Fragile Crystal: Rubies and Rivalries (The Crystal Fragments Trilogy) (15 page)

She didn’t require an answer: she already knew why she was struggling to create now, but every time the solution to her problem flashed in front of her so her mind and body seized up. Her limbs felt as though they were encased in lead, the movements sluggish and heavy, and as she struggled to find some form, some meaning in the dirty colours left behind by her fingers and knife on the canvas all she felt was fear and anxiety.

They had celebrated, she and Daniel. What they had celebrated, however, Kris was not so certain she knew. Their being together again? The closure of the Chiado deal? Maria’s success? This time when he had penetrated her, her mind had felt far away, drifting off elsewhere and not mindful of the here and now.
I need to see you. Call me.

She had tried to find excuses to prevent Daniel seeing the lawyer. From the instant that he had suggested it, she had known that she could not face Maria Gosselin again. But how could she find a way to prevent him seeing her?
Why
did he want to see her?

She made a great show of her leg that day, and her grumpiness and irritability were not feigned though their cause was no longer the pain in her ankle. That had not left her completely, but she was easily capable of withstanding it now, a dull ache that was much less terrifying than the cavity in her chest which opened up whenever she thought of Maria.

Daniel had been sympathetic, but that sympathy had its limits. “It’s not fair of me to let her go without some show of gratitude,” he had said. “That’s not how you make people loyal to you. Maria has done a great job for me—and that’s not something I can say about most of those I work with at the moment. I’ve known her for a long time. If I just send her packing, I’ll never forgive myself.”

Such nonchalance, Kris thought. Was Maria lying? Was it all a lie? She still couldn’t explain why, but Kris still believed that there had been something between Maria and Daniel once. She also believed that whatever it had been, it meant nothing anymore to Daniel, at least on any sexual level. That should have made her feel better about herself, but instead it raised a different set of doubts. What kind of man could express such a deep passion towards another woman and then let it be doused with such cool, professional feelings?

Kris was aware that she was judging Daniel by her own standards, her own emotions. It was not simply the fact that she was a woman: much of her behaviour she had learned from her father, as chaotic and unpredictable a man as she was a woman. But Kris increasingly worried that while her own soul was fire, that of Daniel’s in the end was ice—that when the flames of his desire for her had burned away, all that would be left was a cool, dispassionate kingdom of ice and snow.

He had left eventually for Lisbon, Filipe driving him out for the evening. Kris’s evident distress, which he misattributed to the pain of her injury, left him compassionate but also confused.

When he had gone, she had spent one of the most agonizing evenings of her life. All the time she wondered what Maria was telling him, how she might reveal the truth of what had happened between them. Bitter fragments of their conversation came back to her, and she was tormented by memories of the other woman’s hands holding her down, using her, hurting her… and she crying out for more.
He the master, you the slave. You submit to everything he requires, and he dominates you completely
.

This would be it, she thought. He will know after tonight and that will be the end of it. When her phone flashed with a new message, for a minute she had held the device in her hand, refusing to look down. It will go away if I don’t look at it, she thought.

The message had been from Maria.
Where are you? I need you. You should be here
.

That confused her even more, and an hour later she had gone to bed, pretending to be asleep when Daniel returned home. What did it mean, him returning at this time? It was nearly midnight. Was that long enough for her to have told him everything? Was it long enough for him to have gone back to her hotel room, to have fucked her?

When she was a young girl, like so many children Kris had sometimes lain in her bed and closed her eyes, hiding herself under the blankets to chase away her night terrors. Now, as Daniel came into the room, she hid her head as far down under the sheets as she dared, screwing her eyes shut: thought she pretended to be asleep, in truth it was to fight away her very adult night terrors.

Daniel came into the room and kissed her gently on the cheek. Her body was frozen solid and she dared not move—could not even breathe as he kissed her.

She heard him moving around, his body shifting as he removed his clothes and then he lifted the sheets and climbed in next to her.

“It’s a shame you couldn’t come tonight,” he whispered behind her, then kissed her between her shoulder blades.

She made another show, this time of waking, and turned to him, smiling as though she had just been disturbed from her dreams.

“I didn’t mean to wake you,” he told her gently.

“It’s okay.” She slid her arm round his waist, pulled her own soft breasts against his muscled chest.

“How are you feeling now?”

“Better for a sleep.” The darkness in the room would hide the lies in her eyes.

He kissed her again, and her mouth, wet, eager, accepted him. She placed her head on his shoulder and lay there, silently for a while. “Was it good?” she asked after a while, wondering what he was thinking.

“Yes,” he replied. “It really is a pity you couldn’t come. Maria told me that I have quite a catch with you.”

“Really?” Kris’s ears were alert, but her body had also frozen slightly at the mention of the other woman’s name.

Daniel’s arm was around her shoulder, and he pressed her further into him. He was silent for a long period again, and Kris’s mind began to spin. What are you thinking? Tell me! Tell me now!

At last he spoke. “You know… Maria and I had a thing, once. Long ago. I mean, really, a very long time ago.”

“Really?” That word again. It sounded stupid to Kris even as she said it, but she did not dare reveal that she knew more than he thought she did.

“Yes,” he replied. Was that sadness in his voice? Regret? “It was… it was after Karen died. I… I just wanted you to know. It was over a long time ago. I doubt Maria even remembers, but I just wanted you to know. I… I owed her a lot. Part of me still feels I owe her a little.”

“Oh.” Kris’s voice was small, insignificant.

“I’m sorry,” he said, and now there
was
regret in his voice. “I didn’t mean to upset you. I just didn’t want you feeling there were any secrets between us.”

“Thank you,” she said, lifting up her head and kissing his chin. “It’s okay, though. It’s all okay. Go to sleep now.”

And now here she was, standing before a smeared, messy, dirty canvas, a canvas without shape or form or colour. He had spoken to her honestly. She didn’t believe that he had told her everything: Daniel Stone had too many secret shades in his soul, too many dark recesses for them all to be revealed at once but, in this instance at least, she thought that she had nothing to fear from that night when she had cowered like a child in her bed. But how many other times were there?
Oh, he has many vices
. Maria’s voice echoed around her head.

She was being stupid, she knew it but she could not stop herself. Yet even if there were nothing between Daniel or any other woman for that matter, there remained that unspoken chain that did not just bind them together but also dragged them down, or at least dragged
her
down.

Maria had seen it instantly. So had his old teacher when first she met her, Elaine Christiansen. The CEO of Stone Enterprises, Felix Coltraine, had mockingly alluded to it when last she met him. Daniel loved her because she reminded him of a woman dead for a decade. There was nothing she could do about it. There was nothing she suspected that Daniel could do about it.

And now Daniel was paying a final visit to Chiado Shipping, with Maria. She would leave after the visit, a conclusion to the business she had undertaken for her master, thought Kris a little bitterly. Once it was over, she was to fly to Paris and out of Kris’s life, forever she hoped. Daniel had invited Kris to come along but she had cried off, asking to be dropped at her apartment in Alfama. She would spend the afternoon painting rather than discussing the delights of trade, finances and international shipping law.

But she could not paint. It was not that she imagined anything happening between Daniel and Maria—his admission that night in bed had made her more secure on that score. Yet she and Maria Gosselin were bound together in a secret compact of guilt. It was guilt that made her flee any encounter with the other woman, and also guilt that made her freeze up now as she looked at the mess before her.

All she could hope was that Maria herself would be bound to silence, either by guilt or at the very least self-interest. What had she to gain from revealing that dreadful night to Daniel? He was generous to her—very generous, that much was clear—and Kris had a suspicion that Madame Gosselin was not the kind of woman to throw away the material benefits provided by working for a man such as Daniel Stone. She was, in the end, an employee of his. An employee who had once provided some very special benefits—Kris herself understood the nature of such a compact—but an employee all the same. But what did that make her? she wondered. Was she simply an employee without a contract?

No wonder she couldn’t paint, with thoughts so grim—all of them, she realized in the end, motivated by her guilt. She was projecting the nastiest thoughts onto Daniel, the most cynical observations, but she also realised that her state of mind owed more to her own failings.

The screen of her phone flashed again. Sometimes it would be a message from Daniel, but more often it was a message from Maria. The woman had even tried to call a couple of times, but Kris had refused to answer, just as she deleted any messages. She did not block her, however. That would probably provoke her rival, and who knows what secrets she would reveal to Daniel? She did not dare exclude her, not yet, but instead just ignored her in the hope that Maria Gosselin would fade away.

She looked at the phone for a few moments, then picked it up.
He’s gone
, the message read.
But you should have been here. Don’t worry. I have said nothing, and he suspects nothing. But I need to see you
.

Kris’s heart sank at these words, just as it had lifted slightly when she read
I’ve said nothing, and he suspects nothing
. She was going to delete this one too, but before she did so she felt a wave of despair and frustration pouring over her.

Why?
she typed onto the screen.
Why do you need to see me? Why can’t you leave me alone?

The response came through in less than a minute.
I can’t stop thinking about you. Don’t make the mistake of believing this is something I do all the time. I need you.

Kris dropped the phone on the table, among the mess and chaos of her palettes. Her face twisted up as she stared out to the river, shining and glistening far below, the dark smudge of the distant shore line opposite. “Go away,” she said quietly to no one in particular. Then, more loudly: “Go away! Just fucking
go away
!”

Chapter Thirteen

The messages stopped for a little while, for which Kris was immensely glad. Whatever had happened between Daniel and Maria anything more than simple business was ancient history—at least as far as Daniel was concerned. She could never be sure what this meant for herself and him, but what he had told her that night, after he had returned from a meal with Maria Gosselin, she believed that he was telling her the truth.

And of the other five? Kris had no evidence that they existed, and while she knew that once there had been
something
between Daniel and Maria, she also had her suspicions that the French lawyer was something of a fantasist.

When Daniel said that he had to return to London, she gladly agreed to go with him. Something had soured even for her in Lisbon. This was meant to be her own personal paradise, but a serpent had stolen into the garden of Eden, a serpent with golden hair and green eyes.

Daniel at least was pleased that she was returning with him. “Well, there’s no point staying in Alfama at the moment,” she told him. “My ankle’s just about back to normal, and I don’t think I’m going to be doing much painting. Anyway, I want to spend more time with you.”

He had smiled at this. “I can see the appeal of Portugal—well, anywhere south really—at this time of year, but unfortunately…”

“Yes, I know,” she had told him, squeezing his hand and kissing him on the cheek. “The real world calls.” They had both laughed at this. Indeed, Daniel had looked more relaxed and happier than she had known for a long time. Recently, whenever they had parted he had always left her with a slightly troubled look in his eyes. Whenever she asked what was happening, he would simply shrug and mention business difficulties in a vague and dismissive manner. But this time when they flew to London she had the sense that he wanted her by his side—that
he
needed her. The Gosselin woman was just a fantasist, playing some game with her, she was sure.

When she returned to London, however, she was not so sure that what she felt about it. For twenty-eight years she had lived in the capital, and in terms of time spent it was still more her home than anywhere else. Time spent. She made it sound like a prison sentence, and with the grey, rainy weather that stayed with them from the time they landed at Heathrow till their arrival in Chelsea, England did feel like a return to prison.

At least, she could reassure herself, if this was a cage it was very much a gilded one. Daniel’s own apartment in Chelsea, a penthouse on top of a brick and stone block that had been built in the 1920s and was now a very desirable gated residence, was completely different to her own home in Alfama, though there was much (weather aside) it shared with his villa in Cascais. Clean, spotless, hygienic, it was, she now realised, even more without soul than the villa. And yet she had been with him many days—and, more importantly, many nights—in this place. If you treated it like a very expensive hotel it was more bearable.