The silence stretched and stretched.
He felt every beat of it like a hammer blow inside his head.
‘What happened to you, Edoardo?’ she asked.
The memories tapped him on the shoulder with their long, craggy fingers: Come here, they taunted. Remember the time he hit you with the belt until you were bleeding? Remember the icy-cold showers? Remember the gnawing hunger? Remember the raging thirst?
He pushed them away but one more crept up behind him and caught him off-guard.
Remember the cigarettes?
‘Stop it, Bella,’ he said tightly. ‘I have no interest in dredging up stuff I’ve forgotten long ago.’
‘You haven’t forgotten it, though, have you?’ she asked.
He clenched and unclenched his fists, his stomach feeling as though a crosscut saw was working its way through it. He felt the pain in his back. It had happened so long ago but he could still remember the searing pain and the helplessness. Oh, dear Lord, how he had hated the helplessness. Sweat broke out on his upper lip. He could feel it beading between his shoulder blades as well. His head throbbed with the memories, all of them jostling for their starring moment centre-stage.
‘Edoardo?’ Bella’s hand touched him on the arm. ‘Are you all right?’
Edoardo looked down at her. She was standing so close he could smell her shampoo as well as her perfume. Her eyes were full of concern, her soft mouth slightly open. He could hear her breath going in and out in soft little gusts.
His mobile phone pinged with the sound of an incoming text, and the memories scuttled back to the shadows like sly, secretive rats running from the light of an opened door.
He let out a slowly measured breath. ‘I know you mean well, Bella, but there are some things that are just best forgotten,’ he said. ‘My childhood is one of them.’
She stepped back from him, her hand falling back by her side. ‘If ever you want to talk about it …’
‘Thanks, but no,’ he said and, briefly checking his phone, added, ‘Look, I won’t be in for dinner after all.’
Her expression clouded. ‘You’re going out in this weather?’
‘Rebecca Gladstone needs a hand with something,’ he said. ‘I’m not sure how long I’ll be.’
She screwed up her mouth, her eyes losing their softness to become glittery and diamond-hard. ‘What does she need a hand with?’ she asked. ‘Turning back the sheets on her bed?’
‘Green doesn’t suit you, Bella.’
Her brows jammed together. ‘I’m not jealous,’ she said. ‘I just think it’s disgusting to lead someone on when you have no intention of taking their feelings seriously.’
‘You’re a fine one to talk,’ he said.
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘While your intended fiancé is out of sight, you’ve been up to all sorts of mischief, haven’t you?’
She coloured up and glowered at him at the same time. ‘At least I’m not messing with your feelings,’ she said. ‘You don’t have any, or at least certainly not for me.’
‘Does that annoy you, Bella?’ he asked. ‘That I haven’t prostrated myself before you like all your other suitors, declaring my undying love for you at every available opportunity?’
She gave him a flinty look. ‘I wouldn’t believe you if you did.’
Edoardo gave a little rumble of laughter. ‘No, you wouldn’t, would you? You know me too well for that. I might want you like the very devil, but I don’t love you. That stings a bit, doesn’t it?’
‘It doesn’t bother me one little bit,’ she said with a pert hitch of her chin. ‘I have no feelings for you either.’
‘Other than lust.’
Her cheeks pooled with colour. ‘At least that is something I can control,’ she said.
‘Can you?’ he asked, taking her chin between his finger and thumb, holding her gaze steady. ‘Can you really?’
Her throat rose and fell, and her eyes flickered.
‘Why don’t you try me and see?’
He was sorely tempted. He felt the urge rising in him like a flash flood. Blood pumped and poured. His need for her was a hungry beast inside him, rampaging through his body until he was almost shaking with it.
But instead he dropped his hand from her face and stepped away. ‘Maybe some other time,’ he said.
For a nanosecond he thought her expression showed disappointment, but she quickly masked it. ‘There’s not going to be another time,’ she said. ‘As soon as this snow melts, I’m out of here.’
‘What if it doesn’t melt for another week?’ he asked as he shouldered open the door.
She set her mouth grimly. ‘Then I’ll go out there with a hair dryer and melt it myself.’
Bella slept fitfully until about two in the morning. She got up and looked out of the window. The snow was still falling but not as heavily now. It looked like a winter fairyland outside. It was a scene she was going to miss dreadfully when she left Haverton Manor for the final time. She tried to imagine how it would be once the guardianship period was over. There would be no reason to see Edoardo again. No more twice-yearly meetings. No more monthly phone calls, texts or emails. He would go his way and she would go hers.
They would never have to see or speak to each other ever again.
She turned from the window with a frown. She had to stop thinking about him. She had to stop wondering why he was the enigma he was. What had put that hard cynicism in his eyes? What had made him so self-sufficient that nothing or no one touched his heart?
She couldn’t stop thinking of him as a little five-year-old orphan. Who had looked after him? Comforted him? Who had nurtured him? Who had loved him? Had anyone?
For all these years she had thought of him as a rebel who didn’t fit in anywhere, who didn’t want to fit in anywhere. But what if his childhood had made him that way? What would it take to unlock the guard he had on his heart?
Would he ever come to a point in his life where possessions and financial security were no longer enough? Would he crave the connection he had been pushing away for most of his life?
Bella went downstairs in search of a hot drink and was waiting for the milk to heat in the microwave when Edoardo came in. He was still dressed in the clothes he’d had on earlier and there were snowflakes in his hair.
‘Waiting up for me, Bella?’ he asked as he shrugged off his coat.
She gave him a scornful look. ‘You must be joking.’
‘Rebecca sends her regards,’ he said and dusted the snow out of his hair with one hand.
Bella glared at him. ‘You talked about me while you were … in bed together?’
‘We weren’t anywhere near a bed.’
‘Please spare me the lurid details,’ she said with a roll of her eyes.
‘I was helping her with a horse that had injured itself on a neighbouring property,’ he said. ‘Do you remember the Atkinsons’ place? The new owner has thoroughbreds. One of the brood mares cut her foreleg on some wire. Rebecca needed an extra pair of hands.’
‘Oh …’ She chewed at her lip for a moment.
‘Rob Handley is the new owner,’ he