serious, so intent, so…sad. Or was she simply being fanciful, jumping to conclusions based on her own earlier thoughts?

She crept closer, afraid to disturb him, yet yearning to talk to him, to touch him. She was behind his shoulder when she saw what had been making him look so serious.

‘You’re doing
Sudoku
?’

Larenz stiffened, startled, then swivelled slowly to face her. Despite his still-serious expression, Ellery felt a bubble of laughter rise up her throat; she managed to swallow it back down but she still felt a silly smile spread over her face.

‘I’m sorry if I disturbed you.’

‘No, no, I…I couldn’t sleep.’ She swallowed, for now that Larenz was facing her, she found he still wore an intense look that had nothing to do with his seemingly innocuous activity. She wasn’t sure she wanted to know what it had to do with.

She let her gaze slide away from his and pointed to the top right grid of the puzzle. ‘That should be a six.’

‘What?’ Surprised, Larenz turned back to his book.

Ellery leaned over his shoulder, one finger pointing to the page. ‘That should be a six. See? You’ve made it a two, but it can’t be a two because there’s one already—there—’ She tapped the number with one finger before withdrawing rather self-consciously. She’d wanted to keep things light, afraid of Larenz’s intensity, but now she wondered if he would be annoyed or even offended. Some people were serious about their Sudoku.

Larenz stared at the puzzle for a long moment before he let out a chuckle. ‘So you’re right. You must be quite good at Sudoku to suss that out so quickly.’

‘Well, I spend a lot of evenings alone.’

‘By choice, though,’ Larenz said quietly.

Ellery came around to the front of his chair, hesitating for only a second before she sat on the sofa opposite, her legs tucked up underneath her nightgown.

‘Yes, by choice. I never thought living at Maddock Manor would be a social whirl.’

‘Will your mother sell it one day?’

Ellery let out a slow breath. Sometimes she was amazed her mother hadn’t insisted on selling it already. Even in its dilapidated state, the house was worth well over a million pounds. The very fact that her mother was willing to hold on to it made Ellery think she missed the happy times they’d once had, or believed they’d had, before her father had exposed it all as a sham. A lie.

‘Probably,’ she finally said. She glanced away, letting her gaze rest on the darkened silhouettes of the building opposite. Above them a pale slender moon glowed dimly through the clouds. ‘I never thought I’d live there for ever.’

‘Then what will you do when the place eventually goes?’

Ellery turned back to look at him rather sharply, wondering why he cared. Would it assuage his uncomfortable conscience, when he said goodbye, to know she had something ahead of her other than mouldering away at Maddock Manor? Was he pitying her? Was that why he’d brought her here at all?

The thought that she might be some sort of charity case was both humiliating and repellent. ‘I suppose I’ll go back to teaching full-time,’ she said, injecting a cheerful, brisk note into her voice. ‘I enjoyed it.’

‘Did you? What did you teach?’ Larenz was looking at her with that sleepy, heavy-lidded gaze that Ellery had come to know well. It meant she wasn’t fooling him for a moment.

‘English literature.’ She gave him a pointed look. ‘Including Tennyson’s
The Lady of Shalott.
One of my favourite poems, although I don’t think I like being compared to her.’

‘Oh?’ Larenz cocked his head to one side; if anything, his tone and look had become sleepier. ‘Why not?’

‘Well, she didn’t have much of a life, did she? Imprisoned in her tower, only able to view life through an enchanted mirror, falling in love with Lancelot from afar, and he never even noticed her—’

‘He did at the end,’ Larenz objected softly. He quoted from the last verse of the poem: “‘But Lancelot mused a little space; He said ‘She has a lovely face—’”

‘Not much, though, is it?’ Ellery interjected, and heard the sudden bitterness in her own voice. ‘Considering all she gave up for him.’

A silence descended that was both oppressive and awkward. Ellery had meant to show Larenz how fine she was by joking about that wretched poem, but she felt now she’d done the complete opposite. Annoyed, she glanced away.

‘It’s late,’ Larenz said finally. ‘You should go to bed.’

Ellery turned back to him, her eyebrows raised in challenge. ‘Are you coming?’

Larenz hesitated. His gaze slid away from hers and Ellery’s heart sank. ‘Soon.’

She walked from the room in stiff silent dignity.

When she awoke the next morning, Ellery saw that the other side of the bed was still smooth and untouched. Either Larenz had not slept at all or he had not slept with her.

Determinedly ignoring the little painful pang this thought caused, Ellery rose from bed, showered and dressed. When she came out into the living room, she saw Larenz was already there, dressed in a business suit, a cup of coffee at his elbow as he scanned the day’s headlines on his laptop.

‘Good morning,’ he said, barely looking up from his computer. ‘There’s coffee and rolls if you’d like. I’m afraid if you want the full fry-up you’ll have to go downstairs.’

‘Coffee is fine,’ Ellery replied. She poured herself a cup from the cafetière and took a roll, still warm, from the basket before sitting down opposite Larenz.

They sat in silence for a few minutes, Larenz busy with his laptop and Ellery doing her best to sip her coffee with an air of insouciant unconcern. It looked to be a lovely day; bright autumn sunshine poured through the terrace doors and bathed the room in crystalline light.