‘I was ashamed of it, so I played it down with you.’
‘There’s plenty of skeletons in my family cupboard.’
‘Mum married Alice and Jack’s dad and life was stable while she was with him, but she got bored after a year and asked for a divorce,’ Lara related uncomfortably, still nervous of sharing that part of her past with him. ‘She had a friend in Spain who owned a bar and things only got seriously bad after we moved abroad.’
Gaetano gazed down at her with frowning dark golden eyes. ‘Tell me about it...’
‘We never had a home of our own. She moved in with her boyfriends and a couple of them took too much interest in me and if I talked to Mum about it, she went crazy with me and accused me of trying to steal them from her. I was only fourteen and more a late starter on the boys front than anything else.’
‘Madonna mia...how the hell did you cope with that? That must have been terrifying for you!’ Gaetano grated with heat. ‘Your adoptive mother was very irresponsible and selfish to subject you to a life of that sort at such a young age.’
‘Well, the last guy she was with when I was still there was the worst. He owned his own bar, and I was always helping in the kitchen or clearing tables. I hardly went to school, and it suited them because I was free labour. But when Mum was behind the bar he’d come upstairs and he’d open my bedroom door and stand there staring in and saying, “Just checking on you...” It was the creepiest, scariest thing,’ she confessed, drawing in a shallow breath as she shuddered in recollection. ‘The way he looked at me, the way he spoke to me, it wasn’t right and, eventually, I wrote to my grandparents, Dad’s parents, and asked them if I could come home and live with them and go to school. I was lucky they agreed.’
‘And what did your mother think of that?’
Lara grimaced. ‘I think relief would be the best word to describe her reaction when I told her that I could return to the UK. They even sent me the money for the ticket. Mum couldn’t be bothered with me. She was a good mother while Dad was alive, but I think he must have been the one who wanted to adopt the most because once he was gone, she didn’t seem to have any real interest in me.’
‘I would have understood your situation if you’d confided in me,’ Gaetano told her fiercely. ‘There was no need to pretty anything up for my benefit.’
‘It was more of a matter of personal pride,’ she admitted ruefully. ‘I didn’t want it to seem like there was a huge gulf between us...and then you had to go and turn out to be a prince on the brink of becoming a king. Everything just fell apart then.’
Gaetano wrapped another arm round her. ‘That’s not going to happen again. It fell apart for both of us that day. We should have had more faith in ourselves and in what we had found with each other.’
She rested her brow down on a smooth brown shoulder and sighed. There was much she could have thrown at him, not least his horrified disbelief when he had realised that he had married her. Only she didn’t want to step back into the dangerous ground of the past when the future and the present seemed so much more inviting.
She was on the very edge of a doze when she heard a gong reverberate through the house, the deep boom vibrating through the walls. ‘What on earth is that?’
‘The dinner warning. Very effective. You can hear it inside and outside,’ Gaetano imparted, thrusting back the sheet and lifting her out of bed to settle her barefoot into the biggest, most colourful bathroom she had ever seen.
Twin showers with moulded basins stood side by side. A copper bath was situated beside the window. A huge, tiled vanity with two sinks took up most of the final wall. It was just as Gaetano had said—a house of curiosities—but it was luxurious and full of art and handicrafts.
Dinner was served in the courtyard. Freddy would only pick at his meal. Too many treats, his nanny admitted with a guilty grimace. Lara soothed her concerns, having already noted that the star guest in the Palais des Roses was her son as far as the staff were concerned. They took Freddy out into the beautiful gardens to run around before bedtime. He emerged giggling from under a large shrub and ran to her. She scooped him and his toy rabbit up with an ‘oomph’ of effort, because he was no lightweight, and cuddled him. He rested his head down drowsily on her shoulder.
‘He’s getting tired,’ she commented.
Gaetano extended his arms and gathered Freddy into them. ‘You’re a fabulous mother. When I see you with our son, I realise how much I missed out on. He’s friendly and very confident because he knows he’s loved. I was much more suspicious of new faces and quite lonely,’ he admitted as they strolled back towards the house. ‘Some day—it doesn’t have to be soon—I’d be really happy if you would consider having a second child.’
‘Yes,’ Lara agreed with a smile. ‘I’d like Freddy to have a sibling. I always wanted one myself.’
‘At least I had Vittorio.’
‘But he was more like a father than a brother. A sibling would be different...someone to play with,’ she mused, thinking that Gaetano’s big brother had looked like a very serious man in the couple of photos she had seen of him, not the type of parental figure to get into the rough and tumble games that Freddy revelled in.
Gaetano, on the other hand, loved that sort of stuff and didn’t object to getting his clothes dirty.
‘I’ll take him into the pool tomorrow,’ Gaetano announced. ‘I have a great toddler swimming ring waiting for him. I planned ahead.’
It was a conversation that Lara recalled almost two weeks later as she sat in the shade watching Gaetano entertain their son in the pool. Freddy, safely ensconced in his flamingo ring, chubby little legs kicking, arms waving as he squealed with excitement at his father’s antics. Yes, maybe another child was a good idea, Lara thought abstractedly, thinking back with regret of her decision to keep their son a secret on the assumption that their child would be no more welcome to Gaetano than his wife was after he had regained his memory. With hindsight that had been a mistake and perhaps she should have given his recovery from amnesia a few days more before deciding to leave him and their marriage behind her. Only there hadn’t been time for her to dally on that decision because Gaetano had been due to fly straight back to Mosvakia.
But Lara didn’t want to look back to the past, finding it much more sensible to simply revel in her recent experiences. There had been visits to the souks in the old town of Marrakech. She had bought a pair of soft red leather sliders for Alice, who adored shoes, and a cute wool jacket for Iris. She had even bought a manly leather belt for Alice’s brother, Jack, who would be home on leave soon from the army.
And while she was searching for gifts, such as a book on Moroccan history for Dr Beresford, who she remained in contact with, Gaetano had been busy buying gifts for her. There was no stopping him. Anything she liked, Gaetano bought for her. A picture she admired—it became hers. There was a wonderfully shaped and sculpted terracotta urn that would remind her for ever of the colour of the twelfth-century walls surrounding Marrakech when the sun was setting in the early evening.
Nor would she ever forget the vibrant buzz of life and the scent of grilled meat and spices in the air in the Place Jemaa el-Fna. The big square was full of entertainers, dancers, musicians, fortune tellers and snake charmers. Freddy loved snakes, which made his mother shudder. They had toured a lot of public gardens where their son could run free, and their security team could chase after him. They had visited the beach at Agadir where Freddy had paddled in spite of the breeze, and they had driven out into the countryside where they had seen mule trains carrying goods to market and women balancing tall copper jars of water on their heads.
And there had been some extraordinary moments, she recalled with a dreamy smile. Gaetano had presented her with a spectacular blue diamond ring after dinner in a secluded restaurant in the foothills of the mountains. He knew all the best places to visit, and it had been a magical break but none more magical than the presentation of that ring over mint tea served below the flowering almond trees. He was still trying to talk her out of what he had called her ‘cheap’ wedding ring and into accepting a new and fancier one, but that ring had too much sentimental value for her to consent to a replacement.
Someone had come to the house to pierce her ears and she was never likely to live down the fact that she had fainted, and that Gaetano had panicked and had insisted on a doctor visiting. Her cheeks could still burn reliving that embarrassing morning. But now she owned a beautiful pair of finely worked traditional earrings that, unfortunately, she would only be able to wear once her ear lobes healed. Gaetano had been disappointed by that news.