‘Very much—who wouldn’t?’ Joanna found a stiff little smile from somewhere. ‘It’s such a beautiful place.’
The older woman nodded. ‘Alessandro and I visited it several times while we were there. He was so very drawn by this idea, you see, that a country home could well be the lure he was searching for to coax you back to him.’
Joanna blinked. Sandro had been considering that beautiful place as far back as twelve months ago? She had believed it was a recent impulsive decision on his part.
‘But of course,’ his mother continued levelly, ‘the best made plans can to go awry, even for a man like Alessandro. I was sorry to hear about the tragic death of your sister, Joanna,’ she added gently. ‘It must have come as a terrible blow to you.’
She knew about that too? Joanna’s spine went a little straighter. ‘It was at the time,’ she agreed. ‘But I am over it now.’
‘Still...’ Obviously not put off by Joanna’s stiff tone, the older woman continued, ‘It seems dreadfully fated that while my son was planning his campaign to reinstate you as his wife, you were enduring such a terrible loss... Do you believe in fate, Joanna?’
‘I don’t know,’ she answered warily. ‘I’ve never really thought about it.’
‘Do you believe in love, then?’ the older woman persisted. ‘Do you believe that a good, honest and true love can conquer all, or do you think that even the best love may always be fated to fall by the wayside, no matter what the lovers try to do to hold onto it?’
‘I don’t think I understand what you’re trying to say,’ Joanna replied carefully, while h
er eyes darted across the room in the dubious hope that Sandro would reappear and put a stop to this before it got out of hand.
But he didn’t appear and, like her son, the mother was obviously someone on a mission at the moment, because she touched Joanna’s hand to regain her attention. ‘What I am trying to ascertain, cara,’ she said gently, ‘is whether you believe that your marriage has a better chance at succeeding this time, or whether this is just a sad case of Alessandro refusing to accept defeat.’
‘We are working on it,’ Joanna said tightly.
‘The physical side?’
Joanna shot to her feet. So did Sandro’s mother, her hand closing around Joanna’s wrist with a surprising strength for such a slight person. ‘I am not trying to make trouble,’ she asserted anxiously, making trouble with every word she spoke. ‘But—please, Joanna, you have no mamma to talk to about these things! God knows,’ she murmured unsteadily, ‘it cannot be easy for you after what you have been through. But I do not want to see Alessandro hurt as badly this time as he was the last, because you could not—’
She stopped and swallowed. Joanna began to tremble because it was beginning to hit her, really hit her, what his mother was actually saying here.
‘I would like to help, if I can.’
‘No one can help.’ Abruptly Joanna pulled her captured wrist free, her face turned to ice, her body cast in it ‘This is not your problem.’
‘What’s going on here?’
Joanna spun on her heel to stare at Sandro through eyes made of glass. ‘You told her,’ she accused him. ‘I’ll never forgive you.’
With that she went to stalk past him, but he stopped her by gripping her by the shoulders.
‘Let me go,’ she bit out in revulsion—the first true revulsion she had shown him since his return into her life.
‘Mamma does not know it all,’ he avowed. ‘Only what Molly told me. I am only human, cara,’ he added on a short sigh, when her icy expression did not alter. ‘I needed to talk to someone I could trust about what had happened to us!’
It didn’t matter. To Joanna, still too much had been said. ‘It didn’t happen to us, Sandro, it happened to me!’
‘Us, Joanna,’ he insisted grimly. ‘What those animals did to you, they did to me also. And, like you, I have been paying the price for their actions ever since!’
‘Well, you don’t have to pay the price any more,’ she said, ‘because I am leaving here—even if that means I walk the streets of Rome for ever!’
‘You think I will let you go?’ he mocked. ‘Simply because you are angry at what you see as my betrayal of a confidence?’
At last her cold eyes revealed life, flashing with anger. ‘I trusted Molly to keep my confidence, but she told you,’ she tightly pointed out. ‘Molly trusted you to keep her confidence, but you told your mother. Who has your mother told, Sandro?’ she demanded. ‘How many of the great Bonetti family are by now whispering behind closed doors about the dreadful fate of your sad marriage to a ruined woman?’
‘Oh—no, Joanna!’ his mother put in anxiously. ‘I have told no one! I would not!’
But Joanna wasn’t listening; she had gone way beyond the point of listening to anything anyone had to say to her any more. ‘I feel violated all over again, do you know that?’
Sandro let out a heavy sigh and tried to draw her closer to him, but she wasn’t going to let him. Quite suddenly, she began to shake—shake violently. To shake with anger, horror and a soul-crushing self-revulsion that had always made up a large part of her emotional reaction to what had happened to her.