The Man Behind the Mask (7 page)

Flying down the corridor and then two flights of
stairs to the kitchen, switching on all the lights as she went to illuminate her way, Marianne was back in the shortest time, noting with satisfaction that Eduardo had done as she'd re quested and put his feet up. For the first time she realised that he was still wearing the clothes he'd had on during the day, although several of the buttons on the light blue shirt were casually undone, the formally smart black trousers were creased and his feet devoid of socks or shoes. Switching on another lamp that stood on the shelf of a nearby bookcase, she cleaned up the broken glass with long-practised efficiency, leaving the cleaning implements near the doorway to take away later. Then she returned to the silent male figure on the couch.

‘I'd better take another look at that cut…just to make sure it's as clean as I first thought.'

Sitting down beside him, feeling her body grow warm at the contact with his—albeit out of
practical
necessity and not intimacy—Marianne efficiently re-examined the cut. Seeing to her satisfaction that all was well, she care fully bandaged the handkerchief round Eduardo's hand again, tying the ends into a firm knot to secure it.

‘You'll live. It will throb a bit, that's all, and probably won't even leave a scar. The lamp took the brunt of the damage, by the look of it. The fixing is all bent out of shape. Can it be rescued? It looks expensive.'

Sensing the man beside her tense even more, Marianne came face to face with his disparaging scowl.

‘Do you think I care about what it is worth?'

She lifted her shoulders in a thoughtful shrug. ‘To some people it might be a prized possession.'

‘I do not have any “prized possessions”, so you need not concern yourself about that!'

‘All right, then…I won't. Shall I go and make you a hot drink? Some warm milk with some brandy in it, perhaps…? Something that might help you sleep?'

‘You'd be wasting your time.'

‘Why?'

‘Only a miracle would help me sleep.'

‘Still…it's better to try
something
than do nothing at all and resign yourself to the worst.'

‘Marianne?'

‘Yes?' By now she had risen to her feet, and as Eduardo's searing blue gaze examined her she was suddenly conscious that she stood before him in her dressing gown. It was a practical, no-nonsense kind of garment—neither pretty
nor
flattering—but still… Marianne was hardly immune to the intimate spell the night could cast, and beneath the soft dove-grey wool her body's long-sup pressed need for touch was stirring vividly to life.

‘You must think me extremely ill-mannered.' The rich voice was slightly hoarse, as though he spoke over a throat that pained him. ‘I did not thank you for helping me, and I want you to know that I am not ungrateful.'

‘You're welcome. I would do the same for anybody.'

‘And that very nicely puts me in my place, does it not?'

‘What do you mean?'

‘Your regard for my welfare is not particular…why should it be? It is merely a practical reaction on your part that you would employ with
anybody
in similar need. Tell me…has there ever been anyone in your life who
did
command your particular regard, Marianne?'

The man on the sofa studied her with such an expression of burning curiosity that she knew there was absolutely no possibility whatsoever of wriggling out of giving him an answer. Seriously troubled, Marianne struggled to summon the words that would reveal the truth of her past—the situation that she should have revealed to Eduardo from the moment he had offered her a job and a home but unfortunately had not…

M
ARIANNE'S
clearly uncomfortable glance settled on the dying orange embers of the fire, and Eduardo saw her shiver.

‘Shall I put some more coal on? It's grown a little chilly in here,' she said. ‘
After
you have answered my question,' Eduardo said firmly. For some reason his heart beat was accelerating a little at what she might be going to tell him. ‘Shut the door,' he advised. ‘Then you will not feel so cold.'

She did as he suggested, then stepped silently towards the fire place. Thrusting out her hands, she stole whatever heat remained and then, wrapping her arms round her slim frame, said quietly, ‘There was a man once that I cared about…we were married for less than a year.'

Married?
He didn't echo the word out loud in astonishment or perhaps in
protest
, as his instinct dictated, but Eduardo felt it resonate through him like a thunder clap—a precursor to a storm of feelings and disturbances he hardly knew how to contain.

‘It does not seem conceivable that you were married
so young,' he commented instead. ‘
Too
young. What happened? Did you divorce?'

‘No.' Turning her bewitchingly pretty face towards him, Marianne held Eduardo's gaze with resolute steadiness. ‘He—he died.'

‘Died?'

‘Yes.'

‘How?'

‘A very rare form of cancer.' Her shoulders hunched.

Her ensuing sigh was as delicate as a newborn child's, yet he heard it just the same. Feeling genuine sympathy, Eduardo wanted to react appropriately, consolingly, but his feelings raised the familiar spectre of his own devastating loss, and he found himself staying where he was as if turned to stone, wondering how people bore the some times dreadful things that happened to them, where they found the strength. Then, knowing that he had failed miserably in that department because he had
not
found strength—it was shame and guilt and the need for self-punishment that made
him
endure, nothing noble at all—he clenched his jaw hard.

‘Did he leave you with nothing?' he demanded, his words under scored with indignant anger on Marianne's behalf that her dying husband had clearly left her completely unprovided for. So much so that she'd had to resort to practically begging at the side of the road!

‘What?' The question had clearly stunned her.

‘Look at the situation he left you in! How long since he died?'

‘Eighteen months.'

‘And he left you completely without the means to support yourself?' Hearing the judgment and fury in his own voice, Eduardo made no apology for it.

‘No… He left me his house and—and some money.'

Confusion taking over from rage, he glanced at Marianne in genuine surprise. ‘So what happened? Why was it that I found you in the street busking? And in temperatures that would prevent most people from even going outside unless they absolutely
had
to, let alone stand there singing!'

‘I was learning to perform in public, like I told you before. Music is a passion of mine and I wanted to get better at it. I thought I might eventually join a band or something, make my living that way. I was also trying to rebuild my confidence after what happened.'

‘So you were not going home to some—some hostel or homeless shelter each night?'

‘No. I'm sorry if I gave you that impression.'

What happened to the house and the money you were left? Why phone me and tell me that you were in need of a job and home?'

Regarding Marianne's young, beautiful face, lit so beguilingly by the dying light of the fire, Eduardo couldn't deny the colossal disappointment and sense of betrayal that simmered inside him. What game was she playing that she would deceive him about her situation like this? Had she perhaps discovered who he was, learning that he had the kind of wealth that most people could only
fantasise about? Perhaps her husband's modest legacy of money and a house were not
enough
for a secretly financially ambitious girl like her? The very idea turned his stomach.

‘When I rang you and asked for your help it was because I truly needed it. I didn't lie about that.' She was twisting her hands round the belt of her robe, and her expression was genuinely in earnest, Eduardo saw. ‘I needed a job and a home because—'

‘Go on?'

‘Because I gave the house and money and everything else that belonged to him to my husband's adult children.'

‘Your husband had adult children?'

‘Yes.'

‘From that I gather that he was much older than you?'

‘Yes. He was fifty-nine when we met.'

Moving away from the fire, Marianne turned her back on Eduardo for a moment. He saw the slender shoulders lift and then drop again, as though she was resigned to the fact that now she'd begun her story she would have to see it through to the end. As she turned back to face him, he detected the tiniest quiver of her lush top lip.

‘He was a good man, and a kind one…a genuinely caring soul. Over a fairly short period of time we became great friends. After a while he asked me to marry him, and I agreed. When he left me the house in his will his children con tested it, insisting that because he had been
ill he couldn't have been in his right mind to do such a thing.' Her expression was anguished for a moment.

‘I never asked Donal—my husband—to leave me anything. I'd made my own way before I met him and I would again. But he made me promise that I would hold onto the house so I would have some sense of security. Life was very difficult for a while after he went…dealing with grief and loss, I mean. The legal wrangles over the house made it even more challenging. I finally decided that I didn't want to be in a battle any more. More than anything I wanted peace. So I wrote to Michael and Victoria, his children, and told them they could have the house
and
the money. In the same letter I returned the keys. So you see…when I told you I needed a job and a home…it was perfectly true. I wanted to tell you before, but somehow it never seemed to be the appropriate time.'

Rubbing at his temples, Eduardo frowned. Not one in
ten
women would have done what Marianne had done—given away the house that was legally hers, leaving herself with nothing. He was sure of it. What would her husband have made of such a gesture? he mused, more disturbed than he cared to be at the thought of her being married to a man more than twice her age. More startling still was the idea that they had
both
lost their spouses. Both had experienced the numbing dark realm of bereavement. Although perhaps the expected loss of Marianne's husband due to his illness had been a little less hard to take than the shattering blow Eduardo had been dealt.

Not wanting to revisit such sombre recollections any more tonight, he suddenly realised that the woman in front of him displayed all the signs of being dead on her feet from fatigue—and he was the cause.

‘Go to bed,' he told her curtly. ‘You have an early start in the morning.'

‘Please don't think I came here under false pretences…I would hate that. I'm not a liar. When you left me your card and told me if I ever changed my mind about needing a job and a home I should ring you, I took you at your word.'

‘And I honoured my word, did I not? Now…you have done quite enough for one night, playing both nurse
and
house maid, and you clearly need your sleep.'

‘What about you?'

As Marianne stepped towards Eduardo her question was suspended on air that was subtly but exquisitely charged with an awareness that made his breath slow inside his chest and his mouth dry. He could not take his eyes off her. Her loveliness mesmerised him. With her long hair spilling over her shoulders like dark molten honey, her waist impossibly small, and her form so slender even in the unflattering dressing gown she was a sight that would make most men long to possess her. Silently he echoed that longing. But instead of surrendering to his great desire to hold her, instinctively Eduardo tensed. Desperately he wanted her to come closer, but at the same time the polar extremes of honour and self-loathing were causing him to contain his yearning and pray for it to dissipate.

‘What
about
me?' he echoed, gravel-voiced.

‘You need your sleep too. Please let me go and get you that hot drink or some brandy.'

‘I have survived nights like these before
without
the need for hot drinks or brandy, and I will do so again. Please just do as I say and go back to bed.'

‘All right, then—if you're sure?'

Deliberately not meeting her gaze, Eduardo glanced down at his neatly bandaged hand instead and said nothing.

 

Knowing that Eduardo's already sleep less night had been further disrupted by his accident, Marianne crept round the large, imposing house like a mouse, intent on doing her work as quietly as humanly possible so as not to disturb him. In the kitchen she played the radio at the lowest volume, and closed the door behind her as she prepared and chopped vegetables in readiness for yet another hearty soup for lunch. But occasionally during her work her gaze strayed out of the window to the alluring country views outside that made her heart leap with longing.

The Siberian winter was starting to abate at last, and every where there were signs that the deep snow was melting. Even as she stood by the sink, peeling carrots into a colander, Marianne heard the steady ‘drip-drip' of icicles thawing under the eaves. She found herself speculating if Eduardo might invite her to take another walk with him. If he did, she wouldn't hesitate to say yes, she decided. Perhaps this time they might get a bit
further than the little wooden bridge over the moat and head off into the forest that she was so longing to explore? The crisp, clean air as well as the exercise would definitely be beneficial.

What was it that troubled the man so deeply, seeming to steal away any pleasure he might find in simply being alive?
she asked herself. She could under stand a young, fit man like him being de pressed about not being able to move as freely as he normally might because of his infirmity, but something told Marianne it wasn't just his limp that was causing him pain. Occasionally she had observed what she believed to be deep trauma in his arresting blue eyes, and it was starting to seriously disturb her. That, coupled with the lack of personal photographs or anything alluding to his past or where he came from in the house, as well as his propensity for being reclusive, and she was beginning to suspect something dreadful had happened to him…something so dreadful that even his valet Ricardo refused to be drawn about it.

And now there was another thing that bothered Marianne.
Last night in the intimate confines of Eduardo's room, seeing the distress he'd fought so hard to hide from her and witnessing his pain, she had almost given in to her great desire to reach out and offer him much more
human
comfort. Holding his hand while she examined the cut he had sustained had been a test of endurance in more ways than one—especially when her hands had been trembling the entire time she tended his wound. She had never been so affected just by being
near
a man before…as though all this time her senses had been lying dormant and only now had come to life because
he
walked into a room.

The idea of being close to Eduardo plunged her into turmoil. She had certainly never experienced such wild, almost
painful
longing when she had been with dear Donal…but then they had never been intimate. His illness had simply pre vented it. And after he had died Marianne had been glad they had not enjoyed true marital intimacy, because she had started to acknowledge that her feelings for him—although devoted—had in reality been only platonic.

Frowning at the guilt she'd suffered over that realisation, she reached out to straighten the little terracotta pot of fresh basil on the windowsill, almost jumping out of her skin when the door opened and Eduardo appeared.

‘Good morning,' he greeted her, his expression disarmingly sheepish. ‘Or perhaps I should say good afternoon? I did not realise I had slept in quite so late. You should have alerted me to the time.'

‘I don't think so,' Marianne answered, hazel eyes widening in mild reproach. ‘It seems to me that extra sleep was just what you needed! Why don't you sit down and I'll make you some coffee? Or if you'd prefer to go into the sitting room I'll bring it to you in there. I've lit the fire, so it's nice and warm.'

But Eduardo was already moving towards the big pine table in the centre of the stone-flagged floor. ‘I think I will stay here with you,' he said, drawing out a
chair and lowering himself into it. ‘I am a little tired of my own company just now. The snow is starting to melt at last, I see.'

‘I know. But it's still freezing outside.' Following the direction of his brooding gaze out of the window, Marianne kept her voice deliberately neutral, intuitively guessing that it was probably wise not to mention last night.

But then, just as she was about to fill the kettle with water, she glimpsed the reddened gash on his hand and realised he'd removed the make shift bandage she'd made.

‘How's that cut this morning?' she asked. ‘I hope it wasn't too painful during the night?'

‘It is nothing. I have already for got ten about it.'

‘I'll check it again after you've had your coffee' Marianne said lightly, turning on the tap, filling the kettle and inserting the plug into the wall socket.

‘There is no need for you to trouble yourself any further about it.'

Did he dislike the idea of her touching him?
Marianne wondered. And she was unable to stem the hurt that thought produced.

‘Well…perhaps you're ready for some break fast, then? If you'd like something cooked it's no trouble.'