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“What do you mean?”
“You’ll go to Rome?”
“Ah. I have business in New York,” he said with a nod that drew her attention back to him. “That will see me through the tail-end of the year, most likely. Then back to Villa Fortune for Christmas.”
Something panged in the region of her heart. “That sounds…nice.”
His laugh was gravelled. “It’s loud. The six of us and now Elodie, Jack and the twins, Yaya overseeing everything, telling us we’ve burned the panettone and that the custard is too sweet.”
Her smile was wistful. “It sounds lovely.”
“What’s Christmas like for you?”
“The opposite of loud,” she said, sipping her juice. “When my mother’s home, she cooks, but I’m afraid your Yaya definitely wouldn’t approve.”
“Why? Does she burn the panettone too?”
Another smile, involuntary and automatic. “No, worse. She follows the British Heart Foundation guidelines to the letter, meaning we have an absence of anything fatting whatsoever. It’s rather austere, actually.” She pulled a face. “Even the mince pies are made with filo pastry.”
“That’s bad?”
“Bad?” She made a show of clutching her chest. “It’s sacrilegious.”
His smile might have toppled her if she hadn’t been sitting down, for how powerful it was.
“Real fruit mince pies are a great British tradition. They should be made with the butteriest pastry, you know the kind that leaves a ring on the napkin if you put it down for even a second?” She closed her eyes, remembering the bliss of her first ‘real’ fruit mince pie.
“And when your mother’s not home?”
“Ah. Dad and I book into the local pub,” she grinned. “That’s a little better. They live in a small village in the Cotswolds – you know, one of those places with the tiny old houses lining the main road? The pub is called The Wandering Goose.” She shook her head affectionately. “They serve roast lunch with all the trimmings, Christmas poppers with cheesy jokes in them, and those paper crowns."
His eyes sparked with hers, amusement and shared memories flashing between them.
“Then pudding, custard, a little too much champagne and cider than is wise –,”
“Definitely than your mother would approve of?”
“Definitely,” she grinned. “In the afternoon, we do the Times crossword and wait for the Queen’s address. It’s quintessentially British, but very quiet, very ordered. Sedate.”
“And you’d prefer noise?”
“I would have preferred siblings,” she said, with a wrinkle of her nose. “You don’t know how desperately I wished for a family like yours, growing up.”
“Most of the time I’m envied for my family’s wealth, not my siblings and cousins.”
“I think wealth would come with its own problems,” she said, honestly. “I don’t really envy you that at all.” Then, her eyes shifted to the view, and she lightened her tone. “Except perhaps for your ability to own a patch of paradise like this.”
He didn’t say anything. She turned to face him to find his eyes resting on her face with an intensity that set fire to her soul.
The silence stretched and she felt a compulsion to fill it. “I always swore I’d have lots of children or none.”
Something crossed his features then, a dark look she couldn’t interpret. It was gone so quickly, banished by his smile, that she thought she might have imagined it.
“There were times when I wished I was an only child,” he said with a lift of his shoulders.
“I think all children fantasise about more space to themselves, but when you live it, it’s… I mean, for example, there’s no one to share secrets with, no one to help with mum and dad as they get older. I’m alone, really.”
Her voice, without her knowledge, had grown small, plagued with the loneliness she’d known all her life.
