Ruthless Russian, Lost Innocence - Shaw Chantelle - Страница 19

‘You make it sound easy,’ Ella murmured, utterly transfixed by the story of Vadim’s route to success. ‘But I’m sure it can’t have been. You must have made personal sacrifices.’ She hesitated, and then said quietly, ‘I sometimes feel that when I was growing up I sacrificed many of the things that other young people take for granted. Music demanded so much of my time that I rarely socialised with kids of my own age, and now my career is so consuming that I have virtually no time for friends or…’ she hesitated fractionally ‘…relationships.’ She gave him a faint smile. ‘I wonder if one day we’ll look back and wonder if the dreams we chased so hard were worth the heartache?’

There was a depth to Ella that he had never found in any other woman, Vadim mused darkly. Her insight was uncomfortably close to the mark, but she had no idea that he had sacrificed the happiness and ultimately the lives of his wife and child on the altar of his ambition.

Had the single-minded determination he’d given to chasing his dreams been worth it? He now had wealth beyond anything he had ever imagined when he’d made that first deal with Herr Albrecht all those years ago. But sometimes, in the dark hour before dawn, when he surfaced from the regular nightmare that had haunted him for the past ten years and heard the echo of Klara’s terrified screams for him to save her, he knew he would gladly give up everything he owned to hold his daughter in his arms once again.

Tak-Sin had prepared an exotic fruit salad for dessert, and Ella helped herself to slices of mango and passion fruit, relishing the sweet, fresh flavours on her tongue. Vadim shook his head when she offered him the fruit bowl, and instead drained his champagne glass and refilled it. He had lapsed into silence-a brooding silence she felt reluctant to break. She sensed that his thoughts were far away, and she wondered what memories from his past had caused him to look so grim.

The weather seemed to be reflecting his mood. While they had been eating the evening sunshine had been replaced by ominous-looking clouds, and now the air was still and heavy, the atmosphere charged with electricity that made the tiny hairs on Ella’s arms stand on end. Through the French doors she saw the sky was black, and she caught her breath when lightning seared the heavens and briefly filled the room with brilliant white light. She flinched when a low growl of thunder sounded from across the river.

‘I hate storms,’ she admitted shakily as Vadim returned from wherever his thoughts had taken him and focused his piercing blue gaze on her. ‘When I was a child, one of the gardeners at Stafford Hall was struck and killed by lightning.’

He frowned. ‘You saw it happen?’

‘Oh, no-fortunately; but it was all the other staff talked about for weeks afterwards. They said his violent death would mean another ghost would haunt the Hall.’

‘Did you have many staff?’ Vadim asked curiously. ‘I’ve seen photographs of Stafford Hall and it looks a vast place.’

Ella nodded, thinking of the great grey-walled house with the stone gargoyles over the front door that had given her nightmares as a little girl. ‘It is-seventeen bedrooms, numerous reception rooms and a chapel in the grounds where it was rumoured that a priest was murdered on the orders of the King, hundreds of years ago. When my father first inherited the Hall from my grandfather we had a small army of cooks, butlers and maids, but as the money ran out he sacked the staff until there was only the housekeeper, Mrs Rogers, left. She was about a hundred,’ Ella added ruefully, ‘but she helped to care for my mother, and as my father wanted as little to do with Mama as possible, he allowed dear Betty to stay.’

Thunder rumbled again, louder this time, so that it seemed to reverberate around the room. ‘Did you believe the house was haunted?’ Vadim murmured, sensing Ella’s tension as the storm approached.

She hesitated, and then gave a reluctant nod. ‘I was a very imaginative child, and because my mother was often unwell I spent a lot of time on my own. I convinced myself that the stories I’d heard about the headless baron and the Grey Lady, who was said to have been stabbed to death by her cruel husband, were true. The room at the top of the tower where she was supposed to have met her death was thought to be the most haunted room in the house. It was always cold, and none of the staff would go up there.’ She paused again, and then revealed in a low tone, ‘My father used to lock me in that room as punishment for any misdemeanour I committed. And, as I only had to walk into the same room as him to incur his annoyance, I was punished pretty often when he was home.’

Vadim felt a violent surge of dislike for Ella’s father. ‘Did he know you were scared?’

‘Oh, yes,’ Ella said grimly. ‘I would be hysterical with fear when he dragged me up there-that’s why he enjoyed doing it. Refined cruelty was his forte.’

It was obvious that Ella had feared her father as much as she had feared the ghosts she had believed roamed her childhood home, and some indefinable emotion tugged on Vadim’s heart as he imagined her as a terrified little girl. ‘Did he ever punish you physically?’ he asked harshly.

Ella gave a start as a thunderclap shook the room, and she glanced nervously out at the black starless sky that seemed to smother the garden beneath a heavy cloak. ‘No,’ she said slowly. ‘He never hit me, but sometimes my mother would have bruises… She always said she’d fallen, or banged into the door… But I knew it had been him. Fortunately he never stayed at the Hall for long. He only came back from his house in France when he was short of money and needed to sell off another family heirloom, and it was a huge relief when he went away again.’

‘But if your father treated your mother so badly, why did she remain married to him?’

It was a question Ella has asked herself countless times, and she had never come to terms with the only answer she’d ever been able to come up with. ‘I suppose she loved him,’ she said at last. ‘She once told me that she had fallen in love with him the moment they met, and I think that whatever he did, however many times he broke her heart with his infidelity and his indifference, she never stopped loving him.’ She shook her head. ‘My mother was such a sweet, gentle person. I don’t understand why my father didn’t love her the way she loved him,’ she cried angrily.

‘Maybe he couldn’t,’ Vadim said quietly. He stared unseeingly across the dark garden while the familiar demon, guilt, stirred from its slumber. Irina had been gentle, and her sweet, shy smile had been the first thing he had noticed about her each time he’d walked into the grocery store where she had worked. He had loved her, he assured himself, but the painful truth was that he hadn’t loved her enough. He had known he was the centre of her world, but, much as it shamed him to admit it, she hadn’t been his.

His business, the pursuit of wealth and success, had been his mistress. He had not been unfaithful to his wife, as Ella’s father had been to her mother, but could he really say he had been a better husband than Earl Stafford when he had not spent enough time with Irina and Klara?

‘The reason he didn’t love her was because he was selfish and only cared about his own interests,’ Ella said bitterly.

Her words echoed in Vadim’s head and his guilt choked him.

Ella shivered. ‘I never want to be like my mother and fall in love with someone so desperately that I lose my pride and self-worth. Loving my father didn’t make Mama happy, and ultimately I believe it destroyed her. No man is worth that,’ she stated fiercely.

As she spoke, lightning zig-zagged across the sky and the crash of accompanying thunder was so loud that she screamed and dropped the glass of water she had just picked up. It smashed on impact with the tiled floor, but as she jumped out of her chair and bent to collect the shards Vadim strode around the table and pulled her to her feet. The room was plunged into darkness as the wall-lamps went out; the candles continued to flicker bravely for a few seconds before a gust of wind whipped through the open doors and snuffed out the flames.