The Temple Mount Code by Charles Brokaw

Author:Charles Brokaw [Brokaw, Charles]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780141957210
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2004-09-09T16:00:00+00:00

‘If you didn’t love him, why did you marry him?’ Lourds sat across the table from Alice at an open-air café the way they had when they’d attended the university.

Around them, the Ringstrasse moved slowly. Fewer people lived there these days, and Lourds missed the crowds.

‘I didn’t have a choice.’

‘Of course you had a choice.’

Alice took Lourds’s hands in hers and smiled at him. ‘Sweet Thomas, so immersed in the world of the past that you often don’t realize how the real one works. Austria isn’t the United States. People don’t have the same liberties here.’

‘Even so – ’

She cut him off. ‘I was fortunate that my parents allowed me to finish my extended education before they insisted on marrying me off.’

‘Are they truly that backwards?’

‘You met them.’

‘Once.’ Lourds growled at the memory. Herr and Frau Reinstadler had made it immediately and abundantly clear that they didn’t care for their only daughter’s infatuation. The weekend they’d spent in the Reinstadler estate home, in separate bedrooms, had been decidedly uncomfortable.

Alice smiled at him. ‘And wasn’t that enough?’

‘It was.’ Lourds shook his head. ‘You could have left Vienna.’

‘And gone where?’

Lourds had no answer.

‘Before Klaus, before the arranged marriage, I’d been in love. When that ended, my confidence had been broken. In those days, the attentions of Klaus Von Volker had seemed a godsend. He wanted me in a way I thought I needed to be wanted.’

Lourds took off his hat and placed it on the table. ‘I’m sorry, Alice. I never intended to hurt you.’

‘I know. This isn’t about you, Thomas. If I’d allowed you to take me off with you, I’d have been just as unhappy.’

Lourds grimaced, the hurt from her comment evident on his face.

Alice laughed at him. ‘Don’t be so fragile. It doesn’t become you. I like remembering you as the aloof, self-centered young professor who once told me life was too big to live in one place.’

‘Did I ever say that?’

She placed a hand over her heart, almost cupping one delectable breast. ‘I swear. That was almost word-for-word.’

‘I was something of a bounder, wasn’t I?’

‘No. You were young.’ She studied him unashamedly. ‘In many ways, you still are, and – I think – always will be. You’ll always be the boy I fell in love with, always seeing the fascinating things and adventures in the world that no one else sees.’

‘Still. If I had known – ’

‘You would have only made things worse for yourself and for me. I still cling to that memory of how we were. Some days that’s my only solace. I would not have it destroyed.’ Alice took a breath. ‘The fault was mine. I hadn’t planned for my own life. I had no place to go, Thomas. No money of my own to make a life anywhere. That was one of the keenest interests my parents had in arranging the marriage with Klaus. They hoped their fortunes would increase when they aligned with his.’

‘Did they?’

‘Of course not. Klaus is not a generous man. Not even with me.

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