He looked down at her for a long moment, his gaze deep and dark. ‘How did your mother die?’
She dropped her hand from his arm and turned away, folding her arms across her body. ‘What has that got to do with anything?’
‘You’ve never told me. I want to know. What happened to her?’
Eliza blew out a breath and faced him again. What was the point of hiding it? She was the product of despair and degradation. It couldn’t be changed. She couldn’t miraculously whitewash her background any more than he could his. ‘Drugs and drink robbed her of her life. They robbed me of both my parents when it comes down to it. I suspect my father was the one who introduced her to drugs. He’s serving time in prison for drug-related offences. The one and only time I visited him he asked me to drug run for him. It might seem strange, given that familial blood is supposed to be thicker than water, but I declined. I guess it had something to do with the fact that I was farmed out to distant relatives who weren’t all that enamoured with the prospect of raising a young, bewildered and overly sensitive child. The only true family I’ve known is my fiancé’s. So, as to tartan picnic blankets and puppies…well, I have no experience of that, either.’
He put a gentle hand on her shoulder. ‘I’m sorry.’
Eliza gave him the vestige of a smile. ‘Why are you apologising? It’s not your fault. I was already royally screwed up when I met you.’
His eyes roved her face, lingering over her gaze as if searching for the real person hiding behind the shadows. ‘Maybe, but I probably made it a whole lot worse.’
‘You didn’t.’ She put her hand on his chest, feeling his heart beating slow and steadily underneath her palm. ‘I was happy for those three weeks. It was like stepping into someone else’s life. For that period of time I didn’t have a care in the world. It was like a dream, a fantasy. I didn’t want it to end.’
‘Then why did you end it?’
Her hand slid off his chest to push through the curtain of her windswept hair. ‘All good things have to come to an end, don’t they? It was time to move on. Soon it will be time to move on again.’
‘What about Alessandra? You’ve been very good for her—even Tatiana says so. And it’s easy to see how attached she’s become to you.’
Eliza felt that painful little fishhook tug on her heart again. ‘She’ll cope. She’ll have Kathleen and Marella and, most importantly, she’ll have you.’
‘Will you miss her?’
‘I’ll miss her terribly. She’s such a little sweetheart.’ I wish she were mine.
‘And what about me?’ His eyes were suddenly unreadable. ‘Will you miss me too?’
Eliza’s heart gave another painful contraction at the thought of leaving him. Would their paths ever cross again? Would the only contact be seeing him from time to time in a gossip magazine with some other woman on his arm? How would she bear it? What if he did decide to marry again? He might go on to have another child, or even more than one. He would have the family she had longed for while she would be stuck in her bleak, lonely life back at home, trapped in an engagement with a man who could not free her from it even if he wanted to.
She forced a worldly smile to her lips. ‘I’ll certainly miss picnics on luxury launches and swanning about in a villa that’s as big as an apartment block.’
‘That wasn’t what I was asking.’
‘Just what exactly are you asking?’ She gave him a pointed look. ‘It’s not like you want me to stay with you permanently—Kathleen is coming back. You won’t need me any more.’
‘We’d better get going.’ His expression was a mask of stone. ‘I have some work to see to before we leave for London tomorrow.’
‘We’re leaving tomorrow?’
‘The bursar of your school wants to meet with me. He spoke of a project you had proposed to the board for young single mothers on parenting practices and counselling, especially for those with children with special needs. I’d like to look at it a little more closely. It sounds like a good idea.’
Eliza had trouble containing her surprise. ‘I don’t know what to say…’
His eyes were hard as they held hers. ‘Don’t go attaching anything sentimental to my interest. I have a lot of money and, like a lot of wealthy people, I want to make a difference where it counts. There are other schools and charities that are in just as much, if not more, need of funds. I have to choose the ones I think are most productive in the long run.’
‘This means so much to me,’ she said. ‘It’s been a dream of mine for so long to do something like this. I don’t know how to thank you.’