“Ian? What were you doing in France?” she prompted when he didn’t speak, just watched her with those dark-angel eyes.
“I told you,” he said. “I’ve had business there.”
A chill seemed to settle in her heart, but unfortunately, it didn’t numb off the flash of pain she experienced. “I see,” she said quietly. “So you don’t trust me enough—or care enough—to tell me, in other words.”
“Francesca, it’s not that—” he said sharply, but she interrupted him by flipping back the sheet.
“Excuse me,” she murmured before she left the bed and hurried to the bathroom, walking past her discarded clothing on the floor. She’d find a towel to cover her nakedness before she retrieved them. The last thing she wanted to do at that moment was expose herself to Ian any more than she already had.
Chapter Eight
It was a cool, crisp, windless morning. She went for a long walk with Anne and Elise on the grounds after a light breakfast. She struggled to focus and take part in the conversation as they walked through fields, gardens, and woods, but could tell from the other women’s concerned glances that her distracted, withdrawn state hadn’t gone unnoticed. At Elise’s request, they stopped in the ultramodern stables on the return to the house.
“You’re very quiet this morning,” Anne said privately to Francesca as Elise stroked a russet-colored mare in the distance.
Francesca blinked, rising out of her ruminations. She gave Anne a smile. “I’ve been thinking a lot about the painting.”
“You’ve been thinking a lot about Ian.”
She started. She saw Anne’s sad, knowing smile. “Is he coming around any?” the older lady asked hopefully.
Francesca ground her teeth together at the question. “No. He won’t budge. He’s determined to be miserable.”
Anne sighed. “In my experience, people are seldom determined to be alone and depressed. It’s more that they feel they can’t escape it.”
Regret sliced through her. “I know,” she assured, frustration edging her tone. “But why is he so insistent that Trevor Gaines matters? Ian never even knew him! He’s dead, thank God,” she muttered bitterly under her breath.
Anne put her hand on her forearm. “I know it must be so difficult for you to understand, given your situation with Ian.”
“You’re right,” Francesca said in a burst of honesty. “I’m furious with him for being so stubborn. And are you honestly saying you do understand him?”
“Yes. I don’t agree with him, and I’m extremely worried about his state of mind, but I do understand,” Anne said. She shook her head. “Ian had such a fractured childhood, caring for Helen as if he were an adult, worrying day in and day out he’d be put in an orphanage if the townspeople understood how mad she was, dreading the times when his own mother would cringe away from him in fear. I think that moment when Lucien showed him that photograph of Gaines, and it looked so much like Ian, might have been the worst minute of Ian’s life, but one of the best, too.”
“Best?” Francesca asked, stunned.
“Well not best, perhaps, but . . . significant. He could never make sense of his past. He always tried, but it’s as if Helen’s disorganization, her insanity, made it so hard for him to focus. The questions he used to ask us when he came here as a child: What makes a person go mad? Would he become like his mother? If his father wasn’t schizophrenic, was there a chance he wouldn’t be? Who was his father? Why hadn’t he taken care of Helen?” Anne grimaced in memory. “The concept of an adult looking out for him was so foreign to him, he never even asked once why his father hadn’t taken care of him.”
Francesca closed her eyes to shield her pain.
“He always guessed his father had taken advantage of Helen’s vulnerability,” Francesca said after a moment. “He worried she’d been raped. I don’t understand how finding out all his suspicions were valid—even worse than what he’d suspected—could have been remotely a good thing for him.”
“Because you know how important clarity is to him,” Anne said. “Ian has to be one of the most focused, methodical people I’ve ever known. He prizes seeing clearly above all else, partly I believe, because he was forced at a young age to deal with his mother’s disorganization and irrational behavior. Do you realize how hard it would be, to understand who you are when your only guide is a woman ruled by madness? He coped by making their world as orderly, as controlled, as predictable as he possibly could. But still, so many questions remained for him. His early life—his very identity—still felt blurred to him.”
“So finding out about Trevor Gaines was good for him because it made sense. It helped—”
“Focus the blur, yes,” Anne said.
Francesca stared at Elise in the distance as she moved over to a big chestnut stallion’s stall and began murmuring to the animal in French.
“You’re saying that he would rather see the truth clearly, no matter how painful or ugly that truth is,” Francesca said slowly. The anger she’d been feeling seemed to solidify in her chest cavity, making her heart feel like a winter-cold stone.
“Yes, that’s what I’m saying,” Anne said.
“It won’t help him,” Francesca said starkly. “There’s no meaning to be found in a man like Trevor Gaines.”
Anne sighed and turned to join her in watching Elise. “It’s not the truth about Trevor Gaines he’s trying to understand, not entirely anyway,” Anne said bleakly. “He’s trying desperately to understand himself.”