A Whisper of Disgrace(17)
‘I wanted to get away,’ she said, giving a careless shrug of her shoulders as if to add credence to her statement. ‘To escape from home and see a little of the world. Lots of women my age do that. It’s perfectly normal.’
But a trip to see the world did not tend to make a person look so haunted, Kulal thought. His eyes narrowed. ‘So it’s a temporary trip?’
‘I guess.’
‘And when are you planning to go back?’
His question was unexpected and it made her confront what she had been doing her best not to confront. Rosa shuddered. Back to what? To a home she no longer recognised and a family who had changed beyond recognition as the result of a few spilled and deadly words?
‘I’m not,’ she said forcefully. ‘I’m never going back to Sicily!’
CHAPTER FIVE
KULAL WATCHED ROSA closely as she bit out her heartfelt words—more closely than he usually bothered to watch any woman, but by now she was beginning to perplex him. He had seen the play of emotions which had crossed her beautiful face when he’d asked her about her native Sicily. He had seen wariness and fear. Disgust too. Yes, he had definitely seen disgust when she had declared that she was never going back home. Someone more curious might have wondered what had caused such an extreme reaction, but he had never been a man to delve too deeply. He was more interested in the facts than in what lay behind them.
‘So you will find employment here?’ he mused. ‘Or perhaps you are wealthy enough to live comfortably without any need to go out to work?’
If he hadn’t hit on such a raw nerve, then Rosa might have told him to keep his intrusive questions to himself. Because there always had been money whenever she’d wanted it and plenty of it too. A trust fund had been put in place for her from the moment she’d been born and she’d been able to access it any time she liked. Sometimes she’d wondered what life might have been like if she’d had to save up in order to buy the latest expensive pair of shoes she’d coveted, but that was something she’d never experienced. At least, not until now. Because quickly following the text summoning her home had come another, informing her that all access to her funds had been frozen. That there was no more money to be had.
She knew exactly what her family were trying to do.
They were trying to force her to go back to Sicily by starving her out!
She’d known that they could be ruthless. She’d seen them dispose of enemies and workers—even husbands and wives—she just hadn’t realised that the same ruthlessness could be directed at her.
She stared at Kulal as his question lodged in her mind, suddenly realising that even if she did try to go out to work that her options open to her were very limited. She had a respectable degree in languages, but she wasn’t actually trained in anything, was she?
‘Actually, I’m not wealthy,’ she said. ‘Not any more.’
‘So what are you going to do?’ he persisted.
Frustration made her turn on him again. Was he getting some kind of kick by watching her squirm? ‘What I do or I don’t do is none of your business.’
‘But I could make it my business.’
His tone had softened and instinctively Rosa stiffened, for she suspected that this was a man who didn’t really do soft. She looked at him suspiciously. ‘Why would you do that?’
‘Because I think we could offer each other mutual help in a time of mutual need.’
She looked at him suspiciously. ‘I’m not sure I understand.’
He took a step forward, closing some of the space between them, and he saw from the sudden tension in her body that she was acutely aware of that fact. As was he … ‘I think you’re running from something, Rosa,’ he said as he stared down into her big, dark eyes. ‘Something or someone. I also think that you’re hiding—that you don’t want anyone to know you’re here. And that you’re broke. Or at least, if not broke, then rapidly running out of funds.’
Rosa swallowed because his proximity was making her feel as unsettled as his perception. And how spooky was that, when pretty much everything he’d guessed had been true? Soon after she’d found out that her funds had been frozen, she had sold a bracelet to a second-hand jeweller in nearby Nice, but had received much less for it than she’d been expecting. And wasn’t it funny how money didn’t seem to go anywhere, especially when you weren’t used to living frugally? Especially when she’d blown most of her budget on a tiny crimson dress which had got her into all this trouble.