Tangled Destinies

Tanya looked at her anxiously. Now István was gone, the light had left Lisa’s face. ‘Good grief! He and I will always be at daggers drawn!’ she said lightly. ‘That doesn’t matter a scrap. Pretend he’s not here. I’m dying to hear all the arrangements. Can you take my luggage, John?’

Conscious of the need to reassure Lisa, to remind her friend that John was reliable and steady and loved her, she tucked her arm in Lisa’s, pushing her towards the hotel steps. John remained stony-faced as he stalked along beside them so she sought ways to break the deadlock between them and lift the funereal atmosphere.

‘It’s thrilling that you two are crazy about each other!’ she continued warmly. Was that overkill? she wondered. ‘All that gush in your letters, you old romantic! The lights on the Danube, the candlelit dinners…isn’t it just great that you’re marrying my kid bro?’

‘Great,’ said Lisa dutifully.

Tanya hid a wail of despair. She’d sounded less than overjoyed. As if…as if her mind was elsewhere. ‘So, what’s the plan? I thought I’d go to my room and unpack first,’ she continued, managing to sound quite cheerful. Poor John, she thought miserably. He looked ashen. She must act, act, act! ‘Then I’ll do us all a favour and get rid of the wretched You-Know-Who. I thought an acid bath might do the trick, John!’ she joked.

‘I’ll empty a few car batteries,’ he muttered, his eyes dark with worry.

Tanya tried to give a tinkle of laughter but it wasn’t too convincing. She knew instinctively that he and Lisa would argue again when they were alone. And somewhere in the hotel, with any luck, she’d be throwing crockery at the incorrigible István. Some family reunion, she thought morosely.

‘If I’m not camping under the stars, I suppose you’ve put me in some dark cellar!’ she said with painful brightness.

‘Got it in one. The best cellar we have, on the first floor. Lisa’s next door in the bridal-suite cellar,’ John jokingly answered, rallying himself with an effort and forcing a faint, brave smile.

‘Lovely,’ Tanya enthused, scanning the big windows above. A figure in white moved away quickly, as though the person didn’t want to be seen. Not István, someone smaller. Probably a curious maid, she thought dismissively.

And, as they walked up the steps with John trying for her sake to be normal and talking about the range of facilities at the castle hotel, Tanya saw that Lisa’s eyes were searching for something or someone and she knew who it must be.

István.

She quailed. He still dominated their lives, even in his absence. It was quite plain that Lisa felt his magnetism far too strongly for a woman on the brink of marrying someone else. Poor John! mourned Tanya. He’d adored Lisa from the very first and had resented any time that Lisa had spent with István. John had tried desperately to drag himself out of his elder brother’s giant shadow—without success. Who could? Shadows were elusive, impossible to pin down. Impossible to hurt, too.

‘…here in the old hall,’ John was saying with quiet pride.

Guiltily, she pulled herself together and looked around the high-ceilinged room, genuinely delighted to see that it looked like the interior of an exquisite eighteenth-century mansion, with none of the usual trappings of a hotel.

‘John!’ she cried warmly, admiring the mirrored walls. ‘I’m quite staggered! How clever of you to get a job here! It’s absolutely beautiful—especially the flower displays and romantic garlands. And look at this furniture! By golly,’ she added in awe, ‘it’s all antiques!’

‘Every stick,’ nodded John. ‘It was all inherited by the countess, my boss.’

‘I’m surprised this stuff wasn’t looted and transported back to Moscow during the Communist Occupation,’ mused Tanya.

Her brother smiled absently. ‘Perhaps she hid it. She’s a very astute and nice lady. You’ll like her when we get together to talk about the riding school. She lives on the estate.’ His smile turned to a frown. Lisa was rather obviously searching for István. ‘I’ll get the key and sign you in,’ he ground out tightly, reining in his temper.

Tanya waited till he’d reached an antique desk before she took the bull by the horns and rounded on her miserable-looking friend. ‘Lisa, I don’t know what you’re doing, but you’re hurting John!’ she whispered in exasperation. ‘Can’t you ignore István even for one moment?’

‘Can you?’ retorted Lisa.

‘No-yes!’ Tanya heaved an impatient sigh. ‘You’re confusing me,’ she muttered. ‘How long’s István been here?’

‘So you are interested in me,’ came his satin-smooth voice just behind her and suddenly there were two dozen Istváns in the hall with them, dark, menacing and devilishly handsome from every angle.

‘Only as a porter,’ said Tanya crisply, annoyed that Lisa had abandoned her and crept away to John’s side—and because her pulses had inexplicably leapt into life. The reason for that was so unthinkable that she dismissed it out of hand.

‘A porter? Doesn’t seem to be one around. Must be a coffee-break,’ said István, unperturbed by her put-down. ‘How cool you are. What control!’ he said in admiration. ‘Don’t you have one or two burning questions to ask me?’

Millions, she thought—but not with John and Lisa around. Ignoring him then, she pretended to be surveying the lovely wedding swags and garlands that hung everywhere.

‘Admiring the orchids?’ he enquired softly.

The flowers registered more fully on her conscious mind. Her head jerked up. ‘Orchids!’ she exclaimed sadly.

An ache weighed down her heart. Poignant memories were associated with the bouquet of white orchids that István had sent for their mother’s funeral. Her father had thrown the flowers in the dustbin and so István’s tribute had never taken their rightful place on her mother’s coffin. That fact had deeply distressed her.

‘Ester’s favourite flowers,’ ruminated István quietly, apparently unaware of the drama inside her head.

‘I know,’ she said huskily. He’d been the only one to remember. He’d always given her mother orchids on her birthday. She’d once said that they reminded her of the ones that had been grown in the hothouse close to her old home in Hungary.

István touched her shoulder to regain her attention because she’d averted her face from his. No way did she want him to know how close she was to tears.

‘Tell me something,’ he said gently. ‘What do you think of Kastély Huszár? Intimidating? Alien? Not to your taste, perhaps?’

Glad he’d turned to more mundane things, she eyed him scornfully. If he was trying to play down the attractions of John’s hotel, he’d find her unresponsive. ‘Friendly, welcoming and quite the loveliest place I’ve ever seen,’ she answered, warmth seeping into her tone. ‘Hasn’t John done well?’

‘Oh, he’s landed himself a good job all right,’ admitted István.

‘I’m glad you realise it,’ she said drily.

‘I’m glad you do. I want you to be quite aware of his good fortune.’

Her forehead wrinkled with a puzzled frown. ‘I imagine all these deep, meaningful remarks are leading somewhere?’

‘I hope so,’ he said silkily, his sensual mouth quivering with amusement. ‘I sincerely do hope so.’

It was as if he wanted her to find him seductive, she thought dazedly. And blinked. Alarmed, she said the first thing that came into her head. ‘I do think he’s organised the foyer well,’ she burbled. ‘A shiny reception desk with pigeon-holes for keys and people in uniform and badges would have been out of place. With those books and hats and things scattered about, it’s like someone’s home.’ Mercifully she ran out of breath.

‘Home? Not like our home used to be, I hope. There’ll be tears before bedtime, if so,’ he said enigmatically.

Tanya stiffened. ‘What precisely do you mean by that?’ she demanded, her eyes dark and wary.

‘I’m talking from my own point of view, of course,’ he replied smoothly. ‘I found the family remarkably divided.’

‘You left the family divided,’ she corrected tartly.

‘I’m flattered you imagine it was all my own work,’ he drawled sardonically. ‘Of course,’ he reflected, ‘you were incapable of really seeing anyone’s faults. Everyone loved you because you accepted them, faults and all, and were more concerned for others than yourself. You were the mediator.’

‘I was?’ she said, surprised. It hadn’t been a role she’d been aware of.

‘You tried a little too hard to see the best side of each and every one of us and I admired that,’ he told her idly. ‘Though you gave up on me.’

‘Hardly surprising,’ she said coldly. Her curiosity got the better of her, though. ‘What—what faults did everyone else have—yours being glaringly obvious?’

‘Well, despite all your gentle hints, you never managed to modify your mother’s odd obsession with me, or to change the fact that your father favoured John far more than you three girls. As for Sue, well, you never curbed her passion for cutting up any clothes left lying around and returning them with every inch re-designed and embroidered. I had a bit of explaining to do at boarding-school when the under-matrons unpacked two shirts with smocking on the front!’

Tanya laughed and then felt guilty that she’d done so. ‘Mariann?’ she prompted.

He smiled. ‘You worried unnecessarily over the fact that she sent out totally unconscious signals to every male within a radius of a hundred miles. You worried that she’d become a fallen woman if you didn’t protect her and form a human barrier against the young men who hung around her. I don’t suppose it ever occurred to you that they were rather taken with you, too.’

‘Of course they weren’t!’ she said hotly. ‘Mariann’s got the looks, not me. And yes, it did worry me for her sake, but she seems to take men’s admiration in her stride and isn’t vain or promiscuous at all.’

Tanya thought that it was extraordinary that he should have noticed so much, because he’d always seemed quite indifferent to family life. Those thumbnail sketches of them all made her feel rather uncomfortable. It was as though he’d watched them from a stranger’s viewpoint and judged them with clinical detachment. Your mother, he’d said; your father. Had that been deliberate or unconscious? All at once, she was beginning to entertain serious doubts about his relationship to her.

‘You—you were joking about not being my brother, weren’t you?’ she asked shakily.

‘No.’ The word vibrated through her body.

Suddenly she was too scared to believe him. Scared of the way she was beginning to respond, scared of the churning emotions working away inside her, destroying all caution. ‘It can’t be true! Mother would have told us when she knew she was dying,’ she said huskily. ‘You’re up to something! Why are you here, István?’ she asked with passionate intensity. ‘Tell me!’

‘In time. This is not the moment.’ His eyes gleamed. ‘When you’ve been parted from someone and you’ve both gone your separate ways, you don’t rush the reunion. It’s too volatile a situation and calls for a more delicate, less impulsive touch.’

She gulped in dismay at the husky threat in his tone. He was admitting that he was playing a cat-and-mouse game and meant slyly to work his way into Lisa’s affections again. However, her intended protest was shelved when she realised that John had returned.

‘All done?’ She smiled wanly. Not long now, perhaps a sharp show-down with István in a moment, and then she could be alone to gather herself together. She put a hand on John’s arm affectionately. ‘Don’t bother to show me my room. Let me have the key. You spend time with Lisa,’ she continued, a meaningful look in her eyes, ‘while this reprobate with the designer muscles makes himself useful by carrying my case.’

If she did anything, she decided, she’d make sure the bride and groom-to-be sorted out their differences. Meanwhile, once she and István were less in the public eye, she’d insist on knowing what he was doing here. And how soon he was going. Perhaps she could help him on his way, she thought grimly, contemplating the toe of her shoe with malicious intent.

‘So, the fun begins,’ murmured István, swinging the key backwards and forwards.

‘With bells on!’ she agreed tightly, planning plans.

He picked up her case, and the piece of hand-luggage that she’d nursed throughout the journey, double-stacked them porter-style and imperiously grabbed Tanya’s hand. ‘Let’s go upstairs and ring a few of those bells, then,’ he smiled, hauling her across the vast expanse of black and white chequer-board tiles so fast that she had to cling on to him like mad or slip on the glassy surface.

‘Let me go, you brute!’ she cried, afraid. Afraid of falling. Afraid of the contact. Her skin prickled.

Her hair was coming down in thick chestnut hanks over her shoulders and she was in danger of ricking an ankle if she didn’t wrench free. On an impulse, she scooped up a delicate porcelain vase from a glossy fruitwood table and prepared to aim it at István’s head.

‘You want bells, now hear them ringing!’ she fumed.

‘Mistake,’ he murmured. Because she’d given him time to drop her luggage straight to the floor with not an atom of regard for their contents, grab the vase and unwrap her fingers from it. ‘A little over the top, wasn’t it?’ he enquired smoothly.

She flushed, horrified at what she’d intended. ‘A girl has to defend herself from rogue bell-ringers,’ she muttered in excuse.

‘Sure. But do it some way that doesn’t involve one of Napoleon’s favourite bits of porcelain,’ he said drily.

‘His what?’ she scoffed. ‘Stop this endless make-believe! You can’t possibly know anything about the contents of this building! You’ve only been here…how long is it now?’

‘Long enough to know my way around,’ he answered, dodging her sly question. ‘Hope I haven’t broken anything in your cases.’ He lifted them and jiggled them around a little. ‘Chastity belt, is it?’ he asked wickedly, at a rattling sound. ‘Dear, oh, dear! What are you going to do if it’s broken?’ And he sauntered on up the stairs, leaving her steaming at his outrageous behaviour.

Since he had her luggage and the key to her room, and—she sighed—since it was up to her to get rid of him somehow she had no alternative but to follow. With the distinct impression that she was dancing to every tune he called, she stomped up the stairs so fast that she managed to draw level with him before he reached the top landing.

‘I’ve got Lisa’s present in there!’ she said angrily. ‘If you’ve ruined it, you can get a replacement. It cost——’ She bit her lip. Far too much, more than she could afford, but she was so thrilled for John and her dear friend. Distressed by his carelessness, she felt crosser than ever. ‘You’re like a hurricane!’ she bit. ‘Blasting your way through people’s lives, destroying anything in your path. You ruin everything you lay your hands on——’

‘I’ve lain hands on you a few times, heaving you out of the danger you got yourself into, and you look OK,’ he observed, giving her a rather insulting once-over. A shiver curled, unbidden, right the way through her body at the smouldering in his dark, bottomless eyes. ‘You’re all in one piece,’ he said in a soft, husky growl, ‘all the appropriate bumps in the right places——’

‘István!’ she protested, knowing she must be pillar-box red by now. Her blushes had even heated through to her loins and that had never happened before. But then no other man had ever shaken her out of her comfortable, ordered world. ‘Don’t talk like that!’ she said crossly.

‘I’m trying to wake you up to the truth as gently as possible,’ he said mildly.

‘No,’ she said stubbornly. ‘You’ve got to be my brother. Stop tormenting me like this——’

They turned down the long landing and István put an arm around her shoulders. As she shrugged it off irritably, she saw a flutter of a guest’s white skirt as a door ahead shut abruptly.

‘You’re looking a little flushed,’ he crooned.

‘I’m angry,’ she seethed.

‘Anger, is it? I thought I might have reached some…soft centre, some responsive core of that gorgeous body.’

She gasped. ‘Stop it!’ she grated.

‘When I do,’ he said softly, ‘you’ll wish I were still talking.’

She stumbled. The evidence was increasingly stacked against the fact that István was her brother. ‘Don’t touch me!’ she snapped, when his warm hand steadied her. Her pulses had started a riot all of their own. Some of them had decided to throb in her throat, where he could see them. So she clenched her jaw together and tried desperately not to think of István’s beautiful, wicked mouth.

‘You’ll grind down to the gums if you don’t give your feelings some release,’ he murmured.

Her almond eyes slanted viciously at his laughing face and away again, hastily. He was too darn handsome! Too arrogant. Too…impossible! ‘I don’t think so,’ she said frostily, determined to stop him trying to dent her armour with sly insinuations and outrageous teasing. ‘For your information, there’s a core of steel all the way through me.’

‘Malleable stuff, steel,’ he ruminated, nodding towards a medieval breast-plate on the tapestry-hung wall to illustrate his words. ‘It’s strong and cold to the touch, of course. But build up a fire hot enough underneath it, and when it reaches melting point…’ His eyes glimmered. ‘Now there’s a thought!’ he exclaimed. ‘Some man could come along and mould you to any shape he wants!’

Irritated by the way he twisted things to his own purpose, she gave a derisive laugh. ‘I’m well aware that’s what you’re trying to do to all of us,’ she snapped. ‘But this time we’re wise to you. If you’ve come——’

‘Maybe I’m a reformed character, come to make my peace,’ he said quietly, with a sideways glance at her grim profile.

Her astonished glance caught his and was momentarily trapped before she summoned up enough willpower to look.away, unable to withstand the alarmingly intense message of warmth there.

She gave her head a little shake, frantic to dispel the terrible thoughts that crowded her head. Her eyes skimmed the dauntingly broad shoulders, the swell of his chest with its bunched muscles, the narrow hips

‘I ride,’ he said suddenly.

Tanya jumped, startled. ‘Should I be interested?’ she retorted guiltily.

‘You were staring at my body,’ he said, deceptively as mild as milk. ‘I thought you were wondering how I kept fit. Am I mistaken? Were you staring because you feel attracted to me?’ he suggested wickedly.

‘Of course not!’ she cried, hot and bothered by the mere idea. Questions hovered on her lips—were almost blurted out. But a fear held her back. She was afraid to learn that her parents had lived a lie, that her father in particular had betrayed his strict adherence to truth and honesty.

‘Well, then.’ He smiled and paused, still smiling. If he were a woman, she thought in exasperation, she’d call it a full Mona Lisa effort. An ‘I have plans for you’ smile. ‘As my clothes aren’t special enough to fascinate you for the prolonged assessment you were giving me, and since you strenuously deny a sexual interest, your…intent scrutiny,’ he said insolently, ‘must be because you’re wondering if I’m a fitness freak. The answer is that I indulge myself in almost every sport I can,’ he told her in a conversational tone. ‘I like to keep supple because I need strength and stamina. Perhaps I’d better not tell you what for.’

‘No. I’d rather you didn’t,’ she agreed with enough frost injected in her voice to burn peach-blossom.

Strength, suppleness, stamina. She thought of the ease with which he’d lifted her when they’d met outside the castle and then more wistfully of the occasions in the past when he’d tossed her in the air to banish her tears. He’d barely tolerated her following him on his lonely walks like a devoted puppy. Yet if ever she got stuck in a bog on the moorland or fell into the river he’d always be there, whisking her up, tending to her injuries and heaving her on his shoulder with a half-irritated, half-amused sigh and bearing her back to where her sisters played together, oblivious to her adventures.

But she’d been younger then and it was before his domination of the Evans family had begun in earnest. Which reminded her.

‘Are you here to make trouble?’ she persisted, while he jiggled a heavy iron key in the brass lock of a room labelled ‘Madách’.

‘Of course!’ he said airily, as if that went without saying. ‘Ring a few bells, expose old wounds to the air——’

‘Break a heart or two,’ she ventured apprehensively.

He paused and thought for a moment. ‘Break into one, perhaps,’ he acknowledged slowly and she felt her spine become a pillar of ice at the thought of the vulnerable Lisa and her dear, lovesick brother. ‘You’re honoured. I have a feeling this is one of the best rooms in the hotel,’ István went on in a conversational tone and opening the door, ‘because it’s named after a famous writer——’

‘Whose heart?’ she said huskily, not interested in a lecture on Hungarian notables.

There was a brief silence while he appeared to be considering his words. In placing her cases on the rack provided a raven lock of hair fell on to his high, smooth forehead. Tanya almost reached out to lift it back in an affectionate, sisterly gesture but clenched her fist instead, recognising angrily that he was deliberately spinning out his answer to torment her.

Nervously she strolled around the spacious room, pretending to be admiring the period furniture: the heavy four-poster bed with its fairy-tale stack of duvets and outsize pillows, fit for any Princess and the Pea illustration; the polished floorboards; the expensive white silk drapes at the high floor-length windows. Lavish was the only word that described it all. John’s prospects would be wonderful if it weren’t for István.

‘Whose heart?’ she repeated harshly, unable to bear the wait any longer. This was like pulling teeth!

‘That rather depends on how many bells I get to ring. Some people,’ said István in a voice so rich with sensuality that she was forced to grip the swagged bed-curtains to stop herself from turning around, ‘hide their feelings with such success that no one knows whether they’re in anguish inside or merely wondering if it’s going to rain. Others opt for the danger of total openness——’

‘Not you,’ she whispered, attempting to control the rapid beat of her pulses by breathing deeply. Odd how nervous she was, she reflected.

‘No. Not me,’ agreed István, coming to stand inches away from her and sending her pulses haywire again. His eyes glowed as dark and as warm as a black stallion’s coat. ‘I play my cards close to my chest till I know I can come up trumps.’

Disconcerted, she moved to her cases and flipped them open. ‘Some would question whether you had a heart at all,’ she muttered.

He’d broken the hearts of their father, mother, Lisa and herself as if no blood, no ties bound them together. Only her sisters, bound up in each other, had been partly protected from István’s brutal determination to dominate and crush everyone around him.

‘Is it broken?’ he enquired softly.

For a moment, fooled by his sympathetic tone, she thought he’d meant her heart. She spun around so fast in alarm that she teetered briefly on her high heels, and he reached out to save her from falling.

‘Take your hands off me!’ she rasped, horrified by the electric shock that had passed through her. Why? Why? she thought frantically.

‘OK, I apologise for saving you from landing on your neat little bottom!’ he drawled. ‘I merely thought you’d want to preserve that oh-so-dignified, nose-in-the-air haughtiness you’ve acquired. Is it broken?’ he murmured. ‘Have I…cracked it?’

He was laughing at her! Deep in the molten pools of his damnable eyes she could see glints of amusement! And once again there was a wealth of meaning in his words. More than she could fathom. ‘If you mean my present to Lisa, no, it isn’t.’

‘I’m glad. Want to know what I’m giving her?’ he asked with a sinister, iazy drawi.

At the implication, her heart seemed to stop beating and then it roared into life again, double-quick, as a protest. ‘No!’