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He halted, touched at the question.
‘It may be a while before you can head out here again.’
‘I’d like that.’
Or at least he thought he would. The idea sent a skitter of emotion through him.
As if she sensed it, she slipped her hand into his. The gesture felt somehow right and he left it there, clasped firmly as they wended their way through another terrace of lemon trees, the fragrance as intense as earlier. Once through this they started to climb a set of steep winding stairs cut into the mountain face.
A glance at her face and he could see that anxiety still lingered in the troubled crease of her forehead. ‘I think you’re worrying too much about your father.’
‘That’s easy for you to say. I know my father. Before I went to London I made sure he took his medication, ate right and followed the doctor’s orders. Now he’s on his own I am not at all convinced he is doing any of that.’
‘He looked OK to me.’
Holly shook her head. ‘Nowhere near as good as he looked last time I saw him. I checked his cupboards and they are all full.’
‘That’s good, isn’t it?’
‘No—because they are full of unopened bags of pasta, unopened everything. I don’t think he’s cooked anything since I left. I think he’s been getting take-aways and he’s done a big clean-up before I arrived.’
‘Surely that is his choice to make?’
‘So you suggest that I sit back and allow him to jeopardise his health?’
Stefan considered her words. ‘Pretty much, yes. Sure, you can advise him to take care, remind him, but other than that it is up to him. He’s a grown man; he is also a man with huge responsibilities on the work front. I can’t believe he is incapable of sticking to a healthy diet.’
‘It’s not incapability. It’s habit. He’s just used to someone doing it for him.’
‘Then hire a housekeeper.’
‘He doesn’t want to do that. Says he prefers family around him. Jessica Alderney is a friend—she’s also a trained nurse and an excellent cook—but she isn’t family.’
Stefan frowned. ‘So you will live on Il Boschetto di Sole for life?’
Through duty. Do the right thing, marry her supposed paragon, have Romano heirs, look after her father. It was not his business—and who was to say she was wrong?
‘You make it sound like a prison sentence. It isn’t. Look at this place. Plus, my father is entitled to my support and my help. I love him and I have a vested interest in keeping him healthy.’
They came to the end of a small wooded copse and she stopped.
‘OK. We’re here. Forester’s Glade—or Radura dei Guardaboschi.’
The view stopped his breath. The glade had an aura of magic, conifers, a babbling brook, meadow flowers, a waterfall.
‘I always used to imagine sylvan nymphs lived here,’ Holly said softly. ‘My father used to bring me up here sometimes when I was small and I’d play for hours. Anyway, would you prefer if I left you on your own?’
‘No. It’s fine.’
Stefan hauled in a breath, inhaled the scent of the conifers overlaid by the meadow flowers, looked at the verdant greens mingled with the deep copper brown of the soil, the blue of the late afternoon sky. He wondered if his mother had come here to make the fateful decision to marry his father—whether she had done it because she had been pressured into it by her guardian, persuaded to do her duty because it was the ‘right’ thing to do.
In so doing she’d made a grave mistake. And he didn’t want Holly to do the same. Before he could change his mind, he turned to her.
‘My mother...’ he began. ‘I know you have doubts about her, and in truth I don’t know the history between her and your father. What I do know, from what Roberto Bianchi said, is that he pushed her into marriage with my father for the sake of duty. Perhaps she stood right here and made the decision. And perhaps she figured it wouldn’t be so bad. Maybe she was swayed by the idea of the pomp and glamour of being a princess. Perhaps she did want to rule—to be the mother of royalty. Perhaps she believed she was doing the best for your father. Roberto Bianchi would never have permitted them to marry. Maybe she did what she thought was right. Just like you are trying to do.’
As he talked they continued to walk through the glade. They came to a stop at the edge of a cliff and he sat down on a grassy tussock, waited as she settled beside him.
‘There is a lot I don’t know—will never know now—but what I do know is that her marriage was worse than miserable. All the possessions in the world didn’t change that.’
