The Silver Bride

PART NINE

Scarcely the way I would have chosen to announce the advent of our first child,' Dior commented in a charged undertone that fairly screeched with restraint. 'No...' Stella agreed, trembling. 'But, had you warned me how many scandals there was in your past, I might have been able to bury some of the evidence and protect you.'

Stella flinched from the censure she could hear in his clipped drawl. And as she read what was in that newspaper article she didn't blame him; she didn't. It was lurid stuff. The barest bones of the truth were there but sunk be‐ neath a wealth of lies and exaggerations.

'For a start, I had no idea that you and your mother were virtual outcasts in the town where you grew up.' 'Dior.. .it was a small town. Mum was an unmarried mother when it wasn't at all acceptable.'

Stella cleared her throat of the thickness of tears. 'Her father died owing money to a lot of local tradesmen. Neither of those facts was going to win her any popularity contest. And when my father was seen visiting by the neighbors...well, everyone knew he was a married man.'

'Why didn't you tell me that he ditched your mother to marry his secretary a few months after his first wife died?' Dior enquired drily. He was concentrating on the revelations about her background rather than the infinitely more damaging and cruel comments about her in the present.

She had been branded a cunning little gold-digger, who had seen her chance with a rich man and grabbed it with both hands. She felt sicker than ever. 'Stella...' Dior prompted curtly.

'Well, to be blunt...Th-that's not one of my favorite memories,' she stuttered painfully. 'My father didn't even bother to tell Mum that he had another woman in his life.

The first she knew about it was the notice of their marriage in the local paper! She was devastated.' 'Yes, and I would have preferred to have learned from you that she took her own life.' Stella rounded on him in shaken rebuttal. 'She didn't! She was taking medication for depression.

She was living in her little world. She stepped off the pavement at a junction without looking and just got knocked down!' Dior surveyed her with bleak eyes and his hands coiled into fists which he dug into his pockets. 'You were only sixteen.

How the hell did you cope alone at that age?' 'My caring father sent his solicitor to arrange the funeral. He didn't attend himself, of course.' Then what?' Dior prompted, looking grimmer than ever. "Why did you leave school?' Stella frowned in surprise.

'What choice did I have?' 'At the very least your father should have ensured that you completed your education—' 'Why would he have done that when he had spent sixteen years trying to pretend that I was nothing to do with him?

He was scared his wife would find out about me and throw him out. All the money was hers,' Stella explained wearily. 'So what did you do after your mother died?' 'Our flat was rented. I sold the household stuff to a dealer and went to London.

I stayed in a hostel until I got a job with Watson. The year after that, he offered me the room above the shop. Dior, why are we talking about my background?' Stella studied him with bewildered eyes.

'I didn't tell you any lies. I may have skipped the messier details, but that's no hanging offense.' his black eyes flared to smoldering gold. 'At this moment, I want to strangle you,' Dior confessed in a wrathful undertone.