A Whisper of Disgrace

chapter EIGHT


SHIVERING FROM HIS sudden departure from the bed and from the new coldness in his eyes, Rosa met Kulal’s accusing gaze.

‘Your mother slept with your uncle?’ he demanded in a voice which was icy with disbelief.

‘Yes.’ She tried not to flinch, thinking that it sounded even worse when it came from someone else’s lips. And Kulal clearly thought so too, because his face had frozen into a sombre mask. ‘But this is terrible!’ he flared. ‘I have rarely heard anything more shocking.’

‘You think I don’t know that?’ she questioned. ‘You think I wouldn’t give everything I owned for it not to be so?’

‘Is this not incest?’ he questioned, almost as if he was speaking to himself.

‘No! No!’ And to Rosa’s horror, she burst into tears. All the tears she’d been bottling up ever since her mother had blurted out the horrible truth now came spilling out. She hadn’t dared to give in to the danger of crying before, terrified that once she started she might never stop. She had needed all her energy and her strength to get away from Sicily and the dark web of deceit which had been woven into her life for all these years. But now that the tears had begun, they seemed unstoppable. They slid down her cheeks and onto her breasts, dripping from the prominent curves to fall in a growing damp mark on the pristine linen sheet. ‘I d-don’t know what it is, but it’s not that,’ she declared raggedly. ‘My mother and my uncle were not related by blood.’

‘But they were related by honour!’

‘Yes, they were!’ She glared at him, wiping away the falling tears with a clenched fist. ‘Don’t you think this has been difficult enough, without you, a complete stranger, getting on your high horse and taking the moral high ground?’

‘But I am not a “complete stranger,” Rosa. I am your husband!’

His words seemed to bring her to her senses and she shook her head. ‘But only as a symbol,’ she whispered. ‘As an expedient measure which suits us both. You’re not a real husband, Kulal—and a marriage of convenience doesn’t give you the right to stand in judgement of me, especially when this was something which was completely out of my control.’

For a moment there was a silence. Kulal stared at the fierce set of her lips, as if she was determined not to cry again. And he saw something in her which he recognised with a painful twist of his heart. Something he had buried so deep that he had almost forgotten its existence but which was now reflected in Rosa’s tearstained eyes. It was powerlessness, yes, but it was anger too—that in a single moment, your life could change for ever. For him, it had happened when his mother had scrambled up a rock to go to the aid of her trapped child. For Rosa it had happened when her mother had looked at her husband’s brother with lust in her eyes.

Damn the past, he thought viciously. And damn the never-ending repercussions of that past.

He walked across the room towards her and sat down on the edge of the bed, watching her gaze slide briefly to the roughness of his naked thighs before she turned her head to stare into his face instead. He could see the wariness which had frozen her features and he took one of her cold hands in his. ‘You should have told me all this before,’ he said.

‘And would you have still married me?’

There was a pause as he imagined the reaction of the press, if ever this were to get out. He could read the desperate question in her eyes and he knew it would be the easiest thing in the world to tell her what she wanted to hear. But wasn’t it about time that people stopped lying to Rosa Corretti?

‘I don’t know,’ he said heavily.

It was not the answer she wanted, but strangely enough it comforted her. Much better to hear the harsh truth than honeyed words which meant nothing. And this was an honest relationship, wasn’t it? That’s what it had been from the very beginning. They hadn’t pretended to feel things they didn’t feel and they didn’t need to say things they didn’t mean. ‘You think it’s an easy thing to tell someone something like that?’ she questioned. ‘That I’m not burning up with shame having to admit it to you now?’

He heard the guilt which had distorted her voice and once again he felt the simmer of anger. ‘Of course it’s not easy. But this is not your shame. You are nothing but a victim in all this, Rosa.’

‘And I don’t want to be a victim! I’m fed up with being a damned victim!’ she declared, shaking her head so that her dark hair flew wildly about her bare shoulders. ‘But what would someone like you know about that?’

He heard the resentment in her voice and usually he would have brushed away her question, with all its inquisitive undertones. He didn’t tell women things about his feelings or his past because there was no need to. He kept his secrets hidden from everyone, even from himself. But her admission had made him feel uncomfortable—more than that, it had ignited painful memories which had lain dormant inside his own heart for so long. What could you say to a woman like Rosa Corretti, who had been forced to face such an intolerable situation? Wouldn’t it only be human kindness to open the door on his own suffering?

‘I know more than you would ever guess,’ he said slowly. ‘And at least you can rest assured that the dark secret in your life and the consequences of that secret were outside your control. At least you are not responsible for what happened to you.’

She could hear the terrible pain which laced his words and saw the way that his face had frozen into a forbidding mask. The hard gleam in his eyes was piercing through her—as if daring her to ask him more—and she suspected that a look like that might put most people off. But Rosa did dare, because what did she have left to lose? ‘What happened?’

Kulal shook his head, but that did nothing to keep the memories at bay. He remembered a story that his English tutor used to tell him. The story of a man called Orpheus, who had been told never to look back. But Orpheus had looked back and had been left broken-hearted as a result. Kulal had never forgotten the moral of that story—that looking back could destroy you, and going forward was the only way that you could survive. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said bitterly.

‘Oh, but I think it does,’ said Rosa softly. ‘And I think you want to tell me.’

He turned on her then, his face dark with the deepest sorrow Rosa had ever seen, and she held her breath as she waited.

‘I caused the death of my mother,’ he said bitterly.

For a moment she didn’t speak. She wanted to brush away the bald statement like unwanted dust, but the suffering she saw on his face warned her not to make light of it. ‘How?’

Kulal glowered. He had been expecting her to respond with a placatory ‘Of course you didn’t!’ because that was what everyone always said, even if their accusatory eyes carried an entirely different message. ‘You want to hear how?’ he demanded. ‘Then I’ll tell you.’

Rosa leaned back against the pillows and shiny cushions and nodded. ‘Go on, then.’

There was something so unexpectedly calm about her that Kulal did something he’d never done before. He completely disregarded the fact that she was naked and that her cushioned breasts were just crying out to have him lay his head on them. Instead he opened his mouth and let out the words which had been smouldering away inside him for so long that they seemed to taint the air with their darkness. ‘I was six years old,’ he said. ‘And a very naughty child, apparently.’

She nodded. ‘Most six-year-old boys are naughty.’

‘I don’t need you to try and reassure me, Rosa!’

‘I was merely pointing out a fact.’

‘Well, don’t!’

She shrugged. The fury in his voice would have been off-putting to a lot of people, but she had grown up with furious men whose word was law and she knew how to deal with it. She lay very still and watched him.

Kulal picked his next words carefully; he felt like someone plunging his hand into a basket of fruit, knowing that angry wasps were buzzing inside. ‘It had been a hot summer, piteously hot—with the worst drought our country had ever known. Sandstorms had been raging in the desert for weeks and we had all been confined to the palace. We were going stir-crazy. I remember feeling that so vividly. I remember the constant drip of sweat, despite the fans that whirred overhead. My older brother was away in Europe, and I missed his company. But my mother said we would go on a picnic as soon as the weather improved and one morning the storm just died down, as if it had never happened. There was a strange calm to the air—and even though my mother complained of a slight headache, I was eager to leave.’

He was silent for a moment. How eccentric the memory could be, he thought. How was it that something which you’d blocked for over thirty years could suddenly reappear in your mind, as crystal clear as if it had happened the day before? Were these things he remembered himself, or things he had been told? Or maybe they were just a combination of things he had pieced together after the event.

‘We were driven out to Saxrasahl—a very famous dried-out plain which was once an oasis and is surrounded by intricate rock formations.’

Rosa nodded. She wanted to say that it sounded beautiful, but this was something she could never say, for his voice was leaden with the sound of approaching doom and she knew he would never associate such a place with beauty.

‘We ate our food, but I was eager to play and there was nobody to play with. My mother’s headache had grown worse and the driver and the bodyguards were too hot to join in with me. My mother told me to stay within eyeshot, but I remember being engrossed in my game. I remember climbing to the top of a rock, but the dryness of the terrain meant that it started to crumble. I … screamed.’ He closed his eyes and his heart began to pound. ‘And I heard my mother’s voice calling my name—and soon after that, I saw her face appear, for she had climbed the rock to find me.’

He stared down at his hands, as if he might find some comfort in those tight, clenched fists. The silence seemed to go on and on until Rosa reached out and touched one shoulder which was so hard and unyielding that he might as well have been carved from stone.

‘And then?’

He lifted his head and it was as much as she could do not to recoil from the heartbreak written in his eyes. ‘Her foot slipped. The bodyguard yelled—for he was only feet away from her—but it was too late. She fell.’

She forced herself to ask the painful question, because what else could she have said in the circumstances? ‘And she died?’

He shook his head. ‘Not straightaway. She was airlifted to hospital but she never came out of the coma. She slipped away two nights later, with my father holding her hand.’ A father who had never really forgiven him and a brother who had returned from Europe to accuse him of putting their beloved mother in danger. Later, both men had done their best to try to make up for the words which they’d uttered in the depths of their own grief, but it had been too late. And no blame or accusation had ever been more condemnatory than that which Kulal had directed at himself.

As his voice died away, Rosa stared at him, wondering what on earth she could say to a tortured man who had just bared his soul. What words could possibly bring him comfort? She thought about everything he had missed—all the cuddles and the warmth and knowing that somebody who loved you more than anyone else in the world would always be there for you. And then she felt a sharp and bitter pang of understanding, because she’d never had a mother like that, had she? She moved closer, her arms slipping around his neck as she offered him all the comfort in her heart.

‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered. ‘So very sorry.’

He tried not to flinch but the warmth of her body was irresistible. He had told her more than he’d ever told anyone. His playboy mask had slipped and she had glimpsed the real and ravaged face behind. He felt raw and he felt vulnerable. He felt all the things he had vowed never to feel again.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said unevenly.

‘Of course it matters.’ She saw the bleakness etched onto his features as she dared to bring up the one glaring omission from his story. ‘When your mother died, did you never think that perhaps her headaches might have been contributory? Was a post-mortem ever done?’

‘No!’ Her questions only added an extra layer of pain to his bitter memories and, pulling away from her, he steeled himself against her look of concern. Did she think that he was regularly going to bare his heart to her and subject himself to this kind of pain? And if that was the case, then surely it was his duty to enlighten her.

‘That’s it, Rosa,’ he said flatly. ‘We’ve had this conversation because maybe it was necessary, but we won’t be having it again. We’ve looked inside our individual wardrobes and seen all the skeletons hanging there, but now we’re closing the door on them. Do you understand?’

She heard the finality in his voice. ‘If that’s what you want.’

His eyes narrowed. ‘Yes, it’s what I want, but maybe it’s not what you want. Because this wasn’t what you signed up for, is it?’

‘I don’t think either of us really knew what we were signing up for.’

‘Which is why I’m giving you the opportunity to walk away.’

‘Walk away?’ Rosa blinked at him. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘Leave. Go on. Leave now. Why not? It makes perfect sense. You’ll still get your pay-off—only you’ll get it sooner than you ever anticipated. Because I think I’ve done rather better out of this marriage deal than you.’ He forced himself to say the words—wanting her to hate him, because if she hated him, then she would go. She would go and he wouldn’t have to look into her eyes and realise that she knew his secret and that she had seen his pain. ‘Just think, Rosa—all that money I’m prepared to pay for having taken your virginity. You can walk away now—free and independent, just like you wanted.’

But Rosa didn’t move because she knew exactly what he was doing. He was regretting having confided in her and now he was trying to drive her away. He was offering her money and trying to make her sound like some kind of whore in the process—something she’d emphatically told him she would not tolerate. Hoping that she’d leave here in some kind of rage.

A few hours ago and she might have been tempted, but that had been before he’d taken her to his bed. Before he’d shown her what she was capable of feeling. There was a reason it was called sexual awakening, she realised. Something had happened to her, and it was all down to him. It felt as if she’d been existing in a shadowy place before Kulal had brought her senses to life. And she didn’t want to lose this feeling.

‘Going is the last thing I want,’ she said, and knew she hadn’t imagined the long breath which escaped from his lips.

‘Then what do you want?’

She took the edge of the linen sheet and began to pleat it between her fingers, because that was easier than looking into those piercing black eyes. She recognised that she wasn’t ready to go it alone—at least, not yet. Not when the world outside Sicily still seemed such a big and frightening place. Wasn’t the whole point of this bizarre marriage that Kulal could give her something which nobody else could? Not just the money which was going to buy her independence, but a sexual education which had only just begun. And why should anything be allowed to spoil the best thing that had ever happened to her?

Looking up, she pushed the heavy fall of hair back from her face and the movement caused her heavy breasts to sway. She saw him shift a little and her attention was caught by the growing erection between his thighs and in that moment she felt shy and powerful, all at the same time. ‘I want you to teach me everything you know.’

He stared at her, knowing that he should distance himself from her and yet how could he when she looked so damned gorgeous? How could he force her to leave when he wanted her so much that he felt he could explode with need? He could smell the lingering scent of sex on the air and could feel the erratic beat of his heart as he leaned forward and bent his lips to her neck. ‘Anything specific you have in mind?’ he questioned unevenly. ‘The history of Zahrastan, maybe? Or the new energy proposals I’m setting out next week?’

She tipped her head back. ‘About pleasure,’ she whispered through dry lips. ‘Teach me everything you know about pleasure. I’ll be your wife and one day I will walk out of your life. But in the meantime …’

‘What?

She wriggled again, more impatiently this time. ‘Please?’

He drew back to see the sudden rush of colour to her cheeks and something made him want to show her who was in charge. To show her that, ultimately, he was the one who called all the shots. And perhaps the first lesson she needed to learn was how to articulate her own desires, instead of expecting him to second-guess them. Because only that way would she ever be truly independent. ‘Please, what?’ he prompted softly.

Rosa met the dark gleam of his eyes, and swallowed. ‘Please will you do it to me again?’