She saw his disbelieving gaze travelling over her shoulder, where thick strands of her hair were lying all over the bathroom floor, like shiny heaps of harvested corn. Together with an unfamiliar lightness of head, she felt the jagged, shorn locks brushing against her jaw and she raised it up towards him in a defiant gesture.
‘What have I done? I’ve broken my promise,’ she said, unable to keep the emotional tremor from her voice, because that revulsion was still on his face. And for the first time ever, she recoiled from the hand that reached out and touched her. For once, the feel of his fingers on her arms did not trigger off an unstoppable lust but a sensation of disgust. How could she have let herself stay in such a terrible situation? Giving herself night after night to a man who clearly despised her. Did she have no pride; no self-respect?
She pulled away from him, her breath coming short and fast from her throat. ‘I’ve cut my hair!’ she declared. ‘It’s something I said I wouldn’t do but now I have. I’ve broken my promise and it’s symbolic and final. I’m freeing you from our marriage, Ciro—and I’m freeing myself, too. And I want… no, I need to go home.’
CHAPTER ELEVEN
HE DIDN’T try to stop her. That was the part which shattered Lily most of all. Ciro didn’t say a word to try to change her mind about leaving. Yet when she stopped to think about it—had she really expected anything different? Had she imagined that her proud and unforgiving husband would turn round and beg her to stay? To maintain this farce of a marriage?
In fact she was taken aback by the speed of his reaction to her demand to go home. It was as if he’d suddenly realised that the kind of woman who hacked off her hair in a moment of high emotion would never have made a suitable wife for a high-born Neapolitan. His face looked as if it had been sculpted from a hard, dark marble as he looked at her.
‘Perhaps this is all for the best,’ he said, in an odd, flat voice. ‘When do you want to leave?’
‘As soon as possible!’ she blurted out, knowing that to prolong this state of affairs would be an agony which would only add to her growing heartache. ‘I’ll fly out this afternoon, if I can.’
His horrified gaze returned to the piles of silken hair which were still lying on the bathroom floor and then he lifted reluctant eyes to the shorn strands which untidily framed her face. ‘Wouldn’t you rather go and see a hairdresser first?’
His question only added to her distress, even though she suspected he might have a point. Because didn’t the hasty cut give her the appearance of some crazy woman, who would bring disrepute to the D’Angelo name?
She shook her head. ‘I’ll cover it up with a hat.’ Her voice rose to a note of near-hysteria. ‘Who knows? It might start a new trend of do-it-yourself hairdressing.’
Ciro felt the twisting of some nameless emotion as he looked at her, thinking that the short style made her face seem all eyes. Enormous sapphire eyes which were glittering up at him with the suspicion of tears.
‘I’ll have my lawyers draw up a contract—and the Grange will be signed over to you as part of the divorce settlement. I will also honour my commitment to pay your brother through his course at art school.’ He gave a bitter laugh. ‘You might as well leave the marriage with what you came into it for. Riches beyond your wildest dreams, wasn’t it, Lily?’
The accusation hit her hard and Lily sucked in an unsteady breath, feeling slightly ill as she realised that he’d written her off as mercenary. ‘I don’t want anything from you, Ciro.’
‘You want the Grange.’
Fighting back tears, she shook her head. ‘I don’t want it that much.’ Because wouldn’t her old family home feel tainted if she accepted it under such dreadful circumstances? Wouldn’t she feel tainted if she came over as greedy and grasping? And she was damned if she was going to give Ciro yet another reason to despise her.
‘You want your brother to go to art school.’
‘Not at any price. We’ll work it out somehow. If Jonny is good enough, then he’ll get a scholarship. And if he’s not—well, something else will come his way, because that’s how life works for most people.’
‘Proud words, Lily—but I doubt whether you mean them.’ His mouth gave a twist. ‘You’ll soon change your mind when you speak to my lawyers. I always find there’s something very persuasive about seeing hard offers of cash written down in black and white.’
‘But that’s where you’re wrong, Ciro,’ she returned, the cynicism of his words sending an icy shiver down her spine. ‘When will you get it into your head that this was never about the money?’
‘Then what was it about?’ Dark eyebrows arched with arrogant disbelief. ‘The thunderbolt?’
She wanted to say yes. To tell him that what he’d felt about her had been mutual—but what would be the point when he’d never believe her? Ciro had fallen for someone who didn’t really exist—a make-believe woman he’d put on some unachievable pedestal. And maybe she’d fallen for someone who didn’t exist, too. Because no matter how powerful his passion for her, there was no way that he was ever going to make a good husband. What kind of future could ever be found with a man who was always so coldly judgemental about women?
‘It doesn’t matter any more,’ she said, in a small voice. ‘It’s over.’
Ciro flinched as her words filled him with unexpected pain, but he told himself she was right. It was over. And maybe her abrupt departure would be best—for both of them.
He made a couple of telephone calls and two hours later he was carrying her bags downstairs, where a driver was waiting to take her to the airport. The last thing he remembered seeing was the glitter in her bright blue eyes, before she quickly put on a large pair of shades. Then she tugged at the floppy straw hat which concealed the unfamiliar hairstyle and, almost impulsively, stood on tiptoe to brush her lips over his cheek.
‘Goodbye, Ciro,’ she said, in a strange, gulping kind of voice. ‘You… you take care of yourself.’
‘You, too,’ he said—but a sudden sense of something almost like panic unsettled him. As if he’d just jumped out of an aircraft and forgotten to put on his parachute. ‘Lily—’
‘Please. Let’s not drag this out any more than we need to,’ she said quickly as she moved away from him and climbed into the car.
He watched as she was driven away, waiting for her to turn back to look at him one more time—but she didn’t. All he could see was the stiff set of her shoulders and the large hat which hid her shorn head from the world. For a moment he stood completely still, oblivious to the people who passed him by. And when eventually he went back inside, he was surprised to find that his heart was still heavy, though he reassured himself that such a reaction was only natural after such an unexpectedly emotional departure. And that within a few days the memory of his brief marriage would fade.
But it didn’t happen that way. The reality was very different—and it took Ciro by surprise. He found that his life had changed in so many ways. It had changed by her coming here, as well as by her leaving. And it was the little things which seemed to mock him most and to remind him that she really had gone. Suddenly, the bed seemed too big. He would wake in the mornings, his hand groping towards the space beside him, to find nothing but emptiness and an unruffled sheet instead of Lily’s soft and welcoming body.