Luca was speaking again. His voice was calm, dispassionate. Remote.
‘It will not be so bad, Ariana, you know. You will get used to living here. The time will pass. As I say, you can resume your work, if you want—providing you do not exhaust yourself. My schedule is busy, as you will appreciate.’ He looked at her. ‘We can make this work because we must. We have no option but to do so. Both of us.’
She met his eyes. She knew there was defeat in hers. Yet it was not victory in his.
What was in them she did not know.
Nor care.
A profound weariness of spirit possessed her. For now, that was all she could face. All she could cope with.
For now...
Luca lay in his bed, motionless but not asleep. The night was passing, but sleep did not come.
He was not surprised. Only resigned.
Consciousness consumed him. Consciousness that on the other side of the entrance hall, in the guest suite, was the woman he would have given more than was rational to give not to want. Not to desire.
But desire was irrelevant now. And so were her objections to what he had told her must happen. What either of them wanted was irrelevant.
He stared up at the ceiling, trying to work out what it was he was feeling. Then realised it was nothing. And that was the best thing to feel. The only sane thing to feel. The only thing he would permit.
Memory came to him, unwanted and unbidden, but in his head for all that. Memory from so long ago. Of lying in bed, not more than ten years old, staring at the ceiling as silence had finally fallen outside his bedroom door, the shouting and the yelling over—for that night, at least. Lying there, unblinking, hands clenched at his sides, willing himself not to feel...not to feel anything at all.
It was time to feel that way again.
Ariana gazed up at the front of the Duomo, its extraordinary triangular shape intricately carved into a myriad of convoluted tracery and statuettes, a miracle of Gothic art. She turned away, making for the city’s other most notable construction, the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele.
She sat herself down at a café, ordered a decaf. She missed the caffeine hit of real coffee which had so often got her through a busy working day. But her busy working days were over now.
She slumped back in her chair, sipping the unappetising coffee. Feeling quite blank. Aimless. She would fill the hours wandering around Milan. It got her out of the bleak, stark apartment that Luca called home and that suited him so well.
She’d seen him briefly when she’d surfaced, leaving for his office. He’d informed her in neutral, inexpressive tones that he was taking her to see an obstetrician the following day and had booked her in for antenatal care. She hadn’t bothered to reply, and he’d left the apartment. Soon after, she’d headed out herself.
The rest of the day passed as aimlessly as she had supposed it would. She walked a lot, glad of her padded jacket as she went up and down the streets, stopping for a sandwich which she ended up feeding to the pigeons. Eventually a weariness not just of spirit but of body drove her back to Luca’s apartment. She went to her bedroom, lay down on the bed, stared up at the ceiling.
Luca found her there, gazing blankly. She turned her head to look at him. He’d paused in the doorway. Her expression did not change. Her eyes were not registering his presence.
‘Are you all right?’
His voice was edged. Could there possibly be concern in it? It seemed unlikely.
‘Fine,’ she said, and turned her head away again, staring up at the ceiling once more.
‘Ariana—you can’t just lie there.’
‘Why not?’ She did not bother to turn her head this time.
‘What did you do today?’
‘I walked around. It passed the time.’
She heard him cross the grey-carpeted floor, felt the mattress sink under his weight, felt her hand taken. She tried to draw it back, an instinctive gesture, but his grip tightened. Imprisoning her.
‘Ariana...’ his voice sounded weary now ‘...you have to accept what has to happen. We both do. I don’t want to marry either—I don’t want anything to do with you nor do you with me. We know that. Everything between us has been a mistake and should never have happened. But it did. And now...’
She heard him take a breath—a heavy one.