The line of that old nursery rhyme played inside her head, as it had done so many times over the last five and a half years: All the King’s horses and all the King’s men couldn’t put Humpty Dumpty together again…
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
THE NEXT DAY, Leo got back earlier than he’d expected from his meetings. He had particularly enjoyed the one with the community school bursar. He had made a commitment to the school and he couldn’t wait to tell Eliza about it. The project she had set her heart on would go ahead, no matter how things turned out when her time with him was up.
Last night he had sensed a shift in their relationship. In the past they had had sex, last night they had made love. He had felt the difference in her kisses and caresses. He wondered if she had sensed the difference in his.
Did it mean she might reconsider her engagement? He had done a quick Internet search on her fiancé but he hadn’t uncovered much at all. It surprised him for in this day and age just about everyone had a social media page or blog or website. Was the man some sort of recluse? It had niggled at him all day. After what had come out in the papers yesterday, why hadn’t the guy stormed into the hotel and punched Leo’s lights out? It didn’t make sense. If Ewan Brockman loved Eliza, then surely he would have come forward and demanded an explanation.
It was time to have a no holds barred conversation with her. Something wasn’t quite adding up and he wasn’t going to stop digging until he found out what it was—and there was no time like the present.
Leo came into the suite to find Marella sitting on the sofa with a book while Alessandra was having a nap in the next room.
‘Where’s Eliza?’ he asked as he put his briefcase down.
‘She went to do a bit of shopping,’ Marella said, closing the book and putting it to one side. ‘She’s only been gone a couple of hours. I told her to take all the time she wanted. She should be back soon. Why don’t you call her and meet her for a drink? I’ll give Alessandra her bath and supper.’
‘Good idea.’ He gave her an appreciative smile and reached for his phone. He frowned as the call went through to message bank. He sent her a text but there was no response.
‘She’s probably turned her phone off,’ Marella said.
‘Did she say where she was intending to shop?’
Marella pursed her lips for a moment. ‘I think she said something about going to Queen Square.’
He frowned as he put his phone back in his pocket. Queen Square was where the world-renowned UCL Institute of Neurology was situated. He’d driven past it a couple of times on previous trips to London. Great Ormond Street Hospital was close by. Why was Eliza going there? Sure, there were plenty of shops in the Bloomsbury district, but why had she told Marella she was going to Queen Square of all places?
Leo saw her from half a block away. She was standing talking with an older woman in her fifties outside the UCL Institute of Neurology. The older woman looked very distressed. She kept mopping at her eyes with a scrunched up tissue. Eliza was holding the hand of a gaunt young man in his late twenties who was strapped in a wheelchair, complete with breathing apparatus and a urinary catheter that was just visible under the tartan blanket that covered his thin, muscle-wasted legs.
Leo felt as if someone had thrown a ninety-pound dumb-bell straight at his chest.
Her fiancé.
He swallowed against a monkey wrench of guilt that was stuck sideways in his throat. Her fiancé was a quadriplegic. The poor man was totally and utterly incapacitated. He didn’t even seem to be aware of where he was or whom he was with; he was staring vacantly into space. Leo watched as Eliza gently wiped some drool from the side of the young man’s mouth with a tissue.
Oh, dear God, what had he done?
Why hadn’t she told him?
Why the hell hadn’t she told him?
He didn’t know whether to be furious at her or to feel sorry for her. Why let him think the very worst of her for all this time? It all made horrible sense now that he had seen her fiancé with his very own eyes. It wasn’t a normal relationship. How could it be, with that poor young man sitting drooling and slumped in his chair like that? Was that why she had taken the money he had offered her? She had done it for her fiancé.
His gut churned and roiled with remorse.
He had exploited her in the worst way imaginable.
Leo turned back the way he had come. He needed time to think about this—to get his head around it all. He didn’t want to have it out with her on the street with her fiancé and his mother—he assumed it was his mother—watching on. He took a couple of deep calming breaths but they caught on the claws of his guilt that were still tearing at his throat.