A Whisper of Disgrace(32)

‘Up until now, no. But then up until today I’ve never had a virgin—or a wife, come to that.’

‘Bit of a double whammy?’ she questioned flippantly.

‘You can wisecrack until the sun comes up, but I’m not going to be satisfied until you’ve answered a few of my questions.’

Rosa wriggled uncomfortably, because she didn’t want to think about it. She didn’t want to think about anything. All she wanted was to hang on to this delicious warmth which was still pulsing through her body. She wanted to cling on to the amazing memory of what had just happened until it happened again, but she could see from the hard glint in his eyes that he had no intention of letting her avoid his questions. Why was he so damned persistent? she thought.

‘I lived a very restrictive life in Sicily,’ she explained. ‘It’s not unusual there, even these days, for a female to be wrapped in cotton wool until she is married. I was the only girl and I had two fiercely overprotective brothers, except that they …’

Rosa’s words trailed off and Kulal heard the sudden bitterness which had crept into her voice. ‘They what?’

Rosa pursed her lips together, her first instinct to come up with some fabrication about her past, but what was the point of telling lies? If she shocked him with the ultimate truth, then maybe the marriage would be even shorter than either of them had intended. Except that suddenly she realised she didn’t want it to be. She felt as if they’d only just started on their own particular journey and she wanted more of it. Even if it wasn’t real, she wanted more of that stuff which felt like intimacy.

‘They’re not my brothers. I’ve just discovered that they’re actually my … half-brothers.’

He frowned. ‘I don’t understand.’

How could he possibly understand when she was still having difficulty grasping the facts herself? So that now she would be forced to say out loud the words which still made her want to retch. ‘That’s why I ran away from Sicily,’ she said, and drew in a ragged breath. ‘Because I found out something which rocked my whole world.’

‘Go on,’ he said.

She stared at him, wishing more than anything else that what she was about to tell him wasn’t true. But it was. True and horrible and irreversible. She swallowed. ‘There was a huge family gathering—a wedding which never happened—and my mother got drunk. Very drunk. I could hear her shouting, even above the sound of the music, but I couldn’t quite make out what was being said. And when I did, well—’ She swallowed down the bitterness which had taken up residence in her throat. ‘I couldn’t believe it.’

She remembered her mother’s face looking flushed and contorted. She remembered the sudden lull in the music as Carmela’s slurred words had echoed around the room. Awful, shocking words which had chilled her to the bone. They still did. Rosa tried to stop her lips from trembling as she stared into Kulal’s face, but it seemed that this was something else which was beyond her control. She took another deep breath. ‘I discovered that my father was not my father,’ she said.

‘You already told me that on the plane.’

‘I discovered that my father was in fact my uncle,’ she finished painfully, just so that there could be no misunderstanding. ‘My mother slept with my uncle.’

She was unprepared for the violence of his reaction. She saw his face darken as if some kind of violent storm was brewing there. She sensed that he was about to move away from her even before he actually did. He unpeeled himself from her warm body and got off the bed, walking to the other side of the vast room where he stood there surveying her, as if she was an alien species who had just dropped into his life from another world.





CHAPTER EIGHT


SHIVERING FROM HIS sudden departure from the bed and from the new coldness in his eyes, Rosa met Kulal’s accusing gaze.

‘Your mother slept with your uncle?’ he demanded in a voice which was icy with disbelief.

‘Yes.’ She tried not to flinch, thinking that it sounded even worse when it came from someone else’s lips. And Kulal clearly thought so too, because his face had frozen into a sombre mask. ‘But this is terrible!’ he flared. ‘I have rarely heard anything more shocking.’

‘You think I don’t know that?’ she questioned. ‘You think I wouldn’t give everything I owned for it not to be so?’

‘Is this not incest?’ he questioned, almost as if he was speaking to himself.