The Italian's Passionate Revenge

he remembered the times when she would have thrown it aside and opened her arms to him.

He wondered if she realised that she was standing against the light from the bedside lamp, so that the material became transparent, revealing her perfect shape beneath. It was still early in her pregnancy and, beyond a slight extra voluptuousness, her shape was unchanged.

Efficiently. Did she know how the word savaged him?

He knew he ought to leave now while he was still in some sort of control of himself. The other night she’d dared him to take her in anger, and they’d both known he couldn’t do that. Not now. But if she would soften to him there was still hope.

He moved towards her, close enough to lay a gentle hand on her cheek. It was a touch she’d always loved, just as he had always loved the slight frisson he could sense inside her when he did it.

Now there was nothing. She might have been made of stone. He escaped quickly.

A few days later a large box was delivered to the house. Later that night Elise told Vincente quietly, ‘I’d like to talk to you before you go to bed.’

When he called in her room she handed him an envelope.

‘When I came to Rome I left a lot of things in store in England. I sent for them recently and they arrived today. This is the letter I wrote Angelo, the one Ben stole. I want you to read it.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Quite sure.’

He took it slowly and turned away to the window. He wanted to read it, yet he desperately wanted to refuse.

It was as terrible as he’d feared. For the first time he saw Elise as she had been then, pouring out her heart with all the fervour and passion of young love and grief at parting.

Try to forgive me, my darling…I never meant it to be this way…

She told the whole story, just as she had told it to Vincente: how Ben had arrived suddenly in Rome and snatched her away, using threats to her father.

I heard you calling under my window and I tried to call back to you, to let you know that you were the one I loved…but he gripped me so tightly I couldn’t escape…I love you, I shall always love you…try to forgive me… forgive…forgive…

‘If you showed me this to prove that I misjudged you,’ he said, ‘there was no need. I’ve known that a long time. I didn’t want to know it. When you first came to Rome-and we were together-I tried not to see what was happening to me, but in the end I had to face it. I wanted you to be innocent, so that I could love you without feeling guilty.’

‘That’s the trouble.’ She sighed. ‘Guilt destroys everything. I live with my guilt all the time, and there’s hardly anything of me left. I don’t feel anything any more.’

‘Don’t say that.’

‘It’s true. I prefer it that way. It’s safer. Perhaps we might have loved each other if we’d met differently-’

‘There’s no perhaps about it,’ he said harshly. ‘We were meant to love each other, despite all the things that came between us. Sooner or later, you have to accept that.’

‘Have to?’ She shook her head firmly. ‘No, I don’t “have to”. Don’t try to give me orders, Vincente. This is one thing that isn’t in your control. I won’t love you. I can’t, and if I could, I wouldn’t.’

‘And suppose I love you,’ he snapped furiously.

How different this might have been. Once her face would have softened with joy at a hint of love. Now she merely gave a sad little sigh and said, ‘Then you’re unfortunate. What right have I to be happy with you or any man, when Angelo lies in his grave and I put him there?’

‘But you were innocent,’ he said passionately.

‘How can I be? But for me he’d be alive. That’s the plain truth of it and all the rest is talk. You were right to hate me.’

‘I never hated you,’ he said in a low voice.

She smiled then. She actually smiled.

‘You must have forgotten a great deal. You hunted me down, hating me. You lured me into a trap, hating me. You watched me struggle, hating me. You took me to bed, hating me. You did something that you made me think was love-making, but actually you were studying me all the time, always in control, watching to see if the moment had come to destroy me.’

‘No!’ he said violently. ‘That’s how it was meant to be, not how it was. You were different from everything I’d expected-I tried not to see it, but it was too much for me. You were too much for me. If you hadn’t found out when you did, I was going to tell you everything.’

‘That’s a delusion. There’s no way you could ever have told me.’

‘It would have been hard. That’s why I was putting it off, but I’d have found a way because I knew we had to be together.’

‘Well, we are together,’ she said, sighing.

Together? They stood staring at each other, while the distance between them stretched wide.

He looked again at the letter.

‘“Try to forgive me,”’ he read aloud. ‘“Forgive…forgive…”’

He came closer. ‘Can you never forgive? We both said things that were cruel and harsh, but surely you know now that I meant none of them?’

‘They were true anyway.’ She sighed.

‘Angelo loved you. He wouldn’t want you to suffer like this for something you couldn’t help.’

‘Don’t,’ she whispered, covering her eyes. ‘Don’t talk to me about him, I can’t bear it. I thought I’d learned to live with the worst, but I didn’t know what the worst was. I never knew I’d killed him, but I should have guessed it was something like that.’

‘You didn’t kill him,’ Vincente raged.

‘As good as. I drove him to it. I killed him. In here-’ she pounded her chest with a clenched fist ‘-I know I killed him, and nothing’s ever going to change that.’

A violent sob broke from her, making him go to her. At that moment he would have done anything to ease her pain. But he was the last man who could help her. He touched her but she immediately dried her tears.

‘You know-’ she sighed ‘-if I seem to hate you, it’s mostly because I hate myself.’

‘What are we going to do?’ he said quietly.

‘I don’t know,’ she said sadly. ‘I’m not sure that there’s anything to be done.’

Summer moved on through the heat of August and September. Elise’s health was good and, despite her increasing size, she coped with the high temperatures well.

Not that everything was easy. There was one terrible evening when Mamma insisted on the three of them celebrating Angelo’s birthday. He would have been twenty-nine.

The evening was an endurance test. Mamma had looked at every photograph she possessed of him. Elise went through them nervously, dreading to find one that chanced to show herself.

In this, at least, she was lucky. There was nothing to give away her secret. She gazed at the face of her young love, looking back at her with an endless smile.

Then she looked up at Vincente, and found him regarding her with desperation.

That night he slipped into her room without knocking, as he usually did.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said at once. ‘I had no idea that was going to happen.’

‘I suppose it’s because I was here. She said she wanted to “introduce me” to Angelo. Never mind, it’s over now, and it gave her a little happiness.’

He said abruptly, ‘You’re rather wonderful, d’you know that?’

She turned away so that he wouldn’t see how affected she was by something in his voice that she’d never heard before. Passion, laughter, these she was used to, but the note of gentle admiration she heard now caught her off guard.

‘I’d like to go to sleep now,’ she said. ‘Goodnight.’

‘Goodnight.’ He hesitated. ‘Thank you for everything.’