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‘But when Francesca wrote to me, told me she had gained her doctorate earlier than she’d expected, she said she would need to choose between staying on in the USA and coming home to marry me.’ He paused, his eyes looking inward, his mouth tightening. ‘My first reaction to her letter should have told me.’ His face twisted. ‘Told me that I had changed profoundly. For my first reaction was immediate.’ He paused. ‘It was to cry out in my head, Not yet!’
His gaze came back to Carla.
‘Instead—’ He took a heavy breath. ‘Instead I told myself how ideal marriage to Francesca would be. How entirely suited she was to be my wife...how well she would take on the role of my contessa. She knew all that it wou
ld entail and, unlike my own mother, who made being her husband’s wife the sole reason for her existence, Francesca would continue her academic research here in Italy. When she gave me her decision I knew there was only one thing for me to do.’ He paused again, and when he spoke his voice was heavier still. ‘Remove you from my life’.
She had shut her eyes. He could see it—see how her fingers on the counterpane had spasmed suddenly.
His voice was quiet now, and yet she could hear every word as clearly, as distinctly as the space between them would allow.
‘But there was a place I could not remove you from. A place I did not even know you had come to occupy.’
She could hear him now, in the darkness of her blinded vision.
‘A place, Carla, where you will always be. That you can never be removed from. Never!’
The sudden vehemence in his voice made her eyes flare open. She could see his gaze burning at her.
‘I did not know you were there, Carla! I did not know it even when I was filled with jealous rage—a rage I knew with my head that I had no right at all to feel. Yet it tore me apart all the same! When I heard that you’d become engaged to Vito Viscari—’ His voice twisted. ‘Madness overcame me that night I came to your apartment, blackly rejoicing that he had not married you.’ His expression changed again, became gaunt and bleak. ‘Even when Viscari told me that you carried my child—even then, Carla, when I knew we would marry, must marry, even then I did not realise.’
He stood still, hands thrust deep into his pockets, looking at her across the space that was between them.
‘All I could think was how I’d never been permitted to choose—how first it had been my duty to marry Francesca, if she would have me, and then...’ he took a ragged breath ‘...it became my duty to marry you instead.’
She shut her eyes for a moment, feeling the bleakness she had felt at knowing she was forcing Cesare to marry her. But he was speaking still, his voice changing yet again.
‘When I came back here I found myself seeking out that Luciezo portrait—thinking how my ancestor had been free to choose whatever he willed, as I had never been. And yet—’
He broke off, his face working. Carla’s eyes were on him again, wide, distended, and her throat was tightening.
‘Yet when I read his journal...’ He exhaled slowly, his eyes never leaving hers, filled with a darkness that chilled her suddenly. ‘When I read his final words, then—’
When he resumed, his voice was raw.
‘He cursed himself—cursed what he had done, the choice that he had made in marrying a woman he could not love. He had blighted his whole life—and the lives of both his wife and his mistress, condemning them all to unhappiness. It was a mistake that could never be mended—never!’
Carla felt her own face work, her throat close.
Words burst from her, pained and anguished. ‘That is what I felt I would do if I married you! It would be as if I had become both those Caradino portraits—the pregnant mistress becoming the unhappy wife!’
Her fingers clenched again, spasming.
‘I knew you didn’t want to marry me! How could you, when you’d chosen another woman to marry, had set me aside as you had? How could I condemn you to a loveless marriage to me—condemn you to a marriage you’d never wanted?’
Her voice dropped.
‘How could I condemn myself to it? Condemn myself to the kind of marriage my own mother made—and bitterly regretted. Just as my father regretted it. And...’ Her throat closed painfully. ‘Just as you would regret it too. Regret a loveless marriage—’
She broke off, emotion choking her voice. Her eyes closed, and it was as if she could feel sharp shards of glass beneath her lids. There was a sudden dip in the bed—the heavy weight of Cesare jackknifing down beside her. His hand closed over hers, stilling its clenching.
Her eyes flared open, diamond tears within.
Emotion was in his face, strong and powerful, sending a sudden surge to her pulse, a tightening of her throat. There was a searing in her heart against what he might say next.
‘It would not be loveless.’ Intensity infused his voice. ‘It would not be loveless,’ Cesare said again. ‘When I read Alessandro’s cry of despair and remorse for the mistake he had made, the mistake that could never be amended, I knew—finally knew—what I had blinded myself to! I realised, with a flash of lightning in my eyes, that I could leave you, or you could leave me, and it would make no difference—none at all. For you were lodged in that place from which you could never be removed.’
He paused. Eyes resting on her. The truth was in them, as he knew it must be now.
