CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER TEN
A NA SAT AT a large table in the rustic farmhouse kitchen, draining her second coffee of the morning. Once again, she’d woken alone. She checked the clock on the wall. Aston had been gone for three hours this time, and they’d fallen asleep in each other’s arms, exhausted, past midnight. He must have had no more than four hours’ sleep.
Waking alone didn’t bother her so much; it was more than that. After the dinner at his parents’, she’d begun doing some research into what it took to climb the tallest mountain in the world, the risks. She’d seen the photos and videos—they were awe-inspiring, terrifying. She’d seen the bodies of those who’d failed. It had taken her down a rabbit hole of trying to understand him, what it took to climb the ‘eight thousanders’, as they were called—the tallest and deadliest mountains in the world.
As she’d thought before, she loved what the exercise did for his body, but now hated what it appeared to be doing to him. Hated how tired he seemed, although he tried to hide it well. If he’d appeared happy with it all, if he’d confided in her or was excited in any way, then maybe she could get excited too. But all she was left with was creeping fear and dread. On some of those mountains, a third of people who tried to climb them died. Luckily, Everest wasn’t as bad as that, but still...
She’d tried to talk to him again about when he might be planning his next climb and where that might be. She knew from her research when the best season was to climb, so she guessed it wouldn’t be for a while, but she didn’t know how he could keep going like this. Burning the candle not only at both ends but seemingly in the middle too. No matter how subtly she tried to bring up his mountaineering, he fobbed it off when she hinted at wanting to talk. Kissing her until all she craved was him and everything else was forgotten.
He worked and trained and they made love, but he didn’t seem happy to be doing it. She wanted him to be happy so badly, it had begun to make her desperate. She suspected all the research hadn’t helped. She’d watched videos of mountaineers, trying to understand why they climbed the tallest peaks. Trying to understand him , because he was opaque as a thick fog. But it scared her even more to realise some of the videos she’d watched were from people now dead, lost to the mountains they’d climbed. If only he’d confide in her, just a little, she might understand. That was all she was asking for—him to reassure her this was what he wanted. That he was doing it for himself...and not someone else.
Movement at the door roused her from the dregs in her coffee cup. Aston walked into the room, smiling when he saw her. As always, it made her belly flutter.
‘Good morning,’ he said.
‘Good morning to you.’
The fresh smell of soap and what she could only define as the scent unique to Aston, earthy and wild, threatened to scramble her senses. His hair was still damp. He hadn’t shaved, a stubble grazing his jaw. He looked as handsome as ever, in jeans and a polo shirt, yet she saw things that he might not when he looked in the mirror. The dusty colour under his eyes. The lines deepening at their corners, bracketing his mouth. It spoke to her of stress, of tiredness. She loved his drive, his commitment, but it seemed that it was driving him into the ground.
Ana tilted up her head and he captured her lips. Her heart pounded at the conversation to come, part-excitement, part-trepidation. They broke apart and Ana twisted the engagement ring that sparkled on her finger in the morning light.
He poured himself a cup of coffee, grabbed a croissant delivered by the local bakery and sat across from her.
‘So, where did you go this morning?’ she asked. She’d guessed, but wanted him to tell her. She wanted to lead into this conversation slowly because she wasn’t sure how it would go.
He shrugged. ‘I went for a run.’
If it was anything like the other days, he would have taken a weighted backpack with him, to increase his effort.
‘Why?’
Aston tore off a piece of the buttery croissant and washed it down with a mouthful of coffee. ‘As I’ve told you, climbing requires me to maintain a level of fitness that sitting in a boardroom doesn’t give me.’
‘To climb Mount Everest?’
‘If you knew the answer to the question, why did you ask it, ma chère ?’
From the cool tone of his voice, she was aware she was prodding a sensitive place, but she didn’t know why. She wanted him to explain so she could understand him better. There was something that kept him apart from her, when she craved to get even closer. She’d seen that closeness in his parents, and between Caspar and Cilla. Couldn’t she have it for herself?
‘Why do you want to climb Everest?’
Aston became deadly still as he regarded her, eyebrow raised. ‘Why would I not? I’d be standing on the top of the world.’
Except, they’d been his brother’s words, going by what his mother had told her. And here she was walking into dangerous territory. It required her to challenge him when it was something she was unfamiliar with, that she wasn’t certain of.
‘Are you sure it’s your dream?’
He put down his cup, placing his napkin in his lap.
‘What is this about?’ The sound of his voice—not just cool, but icy, like a frigid winter wind—should have sounded a warning. She carried on regardless because there was a need inside her to understand, to reduce the panic that seemed to build each day, the more she thought about things. In this case, what she didn’t know might hurt her, especially if it hurt Aston.
‘After you’ve climbed Everest, what then?’
He shrugged in a dismissive kind of way, and she was certain that he wouldn’t stop, that he’d keep exhausting himself, keep going, till one day he climbed the last of the eight thousanders or died. But, if he finished climbing the tallest peaks, what then? Would he be happy?
She wasn’t so sure. Ana knew she put a smile on his face but there was something more, something missing. They might lose themselves in each other’s bodies, might make love for hours, but he remained as remote as the mountain peaks he climbed. He’d been right. Convenient didn’t mean cold. Until Aston, she’d never truly understood how close to the flame she could fly. Then something else welled inside her, a sensation so big and all-encompassing, she refused to name it.
‘Climbing Everest is dangerous,’ she said, trying to tempt him into answering.
Ana realised her error immediately. He pinned her with his flinty-blue gaze. ‘Life’s dangerous. You can cross the road and be struck by a car. You can fall down a flight of stairs and break your neck. Nothing’s guaranteed.’
‘But that’s not placing yourself in harm’s way. How many people died on the mountain last year?’
She knew the answer. Seventeen. She knew the answer for every year for the past ten, the grim toll, the statistics.
‘Stop speaking in circles, Ana. You have something to say? Say it.’
‘I don’t think this will make you happy. I think the thought is making you miserable.’
Nothing about it seemed to give him any joy. It was as if this was a kind of obligation, not a challenge he truly wanted to make his own.
‘What would you know about my happiness?’
She reared back a little. What would she know? It was all Ana thought about. She wanted to wake up to him each day and go to sleep with him at night. She wanted him to be happy with her . Happy with his choices in life. She just wasn’t sure he was. She had to make him see what he’d come to mean to her, because surely that meant something to him too?
‘I’m getting no sense of excitement from you about this. All I feel from you is obligation, that you’re doing something you don’t really want. I’m terrified that’s not going to be enough to get you to the top of that mountain and to keep you safe. And the thought of you not being safe is untenable to me.’
Aston stood, raked his hand through his hair and began to pace. He could see where this was going, as it had before with Michel. An old and familiar story. He’d been fooled into believing that this woman wouldn’t hold him back, yet here they were.
Live for me.
He tried every damned day, living life enough for two men.
‘Are you trying to change me? Because it seems, when I put a ring on your finger, you were happy enough with me then.’
Except that wasn’t true. Their whole relationship had been based on a crumbling foundation. She’d agreed to marry him because she’d been afraid. He’d only proposed to ensure his inheritance. That was the deal. Nothing more, nothing less.
‘Aston, we didn’t know each other. And, now I do, I’m trying to make you see.’
He wheeled round. She still sat at the table, gripping onto her empty coffee cup. ‘What? That you’re yet another person trying to tell me what to do?’
‘Your mother told me—’
‘Ah.’ He could imagine any number of things she might have said to Ana, filling her head with stories over dinner. ‘I see where this is going. What did she say?’
Ana stood now, slowly, carefully, approaching him as if he was some kind of wild animal fighting to break free of restraints. He felt it, the past six months compressing upon him, crushing the life out of him.
‘That your brother had always wanted to climb Everest. A-and I think that’s the thing. You don’t really want to want to do it for yourself, but you don’t know how to let it go.’
The audacity . She had no idea how long he’d planned, what it required, what he would sacrifice. How gruelling it would be to make the climb and then to keep going.
‘You could never understand—a woman who’s been caged her whole life, with no sense of adventure.’
As he said those things, she jerked, as if having taken a blow.
‘You’re blaming me for something that’s out of my control. I was limited by my family and my role. It doesn’t mean I don’t have a sense of adventure or want to do things. But I’m not going to irrationally risk my life for a dream that isn’t mine.’
It was as if an awful history was repeating itself. He remembered those days, talking to Michel about a woman he’d met. Remembered how desperate he’d been to keep her, but at the same time how torn he was, being asked to give up what he loved. Aston had thought then that he was witnessing the limits of pain. How na?ve he’d been; it had only been the beginning.
‘You want to hear about my brother? Let me tell you a little story. Michel had one love in his life—climbing the mountains. Until he met Greta.’
How desperately in love Michel had seemed, how obsessed. Because his brother had always had a dark side to him. It was as his mother had said. Michel had been the moon, Aston the sun.
‘She was meant to be a holiday romance. Michel had plans for life, plans we were working on together.’
To reach the top of the world had always been Michel’s dream, taking the ice-axe from their father’s own failed expedition. He’d wanted Aston to join him—two brothers climbing Everest together. He’d sold it with a kind of religious zeal that was impossible to ignore.
‘But with Greta, their relationship, there was always some drama, some crisis. She wanted his only focus to be her. Everything else came second.’
Ana stood there, arms round her waist, her teeth worrying her lower lip. ‘How old was he?’
‘Nineteen.’
‘So young.’
Too young to be in a coffin in a graveyard. Aston had raged at the universe for a year, for taking him.
‘He didn’t want to stop climbing. But she told him it was her or the mountains, one or the other. He wanted both.’
Aston turned his back. He couldn’t look at Ana’s pity. She’d never understand. She was just another woman trying to change a man, to fit him into her own image.
She’d taken enough from him already. Even now, it was near impossible to get out of bed in the early mornings. He had to drag himself away from her. If he wanted to climb to the top of that damned mountain and keep climbing, she could not win this battle, never. The promises he made, his life, depended on it.
‘My brother had some of the most single-minded focus I’ve ever seen in another human being, yet on his last climb he wasn’t thinking about what he should be doing, but of a choice—Greta or the mountains. On a climb where there should have been no distractions, no loss of focus, he was thinking of her. He fell and he died.’
Aston gripped the counter-top till his fingertips blanched white. The pain of that day was never ending. ‘Because of a woman, he died for love.’
The pain in Aston’s voice threatened to break Ana. What a burden he carried, one that no one saw. She understood now what drove him. Why he was lashing out. What he held back. She wanted to go to him, hold him, but she realised that he was a man with an ego showing his wounds. It had been difficult enough for her, being honest about her own. She was sure he wouldn’t react well to pity. For now, all she had was words.
‘I’m sorry. So sorry that happened to Michel, to you and your family.’
He gave a bitter laugh. ‘And yet here you are, trying to do the same.’
She shook her head, even though he couldn’t see her, holding onto the bench-top as if it was the only thing keeping him upright. ‘I won’t. I want you to do it for the right reasons. Tell me you want this. Tell me it’s your dream and I won’t say anything else.’
‘Lies. You need to be reminded, Ana—this was meant to be a convenient marriage, nothing more. You know why I married you? The real reason?’
It was as if she’d swallowed something bad, now congealing in the pit of her stomach. Here was the real story. Did she want to hear it?
‘You said it was time to settle down.’
‘My parents demanded I marry or they’d write me out of their will. Girard would no longer be mine. But I knew the real reason. They knew I’d do anything to keep Girard and they hoped that once I was happily married, I’d forget all about this climb. But they were wrong. You see, like my brother, I have two loves—the mountains and the wine.’
Not her.
No one but me will love you now...
She tried to shut that voice down but it kept whispering, taunting her with what she’d never have. Aston’s love.
‘My father and mother erred. No person will ever prevent me from making that climb. I asked you to marry me because it was the way to keep Girard and the mountains. Why should you have cared? I believed you understood the meaning of a convenient marriage. Now this.’
He saw her as standing in his way when that wasn’t what she was trying to do at all. She wanted to free him. And yet she now began to see this for what it was...
‘You’re afraid.’
‘I fear nothing.’
‘You’re afraid to let love into your heart, because you fear it might be more like Michel’s relationship than your parents’, but even more—there’s a risk it’ll open another door. One that doesn’t keep you locked in the past. That moves you forward to something different, to something better.’
‘Don’t fool yourself. This relationship gives us both something we need. You, safety. Me, my inheritance. But don’t ever think to change me.’
‘I’m not thinking to change you. I—I...’ She couldn’t finish the sentence with the words she wanted to say because they were too big and too terrifying when everything was unravelling horribly. ‘I want you to do it because it’s something you want. Not because it was a dream of your brother’s which he can’t fulfil.’
‘Enough,’ he said, his hand slashing through the air like an exclamation mark. ‘You know nothing about me, you know nothing about life. You want to stay in your little cage? I will not join you there. If you’re asking me to choose you or the mountain, you’ll be disappointed in my answer. So, let’s keep this to what it is. A convenient relationship and nothing more.’
Ana realised in that moment there was no moving him. The pain of it tore her heart in two because she knew what this sensation was now. One that filled her with wonder and dread. One that terrified her and thrilled her. She was in love with him and Aston could never love her back. He’d never give her all of himself. He’d always look at that ring on her finger and know how much she’d cost him. He might be faithful, they might make love, but he could never love her. She couldn’t live with that because if she tried, she’d die a little every day till all that was left was a shell of herself.
‘You’ve made yourself very clear. But I deserve more, not someone who sees me as something they bought for a record price per carat. I deserve to be loved.’
Ana took off her ring and placed it on the table. She felt the loss of its presence, its weight, immediately. It was as if she’d been cut adrift again. But what did it matter? Self-preservation meant she had to leave, not stay. She drew herself up with all the comportment she could raise, from what she’d been taught. For a while, she’d loved pretending with him—just being Anastacia Montroy the woman. Not the perfect princess, not a princess at all. But it was time to call upon all her royal breeding to get through the rest of her life without him.
‘You say I’m trapped, but I’m not.’ Ana turned to leave the room, leave the house. Leave the man she now knew she loved. Unable to stay a minute longer. She blinked her eyes at the burn. They were tears she wouldn’t shed, not in front of a man who didn’t care. ‘It’s you. Aston. You’re the one who’ll always be in a cage.’
Aston sat in his gleaming, modern Paris office in uncomfortable silence. His staff were keeping their distance. His temper was short. He’d lost all motivation. Every morning, waking late. Not training. With no desire for anything let alone climbing to the top of the world. On his desk lay his father’s ice-axe, a reminder of the climb Aston had promised to make.
Why did the thought of climbing a mountain now, hold as much excitement as walking up the closest hill? Nothing interested him—not the food on his plate, not the taste of the wines that had made his family famous. It could all have been ash and vinegar. Yet small things still caught his attention: a flash of golden hair. The scent of roses as he walked past the local florist. The bed in his apartment that carried the memories of entering Ana’s body for the first time and knowing things had changed for ever. So much so, he’d begun staying at a hotel near his office to avoid thinking of her.
He might try to ignore it, but he knew this feeling. It was like a death, the same finality with which he’d lost Michel...however in this case the person still lived. And in some ways it was worse, to know they were out there but didn’t want you.
Aston stood and stared out of the windows onto the city below. Everyone was going about their lives, yet he somehow seemed frozen. He’d never lied to himself before, but he knew he was lying now. Anastacia hadn’t walked away, he’d pushed her. Ruthlessly, mercilessly. He had no one to blame but himself.
On his desk, his office phone rang. Strange, since Aston had given instructions to his staff that he wasn’t to be disturbed. He’d set his mobile to silent. He still had security keeping tabs on Ana and Hakkinen, just to make sure, since her family hadn’t cared enough to listen to her. There’d been nothing to report for over a month. The count had crawled back into the hole from where he’d come in Halrovia, and there he’d stayed. Ana was out in the world too except, rather than hiding, she was living her life. He rubbed at an ache in his chest, one that seemed ever-present.
The phone on his desk stopped then started ringing again. Aston snatched it up to put an end to the shrill sound.
‘Allo? Oui?’
‘Monsieur Lane, it’s your father.’
Aston didn’t want to speak to the man, not now. His wounds were still raw. He was in this position because of his parents’ actions, forcing him into this situation. Now he’d failed in his engagement, had failed to marry Ana. Would they still require a marriage for him to remain in the will? He had no appetite for it. He didn’t care any longer. If his parents saw fit to punish him, to leave Girard to his cousin, then so be it. It was all pointless now, anyway.
‘Father, this isn’t a good time.’
There was silence on the end of the phone. All Aston could hear was some heavy breathing.
‘Aston...’ Something was wrong. He could hear it in his father’s voice, the way it carried such weight, and cracked. ‘It’s your mother.’
Bile burned his throat, sour and sickening, as Aston stalked through the hospital’s sterile halls. The scent of antiseptic overwhelmed him. He hadn’t been into a hospital since the day Michel had died, when they’d been retrieved from that mountain, and Aston had been brought in at the insistence of his family to be checked for any injuries. There hadn’t been any that were physical, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t been mortally wounded that day. The memories were so fresh and acute it could have been yesterday. No matter that there was art on the walls, soothing scenes, this was still a place where death stalked the living.
Aston stopped at a nurses’ station and asked for directions. Luckily, his parents had been in Paris to see the opera, so it hadn’t taken him long to get here even through traffic. Staff led him to a waiting room where his father sat, leaning forward, forearms on his legs and hands clasped, staring at the floor as if in prayer.
‘Dad.’
His father lifted his head. The lines on his face were etched deeply. He’d always been such a robust, healthy man, yet in this moment it was as if he’d aged ten years. He was somehow...diminished. He stood from the chair, as if every move was an effort. Aston strode towards him, everything else forgotten, grabbing his father in a tight embrace. They simply held each other for a few moments as if the past, the present and the future weren’t suddenly colliding.
His father pulled back, wiping his eyes.
‘Son, you look as much in hell as I feel.’
There was time to discuss that, if it ever needed to be raised at all. That time wasn’t now.
‘What happened?’
‘Your mother’s been feeling unwell for a few weeks—nausea, tiredness. We thought it was a virus until she started getting jaw pain. Now they say it’s a blocked artery. A “widow-maker”, they call it.’
Aston’s blood ran cold. ‘What do you mean?’
‘The main artery to the heart. It’s as bad as it sounds.’
His father collapsed into his chair, but Aston couldn’t sit still. He began to pace. He couldn’t imagine his mother and father not together. They’d had a once-in-a-lifetime kind of love, something Aston had always believed was incapable of being duplicated. Whilst their relationship was sometimes fiery, they hadn’t spent a day apart in their thirty-four years of marriage.
‘But if there’s anything that will keep your mother alive it’s the thought of a wedding and having grandchildren. How’s Anastacia?’
Her name brought Aston to a stop. There’d been no press about the end of their relationship. He’d remained quiet about it, for her safety. She hadn’t said anything either. His parents wouldn’t know until he told them and accepted the consequences of his failure. His father looked up at him, his face somehow hopeful in the midst of everything. Aston should lie, so as not to add to his father’s concerns, yet the words choked at the back of his throat. His eyes stung. He shut them and pinched his nose, willing yet more grief away before it consumed him.
‘Son? What’s wrong?’
‘You have enough to worry about.’
‘Now you’re worrying me even more. No matter your age, you are always my child, and you can always talk to me.’
So the words tumbled out of him about how they were over. Ana had left France and gone to stay with her sister...
‘I won’t marry simply to inherit Girard. If that’s what you want, the company’s all yours.’
He’d never wanted a wife yet, with Ana in his life, Aston realised he wanted nothing else. She was strong, caring, kind. Most people only saw her external beauty but, for him, it was the inner beauty she radiated. Losing her was like losing everything.
His father rubbed his hand over his face. ‘We were wrong, your mother and I. That ultimatum... If we could turn back time... But Everest, the rest of the mountains, the risks... It was more than not wanting to lose another child, we simply couldn’t . There’s nothing more unnatural. We’d do anything to protect you, even if it was misplaced. As a parent, all you want is for your child to be happy, and yet you always seemed to be looking for something. We thought if you could find what we had... have ... Then you arrived with Anastacia and we hoped...’
Aston stilled. He wasn’t sure what his father’s confession meant for him and the company. But to know that all of this had been futile... What if he could turn back time to a moment when Anastacia had never been his fiancée? What would he have done?
The answer was simple: no matter the pain, he would have done it all over again. He would always catch her if she ran to him. The ache of the realisation almost cut him in two. He acknowledged what he’d done and what he’d lost because he was a selfish fool and a coward.
‘There were things said in the heat of the moment.’
He wasn’t only talking about that fateful conversation with his parents.
‘Is there a way to fix it, with you and Ana?’
‘I broke something precious. I don’t know how to rebuild from that.’
His father stood and placed a hand on Aston’s shoulder. The weight, the warmth, was somehow comforting when Aston knew he deserved none of it after the things he’d said to Ana.
‘Saying sorry is a start, which is what I need to say to you.’ Simon looked at Aston and held his gaze. The look on his face was earnest. ‘I’m sorry, son. All we wanted was for you to focus on possibilities, not the life you’d been leading, where it seemed you were pushing yourself harder and harder without really enjoying what you were doing.’
They were the same sentiments Ana had expressed, and both she and his parents were right. He’d been living the life Michel wanted, not his own. He was exhausted. He loved mountaineering, but he didn’t need to conquer them all, and had no desire to stand on top of the world. He enjoyed adventure but hadn’t realised he could find it in a person too—in one shining light who cut through the darkness like the beam from a lighthouse.
Ana.
‘I hope the pressure we placed on you to marry didn’t cause this.’
Aston shook his head and gave a short, sharp laugh. ‘No, I did that all by myself.’
By not realising what was important. By trying to avoid love. All this time he’d fought the perceived constraints. Yet with Ana he’d found his greatest freedom. In trying to avoid pain and a loss of focus, both had found him anyway, enough to tear him clear in two. He hadn’t saved himself from anything. Right now, he was suffocating with it.
He’d been too ignorant of his own feelings to realise what was happening. Many climbers fell into serious trouble because of subjective hazards, those of their own making. Failure to analyse conditions, or their poor conclusions and judgement. Despite all his knowledge and planning, with Ana he’d fallen into that trap himself. Now he was reaping the rewards of his own failures. Aston realised that some hurts were too much to heal. He hoped that Ana might see her way to forgiving him—but only if he laid himself bare.
‘Do you love her?’ his father asked.
‘Yes.’
The answer was easy. There was no question about his feelings. He loved Ana and he’d work with everything he had, the persistence and dedication he used in his business and his mountaineering, to get her back. It didn’t matter how long it took, because he was sure now that she’d loved him too. He only hoped that the love and concern she’d shown him hadn’t died because of the things he’d said to her.
His father gave the smallest of smiles. ‘There’s no greater feeling, and sometimes bigger curse. And yet I wouldn’t pass up a single day of any of it with your mother. I regret nothing.’
Aston tried to imagine a life without Ana. All he saw was long, interminable years of loneliness. A sense of absence that no perilous climb or mountain peak would fill.
Now he knew. He’d never felt more alive than when he was with her. Aston wanted the adventure of the world seen through her eyes. He craved to show it all to her, if she’d allow him.
He looked at his father. The man’s gaze was fixed on a point over Aston’s shoulder. His eyes widened, then his face drained, pale. Aston whipped round, and there stood a surgeon in her scrubs, face neutral—not grim, but not happy either.
‘How is she?’ his father asked. His voice was quiet, weak, in a way Aston had never heard before.
‘Your wife is a very lucky woman. The surgery went well. A successful procedure.’
The relief was so intense, Aston could barely even thank the woman who had saved his mother’s life. His father’s shoulders sagged. He put his head in his hands. Aston walked to him and placed his hand on his shoulder. It shuddered under his touch.
Aston didn’t much believe in signs but something about today gave him hope. His father had his second chance. Now Aston had to find one for himself.