He should be feeling relieved. He should be feeling like a condemned man reprieved. But he wasn’t. An uncomfortable, writhing emotion twisted within him.
He kept hearing that word in his mind.
Grotesque.
How could any woman say that about herself? Feel that about herself?
OK, she was plain. But that was not her fault. So why did she seem to flay herself so for it?
A cynical voice spoke in his head.
She’s just facing up to the truth, that’s all. No man will ever want her, and she knows that. She knows just what an unlikely couple the two of you would make—the talking behind her back, the whispering, the scornful looks, the offers to comfort you for your affliction in having had to marry such a female.
He silenced the voice. Ruthlessly.
Instead, deliberately, he called another image to mind. The way she was with Ben. Endlessly patient, always loving and affectionate, supportive and encouraging.
She’d brought him up well.
More than well.
He frowned. It must have been hard for her.
She could have so much easier a life now. If he could just get her to see that.
He cut the water off and stepped out of the shower.
OK, so maybe it wasn’t ideal having Ben’s mother floating around San Lucenzo like a loose cannon. But even if she was a commoner, and an Englishwoman, so what? Something could be sorted, surely? Yes, it would make life awkward—but too bad. Wasn’t Paolo’s son worth some degree of inconvenience, some rearrangement of protocol and expectation?
He whipped a towel around his lean, honed body, then grabbed a hand towel to roughly pat his hair dry.
Once she and Ben were in San Lucenzo she would start to see for herself how a new life there would be possible. And he would have to make Luca and his father realise that somehow they had to set up a situation where Ben and his mother could live there.
His mind raced on. They didn’t have to live in the palace, or the capital itself. The Ceraldis owned enough property in the principality—one of their numerous residences would prove suitable.
A villa by the sea—they’d like that.
He could see Ben in his mind’s eye, playing on the beach—a warmer, less windy beach than the one in Cornwall.
I could visit him a lot then. Get to know him. Spend time with him.
Another thought came to him as he shrugged on a bathrobe and discarded the towels.
I’ll get something done about her—for her. With good clothes, a decent haircut, make-up—surely she’d look better?
It would be a kindness to her.
He headed for bed, feeling virtuous.
And finally relieved.
CHAPTER SIX
THE jet was starting its descent. Rico could feel the alteration in pitch.
‘We’re starting to go down, Ben,’ he announced.
Ben, captivated, stared out of the porthole, at the tiny patchwork of fields and valleys and rivers spread below. He had taken the journey in his stride so far—and so, to Rico’s relief, had his mother.