Chapter Twelve
Lycos nosed his car forward along the stony driveway. It had rained recently and the sky was overcast. Getting out of the car he felt the chill of the mistral on his back—the cold north-westerly wind that plagued Provence in the autumn and winter. He looked about him.
The mas looked drear and deserted. The faded blue shutters were closed on all the windows and the stone walls un-warmed by any sunshine.
He felt the hollow inside him gape wider.
It had been there for a long, long time now. It had started as he’d watched Arielle walking out of the hotel bedroom, not believing that she was doing so. The shock of it knifing through him, hollowing him out.
He hadn’t known what to do.
Nor did he still.
He stood staring at the mas, trying to work out what he felt, but it was impossible. The hollow inside him seemed to make him numb. He went into the courtyard, the cobbles wet from rain, his footsteps ringing damply on the stone.
It was very quiet and deserted. The livestock was all gone, having been transported to the neighbouring farm. He walked through into the gardens. The rain and autumn had bleached the colour from it. The lavender was full of brown deadheads. The geraniums were limp and drooping. The leaves from the trees remained un-swept and unraked. The pool had been covered over, the sun loungers packed away. Water dripped off the roses, which were bereft of any blooms.
He stood awhile, the hollow widening within him.
Becoming wide enough to swallow him up completely.
What am I to do?
The words took physical shape in his head. Hanging there as if heavy weights.
He had come here for one purpose only. To put the place behind him. To put it on the market as he had always said he would do.
To get rid of it.
It was the logical thing to do. It always had been. He hadn’t asked for this place, hadn’t sought it out, hadn’t chosen it. It had just happened to him. Owning it as he did.
So, getting rid of it, taking the money, was the obvious thing to do.
So why haven’t I?
The logic, now, was even more compelling, ineluctable, necessary. After all, his conscience was clear. Completely clear.
I offered it to her and she turned it down.
Turned down not just the mas, but turned me down with it.
He felt the hollow gape wider yet, but something was filling it now. Something worse than the hollow. The hollow was an absence, but this… This was a presence. An unbearable one. An agonising one.
And suddenly, with a clenching of his fists buried in the pockets of his jacket that was keeping at bay the chill of the mistral, he knew what he would do. Must do.
After all, had he not already done elsewhere what he must do? This would complete it.
For one lone, last moment he let his gaze rest on the garden in front of him before looking around and across the frontage of the mas. Then, with rapid and resolute footsteps, he headed back to his car and drove away.
He was done with the mas.
For the mas was done with him. Just like Arielle was.
Arielle opened her voicemail. The call had come in while she’d been expounding French irregular verbs to the adult education class she taught, which, together with the modest income from her father that had funded her at the mas, was funding her there in England. It was strange to be back in the university town where she’d studied music, but it was the only place in England that she was familiar with. Other than London, where her father had lived and worked, and London was way out of her price range. Here she could afford to rent a small flat and pay for the use of a nearby church hall, which came with a piano, so she could give piano lessons. She had also applied to start training to be a teacher so she’d be able to teach French and music at the local school.
It was not the life she’d wanted, but she knew she had to make it work. Perhaps, one day, she’d be inspired to do something more. But in that moment, she was still too raw. Far, far too raw.
Raw with loss. A loss that the passing weeks had shown her was far, far worse than she had once thought it would be.
Because what I had, is gone and will never, can never, return. And what I had was far, far more than I realised I had.
She felt her heart clench, pain filling it. With a heavy sigh she held the phone to her ear. She frowned. The voicemail was from her lawyer, the one she’d spent money she could not afford on when she’d contested her father’s will. What could the matter be now? Surely Naomi wasn’t trying, again, to get hold of the money her husband had dared to bestow on his daughter, not herself?
But the message was quite different. And when she heard it Arielle could only stare, blankly and disbelievingly. But with something flaring inside her that had not been there before.
Lycos sat in the cocktail lounge of the hotel on Park Lane. It was where he usually stayed when he was in London, for it boasted a casino on the top floor. This time he hadn’t been near it. It held no attraction for him. His mind was focussed on one thing only.
Would she come?
Tension wracked him. It reminded him of his early days, setting out to make his way in the world with his card skills before he had learnt to step aside from all emotion. Before he’d learnt how to move into the mental state that detached him from the world and generated the intense focus of concentration necessary to his purpose.
But detachment, now, was impossible. Too much was at stake. More than he had ever thought would be or could be. Because that was what this was, he knew, with a scything inbreath. A stake higher than he had ever made in all his life. Memories bit in him, like the bite of a wolf. Back in Paris, all those weeks ago, he’d made a stake he’d thought must surely be irresistible.
But it lost me what I most wanted.
What he had most wanted then.
But now?
His thoughts cut out. His gaze fixed on the entrance to the cocktail lounge.
Arielle got off the bus. Autumnal chill hit her at once, raw and unpleasant. A world away from the summer’s heat of Provence. She could feel emotion churn inside her as she walked into the hotel. A sudden, vivid memory of the Viscari Paris assailed her—the evening she and Lycos had dined with the Derenzes.
She looked around the lobby, wondering where the cocktail bar was. Then she saw it and made her way to it. She stepped inside, aware that her heart was thudding like hammers in her chest.
Lycos got to his feet. Arielle was heading towards him. He felt something catch within him, across the hollow that was permanently there. Just to see her again. His gaze clung to her as she approached. But he would not let it show in his eyes.
‘Thank you for coming,’ he said, as she reached him. He kept his voice carefully neutral.
She gave only a slight nod, sitting down in the tub chair opposite his. The light level in the cocktail bar was subdued, but he could see she looked pale. The honeyed skin tone he was familiar with had faded, it seemed, out of the Provençal sun. Her hair was drawn back into a pleat and was glistening with faint raindrops. She slipped the buttons of her jacket undone, but did not remove it. Yet even looking as workaday as she was, he still felt his breath catch at seeing her again. Seeing her beauty…
But he must not show his reaction to her. That was not why he had asked her to meet him. A waiter glided up, asking what she would like to drink. She asked for coffee then looked across the low table. Straight at him.
‘Why did you do it, Lycos? This time?’
The question was direct. So was his answer.
‘Because it was the right thing to do. Because it was owed to you.’
She gave a shake of her head. ‘Not by you. You owe me nothing, Lycos.’ She took a heavy, scything breath before continuing, ‘Least of all Mas Delfine.’
Arielle did not let her eyes drop. Would not. She had been here before with this conversation. And, although the reason for it had been completely different, her answer was the same.
‘You know that I can’t accept it, Lycos,’ she said, her voice low. ‘Any more than the last time you offered it to me.’
‘Now is completely different! You must see that!’ he cut across her. His voice was vehement and his eyes flared with anger.
‘Your motive is different, yes, but it’s still one I can’t accept.’
She held his gaze. It was hard to do so. Hard to sit here, so close to him, seeing him again, suppressing all that she felt about him. Those feelings had flared again the moment she’d seen him as she’d walked into the cocktail lounge. Flared as powerfully as they ever had. As they always would—
Because they will. I know that now. It doesn’t matter that I ended it before he was ready to end it. It doesn’t matter that I have not seen him for weeks and weeks. That I am making myself make a new life here in England—the one I have to make. That the memory of our time together will haunt me all my days and my longing for him will haunt me all my nights.
Just seeing him again, here and now, was hammering home that truth. Just as her heart was hammering in her chest.
Just to see him. Just to be here with him.
Emotion crushed her heart, fight it though she must. She had come here because he had asked her to and to refuse would have been ungracious.
Cowardly. Thinking more of her own feelings, than on the gesture he had just made to her. She ploughed on, saying what she knew had to be said. What she knew she had to make clear to him. She kept her voice as calm as she could.
‘Lycos, I can only repeat what you yourself said to me. That it is not your fault that you own the mas. My mother sold it to my father, he left it to Naomi, she gave it to Gerald. You won it off him because he was an arrogant fool to play you. So, he deserved to lose.’
Lycos was looking at her. ‘That’s not how you felt about that boy in Paris.’
She frowned. Why had he said that now?
‘Well, he was a fool, too, but a terrified one. He was desperate.’
‘And now I know why.’
Arielle stared. ‘What do you mean?’
Lycos leant forward, picked up his martini glass, took a mouthful. Then replaced it. He seemed hesitant to speak at first but then he did.
‘After you’d gone, I went to see him,’ he said.
Her eyes widened. ‘You did what?’
‘I went to see him. I got the hotel concierge to find me his Paris address, a very upmarket apartment in the 7th arrondissement, and I called on him.’ He paused again, then continued. ‘When he opened the door to me, he went white at the gills. But he invited me in, took control of himself, went and got a chequebook from a desk and told me he would write me a cheque for the sum of the IOU. He assumed that’s why I’d turned up.’
‘Had you?’
‘No. I took his IOU out of my jacket pocket and tore it up. Then I handed him a banker’s draft for the value of the chips he’d lost to me and told him that if he was smart, he’d lay off gambling, or he’d be an even bigger fool than he’d been that night.’
Arielle could only stare. ‘What…what did he say?’
‘He didn’t. Not then. Someone came into the room. A teenage girl, looking just as scared as he did. He said she was his sister. He told her I’d torn up his IOU and given him back the money he’d lost.’ He paused again. Arielle could hear the change in his voice. ‘She burst into tears.’
He took a breath. He was looking right at Arielle.
‘It all came out. She said their mother had been scammed out of a huge amount of money and if their father found out he’d be furious. He was a bully and made their mother’s life hell. So, the boy was desperate to cover his mother’s losses. Desperate enough to scrape together all the money he could, without their father finding out, and try his luck at the tables. But they’d only made things worse. He lost everything they’d scraped together to bet with that evening.’
He reached for his martini and took another slug before looking across at Arielle again.
‘I’ve ended up giving him a loan. That, along with the sum he’d gambled away, should cover their mother’s losses.’
Arielle stared. ‘You did that for someone you don’t even know?’
He put down his martini glass. Gave a half shrug. ‘I’d thought him a cocky, arrogant, aristocratic idiot who was showing off by taking me on at cards.’ He paused. ‘I was wrong.’
He reached inside his jacket pocket, took out an envelope and opened it. He removed a piece of paper from it and something else.
‘He gave me his IOU for the loan I made him. He’ll make me regular payments out of his allowance, he’s still a student, and for anything still outstanding his trust fund matures when he’s twenty-five. But he also gave me this as surety. It’s his pledge of honour.’
He held out to Arielle the gold, crested signet ring she’d seen the boy wearing. She touched it briefly, wonderingly, and Lycos put it away again in the envelope with the IOU. Thoughts tumbled through her head. More than thoughts. Words came to her. Words she’d said to him as she’d leant her head on his shoulder that night at the mas after they’d pitched in with the grape harvest and Lycos had said he’d promised Dan a spin in his flash car.
‘You’re a good man, Lycos Dimistrios,’ she’d said.
She said it again now, her voice low. Her eyes holding his.
He gave a faint smile. ‘I’m trying to be,’ he said. ‘Your words stung. That’s why I went to see him.’ His voice changed again as he continued. ‘And it’s why I want to restore your home to you.’
He drew a breath.
‘This time, Arielle, I’m not trying to buy you.’
Her face constricted.
‘I let you think I could be bought,’ she said, her voice low. ‘I let you lavish your money on me. Buy me beautiful clothes and jewellery. I told myself I was doing it just to please you. That it didn’t matter and didn’t mean anything. But when you offered me the mas so I would stay with you. Oh, Lycos…’ her voice broke. ‘You were offering me the one thing I longed for. The one thing in the world I wanted most except for…’
She broke off. Suddenly realising what she’d been about to blurt out.
The arrival of her coffee saved her. She dropped her eyes and busied herself stirring in the sachet of sugar, giving herself precious moments to recover and to feel she could look at Lycos again.
His gaze was still on her, but there was something different about him. Something that made her think of his nickname, as if he were a wolf indeed that had just picked up an unexpected scent. A scent he had not known existed…
But which he would not now relinquish.
‘Except for what?’
His words fell into the silence. His eyes held hers. Held her helpless. Defeated. Her expression changed. She set down her coffee spoon.
‘Except for you, Lycos,’ she said.
He heard her speak. Heard the words. But they made no sense.
‘Why do you say that?’ he said. A frown creased his brow. His breath was frozen in his lungs, but he spoke again. ‘It was you who left me,’ he said. ‘Even before I offered you your home back.’
She broke eye contact, her gaze slipping away across the room.
‘Lycos, right from the start I told myself our affair would be just that. An affair, nothing more. That it would end and then, just as you’d told me I must, I would have to go to England and make a new life for myself. Even if you did spend some more time with me in Normandy, or wherever, the end would still be the same. So—’
He saw her pick up her coffee spoon and put it down again. She looked across at him again.
‘So when I got upset, after that horrible gaming party, I felt I couldn’t stay with you any longer.’
Something changed in her face. Something that it hurt him to see.
‘Then…when you’d offered me the mas to stay with you I knew my decision was the only one I could make.’
Her voice dropped, twisting, ‘I could never stay with a man who thought I could be bought.’
He was silent. The gaping hollow that had been inside him ever since he’d watched her walk out of his hotel room, out of his life, stretched like a chasm that must swallow him. He could not bridge it, yet he must try. However hard it was to find the words.
‘Arielle…’ he said her name tentatively, unsurely, ‘…I made you that offer…because…because I panicked.’
She stared at him, incomprehension in her face.
‘You were going to leave me,’ he said. ‘And I panicked.’ His face worked. ‘Arielle, you said you never thought there was anything between us but an affair. If I’d put anything into words, even to myself, I would probably have thought the same. We were good together, that’s what I thought. That’s what I said to you. You were like no other woman I’d known. You were not like the women such as Natalie, who hang around wealthy men. I didn’t really think much more beyond that. Until…’
He took another breath. ‘Until you said you were leaving. Until I realised I had lost you. And that it was my own fault.’
He looked away for a moment, out over the cocktail lounge. Then his eyes came back to her. Nothing had changed in her face. Nothing at all. He felt the gaping hollow inside him still.
‘I went back to the mas, determined to put it up for sale because I could not bear the memories there tormenting me.’
His expression changed.
‘But then, I realised that there was only one thing to be done with the mas. To make amends.’
He reached inside his jacket pocket, drew out a thick envelope and took out the document within.
‘It’s the title deeds to Mas Delfine,’ he said. ‘All authorised by the notaire and made out in your name.’
She shook her head. ‘I can’t, Lycos. I can’t.’ It was a whisper, nothing more, and in her eyes was a look of anguish. ‘There are no amends to make. I understand, now, why you made that offer to me in Paris.’
Slowly, very slowly, he felt for the words he needed now. The words he needed to close that gaping hollow inside him and seal it for ever.
‘Do you, Arielle? Do you understand why I was desperate for you not to leave me?’
He swallowed. Painful, as if he were swallowing glass.
‘In Paris, you called me the Lone Wolf. And I have been, Arielle, all my life. You know my origins, that neither parent cared about me. That because I knew I was unimportant, was not valued by them, I made my way in the world not caring about anyone else. Oh, I hope I was never…callous towards any of the women I consorted with, women like Natalie. I dealt with them on their own terms and it was enough, so it seemed.’
He paused again. Fixed his eyes on her. Her face was very pale and her expression unreadable. He took a breath. He knew what he must say. And that if he said it he may risk it all. But he knew he had to make his final stake.
‘But with you, Arielle, it was not enough. I wanted more. So much more.’
He felt his throat tighten and he had to force the words past. These were the most important words he was ever going to say in his life.
‘After all our time together, those timeless days at the mas and then in Paris, I wanted never to be the Lone Wolf again.’
Her expression hadn’t changed, but her face had whitened, like chalk.
He continued, ‘That was why I was so desperate you should not leave me.’
He dropped his gaze to the thickly folded paper on the table, the deeds to Mas Delfine. He had to find more words. Slowly, feeling his heart thudding inside him, he pushed the deeds towards her. Lifted his eyes to her again.
His eyes, he knew, showed all the emotions that he felt. All that was in him and always would be. All that he felt for her.
He swallowed, finding the words that meant everything to him and always would.
‘What if the mas were my wedding present to you?’
Arielle heard him say it. How could she not? Yet there seemed to be something wrong with her hearing. There was a drumming in her head, in her ears, drowning out everything.
‘A…a wedding present?’ She said it as if no such thing could ever exist.
Her eyes were locked on his and in his gaze she saw something that made her weak. He lifted his hand, as if to reach to her. His voice was low and urgent.
‘Arielle, you told me that I was the only thing you wanted more than Mas Delfine. I feel the same about you.’ He took a ragged breath before continuing. ‘Except that, there is nothing else, absolutely nothing else, that can possibly compete with me wanting you.’ He took a breath, another ragged one. ‘Loving you.’
His eyes bored into hers. ‘Because that is what it is. What I now know it to be. I couldn’t see it at the time. I needed the hell I’ve been in since you left me in Paris to show me that! To show me that wanting you, loving you, is all I could ever want. For all my life. Wanting you as the heart of my heart, the love of my life, as my wife. If you will have me?’
Tears, slow and misting, were welling in her eyes and spilling down her cheeks. He reached forwards with his hand and brushed them away with the tips of his fingers.
‘Is that a yes?’ he asked, his voice quizzical.
How could he ask? How could he even ask? Her tears flowed faster and she heard him mutter an oath. Saw him, through her now hopelessly blurred vision, get to his feet, hunker down beside her and catch her hand, holding it fast. She squeezed it tight, as if she would never let it go, for she never would now. She cried for quite a while. He remained hunkered down beside her, saying nothing, just holding her hand as tightly as she was holding his. So much was going through her mind. So, so much.
She had never dared to admit it, to face that she had fallen in love with him, that to have lost him as she had was unbearable. But now, Lycos was hers. Hers for ever. And she was his for ever.
And the mas, her beloved Mas Delfine, was no longer his, but nor was it hers, either. Because it was going to be what would bring her more joy than anything in the world, except for Lycos. Except for loving Lycos and being loved by Lycos.
It will be ours.
Theirs for ever. As they were to each other.
Her tears were drying and her heart was singing—singing and soaring. She had gone there that evening to tell Lycos she had no claim on the mas. That she could not accept his offer, whatever the reasons he gave and however generous he wanted to be.
She had gone with the expectation that seeing him again would be agony and the knowledge that she had to walk away again from him.
But now, I never shall. Never!
Lycos drew her to her feet. Helplessly, she let him. The world was still a blur, her body suddenly weak. He let slip her hand, but only to slide his arm around her waist and draw her against his side.
‘I’ve got a room here, Mme Dimistrios-to-be,’ he informed her. In his voice was the husk she was so familiar with. She looked up at him, into his night-dark eyes.
He brushed her lips lightly, so lightly with his that her body trembled with it.
‘So, though the hour is early, shall we retire?’
She gave a sigh of bliss, of happiness, of wonder and of love.
‘Oh, yes,’ she breathed. ‘Oh, yes.’
Her body was silk and satin, her mouth velvet and her caresses like a living flame to rouse him to all that he longed for. With his lips and the tips of his fingers, he paid homage to her. From the tender lobes of her ears, down the slender column of her throat, to the sweet mounds of her breasts with their coral peaks straining at his touch and down the valley between. Down, down, to the deeper valley as her thighs slackened and he sought, and found, all that gave delight. To her. To him.
And as their bodies fused and flamed, and as they both cried out, he knew with every fibre of his body, every beat of his hectic heart, every breath and every blaze of all that filled him, that here was his heart’s desire. His heart’s fulfilment.
She lay in his arms, the woman he knew he loved, could never live without and now never needed to. Her tears were wet again on his naked torso and he cradled her to him. As close as they could be. As if they were one body, with a single beating heart.
‘Is this love?’ she whispered. ‘Is this really, really love?’
He grazed her lips with his.
‘Oh, yes,’ he said with a smile on his lips and in his voice, and a look of love in his eyes. ‘Oh, yes.’
She gave a sigh of heart’s content. And so did he.
And sleep, the sleep of love’s sweet promise, took them both.
