‘In my heart, Carla. Where you will always be. You are the woman I would choose for my wife. Whether you carry our child or not.’ He took a breath. ‘I would choose you—because I love you.’
She heard his words—heard that one most precious word that was more to her than all the world—heard it and felt her heart fill with an emotion she could scarcely bear. Did she see the same emotion in his eyes?
She felt Cesare’s strong hand press down on hers. Another ragged breath broke from him.
‘That is what I wanted you to know. Needed you to know. You may not love me, Carla, but I needed you to know my heart. So that whatever choice you make now—whether to marry me or not—you know that you are in my heart for all time. And that you always will be.’
He took a shuddering breath. Poured all that he was into his next words.
‘The choice is yours—it always will be—but if you feel...if you can feel even a fraction of what I feel for you, will you accept my hand, my heart, my life, my love?’
Carla felt her hand move beneath his. Curl into his. Hold his fast. Those diamond tears were still glittering in her eyes and she could not speak. She started to lift her free hand and in an instant he had caught it. Raised it slowly to his lips.
She saw his expression change, grow sombre again.
‘Alessandro is dust,’ he said. ‘As are his wife and the woman he loved. For them all, his regret, his remorse, came too late. But we—’ And yet again he broke off as strong emotion worked in his face. ‘We live now—and we can make our future what we will. We can seize it, Carla—seize it and make it our own!’
His hands pressed hers.
‘My most beloved preciosa, will you accept my hand in marriage? Will you stand at my side all my life, as my beloved wife—my contessa? Will you give me the priceless gift of your heart, your love? Will you let the precious child within you be the proof and symbol of our love, our life together? Will you be...’ his voice caught ‘...in one person, both my wife and the woman I love?’
His voice changed, became overwrought with emotion.
‘Will you unite the triptych—not, as you feared, as an unhappy mistress becoming the unhappy wife, but in the way it should have been united? So that there is no division between wife and love—united in the same woman. United in you.’
She felt her heart turn over and fill to the brim with a joy she had never thought to feel.
Cesare, oh, Cesare—my Cesare!
He leant forward to kiss her tears away, then kissed her mouth. Her fingers clutched his as he drew away again.
‘I tried not to fall in love with you,’ she said, her voice low and strained. ‘Right from the first, when we began our affair, I knew that that was all it could ever be. I knew all along there could be no future for us. That one day you would set me aside to make the kind of marriage I knew you must make. But I could not stop myself. I fell in love with you despite my warnings to myself. And when you ended it...I went into a kind of madness.’
Her face shadowed.
‘I behaved despicably to Vito. I nearly ruined his life. That’s why—’ She took a ragged breath. ‘That’s why I realised I could not ruin your life when you di
d not love me. When you wanted to marry Francesca—’
She broke off, her expression changing suddenly.
‘Francesca! Cesare—?’ Concern was open in her voice.
He smiled. A wry, self-mocking smile. ‘Francesca,’ he said, ‘has gone to California! It seems,’ he went on, half rueful, half relieved, ‘that she, too, did not wish to make a loveless marriage—or any marriage at all! She wrote to tell me that out of the blue she has been invited to join an ultra-prestigious research team on the West Coast, led by a Nobel laureate, and it is her heart’s desire to take up the post. She is beside herself with excitement, and knows I will understand why she cannot marry me now after all.’
He smiled again, and Carla could see relief in it, as well as a self-deprecating ruefulness.
‘Astrophysics is her love—not being my contessa!’
Carla’s expression changed. ‘Count Alessandro’s wife wanted to be a nun...’ she mused. ‘That was her true calling.’
Cesare nodded, seeing the analogy. ‘And scientific research is calling Francesca. For which—’ he dropped a kiss on Carla’s forehead ‘—I am profoundly grateful.’ He smiled again. ‘You will like her, you know, if she makes it to our wedding. But you will have to accept that you won’t understand much of what fascinates her so.’
The wry look was back in his face again, and then his expression altered a little, and he frowned slightly.
‘Maybe that was a warning to me—the fact that I found it hard to communicate with her about her work. Although I know she would always have discharged her responsibilities as Contessa, her heart would not have been in it. I think,’ he said, ‘it took our betrothal to make her realise that what she had grown up with—the expectation she’d always had of what her future was to be—was not, after all, what she wanted.’ His voice grew sombre again now. ‘Just as did I.’
He paused, his eyes holding Carla’s. Then went on.