The end, she thought, knowing he had expected her to have taken a different course—a more intelligent course—in this latter part of her life, and the bottom line was she now felt ashamed of the choices she had made, hated herself for having spent years pursuing some huge empty mirage that she’d been fooling herself with—the dress-ups, the sophisticated patter, the importance of knowing all the right places and things to do. No depth to any of it. No real meaning.
It hurt that she’d wasted so much time on what didn’t count at all. She’d been bottling up the hurt, determinedly keeping a lid on it, but it was seeping out now, mingling with the hurt of being found wanting by this man who tugged on every fibre of her being.
She picked up her glass of wine, needing to wash down the lingering taste of oysters, and the bitter taste of loss. Nic had belatedly picked up his fork. She watched the shells on his plate being slowly emptied and sensed he was forcing himself to eat, to see this evening with her through, hiding what he really thought behind a polite facade, which was what polished people did…playing out the game until the whistle was blown and they could go home with honour.
Rebellion stirred in Serena. She was sick of sophisticated pretence, sick of dishonesty, sick of any kind of game-playing. She waited until Nic had consumed his last oyster, then burst into speech.
‘I should thank you for instigating the conversation you had with Lyall about me.’
‘Thank me?’ He looked at her with dazed eyes, uncomprehending.
‘It was a humiliating wake-up call to what I was doing with my life, but at least it did make me realise I had to get out of it and find something else.’
Conflicting emotions chased across his face—guilt, anger, pride, shame—all finally coalescing into a burning flash of accusation. ‘How could a woman as smart as you even think of marrying a pretentious egomaniac like Lyall Duncan?’
It stung. It stung all the more because it portrayed her as a gold-digger who hadn’t cared to look past the wealth dangled in front of her, and she had no defence against it, except her own deep-seated need to feel cossetted and secure, and the equally strong need to ensure that the children she wanted to have would always have solid support.
‘That’s over,’ she grated out, shamed by his judgment though also resenting how quickly he’d made it, not pausing to take her circumstances or feelings into account. ‘It’s all over,’ she went on, driven to try to rebalance the scales in his mind. ‘I broke my engagement to Lyall. I resigned from my job with Ty Anders. I walked away from all my fashionable connections. I was caught up in a stupid fantasy and I woke up.’
He didn’t take that into consideration, either. ‘But you didn’t let it go, Serena,’ he shot back at her. ‘You’ve coupled me with Lyall.’
‘How could I not? The two of you showed me where I was in your very privileged world. Right on the outer rim,’ she argued. ‘And you…your intimacy…with Justine Knox certainly reinforced my impression that social status was a higher recommendation to you than any questions of character.’
‘I’d made no agreement to marry Justine.’
Serena reined in the jealousy that had erupted from her wounded heart. It served no good purpose. As far as she knew, the woman was out of his life so her argument was hopelessly out of line, anyway. She was simply fighting the wretched feeling of being in the wrong because she wasn’t really, was she?
Not now.
The mistakes she’d made had been recognised and she was intent on taking a different direction, had already made strides towards doing so. She need not have been so brutally honest about herself with Nic. The desire to be done with false images had driven her into opening up on everything.
The waiter returned to remove their plates, inquiring if everything was to their satisfaction. Nic’s curt reply put a swift end to his intrusion. The atmosphere at the table was hardly conducive to genial chat.
Serena sipped some more wine, wanting to anaesthetise the pain. It didn’t matter how much she drank. If this was the end with Nic, a taxi could be called to take her home.
‘You deceived me from day one, Serena. Deliberately deceived me,’ he asserted, his low tone simmering with a violence of feeling which upset her even more.
‘I did not!’ The fierce denial leapt from her tongue. At least, she could defend this ground! ‘You asked if you knew me and you most certainly did not know me. Which I told you.’
‘But you knew me,’ he countered.
‘I didn’t know you. I simply recognised you as the man who seemed amused that Lyall Duncan should choose to marry a mere hairdresser. Did you expect me to recall your part in a conversation that humiliated me?’
‘There was no intention on my part to humiliate you,’ he stated vehemently. ‘I was just curious. Lyall Duncan is into status symbols in a big way. Marrying a hairdresser didn’t fit.’
‘Well, we both heard how it did fit, didn’t we?’
‘The man’s a fool! And because I listened to his absurdly feudal idea of marriage, you set out to take me down, didn’t you?’
‘At the beginning…yes, I did,’ she admitted. ‘And I honestly felt justified by your initial attitude towards me.’
‘What attitude?’ he tersely demanded.
She flushed, wondering if she was guilty of misjudging again, yet there had been things that had made her feel…beneath his notice. ‘The way you greeted me that first morning. I was so unimportant to you, a nobody whose name you instantly forgot, just someone you could use to alleviate an annoying problem. What I said and did was not so much to take you down, but to score a few points that made me feel better.’
‘But once you realised I was strongly attracted…’
‘You did all running, Nic.’
‘And no doubt you revelled in that fact. Better still if you could bring me to my knees.’
That was so far wrong, Serena refused to dignify it with a reply. ‘If you want to believe that, you go right ahead and believe it.’
‘That’s a cop-out, Serena.’
‘For you, yes. Which is what you want, isn’t it, now that you know everything about me. I’m sure you feel absolutely righteous about dismissing me as a nasty little schemer.’ Riled by his wrong reading of her motives, she flung the snobby prejudice that had been eating at her right in his face. ‘That certainly makes me not good enough for you.’