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He saw her shoulders stiffen as his voice penetrated her misery, then she opened her eyes to look at him.
‘Sorry,’ she mumbled, rubbing the flats of her hands self-consciously across her face and blinking to clear her eyes. ‘I didn’t mean to cry. It was just that the photo of my father got to me.’
‘Don’t apologise,’ Marco said, catching her hands with his. ‘I didn’t realise looking at those photos would upset you.’
‘You weren’t to know that my father is ill.’ She smiled at him weakly, but he could tell she had a tenuous grip on her emotions and was only just holding back the flow of tears.
‘Is he very ill?’ Marco asked softly.
Claudia nodded, biting her lower lip as if to stop it quivering. ‘He won’t get better—there’s no hope of that. It’s just a matter of time.’
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, lifting one hand to cradle her cheek gently. She might be a consummate actress, who had wheedled her way dishonestly into Bianca’s life and then into his. But that did not mean she wasn’t capable of loving her father—and her distress looked genuine.
Hearing Marco’s voice so deep with sympathy and feeling the tenderness of his touch was suddenly too much for Claudia. She burst into fresh tears and buried her face in her hands, wishing she could shut out the misery that overwhelmed her when she thought about her father.
A second later she felt Marco’s arms close around her. He was strong and warm and she found herself clinging to him, sobbing in earnest.
‘I want to go and visit him,’ she wept. ‘But I’m scared of how much worse he’ll be since I saw him only last week. I’m not strong enough to hide how I’m feeling, but I can’t let him see me like this—it wouldn’t be fair to upset him.’
‘It will be all right, dolce mia. I’ll take you to see your father tomorrow,’ Marco murmured against her hair. ‘And you will be strong when you need to be. But it doesn’t matter if he sees you’re upset—it shows how much you care.’
She clung to him, thinking how much like the old Marco he suddenly seemed. Part of her didn’t want to accept comfort from him—not after everything that had happened between them. But another part wanted to believe that the man she had fallen in love with four years ago was still there. That man would have comforted her. That man would have moved heaven and earth if it made her feel better.
‘He doesn’t know he’s dying.’ Claudia heard the strangled tones of her own voice, but now she had started confiding in Marco she couldn’t stop. It was such an overwhelming relief to share the awful burden. ‘My stepmother and his doctors thought it was best to keep it from him. If he gets upset his heart couldn’t take it.’
‘Don’t you think he deserves to know?’ Mar
co sounded shocked. The thought flashed through Claudia’s mind that Marco would never forgive anyone for keeping such news from him. But then she couldn’t imagine Marco ever being frail enough to warrant such considerations.
‘I don’t know,’ she replied, feeling utterly helpless. ‘My stepmother told me it would kill him to find out.’
The idea that Marco might disapprove of her actions suddenly made her feel cold and bleak, undermining the grip she had been slowly regaining on her emotions. She burst into renewed tears and hung her head miserably.
‘I apologise. It wasn’t my place to say that. I don’t know the whole situation,’ Marco said, pulling her close to him once again. ‘We’ll talk to his doctors. Maybe his condition has stabilised.’
‘Thank you.’ Claudia pressed her face against the soft merino wool of his sweater, feeling the reassuring strength and warmth of his body radiating through the garment. ‘That would be wonderful. I couldn’t seem to make the doctors talk to me properly—I think my stepmother told them I didn’t understand Italian well enough.’
‘Where is he?’ Marco asked.
‘In a hospital in Turin,’ she replied.
‘Is your stepmother there with him?’
‘I don’t know. I doubt it,’ Claudia said, resting with her face against his shoulder and her hand flat against his chest. His arms were wrapped around her and at that moment she felt totally safe, cocooned in his embrace. ‘Francesca divides her time between London and Turin, but even when she’s in Italy she doesn’t visit him much, even though she has an apartment in the city. She never liked the countryside—she won’t go to the Piedmont house unless she has to.’
She spoke sadly, wishing that her father could have fallen in love with someone who cared for him more than her stepmother did, when suddenly she felt an almost imperceptible ripple of tension pass through Marco. She pulled away from him slightly, sitting upright so that she could look into his face. The hardness in his eyes startled her, making her heart skip a beat.
‘What’s wrong?’ she asked, wondering if he disapproved of Francesca’s lack of devotion. Or maybe he was judging her for not dropping everything to remain at her father’s bedside.
‘Nothing.’ He softened his expression at once. But his blood was boiling at the discovery that Francesca Hazelton didn’t even like the country estate she had taken from his family and moved into only days after his father had died. ‘I was just thinking how hard it must have been on you, being tied to London by your work when really you just wanted to be in Italy with your father.’
‘I would have given up my job in an instant,’ she said, ‘but my father wouldn’t let me. I was furious with Francesca for telling him my plan to quit work, but he got so upset at the idea of me putting my life on hold while he was ill that I simply couldn’t go against his wishes. I’ve flown back to Turin almost every weekend.’
‘No wonder you look tired,’ Marco said, lifting his hand and sliding it through her hair to cup the side of her head.
‘I must look a state,’ Claudia gasped, all of a sudden feeling awkward about how she had let herself weep with such undignified abandon. ‘My face must be blotchy and I can’t bear to imagine how red my eyes are.’
‘There are no blotches.’ Marco raised his other hand so that he was holding her head on both sides, his fingers buried deep in her hair. ‘And your eyes are not red—they are simply luminous, glowing with the emotion you feel inside.’
