“No.”
“Why are you so certain?” Francesca asked, although warmth flooded her at his quick, confident reply.
“Because I’m a much better reader of character at thirty than I was at twenty-one,” he stated dryly.
“Thank you,” she whispered. “So what happened after you confronted Elizabeth?”
“I was convinced she would do something to harm the child once I discovered how she’d manipulated me. The pregnancy had served its purpose. We were married. She was very beautiful—physically, anyway—and a dedicated dancer. Despite her need for a pregnancy, I think she despised the idea of what it would do to her body . . . how it would change her life. She was hardly the maternal type. I thought she might do something to end the pregnancy. I wouldn’t have put it past her, anyway.” He met her stare steadily. “It wasn’t Elizabeth I was so worried about protecting. It was the child she carried. So yes, I did become overly controlling. You know how I can be.”
“But you said once that she tried to blame you for the loss of the child,” she recalled.
He nodded. “She said it was because I rode her so hard about taking care of herself, because I was so controlling about her daily activities and schedule. She felt I restricted her freedom . . . made her a prisoner to my anxiety. She was undoubtedly right about that. It’s what I do when I care about someone, and I cared about that child.”
“Even so, that doesn’t sound like a viable reason for someone to lose a child. One out of five women miscarry, right? Why couldn’t it have just been a natural thing versus something you did?” Francesca asked, puzzled and little annoyed with this Elizabeth. She sounded like a manipulative wimp.
“We’ll never really know for certain. It doesn’t matter anyway,” he said.
Francesca thought it did matter—very much. It related to why he considered himself so tainted when it came to relationships, so broken.
“Why did you marry her if you didn’t really love her?” she couldn’t resist asking.
He gave a small shrug, and she couldn’t help but touch a muscular shoulder. She wanted to soothe him. She couldn’t keep her hands off him. Who knew when he’d let her touch him so freely again?
“I would never allow a child of mine to be a bastard,” he said.
Her caressing fingers stilled at that. It was only the second time he’d ever mentioned his illegitimacy to her. She recalled that he’d called himself a bastard the first night they’d met, at the cocktail party in her honor.
“Your father,” she whispered, noticing the gleam in his blue eyes. Was that a warning glint, a silent message for her to tread carefully? She continued despite the potential risk. “Do you know who he is?”
He shook his head. She definitely felt the tension in his muscles now, but he stayed put in the bed. She decided to take courage that he didn’t excuse himself and walk away, as she suspected he might have before tonight.
“Were you curious about who he is? Are you?”
“Only insofar as I’d like the knowledge in order to kill the bloody bastard.”
Her mouth fell open in shock. She hadn’t expected his focused, intense aggression. “Why?”
He closed his eyes briefly, and she wondered if she’d gone too far. Would he retreat now?
“Whoever he was, he must have taken advantage of my mother. I don’t know if that means out-and-out rape or the seduction of a very vulnerable, sick woman, but whatever the case, I definitely carry the genes of a fucking degenerate.”
“Oh, Ian,” she whispered, her heart swelling with compassion. What a nightmare for a young boy to live with. What a nightmare for an adult man. “And you never saw him, he never came around?”
He shook his head, his eyelids still closed.
“And your mother, she never—”
He opened his eyes and met her stare. “She grew anxious every time I brought it up as a kid, started doing some of her repetitive, ritualistic behaviors. After a while, I avoided the topic of my father’s identity like the plague. But inside, I grew to hate him. He’d done that to her, made her that scared and nervous. Somehow I just knew it.”
“But she already was ill . . . schizophrenic . . .”
“Yes, but there was something about the mention of him that never failed to send her into a bad period . . . a dark one.”
She couldn’t stand that expression on his face. It pierced her from the inside out. She hugged him tight. “Ian, I’m so sorry.”
He grunted at her energetic embrace, and then chuckled softly. He resumed stroking her hair. “Do you think squeezing me like a python is going to make it all better, lovely?”
“No,” she muttered, her mouth moving next to his bare chest. “But it couldn’t hurt.”
He encircled her in his arms and laid her on her back, coming down over her. “That it couldn’t,” he murmured, before he leaned down and kissed her in that masterful Ian-like way that made her forget everything for a period of time . . . even his suffering.
* * *
Francesca knew she’d remember that night spent in Ian’s arms, and in his bed, forever. It’d been sublime to have him open up to her . . . even a little. In the past, he’d told her that their relationship would be a purely sexual one, and there could be little doubt that their attraction—their obsession—with each other sexually was powerful stuff.
But that night, their exchange had been more than about sex. Or so Francesca had thought . . .