‘No prison can hold me,’ he said. ‘I shall find you and kill you.’
Commotion. The police pounced and hustled him out. Judge Fallucci showed no expression as he collected his things and departed.
Watching it now, Holly felt a chill of fear consume her. Matteo could take as many precautions as he liked. Fortese would win. That was the message.
That night she undressed thoughtfully, switched out the light and sat up in bed, her arms wrapped around her knees, staring into the distance.
On the other side of the door she could hear Matteo moving around. She listened, tense, wondering if he would come in, but, as she had expected, he made no move towards her. After a while the light under the door went out.
She waited, coming to a decision. It took all her courage, but she wouldn’t turn back now. She didn’t know how much time there might be left.
At the door she raised her hand to knock, then lowered it. He was her husband, and she was blowed if she was going to knock. She tried the door and, to her relief, it was not locked.
Like so many other things about him, the room surprised her. It was small, almost monastic. In the corner was a narrow bed, on which he sat, his elbows on his knees, his hands clasped, his forehead drooped wearily against them.
He was too lost in his own thoughts to hear her enter, and didn’t know she was there until she dropped down on her knees beside him.
‘I’m sorry if I disturbed you,’ he said.
‘Why, because you’re afraid you might have to talk to me?’ she asked, looking up seriously into his face.
‘No, I just…’ but he gave up at once, confronted by the truth in her eyes.
‘I needed to talk to you tonight,’ she said. ‘There was a programme going back over your history with Fortese-’
‘Did Liza-?’
‘No, she knows nothing except that you’re unusually busy just now, but she doesn’t know why. We talk all the time, except when the physiotherapist comes to work with her leg, or a teacher comes to give her a lesson.
‘When I can be alone I read the papers or watch the news, and there are so many things I want to ask you, but you hide away.’
‘There’s nothing for you to worry about.’
‘Don’t patronise me, Matteo,’ she said, suddenly angry. ‘I’m not a fool. I know exactly what there is to worry about. Every day I listen for you to come home, knowing that one day you may not come. I tell myself that if it was bad news someone would telephone first, and if there’s no phone call then you’re on your way. I try so hard to believe that.
‘When you enter the house I want to run and see you, to touch you and make sure that you’re real, but I keep back and let Liza have you to herself. I have to be content with staying in the shadows, but I thought we’d have more than that. The first night-’
‘The first night I came close to breaking my solemn word to you-’
‘Be damned to your word!’ she said, so fiercely that he stared. ‘Stop being a lawyer all the time. All right, you promised to keep your distance but you didn’t swear an oath about it in court. That kind of foolish promise is made to be broken. What kind of man
‘Who says I want you?’ he demanded in a voice that was as brutal as he could make it. Much more of this and he would go mad.
But nothing worked with this woman. Instead of being dumbfounded she flung back,
She was still kneeling beside him, her face upturned, the moonlight shadowing the hollows of her breast. Moisture gleamed on his forehead as he seized her shoulders in cruel fingers.
‘Will you stop this?’ he demanded. ‘I’m trying to act like a man of honour.’
‘Then be damned to your honour too. Forget it. If Fortese shoots you down, shall I engrave that on your tomb? Here lies a man of honour. He kept his word to the end, but he left his wife alone and desolate, with an empty heart.’
She drew a deep breath and took a calculated risk. ‘Unless, of course, honour is just another word for fear.’
‘Are you mad?’ he flashed at her. ‘Of course it’s fear. How can I not be afraid? Yes, I want you. I’ve wanted you for a long time, and that first night I nearly took you. But I’m glad I didn’t because where can it end? We’ve grown closer than we meant to, you know that. But who am I to dare to get close to a woman? To dare to l-’
‘To love?’ she challenged him. ‘Say it.’
But he shook his head.
‘At any other time I’d reach out to you,’ he growled, ‘and stop at nothing until I’d made you mine. I’d fight anyone, even you, to make you love me. I’d take you to bed and love you until you forgot the whole world, and I’d enclose your heart in mine so that we were one-if only-’
He sighed heavily.
‘If only…’
She tried to answer but something was making her throat ache.
‘But what right do I have to try to win your love when I probably won’t be here much longer? We have to be realistic. Fortese specialises in murder. He’s practically a genius, and he’ll probably get to me.’
‘Don’t-’ she whispered in agony.
‘I must. One day-when this is over-if we get through it-’
‘We will. You’re not going to die,’ she said frantically.
‘I pray to God I won’t, now that I have so much to live for. But I won’t risk leaving you when our love has only just started-’
‘You fool!’ she said violently. ‘Don’t you know it’s already too late for that? Do you think our love hasn’t started just because we haven’t been to bed? Do you think the love of the heart somehow doesn’t count if the body hasn’t loved too?’
‘How do you come to know so much about love,’ he whispered, ‘when I know so little?’
‘Enough,’ she said, laying her lips against his. ‘No more.
She had made her decision and now there must be an end to this. She only wanted him.
It was her kiss rather than his, but he gave himself to it with a whole heart, like a man who had suddenly discovered the elusive answer. He moved gently at first, exploring her lips with his own, then claiming her more deeply.
Slowly he rose, drawing her to her feet so that he could more easily remove her nightgown. His own clothes followed quickly, and she knew her own cautious moment. She was being asked to give so much trust, and for her, as for him, total trust was the last great barrier. But he seemed to understand that, drawing her gently down onto the bed with him.
‘You’re right,’ he growled. ‘It’s too late to back away.’
‘I don’t want to back away. Haven’t you understood anything?’
Once she’d said that, it really was too late. At first he made love to her slowly, with a restraint through which she could still sense a thrilling urgency. And when he saw her smiling at him in dreamy delight he made love to her again, but without restraint now, so that she too could throw off the world and exist only for him.
When they lay in each other’s arms later she gave a slight shiver as the world returned.
‘Summer’s over,’ he said. ‘Now it’s getting cold at night. We should get warm again before you catch pneumonia. Let’s go back to your room. The bed’s bigger.’
‘No,’ she pleaded, holding on to him. ‘I don’t want it to be over yet.’
He nodded, catching her meaning at once. This narrow, uncomfortable little bed was the place where love had reached its first fulfilment, and they were reluctant to leave it. The grandest bed in the world could not compare.
‘Let’s put something on and go under the covers, then,’ he said, rescuing their clothes from the floor. Safely
