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Surely he couldn’t be real? And if he was real then what was he doing here? It didn’t make any sense. She stared at him, groping for some kind of answer. Her stomach lurched as she remembered the last time she’d seen him: being pushed into the back of a police car, his face dark and defiant.
Laszlo didn’t belong in a place like this. And yet here he was. Standing there, as though he owned the place.
She felt her stomach lurch. In the back of her mind, pushed down in the darkness, she’d always imagined that he’d drifted into bad ways. So to watch him saunter into the room was almost more than her brain could fathom. Helplessly, she racked her brain for some shred of explanation.
‘Wh—what are you doing here?’ she stammered, her voice sounding small and shrunken, like a soul facing purgatory.
Laszlo stared at Prudence, his handsome face cold and blank. But inside it was as though he was falling from a great height. His mind was racing, explanations tumbling over one another, each one more desperate and untenable than the last. And all the time, like a silent movie, the short, doomed pretence of their love played out before his eyes.
Aware that he was playing for time, he felt a rush of anger. But words had literally failed him—for he had blotted out all traces of her so completely that just looking at her made him feel dizzy.
‘I could ask you the same question,’ he murmured.
And then, with shock, he remembered that it had been only that morning that his hunger-fuelled brain had conjured up her memory. He shivered as the hairs stood up on the back of his neck and he remembered the cry of the owl he had heard earlier. Had he somehow summoned her here?
The part of his mind not numb with shock pushed the suggestion away irritably: of course he hadn’t. Clearly she hadn’t come looking for him, for her own shock was unmistakable. So what exactly was she doing here?
Eyes narrowing, he stared assessingly at her and waited for answers.
White-faced, Prudence stared back at him dazedly. She must have fallen down a rabbit hole, for what other explanation could there be? Why else was Laszlo Cziffra here in this isolated castle in the Hungarian countryside? Unless—her blood turned cold—could he be working for Mr de Zsadany?
Her mind cringed from the possibility and, remembering his blank-eyed indifference when she’d told him she was leaving him, she felt suddenly sick. But that had been seven years ago. Surely after all this time they could treat each other with at the very least a polite neutrality? But instead of cool curiosity, he was watching her with a sort of icy contempt.
‘I don’t understand—’ She broke off, the colour draining from her cheeks as he walked slowly across the faded Persian carpet towards her. ‘What are you doing here?’ she said again. ‘You can’t be here.’
Watching the shock on her face turn to horror as he approached, Laszlo felt the floor yaw beneath him like a wave-tossed ship. But he had no intention of revealing to Prudence how strongly he was affected by her presence. Or her evident dismay at seeing him again.
Breathing deeply, he steadied himself. ‘But I am,’ he said slowly. ‘Why are you trembling, pireni?’
She tried to ignore it. Just as she was trying to ignore how handsome he was and his nerve-jangling nearness. But the familiar word of endearment seemed to grow to a roar inside her head, drowning out her answer to his question.
For what felt like a lifetime they stood, staring at one another in silence, as they had done a hundred...a thousand times before.
The man’s voice, when it came, startled both of them.
‘Ah, there you are! I’m sorry I’m late. The traffic was terrible.’
A plumpish, middle-aged man, with thick, dull blonde hair and a panicked expression on his face, hurried into the room. Turning to Prudence, he shuffled some files under his arm and held out his hand.
‘I’m so sorry to have missed you at the airport, Miss Elliot. You got my message, though?’
Still speechless with shock, Prudence nodded. She had felt a momentary spasm of relief at the man’s arrival. But now it would appear that her relief was premature. For his words had made it painfully clear to her that Laszlo’s presence was a shock only to her.
The man glanced cautiously at Laszlo and cleared his throat. ‘I see you two have already met. So let me introduce myself. Jakob Frankel. I work for the law firm that represents Mr de Zsadany. May I say on behalf of the family how grateful we all are for you stepping in at the last moment. It was really very kind of you.’
Laszlo felt his guts twist. His brain was struggling to give meaning to what was happening. Jakob had told him that Edmund Seymour was ill and that someone else was coming in his place. Typically, he’d forgotten—for one stranger was no better or worse than another. But suddenly Jakob’s words seemed to take on a new and wholly unpalatable significance: Seymour’s replacement was Prudence Elliot. And that meant she would be living under his roof for the foreseeable future!
‘It’s my pleasure,’ Prudence said hoarsely.
The lawyer nodded and, looking nervously from Prudence to Laszlo, said, ‘Everyone is most grateful.’
Prudence smiled weakly and opened her mouth to speak but Laszlo interrupted her.
‘Miss Elliot could buy her own castle with the fee we’re paying her. I don’t think she needs our gratitude as well.’
Flinching at the undertone of hostility in his voice, Prudence felt rather than saw Laszlo’s dark, probing gaze turn towards her. Her breath, suddenly sharp and serrated, tore at her throat and she touched her neck nervously. She still had no idea what he was doing here but he must be important, for the lawyer was clearly deferring to him. The thought somehow exhausted her, and she felt suddenly on the verge of tears.
This wasn’t supposed to be happening. It was bad enough feeling out of her depth professionally. But now there was Laszlo, staring at her with those cold, dismissive eyes, and all she could think was that he could still make her feel like nothing. How he had made her feel like nothing seven years ago. Swallowing, she gritted her teeth. At least she’d fought for their relationship; he, on the other hand, had been too busy doing whatever he’d done to get himself arrested.
And she wasn’t nothing. In his words, she was being paid enough to buy a castle to do this job and that was what she was there to do. Her job. It didn’t matter that once upon a time, her love hadn’t been good enough for him.
Lifting her chin, she turned towards the lawyer. ‘You’re very kind, Mr Frankel,’ she said clearly. ‘Thank you for allowing me to come. This is a marvellous opportunity for me. I just hope I can live up to your expectations.’
‘Oh, I wouldn’t worry about that,’ Laszlo murmured softly. ‘We have very low expectations.’
There was another long, tense moment of silence and then Frankel gave a nervous laugh. ‘What Mr Cziffra is trying to say—’
‘Is that Miss Elliot and I can take it from here,’ Laszlo finished smoothly.
The lawyer looked at him doubtfully. ‘You can?’
‘I think I can manage.’ Laszlo’s voice was as cold and flat as an Arctic ice floe and Prudence shivered as Frankel nodded, his plump face flushed.
‘Of course,’ he said hastily. ‘Of course.’ He turned towards Prudence.
‘You’ll be in safe hands, Miss Elliot! After Mr de Zsadany, no one knows more about the collection than his grandson.’
The shock was like a jolt of electricity.
Prudence felt her whole body still and then start to shake. The room was spinning at the edge of her vision. Janos Almasy de Zsadany was Laszlo’s grandfather! But how could he be? Janos Almasy de Zsadany was a billionaire several times over. Laszlo was a Romany—a traveller who lived in a trailer. How could they possibly be related?
With an almost painful stab of hope she wondered if she had misheard Frankel and she turned to Laszlo, expecting, praying he would still be staring at her with the same cold, uninterested expression. But she saw instead that he was staring at her with a look of pitying scorn and horror.
Her stomach convulsed with fear. Frankel was telling the truth.
Heart thumping, feeling dizzy and sick, she glanced numbly at the lawyer. But he seemed unaware of the turmoil he had created with his simple statement of fact. Fighting her misery, she glanced back at Laszlo. There was no denial on his face—no embarrassment or confusion, and she stared at him, unable to ignore, even in her misery, his luminous, impossible beauty.
He looked up and she flinched as he met her gaze, the softness of his mouth only seeming to emphasise the hard challenge in his eyes.
Frankel coughed. ‘Right. In that case I’ll be on my way. Goodnight, Miss Elliot! I’ll see myself out, Mr Cziffra.’
‘Thank you, Frankel.’ Laszlo stared steadily at Prudence, his eyes glittering like shards of yellow glass. ‘Enjoy the rest of your evening. And don’t worry. I’ll take good care of Miss Elliot.’
Prudence felt her stomach turn to liquid as Laszlo turned towards her and nodded.
‘I promise I’ll give her my full and undivided attention.’
The table lamps felt suddenly like spotlights, and although the room was warm she felt cold and shivery. She watched Frankel leave with a mounting sense of dread, every nerve in her body straining to breaking point. She wanted to run after the lawyer and beg him to stay but her body was rooted to the spot. Numbly, she stared at the paintings on the wall. Just moments ago they had given her such innocent pleasure. But not any more. Now they seemed like cruel-eyed onlookers, mocking her stupidity.
The anaesthetic of shock and bewilderment was starting to wear off and she felt a sudden stabbing surge of irritation. Okay, it was awkward and stressful for both of them to be thrown together like this, but surely she had a far greater reason to be upset than him? Surely she deserved some answers here? Her lip curled. In fact, how could he just stand there and not offer one word of explanation?
Glancing at his expressionless face, she gritted her teeth. Quite easily, it would appear. Her chest tightened. He hadn’t changed a bit. He was still putting the onus on her to resolve everything. As though he were a witness rather than a central protagonist in what was happening.
‘Pretending I’m not here isn’t going to make this go away!’ she said slowly. Willing herself to stay as cool as she sounded, she lifted her chin and met his gaze. ‘We need to sort this out.’
Laszlo stared at her. ‘“Sort this out”?’ he echoed softly. His mouth tightened as he suppressed a humourless laugh. There was nothing to sort out! Except out of which door he would throw her! ‘Is that what we need to do?’ His eyes met hers. ‘So. You’re Seymour’s replacement?’ he said coolly.
Heart thumping against her ribcage, Prudence nodded. Keeping her eyes straight ahead, she cleared her throat. ‘And you’re Mr de Zsadany’s grandson!’
She fell silent and waited for his answer. But he did nothing more than nod. Turning her head, she clenched her fists: the words incorrigible and impossible were ricocheting inside her brain. Was that it, then? No explanations. Not one word to acknowledge the impact and implication of those words.
As though reading her mind, Laszlo sighed. His eyes looked through her and past her as he spoke. ‘My mother was Zsofia Almasy de Zsadany. She was Janos’s daughter and only child.’
It was like hearing a marble statue speak and her heart flinched at the chill in his voice.
‘She met my father, Istvan, when she was sixteen. He was seventeen, a Kalderash Roma. Both their families opposed the match but they loved each other so much that nothing could keep them apart.’
His eyes gleamed and she felt a jolt of pain at the accusatory barb of his words.
‘They were married and I was born nine months later.’
Prudence stared at him numbly. Who was this Laszlo? And what had he been doing living in a shabby trailer in England? Had he been rebelling? Or estranged from the de Zsadanys? Her head was swimming with questions. From knowing next to nothing about him she suddenly had so much information she could hardly take it all in. But her heart contracted as she realised that even the small things he had shared with her had been half-truths.
‘Why were you there? In England, I mean?’
He frowned. ‘After my parents died I spent time with both my families. My grandfather wanted me to go to school. To be educated. So I stayed in Hungary during term-time, and in the holidays I went and visited my father’s family, wherever they happened to be living.’ His eyes gleamed remorselessly. ‘I wanted to be loyal to both my mother and my father.’
She forced herself to meet his gaze. ‘I see,’ she said slowly. ‘But you didn’t want to be open and honest with me?’ She felt a sudden rise in tension as his eyes slid slowly and assessingly over her rigid frame.
‘No. I did not,’ he said finally.
Prudence gaped at him, her pledge to stay calm and detached now completely forgotten. ‘Didn’t you think it might have been better, not to say fairer, to share the whole truth with me?’ she said furiously. ‘You know—the fact that your grandfather was one of the richest men in Europe? And that you lived in a castle surrounded by priceless works of art?’
He looked away from her and shrugged. Prudence felt almost giddy with rage. How dare he just stand there and shrug at her? As if it didn’t matter that he’d lied to her. As if she didn’t matter.
‘What difference would it have made?’ he said flatly. ‘There were lots of facts you didn’t know about me—why focus on that one?’ His face twisted. ‘Unless, of course, it wasn’t the truth you wanted to share. Maybe there were other things you’d have liked to share. Like my grandfather’s money.’
The breath seemed to snarl up in her throat. ‘How can you say that?’ She stepped towards him, her body shaking with anger. ‘How can you even suggest—?’ Her head was spinning, nerves humming with rage and frustration. ‘Don’t you dare try and twist this, Laszlo. You lied to me!’
Laszlo’s face was suddenly as pale and rigid as bone and she had to curl her fingers into her hands to stop herself from flinching at the hostility in his eyes.
‘I didn’t lie,’ he said coldly. ‘I am half-Romany and I did live in a trailer.’
‘Oh, that’s okay, then,’ Prudence said sarcastically. ‘Maybe it was your other half. The half that lived in a castle. Perhaps he lied to me?’
Anger was bubbling up inside her, her breath burning her throat. She wasn’t the one who’d lied about who she was. She winced as her nails dug into her skin. Had he actually told her the truth about anything?
Laszlo met her gaze. ‘You believed what you wanted to believe.’
Prudence shook her head in disbelief. ‘I believed what you encouraged me to believe,’ she said furiously. ‘There’s a difference.’
There was a dangerous silence and then his eyes narrowed.
‘You’re missing the point, Prudence. It doesn’t matter what someone believes if they don’t have faith.’ His voice was ragged, frayed with a bitterness she had never heard before. ‘Without that it’s all just words.’
She sucked in a breath. ‘Yes, it is. Your words. The lies you told me.’ Her heart was pounding; her hands were tight fists against her sides. ‘Don’t try and turn this into some philosophical debate, Laszlo. I’m upset because you lied to me and you took away my choices.’
‘So now we’re even,’ he said coldly.
CHAPTER TWO (#u0f1d44dd-9fa6-5606-9829-0774de11bd46)
SHE STARED AT him blankly. Even? Even!
‘What that’s supposed to mean?’ She flung the words at him, wishing they were sticks or stones or better still bricks. But he didn’t reply. Instead he made an impatient sound and she watched helplessly as his face closed tight like a trap. Her muscles were aching with the effort of not picking up a lamp and beating him to death with it. How could he do that? Just switch off in the middle of a conversation and take himself outside of it?
Feeling a familiar cold, paralysing panic, she wrapped her arms around herself. But of course she didn’t need him to answer anyway. She knew exactly what he was talking about.
An undertow of defiance tugged at her frustration and slowly she shook her head. ‘No, Laszlo. If you’re talking about the fact that I ended our relationship, then we are not even. Not even close to being even.’
Her whole body was suddenly shaking and she wrapped her arms more tightly around herself. Walking away from Laszlo and from her romantic hopes and dreams had been hard—one of the hardest things she’d ever done—and it had taken every ounce of willpower she’d had. But if he’d wanted to, if he’d wanted her, he could have stopped her; she’d given him every chance to change her mind. Only he’d barely uttered a word when she’d told him that she was leaving him. Certainly not the sort she’d craved. He’d let her go and that had been his choice.
A sudden, suffocating misery reared up inside her as, with a shudder, she remembered just how cold and unapproachable he’d been.
She stood rooted to the spot, numbed and struck dumb at her own stupidity. No wonder he’d been so secretive—smuggling her into his trailer and carefully sidestepping her requests to meet his family. Fool that she was, she’d been too dizzy with love, too in thrall to the way her body had softened and transformed beneath his touch, to wonder why. Besides, she’d been flattered at the start, at least, for she’d believed that he wanted her all to himself. He’d stolen her heart and her virginity in quick succession and all the while he’d been living a lie.
She looked at him wearily. But why did this lie matter, really? After all, she couldn’t change the past. Or change the fact that he hadn’t loved her enough to fight for her. Her mouth twisted. This discussion was a dead end. There was no point in trying to talk about their relationship now: it was seven years too late. And besides, she had a new life now. Maybe not the one she’d been hoping for, but a good life, and she wasn’t about to let him pick up her world and smash it to smithereens.
Her pulse fluttered into life and she glanced at the door, wishing she could go back in time to the moment before she’d walked through it. And then, with a start, she remembered that even if that had been possible it simply wasn’t an option. Edmund needed this job. That was why she had come to Hungary. And she needed to focus on that fact and not get sidetracked into a post-mortem of her romantic past.
She took a calming breath. The cataloguing was more important than her feelings. Not that she had any feelings for Laszlo any more. At least not any that should get in the way of what was essentially a job like any other. Their relationship was history and, while clearly she would never have chosen to meet him again, let alone work with him, there was no reason not to treat him like any other client—albeit one who was difficult, bordering on the socially inept.
Fighting down the urge to bolt through the door, she lifted her chin and met his gaze. She wasn’t going to let his inability to let go of the past upset her. She would be calm and efficient—a detached professional.
‘This is getting us nowhere, Laszlo,’ she said firmly. ‘I’m here to do a job for you and your grandfather.’
Biting her lip, she paused, her muscles tightening again. Did Janos know about her relationship with his grandson? That could be awkward. But then her body relaxed. Somehow she didn’t think so. It was a long time ago, and they’d never met, and Laszlo had probably had hundreds of girlfriends since her. Her cheeks grew suddenly hot and quickly she pushed that thought away.
‘I know he wants to start on the cataloguing as soon as possible, so why don’t we put aside our differences and try and concentrate on making that happen for him? Can we do that? Can we call a truce?’ She gave a small, tight smile and clenched her hands into fists to stop herself from crossing her fingers.
Laszlo stared at her speculatively. She wanted this job. It was obvious from the conciliatory note in her voice and the slight increase in tension around her shoulders. His gaze drifted hungrily over her neck to the pulse beating in the hollow at the base of her throat. To anyone who didn’t know her she looked like the perfect English Rose, pale and demure. But he knew the other Prudence. The one beneath that calm, poised exterior, who had wrapped herself around him with passion and fervour. That contrast, and the knowledge that he alone possessed that other, hidden Prudence, had excited him unbearably. With a spasm of disbelief, he realised it still did.
Feeling his body stiffen, he lifted his gaze and smiled at her almost mockingly. ‘Since you put it so nicely—’
She stared at him warily. She hadn’t expected him to come round so easily. But then, with Laszlo you never knew what to expect. ‘Thank you,’ she said stiffly. ‘I must say I’m a bit surprised—’
He smiled coolly. ‘I know how much women love surprises.’
Nodding, she forced herself to breathe slowly. Perhaps she could make this work. She just needed to stay focused on what was important: the fact that Laszlo was nothing more than a client. She looked up and found him watching her. A tingle of heat ran down her spine. She could almost see his desire—feel him wrapping it round her like a dark velvet cloak.
