This,â he said, looking down at the letter clutched in his hand, âis as near to being a suicide note as youâre ever likely to see.â
âSuicide note?â
âChapter and verse. He knew that youâd soon be leaving himâfor someone younger, someone he had trusted.â He held the letter out to her. âRead it.â
Recoiling from it, Celeste cried, âIt isnât true! He couldnât have thought. . .â
âAlec was a scientist. He didnât jump to conclusions easily. Heâd have looked at the evidence, weighed it carefully.â
Celeste said, trying to be reasonable, âBut in his private life he was different. You hardly saw him for years at a time. Do you really know what he was like? If I even spoke pleasantly to a man, he thought I was flirting. . . . It was all in his imagination.â
â
All
of it?â Ethan sneered.
âEthan, you have to realise. . . he was abnormally sensitive about some things, and getting more so. . . . I wondered sometimes if he was mentally unbalanced.â
Ethan gave a short, harsh laugh. âYou expect me to believe that? About
Alec
?â
Celeste gave a hopeless little shrug. Of course she shouldnât have expected it. Ethan worshipped his older brother; it was the habit of a lifetime. Nothing she could say was going to alter his opinion. Bewildered, she stood with her hands clenched at her sides, staring at him.
He said, âYou can cut out the innocent act. I told you, I know all about you. I didnât see much of Alec over the past few years, thanks to you and. . . certain related factors which we neednât go into just now. But we were always close. He wrote to me often. Long letters, Celeste, very private letters in which he told me a lot of things that he would never have discussed with anyone face-to-face. It was a safety valve for him, to be able to pour out his heart over a marriage that had gone sour, over a wife who was. . . faithless.â
Celeste cried, her cheeks losing all colour, âThatâs not true! Ethan, you
canât
believe thatâs true.â
âWhy not?â he said, unemotionally. âYou might say Iâve had a sample of the evidenceâat first hand.â
Wordlessly, Celeste shook her head. âNo,â she murmured. This couldnât be real, she told herself. It didnât feel as though it was real. It felt like a dream, a nightmare from which she must surely wake.
She turned and headed for the house, wanting to get away from him, to be alone behind a closed door.
Hard hands grasped her and swung her around. Ethan said, âCeleste!â and the hands on her shoulders tightened, gave her a little shake. She knew she was going to faint, and she thought,
Not again
.
Vaguely she was aware that he had hoisted her into his arms and was carrying her. She felt cold and floaty, and very dizzy, quite unable to help herself.
After what seemed a long while, she began to feel less sick and the blood seeped back into her veins. She opened her eyes and found that Ethan had placed her on the bed where she had slept last night, and dropped a light duvet over her. A folded facecloth lay over her forehead.
Ethan frowned down at her. âBetter?â he inquired curtly.
She murmured, âThis is becoming a habit. Iâm sorry.â
âMaybe thatâs my line,â he said. âLie still.â
She did, closing her eyes, but said, âAre you apologising?â
âIf I caused this, yes. Iâm not a sadist.â
âBut youâre not sorry for. . . what you think,â she said tiredly. âAre you?â
For a moment he didnât reply. Then he said evenly, âDonât worry about it just now. The letter was a bit of a shock. Maybe I overreacted.â
âBut if you really believe. . .â She moved her head, and her eyes fluttered open, finding his.
âI said donât worry about it,â he
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