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Her voice trailed off. Rafaello said nothing. She went on walking. ‘So, you see,’ she continued in the same strained voice, though she tried very hard to make it as normal-sounding as possible, ‘I don’t know who my mother was, and I have no idea at all about my father—well, the boy who fathered me, presumably equally by mistake. Maybe he didn’t even know he’d got my mother pregnant. Or maybe—’ her voice tightened ‘—my mother didn’t even know which boy had got her pregnant. So, anyway…’ She took a breath. ‘I was taken into care, and—’
Cold was running down Rafaello’s spine. ‘I knew nothing of this!’
His interruption made Magda flinch. The harshness was back in his voice with a vengeance. Her feet slewed to a halt. The fragile edifice of civility which had been built up over lunch crashed down around her ears. She stole a look at him. He had stopped, too, and stood looking down at her. His eyes, veiled behind his dark glasses, were invisible, but his mouth was set in a tight, grim line.
Her heart plunged to the ground. It was like walking headfirst into a blizzard after spring flowers had blossomed. Oh, why didn’t I just make some excuse and tell him nothing about Benji—or me? she thought in anguish. He’s horrified—appalled! She felt sick inside.
‘I…I thought you knew,’ she said in a small, shaky voice. ‘It was on my birth certificate. “Parents unknown.” And my time of birth was the closest estimate the hospital could come up with. You wanted my birth certificate for the marriage licence.’
‘I did not see it,’ he replied remotely.
Magda bit her lip. Of course. Why should Rafaello di Viscenti bother himself with trivia like her birth certificate?
‘You were telling me about Benji’s father.’ The voice that prompted her was distant still. With a heavy, sinking heart, Magda forced herself to continue her sorry tale.
‘Um—it was in the care home—there was another inmate. Kaz. We sort of…stuck together…Then—well, um—it gets…complicated.’ She swallowed through her tightening throat, forcing out words that brought back so many agonising memories. ‘We’d just left the home, let loose on the world, and we were living together when Kaz was diagnosed with cancer. At first the treatment worked, for a couple of years, but then the cancer came back. Terminal this time. Kaz…Kaz died just after Benji was born….’
She couldn’t go on. Just couldn’t. She started walking again, but she couldn’t see anything. She was grateful for her dark glasses because they kept the tears hidden. Her steps were jerky.
Suddenly her arm was taken. Held in an iron grip. She tried to pull away, but she could not. She felt tears seeping from under the lower rim of the dark glasses, and lifted a hand to try and wipe them away.
‘I am ashamed,’ came the low voice. ‘I am ashamed of everything I have ever thought or said about you.’
He turned her towards him, taking her other elbow in that vice-like grip. She screwed up her eyes, trying to stop the tears coming. Her throat was burning with the effort of keeping herself from crying.
She felt one hand let her go, and then he was sliding her dark glasses from her eyes.
‘No tears—they will spoil your make-up.’ There was a careful humour in his voice—deliberate, she realised.
She gazed up at him, eyes swimming. His face was a blur. With infinite gentleness he scooped his little finger along the line of her lower lashes, catching the moisture on each before it could run down her cheeks. As her vision cleared his eyes came into focus, looking down into hers.
It was as if she were suspended in time, suspended by the lightest strand of gossamer, the gossamer touch of his fingertip, yet she could no more move, no more breathe, than if she were held in bands of steel.
Everything stopped—her breathing, her heartbeat, so it seemed, and all the world everywhere—just stopped. All that existed was Rafaello, looking down at her, the strangest, most enigmatic expression in his dark, dark eyes.
Her lips parted as the softest exhalation of breath sighed from her.
Slowly Rafaello brushed the tips of his fingers into the fine tendrils of her hair.
‘So lovely—’
His voice was a murmur and then his head was lowering to hers, and as Magda’s eyes fluttered shut she gave herself to the exquisite wonder of Rafaello di Viscenti, the most beautiful man in the world, kissing her.
His mouth was soft and warm and oh-so-skilful, moving with delicacy, with exploring slowness, tasting her lips as if she were the sweetest dessert.
