Jess flinched as if he had jabbed a red-hot branding iron near bare skin. She wanted to shout and scream back at him like a fishwife in response to that offhand statement, which set such a low and casual value on their marriage. It was a direct reminder of the practical agreement on which their union was based. Only fierce pride kept the tide of her rising emotions taped down and under control. He was offering her her freedom back as though their marriage had indeed only been a temporary diversion for a man whose future would be taken from him when he least expected it. He was showing her the door. He was politely letting her know that, although he had lied to her and kept her in the dark, it didn’t ultimately matter because he didn’t care enough even to try to hang onto her.
‘The baby,’ she mumbled sickly.
‘I’m sorry, I’m very sorry that I got you involved in this,’ Cesario muttered roughly. ‘I know that’s not good enough but, apart from money, it’s all I’ve got to give you right now.’
Jess lifted what shreds of dignity remained to her and dealt him a scornful smile of dismissal. ‘I don’t need your money!’
‘I’m signing the Halston Hall estate over to you this week.’
Jess was trembling; appalled by the way he was concentrating on financial arrangements for their separation when her heart was breaking up inside her and her sense of loss was dragging her down so deep and so fast she felt as if she were drowning. ‘Oh, goody, I’ll own the Dunn-Montgomery ancestral home—how fitting!’ she exclaimed with a brittle laugh, desperate to hide her pain and spinning around in an unchoreographed half circle to conceal her emotion from his keen appraisal. ‘What are you talking about?’ ‘I never got around to telling you but I’m actually an illegitimate Dunn-Montgomery,’ Jess told him in an artificially bright voice. ‘Robert Martin married my mother when I was ten months old but I wasn’t his child. My father is the member of parliament, William Dunn-Montgomery, although he will never admit the fact. He was a student when he got my mother pregnant—’
‘And that’s why Luke was so taken with you at our wedding—he knows he’s your half-brother!’ Cesario guessed, frowning at her in sudden comprehension as he made that familial connection. ‘Madre di Dio! Is that why you married me? To get Halston Hall?’
Thunderstruck by that suggestion, Jess stared blankly back at him.
‘I can see that my ownership of the house would have been a major attraction to someone in your circumstances,’ Cesario said drily.
Jess had turned pale. ‘Someone in my circumstances?’
‘You said yourself how fitting it would be that you should own the former ancestral home of the Dunn-Montgomerys, when your birth father refuses to even acknowledge your relationship,’ Cesario extended. ‘I don’t mind. In fact it’s a relief if Halston Hall can in some way compensate you for the way in which I’ve screwed up your life.’
There was a note of finality to that assurance. His dark golden eyes were cool, his stubborn sensual mouth composed in a firm line. For the first time since her arrival she knew exactly what he was thinking: he had said all he had to say to her and now he was ready for her to leave. For several seconds she withstood the steady onslaught of his gaze, because a crushing sense of rejection was holding her in a near state of paralysis, and then she moved away on feet that felt as if they didn’t belong to the rest of her body.
Cesario was making a phone call in his own language but both his voice and actions seemed to be happening far away at the end of a long dark tunnel. Jess felt detached from her surroundings and horribly lightheaded.
‘You’ll be driven home…no, don’t argue with me,’ Cesario urged as her lips parted. ‘You’re pregnant. I don’t want you struggling to find a seat on a packed train during the rush hour.’
With enormous effort, Jess focused on him. She dimly recognised that she was in a state of shock so profound that she could barely think, but there was one question that she could not suppress. ‘You said your condition had got worse…how long?’ and her voice ran out of steam altogether and just vanished in the awfulness of what she was saying.
‘They’re not quite sure. Not more than six months,’ he proffered with unnatural calm. ‘I do have one favour to ask…’
‘What?’ Jess prompted shakily, for the number six was whizzing round and round inside her head as if someone had turned on a manic mixer.
‘Would you mind if Weed and Magic lived with me? For as long as that’s practical,’ Cesario extended tight-mouthed.
Jess felt as if someone had their hands squeezing round her throat: it was that hard to breathe and there was a pain building in her chest. She was recalling the patient way he had learned hand signals so that he could communicate with the deaf terrier. ‘No problem,’ she said, schooling her voice to control it. ‘No problem at all.’
Rigo Castello escorted her in silence down to the basement car park and tucked her into a limousine. She remembered the older man’s behaviour when Cesario had collapsed and realised that he had been in on the secret as well. It seemed that of all the people close to Cesario she had been just about the only one kept in the dark. Deceived, lied to, shut out of the charmed circle and, although he wanted her dogs for company, he didn’t want her.
CHAPTER TEN
THE instant Jess laid eyes on her mother that evening she started to cry. Once she had let that flood of pent-up grief and despair flow freely there was no stopping it.
Shaken by the state her daughter was in, Sharon Martin took some time to grasp the situation that her daughter was describing between heartbroken sobs. When Jess had finally mopped her eyes dry, her eyelids were so swollen she could hardly see out of them. But she had only to think of Cesario and more moisture trickled down her quivering cheeks.
‘You’re the first person in my family ever to go to university and yet when it comes to a real crisis you act as if you’re as thick as two short planks!’ Sharon pronounced, shocking her daughter right out of her self-preoccupied silence.
‘How can you say that?’ Jess gasped.
‘The man you say you love is dying and you’re still whinging on about how he lied to you! What are you thinking of?’ the older woman demanded.
The man you love is dying. And there it was, the simple fact that had frozen Jess’s ability to reason at source. That news had torn her apart, both angering and terrifying her, for she did not know how to handle something so enormous and threatening that it affected her entire world and destroyed even the future.
‘Cesario lied to protect you and, by the looks of it, he knew what he was doing when he lied, because you’re sitting here being useless!’ Sharon scolded. ‘Where is your brain, Jess? He doesn’t want you to feel that you have to stay with him because you’re his wife and he’s ill. He knows you didn’t sign up for that and he clearly never intended to tell you. Obviously he thought he was going to have more time with you. He doesn’t want your pity. That’s why he told you that you could have a separation right now, so that you are free to do whatever you like.’
Blinking rapidly, Jess stared back at her mother. ‘What I like?’ she echoed.
‘A week ago you were in Italy with Cesario and you were both very, very happy, weren’t you?’ Sharon voiced that reminder gently.