“You should stay.” I drop my arm around her again and squeeze her to me. “Don’t go. I meant what I said. This is your home. Forever.”
She takes a sip of the elderflower honey drink. A drop glistens on her lip and it’s all I can do not to kiss it away.
“If it weren’t for my daughter, I’d have sent Clive away the moment he showed up.”
Yes! Thank you, God.“You don’t love him anymore?”
“Not like before.”
I want to be happy about her answer, but the way her brows knit together, and her forehead furrows is not the face of someone who has rejected an idea outright.
“But…?” I brace myself for her answer.
“It’s not just about me, is it?”
“Did he play the father card?” I can’t keep the sudden anger from my tone.
She gently pulls away from under my arm, so I slide it up over the back of the swing seat. I’m not giving up on the hug, we will work out whatever is wrong between us.
She draws in a deep breath then starts talking.
“With a marriage of convenience, Clive had all but given up on having a family. There are so many married political couples who lead separate lives with other ‘unofficial’ partners.” She makes air quotes. “They used to call it ‘doing a royal.’ Because, you know...” She glances up at me.
“Like Charles and Camilla when he was still married to Princess Diana?”
She nods. “Edward the Seventh, too. Anne and William of Orange. George the Fourth, most of the Hanoverian kings and princes, I could list a hundred such marriages.”
“You’re like a walking-talking Wikipedia.” If I hoped to make her laugh, it doesn’t work.
“Clive said he might have been content with that, but now, the baby changes everything. We can have a real family, a real home, a real future. Malinara could have a brother or a sister.”
An acrid bitter taste fills my mouth, like burnt toast. I would sooner stay celibate for the rest of my life and keep her here if it stops her sleeping with that man again. Or getting pregnant by him. I take my arm from the back of the swing seat and cross it over my chest.
“And?”
Lessa meets my eyes. “I have to think about all of this carefully. Do I have the right to keep my daughter from her father? Doesn’t she deserve a chance at a normal family?”
I desperately search for an answer, because Lessa herself doesn’t seem happy about this two-point-four-children picture.
“What about the press, the scandal?”
“He thinks it can be managed. His wife has been making noises in the media about wanting out. I think she’s met someone. They haven’t lived together in years, Clive stays at his flat in London, it’s a gated development with several blocks and about three hundred flats. He thinks they can rent me a flat there to start with. I’m not easily recognisable with–” She touches her dark red curls and then brushes a hand down her wide skirt. “He can come out of his flat, walk down the corridor, up some stairs, into the lift, and get to me without anyone catching on.”
“And yet, you’re not sure.” I ask fighting to keep my hope alive.
She shakes her head.
“Then, don’t go yet. Stay here at least until next year. Give yourself time to see if you could live on La Canette. I’ll do anything in my power, I can turn down the job.”
She lays a hand on my knee to make me stop.
“You can’t do that. And certainly not for me and Malinara. I couldn’t accept such a sacrifice.”
“We can work something out.” I cover her hand, still on my knee. “I could go and come back for holidays.”
“With your girlfriend?” Lessa pulls her hand away.
“What girlfriend?”
