‘Pity,’ said Hester. ‘I’d have liked to meet the man who finally made you into a woman. Because under all the woe, my lamb, there’s a new light burning.’ She gave her friend a worldly look. ‘Nice, was it?’
‘I don’t want to discuss it.’ Flora crunched another tissue in her hand.
‘That good, eh?’ Hester said reflectively. ‘So what are your immediate plans, once you’re over your crying jag?’
‘I’ve got to get away for a while. I’d already been considering it, and now I’m sure. I feel bad enough about all this without having to field the angry phone calls,’ she added, shuddering. ‘I need to get myself back on track—somehow.’
‘And you really don’t want to see Marco Valante again?’
‘Never—ever.’
‘That’s tough.’ Hester came away from the window. ‘Because he’s outside, just getting out of a car.’
‘Oh, God.’ Flora scrubbed at her tearstained face. ‘Don’t let him in.’
‘Nonsense.’ Hester grinned at her as she went into the hall to answer the doorbell. ‘I want to meet him, if you don’t. I might even shake hands with him for his sterling efforts on behalf of repressed womanhood.’
‘Hester!’ Flora shrieked, but it was too late. The front door was being opened and there was a murmur of voices in the hall.
A moment later, Hester returned, her face wearing a faintly stunned expression. ‘You have a visitor,’ she said, standing aside to allow Marco to precede her into the room. ‘And I have places to go and things to do, so I’m sure I leave you in good hands.’
‘No—please. There’s no need…’ Flora began desperately, but Hester simply blew her a kiss, added an enigmatic wink, and departed.
Leaving Flora staring at Marco across the back of the sofa. She was horribly conscious of how she must look, in ancient jeans and a sweatshirt, her hair pulled back carelessly into a rubber band, her face pale without the camouflage of cosmetics, eyes reddened through weeping.
He, on the other hand, was immaculate, in another elegant suit, but his usual cool assurance was not as much in evidence. There was an odd tension about him, she realised. There were signs of strain in his face, the skin stretched tautly across the high cheekbones, and his eyes were watchful, even wary, as they studied her.
And yet, in spite of everything, she felt the familiar, shaming clench of excitement deep within her at the sight of him. The uncontrollable twist of yearning that she was unable to deny.
She felt more tears welling up suddenly—spilling over. He made a small, harsh sound in his throat and walked round the sofa to sit beside her. He took a spotless handkerchief from his pocket and began to dry her face, his touch gentle but impersonal.
When she was calm again he studied her gravely for a long moment. ‘My poor little one,’ he said quietly. ‘Have you discovered you cared for him more than you knew?’
She shook her head. ‘I wish I could say that,’ she said huskily. ‘But it wouldn’t be true. I—I would have broken off the engagement anyway, but I never meant it to happen like that. To publicly humiliate him in front of his friends.’
‘Then why are you crying?’
Because, she cried out in her heart, I thought I would never see you again. Because I’ve just realised that, for me, it was never just sex. That, God help me, I’ve fallen in love with you. But I know you don’t feel the same, so this has to be a secret I can never share—with anyone.
She gave a wavering smile. ‘Perhaps because I’ve never had so many people concertedly angry with me before.’ She swallowed. ‘The general view is that I’ve done an unforgivable thing.’
He was silent for a moment. ‘That is a harsh judgement,’ he said at last. ‘Engagements are broken every day.
‘But not by me,’ she said. ‘I—I’ve always been so—well-behaved. And now I’m a bad lot. A scarlet woman, no less.’
He said her name, on a shaken breath, drawing her into his arms and holding her close. She flattened her hands against the breast of his shirt, absorbing the comforting warmth of his body, feeling the beat of his heart under her palm. Content, she realised, just to be near him. And how pathetic was that?
He took the band from her hair, running his fingers through the silky waves to free them, lingering over the contact. She could sense the pent-up longing in his touch, and her heart leapt.
‘Your friend told me you are planning to go away for a while,’ he said at last. ‘Is that true?’
‘Yes.’ She bit her lip. ‘I know I’m being a wimp, but Chris seems to have told everyone about us, and I’d rather not face the music for a while.’
‘Have you decided where to go?’
‘Not yet.’ She shook her head. ‘I don’t seem capable of active planning at the moment.’
‘But your passport is in order?’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘Then that makes it simple,’ he said. ‘I shall take you back to Italy with me.’
Her lips parted in a soundless gasp. She stared up at him. ‘You—can’t be serious.’
‘Why not?’ He shrugged. ‘I have to return there, and you need to escape. It solves several problems.’
And creates a hundred others. She thought it, but did not say it.
‘Won’t your family—your friends—find it—odd?’
‘Why should they? I shall take you to the castello. I often have friends staying with me there.’
In translation, the castello was where he took his women, she told herself with a pang. She would be just another in a long line.
She ought to apply some belated common sense and return a polite but firm refusal, and she knew it. But he was leaving soon, and she wasn’t sure that she could bear knowing this was the last time she would be in his arms, breathing the warm masculine scent of him, or feeling his lips touching hers.
She thought in agony, I can’t let him go. I can’t…
She said slowly, ‘Marco—why do you want me with you?’
He put his lips to the agitated pulse in her throat. ‘You have a short memory, mia cara.’ The smile was back in his voice. That husky, sensuous note which sent her blood racing. ‘Do you really not know?’
It was the answer she’d expected, so there was no point in regret or recrimination.
Heaven, she thought. Hell—and now heartbreak. Stark and inevitable, whether she stayed or went. But at least he would be hers—for a little while longer.
On a little whisper, she said, ‘Do you think this is wise?’
‘Ah, mia bella.’ There was an odd note in his voice that was almost like sadness. ‘I think it is too late for wisdom.’
‘Yes,’ she said, sighing. ‘Perhaps so.’ She tried to smile. ‘In that case the answer’s yes. I—I’ll go with you, Marco.’
He took her hand and kissed it, then laid it against his cheek, his eyes closed, his face wrenched suddenly by some emotion that she did not understand.
But instinct told her it had nothing to do with happiness.
And she thought, Heaven help us both.