I had my happiness here—as much as I could ever have with Cesare. I knew from the start it was all I could have with him. That he could never be mine—not the way I came to long for him to be.
She felt her eyes distend, looking back into the past, the days and nights she had spent with Cesare. Then looking into the future she had now committed herself to—becoming his wife, his contessa, but not the one he had chosen of his own free will.
I can’t do this to him.
With a sudden impulse she threw back the bedclothes, her hand automatically easing across her abdomen as she got up. Inside—invisible, almost intangible—new life was growing.
She felt her throat close with sudden, overpowering emotion.
This is Cesare’s gift to me. Not his heart, but his child. And it will be enough.
With swift, resolute movements she dressed, repacked her case, headed downstairs. She needed to find Lorenzo—needed him to summon her a taxi to the airport. Needed to do what she knew she must do—set Cesare free.
* * *
With heavy tread Cesare walked down the ornate staircase to the piano nobile of the eighteenth-century section of the castello. He was booked on a flight to the USA, and his helicopter pilot was on standby now to fly him to the airport. He’d emailed Francesca last night, to let her know of his impending visit—but had given no indication of his purpose. It would be a shock to her, what he must tell her, but it was one he had no choice but to inflict.
Yet again, as it had done the previous afternoon, across his mind flashed the image of that Luciezo portrait. The ancestor who had had complete freedom of choice in his life. He ejected the image. What was the point of thinking about his forebear? His own life afforded no such freedom of choice.
Abruptly he went into his office, snapped on his laptop, dragging his mind back to the present and all the difficulties that enmeshed him. He must check to see if Francesca had replied to his email. She had—but it took him a moment to steel himself to open it. The enormity of what he was going to have to do to her weighed upon him. She did not deserve it.
Yet nor does Carla deserve to have to marry me. She made it clear enough to me yesterday how reluctant she is!
And he—what did he feel about it?
He veered his mind away. That was a path he did not wish to follow. Not now. Not yet. First he must smash up Francesca’s life.
He clicked open her email. Made himself focus on what she had written. For an instant, her words blurred, then resolved.
He started to read.
My dearest Ces, your email has been a catalyst for me. I have something I can no longer delay telling you.
He read on, disbelievingly.
Then, as the full impact of what she had written hit him, he sat back, his chest tight. Slowly he reached to close down his laptop. He would reply—but not yet. For now he could only sit there. Taking in what she had written. Taking in the implications.
A discreet knock sounded on his office door. At his abstracted permission to enter, his archivist came in.
‘The papers you asked after yesterday,’ he said, placing a leather-bound folder in front of Cesare. ‘This is Count Alessandro’s private journal.’
Cesare thanked him, his manner still absent, his mind still elsewhere. Then, as if to shake his thoughts from him, he reached for the folder and opened it, bringing out a marbled notebook, its pages mottled with age, covered in thin, flowing script. Sixteenth-century Italian, difficult to decipher.
But across the centuries his ancestor’s words reached to him. And as he read a frown started across his face. He read on in silence, his expression sombre. Then, at last, he lifted his eyes from the page, from the ink scored so deeply into the antique paper, as if reverberating still with the vehemence of his ancestor.
For a long while he sat. Feeling emotion swirl deep within him—turbid, inchoate. Making sense of what he’d read. Seeing, too, the printed words on his screen—Francesca’s email—melding with the antique script in front of him.
Then, with a sudden intake of breath, he pushed back his chair. He needed to stand down his helicopter pilot. And he needed to drive back to Lazio.
He was halfway to the door when he felt his phone vibrate in his jacket pocket. He pulled it out, glanced at the screen.
A voicemail.
From Carla.
He stilled. Pressed ‘play’.
And everything in his world changed again...