She had come to him wanting a connection, the bond she had been denied by her father, but he had not allowed himself to see that. Instead he had dismissed her, because selfishly he had been afraid of the intensity of his longing for her and the emotions she had aroused in him. He hadn’t taken the time to look beneath the surface. Just like everyone else in her life apart from her grandparents he had dismissed her and her feelings as unimportant. Caesar swallowed hard against the bitter taste of his own regret. He prided himself on his care of his people, on taking the time to listen to them and help them with their problems, on having wisdom and compassion and seeing beyond the obvious. He prided himself on extending all of those things to others but he had withheld them from Louise, who had probably had more need of them than anyone else.
Because he had desired her. Because somehow she had touched a place within him that made him burn for her. That had made him feel humiliated, so he had punished her for that and for his own vulnerability.
His behaviour had been unforgivable. Unforgivable and shameful. It was no wonder Louise was so hostile towards him.
But the reality was that between them they had created a child—their child, his son. Oliver whom they both loved. He looked at the report again. What courage and strength it must have taken for a girl hurt and rejected, humiliated and shamed as Louise had been, to deliberately and willingly subject herself to the most intense kind of professional soul-bearing and to come through that experience, to rise from it as she had done. He admired her for that. He admired her and she despised him. But she would marry him—for Oliver’s sake.
‘I NOW pronounce you man and wife. You may kiss the bride.’
Louise tensed as Caesar leaned towards her to kiss her formally and briefly on the lips. The second kiss to seal their marriage, since they had already gone through the formal service once in Italian before it had been repeated in English.
The ceremony was taking place in the private chapel of the Falconari castello itself. The Bishop, a second cousin of Caesar’s, had travelled from Rome to marry them, and to Louise’s surprise the wedding was being attended by several local dignitaries and by Caesar’s older cousin and her family—her husband and their three sons, the youngest of whom was only eighteen months older than Oliver.
Anna Maria and her family had arrived within three days of Caesar’s formal announcement of their marriage, and unexpectedly—indeed reluctantly at first—Louise had quickly discovered that she genuinely liked the no-airs-or-graces Anna Maria, who never used her title and whose husband was an untitled businessman. She had even found herself agreeing to Oliver accompanying Anna Maria and her family on the sightseeing trips they had planned during their visit. She’d agreed because she had seen how much Oliver enjoyed their company, however, rather than because, as Anna Maria had suggested, she and Caesar needed time together on their own. Time alone with Caesar was the last thing she wanted.
Louise knew that Anna Maria had been given Caesar’s official version of their past relationship, because whilst thankfully Anna Maria hadn’t asked her any difficult questions she had made it very plain that she fully accepted and welcomed both Ollie and Louise herself into the family.
It was only now, with the full weight of the formality of what marrying a man in Caesar’s position actually meant upon her, that Louise was able to admit just how daunting she might have found the rush of events and the traditional hoops to be jumped through prior to the ceremony if it hadn’t been for the fact that Anna Maria had been on hand to answer her questions and support her when she had needed support.
Louise had wanted the ceremony to be little more than a brief legal formality, and at first had balked at Caesar’s plans for something grander, but he had insisted that this was necessary—unless she wanted it to look as though he was ashamed of her and thus give rise to gossip that she might have used Oliver to push him into a marriage he didn’t really want. That suggestion had incensed her so much that she had angrily reminded Caesar that he was the one who was pushing her into marriage, and not the other way around.
Somehow in the ashes of the heat of the argument that had followed she had discovered that Caesar was to have his way after all, and that their marriage would have all the pomp and circumstance that Caesar felt necessary in order to show his pride in his newly discovered son and his wish to honour the woman who had borne that son—as he had put it to her. He had even arranged for there to be a public proclamation to that effect, something which had delighted Oliver, who was slotting into life at the castello with an ease that sometimes made Louise feel just a little bit shut out from a side of her son’s personality that she could see now came entirely from his father.
Caesar was still holding her hand. He had taken possession of it when he had leaned forward to give her the formal ceremonial kiss. Louise could feel herself starting to tremble. A natural reaction to the stress of what was a very demanding day, that was all, she reassured herself. It had nothing to do with the fact that the hand cradling her own belonged to Caesar. Cradling? Her hand? Caesar, who had humiliated her so publicly and who only wanted her as his wife because she was the mother of his son?
Watching the small diamonds and pearls that picked out the family arms on the heavy lace veil Louise was wearing tremble slightly as she stood apparently motionless at his side, Caesar frowned. There was nothing in Louise’s poised calmness to suggest that she felt apprehensive or vulnerable, nothing in anything she had said or done to suggest that for any reason at all she might need his support, and yet that small tremor made him instinctively want to move closer to her. Because she was now his wife, and it was his duty as her husband to be her protector at all times and in all things. That was part of the code of his family.
His frown deepened as he looked more closely at her whilst the Bishop spoke some final family prayers. Her choice of a very plain, dull wedding gown from the selection that had been sent at his request from Italy’s couture houses was both discreet and appropriate. High-necked, cream and not white, long-sleeved, it should perhaps have looked plain on her, but instead it looked regal and elegant. That she should also have chosen to wear the long intricately embroidered wedding veil, with its mingling of the arms and emblems of his heritage, stitched for his mother by the nuns of the convent her family had endowed for generations, had been a decision that initially he had put down to his cousin’s influence. But she had soon corrected him, telling him that although at first Louise had been reluctant to wear something so obviously expensive and fragile, she had changed her mind, saying that she wanted Oliver to be able to look back and remember that she had worn things that were memories of both his paternal grandmother and his maternal great-grandmother, whose pretty little blue enamelled brooch Oliver had told him his mother was also wearing.
In Caesar’s opinion it would have been better if she had agreed to wear the family tiara he had offered her to secure the veil, and if she had not insisted on refusing the expensive engagement ring he had shown her. But he had been unable to persuade her to change her stance on that issue, and now, he decided, the reason he was rubbing his forefinger over the plain band of gold he had so recently placed on Louise’s hand was because he felt it was wrong that it should be worn alone.
Her skin felt soft and smooth, her fingers long and slender, her nails were discreetly varnished with a soft pink polish. Out of nowhere his memory conjured up an image from the past of her hands. It wasn’t, however, the image of those same nails painted dark purple that was causing heat to flood his lower body, along with an abrupt, powerful coiling of raw male desire. It was too late now to banish the memory searing his body: the sensation of those slender fingers curling round his erection, accompanied by the sound of her indrawn gasp of breath. Her hand had trembled, he remembered, and then so had her body as she had leaned over him, touching him