‘MARRY me,’ murmured Lex a week later as they lay sprawled together on the lounge in the drawing room eating home-made French frou-frou food and watching a remake of Pride and Prejudice on the television. It was after ten on a Friday evening, maybe after eleven, and Sienna was wearing pyjamas in the form of a grey singlet top and baggy white cotton trousers. Lex’s pyjama bottoms were pale blue and white striped and his chest was bare. The day’s work had been done, they were well into the play part of the evening. Mr Bingley had just proposed to Jane. Sienna was undeniably happy with her lot.
At least, she had been until Lex had uttered those two little words guaranteed to make her tremble, and not in squirming anticipation. She looked from Lex to the TV screen and back again. No need to panic. Maybe he was just having a little fantasy interlude with one of the Misses Bennetts. Maybe he was playing the film critic and attempting to distil the theme of the story down to two words that started with something other than P.
But then he looked at her, his eyes dark and his expression brooding, and spoke those words again.
‘Marry me.’
‘What?’
‘You heard.’
‘Yes, but—’ Lex looked away and Sienna felt her heart constrict. ‘You’re serious.’
‘Yes. That’s also all you have to say to make this happen, by the way. Yes. I particularly liked the way the very sweet Jane Bennett just said, “Yes, yes, a thousand times, yes”. Not a but in sight. Makes a man feel wanted.’
‘Keep watching,’ she said. ‘You might pick up a thing or two about delivering a successful marriage proposal. There’s usually mention of love. Ardent love, tempered by the utmost respect. These words are often delivered with an appealing lack of confidence, possibly even a very sexy stutter. Even if you are as rich as Croesus.’
‘You’ve seen this movie before,’ he said.
‘Oh, yes.’
‘You do realise that both the book and the screenplay were written by women.’
Sienna eyed him narrowly.
‘I’m just saying…’
‘Your chances of hearing that yes are so very low right now,’ she told him darkly.
‘But there is a chance of it,’ he said with no little satisfaction. ‘We’ve established that the offer is sound.’
‘Lex, I—’ She didn’t know what to say that wouldn’t hurt him.
‘Would it help if I told you how much I love you?’ he offered quietly, and when she met his gaze she realised that, although his smile was teasing, his eyes were deadly serious. ‘You were right. I may have overlooked that part earlier.’
Sienna ducked her head as tears pricked at her eyes. Served her right for asking for something she didn’t know what to do with. ‘How can you be sure that this isn’t just infatuation?’ she said shakily.
‘Because I love being with you. Always have, always will. Because I know you. Because there’s a place for you inside of me and I want you there.’
Siena closed her eyes.
‘Sienna, do you love me?’
It felt like it. If the pain in her heart was anything to go by. Her tears began to fall in earnest.
‘Would it be so bad, being married to me?’
‘No.’ Sienna shook her head and wiped her eyes with her fingers, grateful for the curtain of hair that shielded her face from view. Until gentle fingers tucked her hair behind her ear. She heard Lex curse softly. ‘I’m sure you’ll make some woman very happy.’
‘Why not you, Sienna? Why can’t I make you happy?’
‘What if it doesn’t work?’ She knew their time in Australia was coming to a close and that she would lose the closeness to him that she craved once they were back in England, but she wasn’t ready for this. Not marriage. Not that. Never that. ‘What about your wealth? And my lack of it?’ What about her inability to commit for fear of failing him? ‘We’re just not equal, Alex. And I need to be.’ Sienna knew exactly what happened when monetary inequality soured a marriage. When any type of inequality entered a relationship, for that matter. When one gave more than the other. When one loved more than the other. She knew what came of that.
Hope died first. Then courage died. And then the will to live…died.
‘I know you’re thinking of your parents, Sienna,’ said Lex urgently. ‘I know their marriage was a disaster, but it was the exception, not the rule. It doesn’t have to be like that. It wouldn’t be like that. We could be happy together. I know we could. All you have to do is believe in yourself and the things you bring to this relationship.’
But self-belief had never been Sienna’s strong suit. ‘I don’t bring much.’ A bundle of insecurities and an old stone house in Cornwall that needed more money spent on it than it was worth. ‘You could do so much better.’
‘Dammit, Sienna, I don’t want better. I want you!’ Lex pulled away to stare at the screen. So did Sienna. Mr Darcy currently held court, burning it up with his brooding glances, but he had nothing on Lex. When Lex decided to sizzle and brood he could set the drapery on fire.
‘All right,’ he said after a fraught twenty seconds of silence. ‘Do you concede that, apart from the disparity in our wealth, that we’re well matched? That we’re quite capable of holding our own with each other intellectually, morally, and—’ his eyes took on a decided gleam ‘—sexually? That to all intents and purposes we are equals in those areas?’
‘You’re playing with words, Lex.’
‘I’m taking that as a yes,’ he said. ‘For my part, I’m willing to concede that I do have much healthier self-esteem than you, and far fewer abandonment issues. However…I’m willing to wager that, give or take a decade or two, you’ll finally figure out your own worth and realise that I’m not going anywhere. Problem solved.’
‘In a decade or two?’
‘I’m a patient man.’
Bemusement began to spread through her. This conversation had taken a distinct turn for the surreal. ‘There’s still the small matter of your wealth and my lack of it,’ she reminded him. ‘How do you plan to even that out? Become the philanthropist and give away all your money?’
‘I’d really rather not,’ he said dryly. ‘Although I do know this woman who needs a few hundred million in order to believe in her own worth enough to take a chance and commit to the man who loves her. I could always give it to her. No?’ He’d seen the refusal on her face long before she thought to voice it. ‘Hell, Sienna. It was worth a try. All right, so we find another way to improve your finances.’
‘We’re talking a lot of improvement,’ she said. ‘How do you propose I become a megamillionaire overnight?’
‘I didn’t say overnight,’ he said. ‘Realistically speaking, I think you need to look at a somewhat longer time frame than that. I’m thinking that with your rapidly growing business acumen and occasional guidance from a very interested party that you could get there inside a decade.’
‘I’m having a thought,’ she said.
‘Does it involve lottery tickets?’
‘No.’
‘Games of chance?’
‘No.’
‘Felonious acts?’
‘No,’ she said, rolling her eyes. ‘Maybe I just need to find those paintings. Maybe if I did that, then everything else would fall into place. Money. Self-confidence. Everything.’
‘No.’ The teasing light in Lex’s eyes had disappeared, replaced by a weariness she didn’t often see in him. ‘Enough with the paintings, Sienna. You need to stop pinning your hopes on them, devoting your life to looking for them. You need to find some other way to put your past behind you. That train’s not coming.’
She knew it. In her heart she knew it. And still she clung to the thought of them the way a dying man clung to the thought of a miracle cure. ‘How do you know?’
‘Because my mother’s been looking for them for the past twelve years on your behalf,’ he said curtly. ‘She’s had Scotland Yard looking, private galleries, private collectors, private investigators, you name them, she’s had them looking for those paintings. Adriana’s investigation force spans the globe, but she’s never heard a whisper. Not one. They’re gone, Sienna. All the way gone.’
‘She’s been looking for them all this time?’ Sienna whispered. ‘For me?’
‘She knows what they mean to you, Sienna. We all do. I’d love for her to find them for you. I’d love for you to find them so that you could rewrite your past and find some comfort there. But I also need to believe that there’s a way for you to move forward without those paintings. With love,’ he said quietly. ‘With me.’
‘I can’t,’ she said quietly. Pathetic cowering weakling. ‘I’m so sorry, Lex. You’re the finest man I know. Generous, and beautiful, and…beloved. But I just can’t.’
Sienna slept badly that night and she slept alone. Surrounded by space, bereft of warmth, she dreamt of loss and of loneliness. Of Lex and a life without him. She lay there in the half light of dawn, her pain a living thing as she remembered the desolation in Lex’s eyes when she’d refused his offer of marriage and the hollowness he’d left behind when he’d stood and left the room without another word.
The one person in her life who’d never once let her down and she’d refused everything he had to offer because she would not allow herself to believe that someone like him could want someone like her.
Pathetic cowering weakling. Her father’s words haunted her. Cut at her.
Defined her.
At seven-thirty Sienna abandoned all pretence of sleep, pushed back the bedcovers, and headed to the west-wing breakfast room, praying that Rudy had delivered the coffee already and that Lex would be nowhere in sight.
The coffee was in evidence, she could smell it before she’d even entered the room. One down. But Lex was there too, and why wouldn’t he be? It was his coffee. His house.
‘Morning,’ she said, wishing herself far, far away. Wishing that she could somehow turn back time and make everything all right between them. Because it wasn’t all right. It was all wrong. And she had no idea how to proceed from here.
He’d showered and shaved this morning, but that was where his concession to orderliness ended. His olive-coloured T-shirt was an old one. His steel-grey workman’s trousers had seen better days. The colour matched the colour of his eyes. His eyes made her nervous.
‘Morning,’ he said smoothly. ‘Sleep well?’
She hadn’t and he knew it. She figured it for one of those rhetorical questions that didn’t need an answer. ‘You look dressed for dirt,’ she said instead.
‘Rudy and I are heading to the boatyard soon. We’re building a boat together.’ He regarded her with those watchful, measuring eyes. ‘You’re welcome to come along.’
‘No. I—no,’ she said awkwardly, heading for the coffee. The sooner she had coffee in hand, the sooner she could leave. ‘Thank you. I just—no.’ How on earth was she supposed to extricate herself from his life when she was so deeply enmeshed in it?
‘You think I’m going to let you go, don’t you?’ he said mirthlessly. ‘Just like that? Just because of one minor setback in our negotiations? I thought you knew me better than that, Sienna. You should have known that come this morning I’d have another offer on the table.’
Sienna fumbled with the coffee pot, cursing as it sloshed over the rim of the cup and onto the floor. Rudy would not be pleased. She set the coffee down and reached for a napkin.
‘Leave it,’ he said curtly.
She left it. Which left her standing there clutching a napkin in one hand and a coffee in her other. ‘What kind of offer?’ she said hesitantly. She couldn’t deal with another marriage proposal right now. She really couldn’t.
‘I still want you by my side,’ he said. ‘That’s non-negotiable as far as I’m concerned. Marriage is somewhat more negotiable. We don’t necessarily have to marry, although I will reiterate that I would prefer to. It’s easier on the children, wouldn’t you agree?’
‘Children?’ she echoed.
‘Ours,’ he said blithely. ‘As for the paintings, I’m prepared to throw considerable time and resources into helping you look for them. Maybe you will turn up something that my mother has missed. I figure I can take a month off work, starting from when we leave here, to help you look for them. With all that I am. All that I have. If you really think those paintings will make a difference to your past and to our future, then I’ll help you look for them.’
‘Lex—’
‘Think about it.’ He came to stand in front of her and leaned down to press a light kiss against her unresisting lips. ‘That’s all I’m asking you to do. Just think about it.’ His smile turned rueful. ‘Think about it and don’t say no.’
Sienna thought about Lex’s latest offer all the way back to her room. She should have realised that he would find a way to reopen negotiations. That he would come up with what sounded on the surface like a wholly reasonable compromise—one that nonetheless moved him inexorably closer to getting what he wanted. She’d been watching him in action all week with the takeover bid. At the end of last week she’d have bet money she couldn’t afford to lose that the Scorcellinis would decline his offer. But they hadn’t. Lex was good at negotiating his way through difficult situations. At turning ‘no’s into ‘maybe’s and ‘maybe’s into ‘yes’s.
At making people believe.
She wanted to find a way to overcome her fears. For Lex. For herself. She badly wanted the scars of her past to stop determining her future. She wanted to understand what had made her mother so fragile that she’d taken her own life. What fundamental flaw pushed a person down that path? What flaw inside her father had made him treat his wife and child so badly? What flaw inside her had made them leave her without a second thought? Only someone who’d lived through those years with her parents would know the answers to those questions. Someone who’d lived in the house and witnessed it all. Someone like Elsie.
Elsie had left her too, but Sienna didn’t want to dwell on that.
With a little more effort she might be able to find Elsie and talk to her. About the paintings. And about the past.
She needed to see if Maggie Cameron of 42 Aldersley Road, Hornsby, had her phone number listed in the directory.
She did.
Moments later, with Elsie’s letter in hand, Sienna had dialled the number and started to pace. The phone rang once. Twice. Five times.
‘Hello?’ said a woman’s voice she didn’t recognise. The accent was Australian. The voice sounded elderly. Maggie Cameron, she presumed.
‘Hi,’ said Sienna hurriedly. ‘Ah, hello. I’m not sure if you can help me, and I do apologise for disturbing you if you can’t, but I’m trying to find a Mrs Elspeth Blaylock.’
There was a long pause, and then the woman spoke again. ‘Who is this?’
‘Sienna. Raleigh. Elspeth used to work for my family in Cornwall years ago. I’m in Sydney at the moment and I have your current address written on the back of one of her letters. I got your name from your neighbour, and your number from the book…’ Sienna closed her eyes and cursed herself for not being better prepared. ‘Her name’s Elsie. Elsie Blaylock.’
‘Yes, dear. I know. This is Margaret, her sister. But I’m sorry, Sienna. Elsie passed away some twelve years ago. You might remember that she came home to look after me? Turned out that she was the one who was ill.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Sienna mumbled. ‘I’m so sorry. I didn’t realise.’
‘You’re Mary’s girl,’ said the voice.
‘Yes.’
‘The one who used to sit in Elsie’s kitchen and make pastry snails and butterflies.’
‘Yes. That’s me.’ Sienna fought back unexpected tears. ‘I’m so sorry to trouble you. I just thought…well…it would have been nice to see her again, that’s all.’
‘Elsie would have liked that you called her,’ said her sister. ‘She used to talk about you all the time. She’d have packed you up and brought you back here with the rest of her belongings if she could have. She never could countenance the way your parents treated each other. Or you, for that matter. “Such a dear little thing,”’ she used to call you. “Such a dear and loving little girl.”’
Sienna’s vision blurred. She could feel herself clutching the letter in her hand; she just couldn’t see it any more.
‘I swear she used every trick in the book to try and convince her doctor to let her go to Mary’s funeral, but she was far too ill to travel by then,’ said the voice. ‘She had to make do with sending a card. She wrote you a letter too, as I recall. Fretted over it for days, but finally it went in the post.’
‘I don’t remember receiving it,’ Sienna said shakily. ‘I don’t remember much about those few months at all.’
‘Ah, well. You were so young, see? Such terrible things to happen to someone so young. I wouldn’t fret one little bit over not remembering that letter. Elsie wouldn’t want you to fret,’ said the voice. ‘She’d have been so pleased that you called. She’d have loved to see you again.’
‘I—thank you,’ said Sienna. ‘I’d have loved to see her again too.’
Sienna ended the call on a wave of emotion. She placed the letter gently on the bed and turned to stare unseeingly out at that million-dollar harbour view, her arms wrapped around her waist, holding her feelings in, keeping others out. She was still standing there when Lex walked in some time later. It could have been one minute later, it could have been ten. She glanced at the clock. Ten past eight. Make that closer to twenty minutes. She gathered herself together with a start. ‘I thought you and Rudy were heading out?’
‘We are. But Rudy invited Grace to meet us for lunch. She wants to know if you’d like to join us. She thought she could drop by and pick you up on the way.’ Lex’s sharp gaze went from her to the letter on the bed. ‘May I?’ he said.
Sienna nodded.
He crossed to the bed and picked it up, scanning it fast. ‘You called her?’
‘Yes.’
‘To ask her if she knew anything about the paintings?’
‘More or less.’
‘And?’
‘She’s dead. I spoke to her sister.’
‘What did her sister have to say?’
‘Nothing much. Nothing about the paintings. She mentioned a letter…a letter Elsie wrote to me after my mother’s death. I think I’ll try and find it. Not because there’ll be anything about the paintings in it because I doubt there will be. But I’d still like to find it.’
‘Want some help?’ he said quietly. Different offer from his earlier one. Same unwavering support.
‘Yes.’ It was that or walk away from him and she couldn’t do it. She just couldn’t do it. ‘Will you come to my house in Cornwall with me when we get home? My mother’s belongings are there, up in the attic. That’s where Elsie’s letter will be—if my father didn’t throw it out.’
‘I’ll come,’ he said gently.
‘For a month?’
‘Yes.’
‘And help me look for the paintings?’
‘If that’s what you want.’
Sienna nodded and looked away. She didn’t deserve this man. Not his support. Not his love. ‘Tell Grace I’ll give her a call later,’ she said shakily.
‘You’ll come to lunch?’
‘Yes.’ He gave so much. She gave so very little back. She could at least join him for lunch. She’d be fine by lunchtime. ‘Excuse me. I’d better go and have that shower.’
She left him standing there as she made her way to the bathroom, shed her pyjamas and stepped beneath the spray of a showerhead set to stinging. She felt the tears she’d been holding at bay start to swallow her and she let them come, silent, choking sobs of despair. The water wasn’t hot enough; the water didn’t burn nearly as much as the pain in her heart. She wanted it steaming, scalding.
The shower door opened abruptly.
Lex.
He saw her face; he saw her tears. ‘We’ll go to Cornwall,’ he said abruptly. ‘Paintings or no paintings, you can find your way through this, Sienna. I know you can.’ He stepped into the shower beside her, fully clothed, and held her while she wept.