Sweet Revenge (32 page)

“I’m not trying to make you believe anything. You asked for the truth, and I decided to give it to you.” She frowned consideringly into her wine. “It doesn’t really matter, you see, because you’ve no evidence you can take in. Your superiors would think you were crazy, and in any case, I had already decided that this particular job was the last in this phase of my career.”

“That’s ridiculous. You’d have been a child when this began.”

“Sixteen when I started. Very green,” she continued when he stared at her. “But a fast learner.”

“Why did you start?”

The faint smile disappeared, and she set her wine aside so that the glass clicked against the table. “That’s none of your business.”

“We’re past that, Adrianne.”

“That’s my private life.”

“You don’t have one any longer that doesn’t include me.”

“A very large assumption, Philip.” She rose, looking across at him. She could, when necessary, be as royal as her title. “Not that it hasn’t been an entertaining evening, but I really must say good night. I’m exhausted.”

“Sleep late tomorrow; we haven’t finished.” He glanced at his watch. “I need to make a call before we go on. I have a friend in Paris who can make enough of a show to keep Interpol amused for a day or so.” Without asking permission he walked through the doorway to use the phone in the bedroom.

When he came back she was asleep.

He looked at her as she lay curled on the sofa, one hand pillowing her head, the other loose at her side. Her hair
curtained her face, and when he brushed it back, her breathing remained slow and even. She didn’t look cool or regal now, but young and vulnerable. He knew he should wake her, knew he should question her now, while her defenses were down. Instead, he switched off the light and let her sleep.

It was almost dawn when he heard her. The light was a soft, quiet gray that would, with the strength of the sun, soon turn white and brilliant. Philip was stretched out on her bed with his shoes and shirt tossed carelessly on the floor. He woke quickly, immediately oriented, but had sat up in bed before he realized it hadn’t been the light that had woken him, but the sobbing.

He went into the adjoining room to see her balled tight, as if in defense against an attack or in great pain. It was only when he crouched beside her, lifting a hand to her wet cheek, that he realized she was still asleep.

“Addy.” He shook her, gently at first, then harder when she fought him. “Addy, wake up.”

She flinched violently, as if he’d slapped her, bundling herself back against the cushions with her eyes wide and terrified. He continued to murmur to her though some instinct kept him from gathering her close. Gradually, the glazed look faded and he saw the grief.

“A bad dream,” he said quietly as he took her hand. Hers trembled, but for a moment, just a moment, she gripped his fingers hard and held on. “I’ll get you some water.”

There was a bottle still unopened on the counter. He watched her as he pried off the top and poured. Soundlessly, she drew her knees in close to her chest and dropped her forehead on them. Nausea ground in her stomach while she took long, deep breaths and struggled for equilibrium.

“Thank you.” She took the glass, steadying it with both hands. Humiliation grew sharper as grief dulled. She said nothing, only prayed he would leave and let her gather up the tatters of her pride.

But when he sat beside her she had to fight back the urge to turn into him, to rest her head on his shoulder and be comforted.

“Talk to me.”

“It was just a dream, as you said.”

“You’ve hurting.” He touched her cheek. This time she didn’t jerk away, only closed her eyes. “You talk, I’ll listen.”

“I don’t need anyone.”

“I’m not going away until you talk to me.”

She stared down at the water in her glass. It was warm and tasteless and no comfort against the raw feeling in her stomach. “My mother died on Christmas. Now, please leave me alone.”

Saying nothing, he took her glass and set it aside. Just as quietly he drew her into his arms. She stiffened, pulled back, but he ignored her reaction. Rather than giving the words of sympathy she would have hated, he stroked her hair. Her breath came out in a half sob, half sigh as she went limp against him.

“Why are you doing this?”

“My good deed for the day. Tell me about it.”

She never spoke of it. It was too hard. But now, with her eyes closed and his shoulder cushioning her head, the words came. “I found her just before sunrise. She hadn’t fallen. It was as though she’d been too weak to stand and had simply laid down. It looked as though she might have been trying to crawl out for help. She may have called to me, but I never heard.” Unconsciously, she worked her hand on his shoulder. The fingers opened and closed, opened and closed. “You would have heard the stories. Suicide.” There was a raw edge to the word, as though it hurt her mouth to say it. “But I know it wasn’t. She’d been ill for so long, so much pain. She was only looking for a little peace, an easy night. She would never have killed herself that way, knowing that I … knowing that I would find her.”

He continued to stroke her hair. He knew the stories, the scandal. It still surfaced from time to time, weaving itself into a mystique. “You’d have known her best.”

She drew back to look at him then, to search his face before she let her head drop back to his shoulder. Nothing that had ever been said to her had eased more. “Yes, I did know her. She was kind and loving. And simple. No one really understood that the glamour belonged to the actress but not to the woman. She trusted people, the wrong people. That’s what killed her in the end.”

“Your father?”

He cut cleanly to the bone, so cleanly, Adrianne didn’t feel the pain until after the cut bled. “He broke her.” She rose then, to wrap her arms tight around her body and pace. “Bit by bit, day by day. And he enjoyed it.” There was no weakness now. Her voice rang as clear as the bells in the square that had heralded Christmas, but without the joy. “He married the woman who was considered the most beautiful of her time, A Western woman. An actress men thought of as a goddess. She fell in love with him and gave up her career, her country, her culture, then he proceeded to destroy her because she was everything he wanted, and everything he despised.”

She walked to the window. The sun was strengthening, shooting diamonds onto the clear water. The sweep of beach was empty.

“She didn’t understand cruelty. She had none. There was so much I didn’t know until years later, when it all began to pour out of her in her despair and confusion. In Jaquir she would talk to me because there was no one else she could talk to.”

“Why didn’t she leave him sooner?”

“You’d have to understand Jaquir, and my mother. She loved him. Even after he took another wife because she’d displeased him by giving him a female child, she loved him. He insulted and humiliated her, but she hung on. She spent her days trapped in the harem while his second wife swelled with his son, and she loved him still. He beat her, and she accepted it. She couldn’t have more children, and she blamed herself. For nearly ten years she stayed, veiled and abused while he destroyed her confidence, her ego, her self-respect. The damage was great, but she held on. For me. She might have been able to get out, to escape, but she thought first of me.”

She took a long breath, looking out blindly at the sun-washed sand. “Everything she did, everything she didn’t do, was for my welfare.”

“She loved you.”

“Perhaps more than she should have, more than was good for her. She stayed with him year after year because she wouldn’t leave me. He beat her. He humiliated her. He
raped her. God knows how many times he raped her. But once I was there, curled under the bed, with my hands over my ears trying to block it out. And hating him.”

His eyes sharpened at that. The sympathy he’d been feeling changed to a dull, throbbing anger. She’d have been only a child. He started to speak, then held his tongue. There was nothing he could say to gloss over that kind of pain.

“I don’t know if she ever would have found the courage to leave. Then one day when I was eight, Abdu told her he was sending me away to school. I was to be betrothed to the son of an ally.”

“At eight?”

“The marriage would have waited until I turned fifteen, but the betrothal was a good political move. There must have been some of the actress in her yet. She accepted his decision, even seemed pleased by it. And she talked him into taking me along to Paris with them to teach me a little of the world. If I was to be a good wife, I should know how to behave outside of Jaquir. She convinced him that she was delighted with his interest in my welfare, that she approved of the coming marriage. It’s not uncommon for a woman of my country to marry at fifteen.”

“Whether they want to or not?”

She had to smile. He sounded so British. “Marriages are still arranged in Jaquir, from the farmers daughter to the king’s. Its purpose is to strengthen the tribe and legitimize sex. Love and choice have nothing to do with it.”

The light was changing. She saw a young man, covered with sand, walk groggily along the edge of the beach. “When we were in Paris, she managed to contact Celeste. Celeste arranged for tickets to New York. Abdu cultivated a progressive image outside of Jaquir, so we were allowed to shop and go to museums. My mother was permitted to have her hair unbound and her face unveiled. We lost the bodyguards in the Louvre, and ran.”

She pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes. They were swollen and gritty. The bright beam of sun made them ache. “She was never well again, and she never stopped loving him.” She dropped her hands to her sides before she turned. “It taught me that when a woman lets herself love,
she loses. It taught me that to survive, you rely on yourself, first and last.”

“It should also have taught you that sometimes love has no threshold.”

She felt a sudden chill race up her arms. His eyes were calm, steady. There was something in them she didn’t want to see, just as she didn’t want to analyze why she had told him more than she’d ever told anyone. “I want a shower,” she said briskly. She moved past him to the connecting door. Something made her hesitate before she shut it firmly between them.

She thought he had gone. She lingered in the shower, letting the hot spray beat over her skin. The spearing headache she’d developed lessened to a dull throb she knew could be erased by a couple of aspirin. Because it soothed her, she slathered on scented cream and slipped into a loose robe with the idea of stretching out on the terrace lounge and letting her hair dry in the sun.

The beach would wait. This morning it would be better to be alone, without the roving cocktail waiters to see to her thirst, or vacationers splashing, shouting, or baking nearby. She always spent Christmas morning alone, avoiding well-meaning friends and social obligations. Memories of her mother’s last Christmas weren’t as sharp or as painful as they once had been, but she couldn’t bear the sight of holly or shiny colored balls.

Phoebe had always put a white angel on top of the tree. Every year from the first they’d spent in America. Except for the last, when she had been caught so deep in that dark tunnel she had been sucked into.

Adrianne looked at her mother’s illness that way, like a tunnel, dark, deep, with hundreds of blind corners and dead ends. It was better to have that tangible vision than the cold comfort of all the technical terms in the dozens of books on abnormal behavior Adrianne had pored over. Better still than all the diagnoses and prognoses she’d received in quiet leather-scented rooms from respected doctors.

It had been the tunnel that had pulled her mother deeper as time went by. Somehow over the years, Phoebe
had been able to find her way out again. Until she’d been too tired, or until the dark seemed easier than the light.

Perhaps time did heal, but it didn’t make you forget.

She felt better for having put her feelings into words, though she was already regretting having given Philip so much. She told herself it didn’t matter, that soon they would be going their separate ways and whatever she’d said, whatever she’d shared, would mean little as time went on. If he’d been kind where kindness hadn’t been expected, it couldn’t matter. If she’d wanted where desire could never exist, she could overcome it. She’d taken care of herself too long, guarded her emotions too carefully, to let him make a difference.

From now on every thought, every feeling, had to be focused on Jaquir—and revenge.

But when she opened the door between the rooms he was still there, shirtless, barefoot, talking in surprisingly fluid Spanish to a white-suited smooth-faced waiter. She watched Philip pass bills over—enough, apparently, to make the young man glad he was working, holiday or not.

“Buenas dios
, señora. Merry Christmas.”

She didn’t bother to correct his assumption of her relationship with Philip, or the fact that Christmas hadn’t been merry for her in quite a long time. Instead, she smiled, pleasing him almost as much as the pesos already in his pocket.

“Buenos dios. Felices Navidad.”
Adrianne folded her hands and waited for the sound of the door closing. “Why are you still here?” she asked when they were alone.

“Because I’m hungry.” He walked outside onto the terrace and sat. Obviously settled and comfortable, he poured coffee. There were ways and ways to gain trust, he thought. With a bird with a broken wing, it took patience, care, and a gentle touch. With a high-strung horse that had been whipped, it took diligence and the risk of being kicked. With a woman, it took a certain amount of charm. He was willing to combine all three.

She came out, frowning. “I might not have wanted breakfast.”

“Fine. I can eat yours too.”

“Or company.”

“You can always go down to the beach. Cream?”

She might have resisted the smell of coffee, or the golden light of the sun. She told herself she could certainly have resisted him. But she couldn’t, wouldn’t, resist the scent of hot food.

“Yes.” She took her seat as if granting an audience. Philip’s mouth twitched.