Her heart thudded against the wall of her chest. “I love you, too.” Every fiber of her being urged her to agree, to say she would live with him, would sleep in his bed, share his food, help him rebuild his life. But she couldn’t be sure. The intensity of their relationship, the atmosphere of danger and rampant passion had perhaps led them to believe that what they felt was love, when it was lust, burning clear and beautiful, but lust just the same. She longed to throw caution to the winds, to go with her heart, but she was her father’s daughter and she had her own past that warned her to be cautious, like a stern grandmother wagging her finger at a wayward girl. She needed time and space to consider before she agreed. When she agreed-if she agreed-it would be because she was absolutely sure of her own feelings as well as his.
She swallowed against the constriction in her throat. “Marco, I know about your wife. I know what happened to her. You and I-” she let her hand linger on his shoulder “-we have known each other three days.”
He looked up at her face. His eyes were hooded, his lips set in a thin line. She placed a finger on his lips. “Let me have some time, Marco. Let me go home. In a short while, if I still feel the same way as I do now, I will come back to you.” She smiled at him. “We have a few more hours together. Pour me some more of that delicious wine after all and tell me about your family, about this house.”
He filled their glasses again. “My family has owned the land around here for four hundred years,” he began. “The ancestors of most of the people who work for us tilled the soil and built the terraces…” He went on to tell her about the crops, the vines and the olives, and about all the intricate relationships, the intermarriages, the sense of belonging.
She sat cross-legged on the bed, listening to him talk, occasionally massaging and flexing her sore ankle. She understood completely. Her own family had been landowners for centuries too, ever since one of them had made a fortune sailing with Sir Francis Drake.
Dusk fell and Marco lit candles. The flickering flames sent shadows dancing in the room as he gestured, and emphasized the planes and hollows of his face, making his eyes glitter. She watched him, drinking in the lines of his body, the passion in his voice.
“What about Giovanni?” she asked at last.
Marco’s lips twisted in a bitter grimace. “My mother’s sister’s boy,” he said. “Two years younger than I, but we were inseparable growing up. His father died when he was just a baby and my father took him in like a son. Everything I had, he had too. Education, money, opportunity-” He sighed. “I don’t understand it.”
“Jealousy,” Emma said. “Easy enough to understand really. The younger boy always wanting to be as big, as strong, as clever as his older cousin. Never quite able to make it. Rebellious, plus resentment at being the poor relation, being beholden. Then an opportunity comes to follow a different path, to be successful in a totally opposite way, and it’s too tempting to resist.”
Marco stared at her. “Do you think so?”
“I know so. Seen it lots of times. You don’t make friends by heaping them with material things. I know your family’s intentions were good, but the grateful orphan only exists in novels.”
“You’ve a hard heart.”
“No, just a practical one.” She touched his hand. “But I also understand how it hurts when someone is ungrateful.”
He raised her hand to his lips and kissed her fingers. “Are you speaking from experience?”
Some of the juice from the grapes had clung to her hands and he placed each finger in his mouth, sucking the sweetness. She tried to ignore the desire tugging at her and gently withdrew her fingers.
“Yes. I know someone just like that.” She pulled a cover around her. “They leave poison behind them.”
He looked at her. The weight of his unspoken question hung between them. He reached up and tucked a strand of her hair behind her ear. “After all we’ve shared, I would like you to tell me who hurt you,” he said, his husky voice betraying the depth of his feeling. “We’ll have no chance together unless we’re honest with each other.”
He was right. This was the moment of truth. She had known in her heart that it would come as soon as he’d said, “I love you”. This was the revelation she had thought she might not have to make if she had been able to leave tomorrow with no questions. The last few days were not a case of “Thank you for a wonderful experience Signor Marco. If ever you’re in England look me up.” This hadn’t been a simple fling, nights and days of wonderful sex. Oh, the sex had been extraordinary, but there was more. They both knew they were on the brink of something life-changing, and the realization had already dawned that she’d moved too close to the edge to avoid disaster.
She would have liked him to believe she had no past, that she had come to him like Venus rising from the waves, all pure and unsullied. On the other hand, he knew for a fact she wasn’t a virgin, must have understood that there had been lovers.
She took a deep breath.
“When I was eighteen I was in love. You have to understand that where I come from a girl’s whole life is a preamble to getting married to the right man, living in the right house, and in the right county, like something out of a Jane Austen novel. He was a poor relation, but we’d grown up together, and he’d been treated like a son. Daddy liked him. I thought I loved him.
“A huge wedding was planned, my grandmother’s tiara came out of the vault for a clean and a polish, the invitations were ready. I was to wear my mother’s lace veil.” She swallowed, blinking back tears that she still couldn’t hold back. “Then he ditched me. Wrote me a twenty word note and took off for some job in India, left the country. He didn’t even have the guts to tell me to my face. I still don’t know if he planned it or if was an unconscious revolt against everything my family stood for, but I was devastated. Imagine the humiliation-eighteen years old and jilted by someone I’d known forever. I vowed I’d never put myself in that position again. I swore I would marry if and when I had to, but only to secure my inheritance, never for love. Love makes you too vulnerable.”
Marco handed her some more wine and she took a deep draught. He made as if to speak but she held up a hand. “No, let me finish. Almost out of revenge, I set out to break hearts. I was what is known as a ‘goer’. If there was a riotous party I’d be there. I was choosy about my partners, but there were more than I care to admit. Men fell for me, declared their love, but I soon tired of them. When it was finished I never answered their letters or their pleading. I enjoyed the power. I associated with people who didn’t want any commitment and I found myself turning from a jilted, eighteen-year-old deb with a broken heart into a worldly wise woman of twenty-seven.”
She continued to look down, not daring to lift her eyes to see his reaction.
“Is that how you thought of me? An instrument of revenge?” His voice seemed to come from far away.
“Oh God, no! You were so different.” She felt his fingers on her face, wiping away the tears. He gathered her into his arms and rocked her as she cried.
“Now you can take back what you said,” she murmured against his chest. “I understand if you want nothing more to do with me.”
“
“Yes, it’s over. It’s been over for a while, until I met you.” She lifted her face for his kiss.
Soon after, Marco snuffed the candles and lay beside her in the big, soft bed. The sweetly scented night air wafted in through the open windows, stirring the pale curtains.
They lay quietly for a while, with his arms around her. And then he found her mouth and kissed her, not just with his lips but with his whole being, surrounding her and engulfing her in a consuming embrace. She resisted the call of his body for no more than a heartbeat before pressing herself against him and returning his kiss with all the heat and depth of feeling that she knew now had been missing from her life.
Somewhere in the distance frogs croaked and a dog barked. Emma drifted to sleep in Marco’s arms.
The next morning, Marco found her some clothes and a strong walking stick, and she hobbled downstairs to an early breakfast. As soon as she had finished, he brought a couple of horses and they rode into the nearest village. It seemed as if every inhabitant was outside, going about some urgent business. She supposed they were catching up on their lives, bringing back old habits and order after the long interruption.
There was one telephone in the village and it was working. She breathed a sigh of relief as the operator motioned her to pick up the receiver.
“How will I pay for this?” she whispered to Marco as she waited for the connection.
