‘Louisa if it’s a girl, Bernardo if it’s a boy.’
He did not reply in words, but his look showed his gratitude.
‘I think Bernardo Montese sounds good,’ she mused.
But he shook his head. ‘Bernardo Hanley.’
‘What?’
He hesitated slightly before saying, ‘Where the mother is unmarried, the child takes her surname.’
‘I don’t like that idea.’
Luca took her hand and spoke gently. ‘Neither do I, Rebecca. But the decision is yours.’
They were married quietly, in the tiny local church. Luca held her hand as though unwilling to risk letting her go for a moment, and there was a calm intensity in his manner that told her, better than any words, what this day meant to him.
When the birth began he refused to leave her. It was harder and longer than last time, but at last their son lay in her arms, and she and her husband were closer than they had ever been.
‘You have your heir,’ she told him, smiling.
But he shook his head.
‘Labourers don’t have heirs,’ he said, as he had said once before. ‘It was a child that I wanted. Your child, and nobody else’s.’ He touched her face. ‘Now I have everything I want-well, except perhaps for one thing more.’
He had his wish in the spring when their daughter came home at last, and was laid in the spot he had chosen.
‘I thought it would be nice here, surrounded by the trees,’ he said to Rebecca when the service was over and they were alone. ‘And there’s plenty of room, do you see?’
She nodded, understanding.
‘You don’t mind?’ he asked, a little anxiously.
‘No, I’m glad you thought of it. But I want many years together first. We were apart for too long, and we have so much to make up.’
He kissed her hands and spoke with the same calm fervour as at their wedding.
‘Years ago,’ he said, ‘two nights before we were to be married, I promised you that my heart, my love and my whole life belonged to you, and always would.
‘Now I say it again. I will spend all my days making up to you for the suffering I couldn’t prevent. And when life is over, nothing will change. Do you understand that? Nothing. For then I shall be with you forever, and that is all the world can hold for me.’
Lucy Gordon
