One Hour to Midnight (11 page)

What would it be like to possess roots like the ones the Karvasis family had? To know generations of your family had lived within these same walls?

Cassie opened the door into the Blue Room, one of the few she'd been permitted to use when she'd lived here before Jordan's birth. Julia had guarded her possession jealously.

Now, a swift glance assured Veronica there were no photos to mock her.
 

"I love this room," Veronica turned to Cassie. "Won't you share a cup with me, please?"

The older woman's homely face creased in a smile, her blue eyes twinkled behind wire-rimmed glasses, grey curls bobbed as she nodded. "I'll fetch another cup."

When she returned, Cassie poured tea and sat in the chair opposite, her expression soft. "What have you been doing since you left, Ricki?"

"It's Veronica, Cassie. I go by my given name now."

The older woman gave her a shrewd look. "I see."

And Veronica knew that Cassie did see, and what's more she understood the reason behind the change.

"Teaching." Veronica toyed with the cup handle. "After I returned home, I went to University, obtained my teaching degree and then returned to teach at my old school."

"You enjoy it?"

Her job and Kathleen's support were the only things that had saved her sanity during the past difficult years. "I love it. Children are so rewarding, especially the ones I teach."

"Are they handicapped?"

"Not in the usual sense." Veronica chuckled, recalling some of the delightful imps who'd passed through her classes. "They're children of recent immigrants. English isn't their first language. Some find the transition very difficult."

Cassie was silent for a few moments then looked directly at Veronica, sky blue eyes clear. "You've been in my thoughts so often. I always felt you had a very raw deal."

Veronica glanced at Leon's housekeeper, surprised. "It was a long time ago. I was young and silly."

"Maybe," Cassie said shaking her head. "But that's no excuse for the pressure they put on you."

Veronica fiddled with the silver teaspoon lying beside her cup. "So I didn't imagine it?"

"No child, you didn't." Cassie's blue eyes flashed. "I told Leon the day he brought you here he was making a huge mistake."

As the years passed, Veronica often wondered if she'd been under pressure, or if she'd imagined and magnified it over time. Now, to hear Cassie validate her conclusions, she knew she'd not been mistaken.
 

A burden eased and soothed an intolerable ache. The pressure had not been a figment of her imagination. But she wasn't comfortable discussing Leon, or his late wife, with their housekeeper.

"What happened to Julia?" she asked changing the subject to something less emotionally charged.

"Didn't Leon explain?"

"Only that she was dead."

And he made damn certain I never knew he was a widower until I returned to Australia.
 

"It's gone two years since she passed. She had melanoma and died a slow, miserable death." Cassie's mouth tightened. "Now Jordan's battling leukaemia, it's been tough on Leon."

Veronica took a quick sustaining breath. What a dreadful burden. First, losing his wife and now being forced to watch his son is fighting for his life. "No wonder he didn't want to talk about it."

"He was very cut up when Julia died."

Veronica never doubted it. To be loved as Leon loved Julia was every woman's dream, but had the other woman been worthy of that love? Or had love indeed made Leon blind?
 

The mean thought made Veronica shiver in discomfort.

"You must be tired." Cassie reacted to the shiver. "Leon said you've had a stressful few days. Jordan is counting on you being fit and rested."

"I know. He's so sick, Cassie. I can't believe how much he's changed in the past year." Veronica looked up and caught Cassie's expression. "Julia sent me a letter and photo every year on Jordan's birthday."
 

"Not Julia! I'll wager anything you like that she never gave you a single thought after you left here." Cassie looked at her keenly. "You have Leon to thank for your letters."
 

"I suspected as much. From something he let slip," she said quietly. Although the letters were signed by them both, it seemed as if Leon was the one who cared enough, to keep her updated on Jordan's life.

"You go and lie down, my dear. You're looking peaked."

Back in her room, Veronica found a maid was unpacking her case. The girl gave Veronica a shy smile and then scurried out the door. The photo of Jordan sat on the bedside table and beside it, the silver mouse. Sitting on the edge of the bed, she held the frame between unsteady hands. Comparing this photo to Jordan now, she could only pray that the transplant would at least grant him remission.

Chill foreboding settled around her shoulders.

Would their prayers be answered, or would the God of retribution snatch this member of the Karvasis family too?

Chapter Seven

U
nable to sleep, Veronica leaned her elbows on the wide sill of the sitting room window. Moonlight danced silver sovereigns on the flagstones of the terrace beneath the weeping bottlebrush and sentinel melaleucas. By day the trees swarmed with lorikeets and honeyeaters. Now, they were like the house.

Brooding. Waiting.

A night breeze tugged at her hair. Freed from its daytime confinement, the thick honey blonde curtain brushed shoulders that gleamed white in the pale light.

A small sound on the terrace alerted her. The atmosphere underwent a subtle change. Blood pounded in her veins and nerve ends tingled.

Leon crossed the flagstones, the moonlight's shadow moving ahead of him. Outside the French doors to her suite, he paused.
 

Veronica never hesitated. She opened the door and he stepped inside.

"Is Jordan sleeping?" She was first to break the pulsing silence. Why had he come to her?

"Yes." He moved closer, leaned against the opposite sill of the bay window and tilted his head back on the frame. His shoulders drooped and his hand hung limp.

"You need rest," she said, her concern genuine. Leon looked very much like a man teetering on the edge.
 

"What's rest?" His hollow laugh echoed as he straightened and stepped closer. "Would you give a man comfort and ease, Ricki?"

Her heart raced, she'd always loved the inflection he put on her name. Tonight she revelled in being Ricki. Sensible Veronica had vanished with the moonlight.
 

His brooding words made her react. Alone in the night, with no fear of being interrupted, and Julia but a distant memory, she opened her arms and offered Leon comfort.
 

It was risky. But tonight, back within Claremont's confines, she succumbed to impulse.
 

Leon stepped into her arms, shudders shaking his body as he crushed her close, his bowed head resting in the hollow of her neck.

"Why?" His voice was muffled in her hair.

She slipped her hands beneath his jacket, ran her palms up his back and found muscles as rigid as iron. She frowned and tightened her hold.
 

Even a man as strong as Leon had his breaking point. "Life offers no guarantees."
 

"But he's so young, he was so vital." Leon pushed her away, gripped her shoulders, his expression tormented. "It's not fair."

The age-old reaction alarmed her.

She'd never seen Leon so down. Did he think he had the monopoly on suffering? He would probably hate her but she knew sympathy would be no help.

"Who said life was meant to be fair. Stop indulging in self-pity and consider the advantages you do have."

Leon jerked back as if she'd slapped him, dropped his hands and his retaliation was swift. "It's different for you. You've never loved Jordan. Never watched him grow, or walked the floor with him when he had colic. Hell, you never even had the guts to visit and get to know your child."

Shock left Veronica bereft of speech, and then rage bled through her grief and into the huge, internal void she'd lived with for a decade.

"How dare you?" Each clipped word was edged with fury. "You have a nerve. It was because I loved Jordan that I left him to you and Julia. What could I offer him by comparison?"

"That's so easy to say now."

She whirled around, desperate to escape his harsh words.
 

"Easy. How dare you? You and Julia brought me here so you could take my baby." The accusation rose from the deep well of festering bitterness. "Your whole family used me."

Leon moved swiftly, spinning her around to face him.

"You've intimated as much before. Explain yourself." His flat, lethal voice was wiped of emotion.

Should she? Why not? Kept inside it was poisoning her in slow steady increments. "Why did you bring me here unless it was because I was so conveniently pregnant?"

For long moments nothing moved or stirred. The tension in the night silence was tangible. "Would you have preferred I dump you alone and pregnant on a street corner?"

"I may have fared better." She threw the challenge at him, suddenly reckless. "What you did do was little short of criminal."

His intake of breath was harsh. He gripped her shoulders and she shivered in reaction. How could she hate and love someone at the same time. The conflict was tearing her apart.

"What are you implying Veronica?"

"You and Yannis planned the whole thing. Sonia—" Horrified where anger had led her, she stalled.

"Sonia?" The velvet question made her shudder. "Don't stop there, Veronica. What did Sonia tell you?"

Years of anguish and rage against the powerful Karvasis brothers spilled over. Did wealth give them the right to play God with another person's life? Her life?

"You conspired with Yannis, Leon. You promised your brother you'd clear his gambling debts if he found someone to give you the child your wife couldn't conceive." Veronica's voice shook with years of anger. "And Yannis found me, an orphan with no family, such an easy mark. You both used me with as little consideration as if I were a brood mare."

The accusation vibrated in an atmosphere fraught with menace.
 

"And if I told you that was a farrago of lies?"

Leon moved and a shaft of moonlight illuminated him. Black brows drawn together, light and dark, harsh shadows slashes on his fierce, proud face.
 

A violent shiver wracked her.
 

Lucifer, himself, couldn't have appeared more menacing. There was no trace of gentleness in him. He could have been hewn from granite. It may have been the unforgiving light that created the illusion. But there was no mistake about the fright goose-stepping across her skin. Had she gone too far?

"What possible reason could Sonia have to lie?"
 

He spun away, bracing his outstretched arms against the window frame. His muscles stood out in taut relief against the night sky, knuckles gleamed white in the moonlight. "To suggest I conspired with Yannis is beyond belief. Do you think I would lend myself to such a callous scheme?"

Veronica wanted to believe him, but maturity made her cautious.

Was Leon guilty of conspiracy?
 

His delight in her decision to relinquish her baby made him forever suspect in her eyes.

"I can't prove my innocence or make you believe me." He turned and looked at her, his expression grave. "You trusted me with Jordan. Did he mean so little to you that you would give him into the care of a man you thought capable of such villainy?"

She did love Jordan and always would.

And once she'd blindly trusted Leon. Now doubt preyed on that blind trust and no matter how she tried, it refused to be dislodged. Ultimately it came down to trust.
 

And trust was something she no longer possessed.
 

But recalling Sonia's visit a few days earlier, Veronica granted Leon a small concession. "Sonia could well have just been spiteful."

Sonia did have good reason to resent her.
 

Yannis had betrayed his wife as much as he'd betrayed her. And Veronica had considerable sympathy for the other woman's very public humiliation.
 

But Sonia wanted to remarry; did that mean she'd moved on from Yannis' betrayal?
 

Like a troublesome tooth, Yannis niggled at Veronica. Until she understood what drove him to such dastardly actions she would never have either peace, or closure.
 

Leon's austere features softened slightly as he accepted her words as the concession they were.