‘I need to go, Carlo.’
‘Of course, of course. Let me know when you’re back and congratulations again.’
As the lawyer hung up, Ettore switched off his phone and got to his feet.
‘Dulcie—’
‘What was he talking about?’ The stiffness in her body had edged into her voice. ‘What’s the Corti-Marchesi clause?’
‘It doesn’t matter.’
He started to walk towards her, but she held up her hand. ‘It sounded like it did. It sounded like it mattered a lot. I mean, fulfilling it means you inherit everything, right?’
Her face was blank of expression, but he could see the shock, the wound in her eyes.
‘Yes, it does, but—’
‘And to fulfil it, you had to get married?’
‘I have to be married before the current heir’s death.’
‘Must have been annoying when we split up, then. I guess you must have thought you could find a replacement pretty quick.’
‘I didn’t think that. I didn’t even know about the clause until three weeks ago.’
‘And then you came to find me.’
She blinked as if she were trying to wake up from a dream. ‘You said you wanted to make your father happy and then you offered me money to help my brother. You made me feel as though you were doing me a favour but all the time you were looking after yourself.’
‘Not myself. The estate, the castle. You’ve met my family; they would wipe out six hundred years of history and the livelihoods of an entire community in a matter of weeks if one of them inherited. I can’t let that happen,dolcezza.’ He took a step towards her, wanting to take the pain from her eyes.
‘Don’t call me that.’ Her voice was cold like ice, but fragile too. And he knew if he took another step forward it would crack.
‘You expect me to believe that you care about those people? You didn’t want the responsibility. You told me you were going to walk away. Or was that a lie too?’
‘No, I was planning on leaving. Before I met you, when I pictured my family, I never saw myself. Fiana was the hardest place in the world for me to be happy. But then you came to Puglia, and it was the easiest.’
‘And you expect me to believe that.’
‘It’s the truth.’
‘Like it was true when you told me we needed to stay married because you wanted to make your father happy.’
‘That was true. It still is—’
‘And yet you didn’t tell me about the marriage clause, did you? Even though that was true too.’ Her mouth pulled into a smile that was utterly and heartbreakingly sad. ‘For the same reason you didn’t tell me you were a marquis. You didn’t trust me.’
‘I didn’t know you like I know you now.’
‘And I didn’t know you. I still don’t.’ Her fingertips were white where they were biting into the door frame.
‘Yesterday, you said we could make it work, make us work because we’d held nothing back. But you were lying—’
‘I wasn’t. I’d forgotten about the clause because it didn’t matter to me any more. Look, when I came to Cambridge to find you, I was going to tell you that I wanted a divorce. Then I saw you and I knew that I didn’t want to let you go. I didn’t want to lose you, again. And I knew that Oscar needed help, and you needed money to help him, so I offered to pay for his treatment.’
‘You wanted a divorce?’ She was staring at him as if he were a stranger, and then she was moving past him into the dressing room.
‘What are you doing?’ Heart pounding, he followed her in. She was shutting the safe. Her hands were shaking.
