Into the tunnel. The tunnel that was funnelling him forward to a marriage he could not avoid, to a future mapped out for him just as it had been for his parents, Louisa’s parents, and so many more of his family over the generations, across the centuries.
Anger speared again, more intense. More intense, too, the other emotion—the one that was focussed like a dark, burning flame on what he had put aside to enter the tunnel. What he could not have again.
And what, with sudden consuming heat, he wanted once more…
One last time…
CHAPTER SIX
‘THANK you so much, Richard, for a lovely evening.’ Alexa infused warmth into her voice. It was a little forced, but she hoped Richard hadn’t noticed. Just as she hoped he hadn’t noticed her abstraction during the remainder of the evening.
She’d tried hard to be a good guest, the pleasant evening companion owed to someone as nice as Richard Saxonby, but her mind had had a will of its own. It had wanted her to wander off, wanted her to seek and find the object of its attentions, and she’d had continually to rein it back. So, too, her gaze. The knowledge that Guy was somewhere in this vast gathering, with scores of tables and hundreds of people, had been a constant torment to her. She had felt herself disastrously, damningly, wanting to seek him out with her eyes, searching through the mass to see if her eyes could light on him again…feast on him again. But they mustn’t! She must not. That was all there was to it.
But it might be the very last time I see him in the flesh…
The plea came from somewhere deep inside her. She fought to crush it back, push it back where it had come from, but it kept trying to find its way out.
I’ve go
t to be strong! I’ve got to!
The admonition was fierce, the intent resolute.
Just don’t look for him—don’t try and see him. Leave him alone. He’s nothing to do with you any more—nothing!
That was all she must hold on to. That time in her life, when Guy de Rochemont had been with her, was over. Gone. Finished. That was all there was to it.
But it was one thing to tell herself that, another to do what she was told—stop trying to see Guy somewhere in all this crowd.
In the end it had been a relief when Richard’s party had started to break up and disperse. So focussed had she been on Guy’s disastrous presence at the gala that she’d given no thought to what Richard might be thinking about how the evening should end. But now, as he helped her into a taxi in the hotel’s forecourt, he said solicitously, after she’d thanked him for the evening, ‘Would you like me to see you home?’
It was lightly said, no more than a polite offer, and Alexa was grateful. He was not going to chance anything this early, and it was yet another sign of how nice he was. Since she knew he lived in Highgate, quite a different direction from Notting Hill, she assured him she’d be absolutely fine, thanked him again for the evening, and waved him goodbye as her taxi pulled away. But once she was on her own, the taxi threading along Park Lane, she was instantly prey to her emotions. She sat back, her eyes shut, wishing she could shut out her thoughts as easily.
But it was impossible. Impossible to suppress, as she knew she must, the swirl of emotions in her head. Oh, why had she had to see Guy again? It had been the very last thing she’d needed!
I thought I was starting to get over him. Get him out of my system. Move on. Make new connections, put him behind me finally…
Her eyes shadowed.
I thought I was starting to make myself fall out of love with him…
Her hopes had been real, fervent—but all it had taken was a single, shocking sight of him to know just how useless those hopes had been. In anguish, the thought resolved in her head. Hollowing her out with hopelessness.
I’m still in love with him… And there’s nothing I can do about it…
The truth, stark and painful, stared bleakly back at her, scraping at her heart with razoring pain. Guy was gone—gone from her life…
As the taxi deposited her on the pavement outside the house she lived in, she felt an empty longing in her, a hopeless tearing. She opened the front door into the entrance lobby. Dolefully, her feet leaden, she gathered her narrow skirt in one hand and headed heavy-hearted up the stairs. Never had life seemed so bleak.
A pall seemed to be hanging over her, slowing her steps. And what was there to speed up for? An empty flat awaited her. A lonely night.
A hopeless skein of yearning unwound in her. Heartache and hollowness.
In her head, as it had been over and over again, she saw Guy’s image and felt her heart squeeze—but Guy wasn’t there. Would never be there. Never again. Never—
The ache in her heart worsened.
At the door to her flat she paused, summoning the mental energy to open it and go in. When she did, she closed the door behind her, feeling the emptiness of the flat all around her. Dropping her evening bag on the hall table, she shrugged off her fake fur evening jacket and walked listlessly into the sitting room, intent on reaching the kitchen beyond to make herself a cup of herbal tea to retire with—and stopped dead.