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Matthieu seemed to take that in before turning back to the ring. ‘May I?’
Maria gently pressed it into his open hand.
‘So without commissions, this is what you like to create?’
‘Yes.’ The smile returning to her lips warmed the word, warmed her deep within.
‘There is space in Lucerne for a studio if you—’
‘No,’ Maria interrupted. ‘No, that is a kind offer, but... I prefer to be around others when I work. There’s a strange but wonderful feeling when you are lost in your own world, yet surrounded by others. It feels...’
‘Less lonely?’
* * *
Matthieu silently cursed. He couldn’t help but think that he had somehow taken this bright and beautiful woman and hidden her away from the world. Dragged her back to his lair, and for a moment he feared that he might actually be harming her. Keeping her locked away from the sunlight and from the things that she needed most.
He cursed the nightmare that had somehow lifted the lid on memories he had not confronted for years. Because he knew so well, too well, how lonely a child could be. All those days, weeks and months spent in a hospital room, checked on by nurses and visited by Malcolm, but when he was alone, the silence had wrapped around him and become deafening.
A silence that had carried on in his life until... Until Maria.
Matthieu bit back another curse. Even as Maria spoke of the need for company, to be surrounded by people and life, all he wanted to do was take her back to Lucerne and surround her with himself. To protect her, hide her away from the world where she only knew him. The beast began to stir in his breast again, roaring mine. As if his heart had recognised her as his and only his, the world outside be damned.
And that, above all things, scared him the most. Because he had worked so hard, for so many years, to ensure that he was never bound in such a way to another person. And now that he was...
Matthieu pushed aside the thought that had grown thorns and threatened to bloom into his mind. He looked at Maria, lost in her own thoughts as she caressed the spun silver in her hands, and purposefully unfurled his clenched hand to reveal the ring she had made before she had come to live with him.
‘It doesn’t have to be that way any more, Maria,’ he said, no longer sure if he was talking about her loneliness or his past.
‘It doesn’t feel as if it is,’ she said, her hand once again sweeping over the outline of their child. Her eyes held a ring of truth, shining within them, offering, rather than asking for, assurance. An assurance he suddenly wanted to turn from. Because his wife was upsetting everything he t
hought about his life. Every natural instinct to turn around and retreat, to close himself off from the world just as he was beginning to hope. To hope for something more than the constraints he’d put on his heart the night of the fire.
* * *
‘You can stay, Maria, if you need—or want,’ Sebastian said, sweeping her up in his arms to say goodbye even as his words contradicted his actions. She smiled, relishing the comfort and more that her brother offered.
The meal had been delicious—Matthieu keeping to his promise to eat everything she chose for herself, making her smile and the men at the table sceptical. Although the conversation had been a little slow to start, Sofia and Maria making the most of it, both her husband and her brother had soon relaxed into the gentle, teasing tone that had descended. And it had felt glorious to Maria, who had been so worried at the thought of any kind of confrontation. She had been so grateful to Sofia, who had completely put aside her faux pas from the night of the gala in Iondorra, and now when Maria looked at Theo she marvelled at how deeply wrongly she had interpreted not only their relationship but her own feelings for him. Joy rose within her chest as she thought now of how they had found happiness together...the same kind of happiness she had found with Matthieu perhaps? She couldn’t help but cast her mind into a future where she and her husband surrounded a beautiful child, with dark wayward curls and devastating honey-green eyes, with love and happiness. Some long-distant sunlit future, the thought of which filled her with inescapable joy.
‘That’s okay. I’m good, really, Seb. I am.’ And she felt it too. Somehow talking to Matthieu, sharing something of herself with him had forged a connection deep within her. Unaccountably she felt overwhelmed by emotion. As if being reunited with her things had triggered something—and not just the idea that had sparked in her mind the moment she’d seen her equipment and materials. The urge to create something for Matthieu, something that would potentially mean so much to him. She couldn’t shake the feeling that she wanted to give something back to him. Because in a way, that was what he had done for her. Bringing her here, to see her brother, to stand beside her. She had shrugged into the safety he had offered her. The future.
One where she realised that now she could make the jewellery that she wanted to. Not dependent on commissions, not dependent on her meagre pay cheque from the café. And she wondered at how different it felt. Accepting the financial security he offered, when everything in her had railed against the same from her brother.
Trust. She felt it unfurl within her. She was beginning to trust him. Trust that he would be there for her and her child. And it began to fill her, consume her and make her feel... Excited for what was to come? Hopeful?
Seb released her from his hold, casting a glance over her shoulder to where Matthieu was arranging for all the boxes from her room to be sent on to the private jet waiting to take them back to Switzerland. ‘Mi amor,’ he said and sighed. ‘I am pleased for you. And for this little one,’ he said, his eyes crinkling and his hand warm on her belly. ‘And I suppose Montcour is acceptable,’ he begrudgingly admitted. ‘But... I do know of his childhood. I know what happened to him, and that kind of damage, that kind of baggage... Anyone would have to be blind not to see how closely he guards his heart. I just fear that those walls might be a little too high even for you to climb.’
‘We all have baggage, Sebastian.’
‘Perhaps, but I just want you to take care.’
As Maria and Matthieu were whisked away from Seb’s estate in Siena and towards the small private airfield, she tucked away her brother’s warning. Put it into a box and buried it deep. Because for the first time in what felt like for ever, she wanted to hold onto this feeling. To keep it within her and let it warm her from the inside out. Let it nurture both her and her child. Because this feeling, Maria realised, was love.
CHAPTER TEN
A SILENT SCREAM tore from Matthieu’s mouth as he bolted up from the bed. He was covered in that kind of cold unnatural sweat that came from a night terror. The kind that he’d experienced three times already in the weeks since returning from Siena with Maria.
Heart pounding in his chest and shivering, he turned to where Maria lay on her side in the bed, the only balm to his soul that she hadn’t been woken by his nightmare. He rubbed a hand over his face to try and erase the memories of the haunting dream. The way his father had looked at him from the window of their home, flames licking around the edges of the wooden frame, the crackling, screaming sound that filled his ears as the fire consumed everything in its path.
