‘Do you want a bath? I’ve had your clothes brought from the town house.’
Meghan nodded numbly. ‘Yes, fine.’
He walked over to her, skimmed his hands lightly over her bare shoulders. ‘Don’t be afraid, Meghan. There are no shadows here.’
But there were, she realised. There always would be. Because he didn’t know. Didn’t understand.
She couldn’t make him tell her his secrets, but she could at least tell him her own. Banish her own shadows.
‘I think,’ she said jerkily, ‘I’ll have that bath.’
‘Buon. I’ll be waiting.’
Meghan sifted through her suitcase, found her toiletry bag, full of the new cosmetics, tubes and sprays and gels Gabriella had picked out for her, and the nightgown also selected by her mother-in-law—a sheath of ivory silk, held up with two tiny straps and scalloped with lace. She bunched the garment in her fist and, avoiding Alessandro’s gaze, retreated into the bathroom.
The room was larger than her bedroom back at the hostel, a lifetime ago. Meghan turned the taps, added luxurious scented bath foam, carefully stripped off her wedding gown and slipped it on a hanger.
She stayed in the bath for half an hour, searching for her courage, clinging to what little she found.
Finally, reluctantly, her pulse thrumming—not just from the heat of the bath water—she rose from the tub and dried herself off, slipping on the bridal nightgown.
There was a thick terrycloth robe hanging on the door, provided by the hotel. Meghan slipped that on too.
Alessandro was stretched out on the bed, relaxed, his jacket and tie off, the top two buttons of his shirt undone. Just the sight of that little bit of clean, tanned skin caused Meghan’s pulse to skitter higher.
He sat up when he saw her, taking in her bulky bathrobe with an ironic knowing look.
‘You won’t be needing that, will you?’
‘No, but I want to talk to you first.’
A guarded expression came into his eyes, but he shrugged and patted the bed next to him. ‘Of course. What about?’
‘Me.’ Meghan swallowed nervously and sat down. Her fingers fiddled with the sash of the robe. She couldn’t look at him. ‘Alessandro, I haven’t told you everything about my past. About Stephen. I was too ashamed.’
‘You want to tell me now?’ His voice was carefully neutral.
‘Yes. Because I don’t want there to be secrets between us. My secrets.’ Meghan forced herself to look up, meet his eyes. ‘My shadows. And I want you to understand why I am … the way I am.’
He was quiet for a moment, his face blank. A mask. ‘All right.’
Meghan took a deep, shuddering breath. This was so hard. Yet she knew she needed to do this.
Confession. Absolution.
‘There was more to it than him just being married.’
Alessandro waited, silent. Meghan forced herself to continue. ‘Stephen had always been handsome, charming. I knew he was a little racy, a little wild. I accepted it as part of him, and I loved him anyway. Or so I told myself. It’s amazing the things you can convince yourself of when you’re blind. In love.’
‘Or naïve,’ Alessandro added quietly.
Meghan nodded. ‘I was all three. I accepted the sneaking around. I thought it was because he was a prominent businessman—a lawyer—and he didn’t want to publicise his romantic relationships. I never thought that he thought … that he would …’ She trailed off, staring down at her fingers still fiddling with the sash, her vision blurring.
‘What did he think?’ Alessandro asked, his voice soft, and yet with an underlying hardness that Meghan knew was not directed at her. ‘What did he do?’
‘The thing is,’ she continued, her voice falsely bright, determined, ‘I should have known. I’m a modern, educated woman. Women like me don’t get into situations where …’
Alessandro covered her hand with his own, stilling her nervous fidgeting. ‘Where what?’
She squeezed his fingers, clutched them like a lifeline. ‘Where you’re controlled,’ she explained quietly. ‘First it was just how I was with him. I wanted to please him, to make him happy. He liked … certain things. Then it was what I wore, who I saw, what I said. He was jealous—horribly jealous, coldly jealous—and I thought it was love.’
Alessandro was silent for a moment, taking this in. ‘He did abuse you,’ he finally said flatly, still holding, stroking her fingers.
Meghan shook her head, denying the truth she’d suppressed for so long … the truth about Stephen, the truth about herself. ‘But I let him. I should have known better. Everyone wondered what was happening to me—why I was so different, so distant. He didn’t like my friends, my family, didn’t like my life. I stopped going out … I lost my job because of it.’ She closed her eyes briefly, recalling the pain, the shame. The obsession. The delusion. ‘I told you Stanton Springs is a small town. Everybody watches out for everybody else. People care. They cared about me, and I just drove them all away. All that mattered to me was Stephen. I didn’t know sometimes whether it was because of love or fear, but I couldn’t leave him. I couldn’t. How could I have been so blind? So stupid?’
‘Our hearts are blind,’ Alessandro said after a long moment. ‘You thought he loved you.’
‘If I’d had any self-respect—’ Her voice caught jaggedly on a sob, then she choked it back. ‘I would’ve walked out before it came to … before it brought me so low.’
Alessandro’s eyes were gentle, but knowing. So knowing. ‘What did he do to you?’
Meghan shook her head. She couldn’t look at him. Didn’t want to see disgust in his eyes, the disgust she’d felt herself, at herself. ‘Nothing more than what he’d been doing before. Controlling me, humiliating me. He liked to see me under his thumb, catering to his whims, accepting his insults. Brought low. It gave him pleasure. I see that now, even though at the time I thought that was what you did when you loved someone. You just took it. You thought they’d stop. Change. I thought it was because I wasn’t good enough, perfect enough. And then one night I’d had enough. I was so dispirited, so broken. I felt like I was dying inside—like all the good parts of me were gone. Used up. And I told him I’d had enough.’
‘Did he let you go?’ Alessandro asked quietly. Knowingly.
Meghan’s hands clenched on the sash once more as memories assaulted her, battered her brain and heart. ‘No. I should’ve realised he wouldn’t. I told him I was sorry, that I loved him, and then …’ She looked up now, met his gaze, faced the truth. ‘He hit me. Across the face. I was so stunned I just lay there. I couldn’t believe it. I was being hit by a man. The man I loved.’
‘If I could get my hands on him …’ Alessandro whispered savagely under his breath.
‘He kept hitting me. I just took it. I was so surprised, so amazed it was happening. That I’d let it happen. It was my fault.’
‘Meghan, it wasn’t—’
She continued, determined to finish it to the end. ‘He told me he was married then—said I must’ve known. He laughed about it. He said if I wondered why he treated me like a whore it was because I was one, and everyone knew it.’ She closed her eyes briefly, shaking her head against the onslaught of memory. ‘Of course, I knew he was lying. At least, my mind knew. My heart didn’t. My heart believed every word he said.’ She whispered the last, the confession echoing through her soul. She’d believed.
‘What