CHAPTER ELEVEN
LOUISASATIN the warm morning sunshine on a sheltered patio overlooking the lake. She closed her eyes, relishing Matteo’s gentle touch. The way his fingers threaded through her damp hair, separating the strands so they could dry.
‘We should go inside soon; I don’t want you to burn.’
‘Just a little while longer,’ she said, breathing in the scent of lavender that drifted on the breeze, which she’d always now remember as the smell of summer. Relaxing further as he stroked down her back. If she were a cat, she might start purring.
‘It’s like silk on fire,’ he murmured as if to himself. ‘Magnificent.’
‘My family were hoping for the Bainbridge blonde.’
Matteo grunted. ‘What have I told you about anything they had to say?’
Louisa opened her eyes. Stared out across the lake, like a well of blue ink on the landscape.
‘To forget them. I do, mostly...’
Some days, the voice in her head could be persistent. Though around Matteo, the negative chatter had less power. His praise and his words tended to drown them out till they held no more irritation than a gnat she could swat away.
‘Mostly should become always. They didn’t deserve you.’
His grip on her hair gently tightened. Drawing her head back as she smiled. Goosebumps shimmered over her as his mouth descended on hers.
She opened for him. Their tongues touching, the kiss deepening. Each day seemed like a kind of miracle. A dream she didn’t want to wake from. This was far better than any reality she’d ever lived in. And Louisa knew reality would have to intrude eventually, but she had time. There were no pressing deadlines. She could continue to drift in this warm, sunshine-filled fantasy for a while longer.
Matteo’s phone vibrated on the table close by, drawing her from the moment. An interruption from the world that wasn’t polite enough to stop for them. She drew away.
‘Take it. I know you have a business to run. I’ll be here when you get back.’
He smiled and it was warmer than any sunshine she might be sitting in. ‘I’ll hold you to that,’ he said as he grabbed the phone and wandered into the house.
She stood and strolled to the railings of the patio overlooking Lake Como. Little boats skipping across its surface. Louisa had never thought she could love anywhere as much as Easton Hall and its surrounds, but this came close. In the UK, everything was about the safe and familiar. Here? She wondered whether she’d love it without Matteo. Because everything about the villa was bound up in him. This patio, where they had a breakfast under the dappled shade of enormous potted olive trees. Their days filled with exploration of the lake and its surrounds. Nights filled with exploration of each other. A sense of no end date. Just a future with a person not a place...
No, that couldn’t be right. No futures had been discussed. Except he had offered to show her the world, his hotels, his retreats. His other houses. That was a future of sorts. And their nights, his whispered words in the darkness, of being unable to get enough. Of more, more, more. What was that, if not a future? Her heart fluttered against her ribs. Not a sensation of dread but one of excitement, of possibility.
The sun brightened, warmer as the morning aged. Matteo would worry if she burned, so she moved to a large cantilever umbrella he’d had set up here, so she could sit under cover whilst looking out over the lake. That care, that kindness. It meant something, didn’t it?
Movement at the door drew her from her introspection. A liquid heat flooded her veins as Matteo stalked through. She couldn’t get enough of him. His power. Strength. It all made her feel safe, protected. Wanted. She might never get enough of him. Except...
The look on his face. Jaw hard. Eyes narrow. His body not lax and loose but strung tense like a bow. Obviously, business was not going well.
‘Problem?’ she asked.
‘The family seek to challenge the will.’
It was as if her heart forgot to beat. Like everything, the breeze, the birds, all...stopped.
‘Can they do that?’ She could barely get out the words. That they would try to take it all away...
‘They’ve been rattling their sabres. Seems they’re finally ready for war.’ His fists clenched. Released. Looking as if he was priming for battle. He gave a short, sharp laugh. ‘I expected it. They can try. But there’s no doubt they’ll fail.’
He strode to the balcony, planted his hands on the carved marble balustrade. Looking out over the lake, he reminded Louisa of a king, surveying his domain.
She stood, walked over to him. Her legs almost unable to support her weight. Her insides twisting in painful knots. What if they were successful? She’d lose her home. She’d lose everything.
This, here, Matteo’s house on Como. She loved it, but it wasn’t home. She’d be happy to travel, but there was a place of her own she always wanted to know she could come back to. Easton Hall. In that moment, she wanted to return. Ground her feet on the cool green grass, walk through the gardens, by the chalk stream with him. Make a home there, with Matteo. They could still travel together but they’d always have a place. It was then it hit her with a blinding strike of realisation, the endless possibility. How she...
How she loved him.
She could be his family. They could be a family.
‘What if—?’
‘No. This is the chance to truly destroy them.’ He turned his head towards her, his eyes bright. Almost fevered with a zeal she’d never seen before. ‘I own Easton Hall and they’ll never get it. It will become part of my company’s property portfolio. Generations will be able to enjoy it but none of them will be a Bainbridge ever again. It will be lost to the family for ever.’
Did he forget? He was a Bainbridge. Her mother had been one too. And there was the not so small matter of her inheritance.
‘But...what about me?’
‘What about you?’
The words hit her like a slap. She almost reared back. He wasn’t thinking of her at all. Hadn’t she figured as part of his plan for a future, for anything?
‘Easton Hall is my home.’
He snorted. ‘You can live anywhere in the world. Pick a place. My hotels, my retreats, they’re all available to you, free. Easton Hall is nothing but a crumbling symbol of a family that needs to be shown for what it is. Not paragons of virtue, but fake to the core. A fa?ade for liars and cheats. You should have no interest in it, at all.’
‘And yet, Easton Hall is all you can think about. You’re obsessed with it.’
He wheeled round to stare down at her, nothing on his face other than the hard clutch of fury. ‘Obsessed? I want to destroy what it represents. You should too after what was done to you.’
He still couldn’t see. This between them was worth fighting for, revenge wasn’t. It could only destroy, yet she finally saw a future and understood that love, the right kind of love, could build.
‘Don’t you see, Matteo? You say you don’t care about place, don’t care about a home, but you do.’
‘You think you know me so well. You know nothing.’
She shook her head. He truly couldn’t see, so blinded by hatred of a family that wasn’t worthy of his time, it obliterated everything else.
‘You said my mother shouldn’t invade any of my thinking time, yet you’re not taking your own advice. Forget the family.’
‘Forget them?’ His eyes were wide, incredulous. A sneer of disbelief on his face. Yet he couldn’t see what she could. Louisa needed to make him listen.
‘Everything about you yearns to find your place. You’ve been searching for your birth parents. Discovered Italian heritage so bought a house here. What is all of that if not a need to find where you belong in the world?’
She hated the way her voice was so small, lost. Almost pleading. As though she had no agency here, when she did. She had the right to stay in the home till she decided to leave it permanently, or marry...
Marriage. She realised that with Matteo she wanted everything.Louisa reached out, settled her hand on his arm, the whole of him tense, as if one wrong move and he’d shatter. It was a surprise that he didn’t pull away from her, but she had to make him see.
‘You don’t just want it. You crave it. Your safe place. Somewhere to call your own...’
Louisa took a deep breath to conquer her fear. To be brave and make her greatest pitch. To the man before her, to the boy he’d once been. To Matty. To the universe. To crack open her chest and hand him her heart. Hoping with every beat that he’d take what she was offering him.
Matteo pulled back, began to pace. How couldn’t she see? This was his chance. The final hammer blow, and she thought he wouldn’t take it? That some nebulous idea like ‘home’ could stop him? He’d never stop. Not until he got what he had planned for.
‘I’ve told you. I don’t need any of that.’
Louisa held out her hands, as if imploring him.
‘You’re lying to yourself. You own retreats. Boutique hotels. Escapes, sure. But they’re still places where people live, for a while at least. Ask yourself why that’s the business you chose. Why you’re so successful. Your company is called Arcadia. I looked up what that means. A place of rustic idyll. Of innocence and pleasure. What does that tell you?’
He shook his head. She was looking for signs that didn’t exist.
‘It tells me nothing other than it’s a lucrative business and I excel at it. My company’s motto isn’t “Beyond home, your ultimate haven” for nothing.’
She looked to the heavens, almost like asking for divine guidance. ‘For a reason. Matty, can’t you see? That just proves my point. You’re searching and searching for your place, because you’re lost. And now you’re trying to take away the only home I want. Where I’ve always been safe. The home I believed I’d live in for the rest of my life.’
She didn’t feel safe with him? Her words were like a knife to the gut. Louisa couldn’t see. She was still trapped by her past.
‘You’re a young woman. You need—’
‘I need to be where I’m happy. We both do, and I realise where that is. You don’t have to search any more. I love you Matty. Make your home with me.’
Her words brought him to a halt. His heart pounding a sickening rhythm. No.
‘You don’t love me.’ That was impossible. Matteo knew he should care but couldn’t. Not with this sensation of heaviness in his chest. His heart pounding as if it would burst from his ribcage. She’d offered him something he didn’t want. That he’d never asked for.
‘You don’t get to tell me how I feel,’ she said. Something about Louisa seemed to crumple, fold in on itself. As if part of her had broken. She turned her back to him, voice cracking. ‘And you don’t get to tell me what I want out of my life...’
Matteo raked his hands through his hair as that heaviness increased. Squeezing the life out of him. There wasn’t enough air to take a breath. ‘I thought you’d be the one person who could understand. That family wanted to silence you. Send you back to the woman who hurt you to preserve their pristine name. The family who cast me aside because I wasn’t a true Bainbridge, no matter what my adoption made me at law. They’re craven and soulless, and they will pay.’
Victory was so close he could almost taste it.
She shook her head. ‘How do you expect to make them?’
‘They want a fight, they’ll get it. There are reasons why Mae left the home to me. A right to reside to you. I believe those reasons have everything to do with the way that family treated us. It’ll all come out in court, if not before...’
All the colour bled from her face, as if she’d seen a ghost. Her eyes widened.
‘How could...how can...? You know what will happen. It’ll be splashed all over the press.’
He laughed. That negative press would destroy the family and the image they’d built. The damage would be irreparable.
‘It’s perfect. They sow the seeds of their own demise. They won’t even see it coming till I have them.’
‘No!’ She slashed her hand through the air, stalking towards him, fists clenched. ‘I don’t want that story to become who I am because that’s all anyone will ever remember about me when they hear it. You want to use my pain, what I went through, as fodder to get back at the family I’ve left in the past. You care about revenge more than you care about me.’
He gritted his teeth. She thought to take it all away from him? What he’d worked at for so many years? For what, some meaningless declaration like love? His parents had told him they loved him, and they’d abandoned him when someone better came along. And where had love got her?
‘If you cared about me at all, loved me as you claim, then you’d understand. But you don’t love me. That’s an illusion.’
Louisa’s shoulders slumped. Her chin trembled as she took a shuddering breath. ‘I—I thought...but I was wrong. I’ve told you before I’m not leaving Easton Hall. I thought you’d understood. I won’t be a party to this, I can’t stay and watch this happen... Because it will destroy everything.’
Louisa turned and began to walk into the house.
‘Where do you think you’re going?’
She didn’t break her stride, kept moving as he followed. ‘Away. Anywhere but near you.’
It was as if a weight pressed on him. Relentless. Crushing. Right now, he felt like Atlas, trying to hold up the sky. She wouldn’t leave. She couldn’t.
‘You’ll never survive on your own.’
Louisa stopped then. Turned, slow and deliberate. Head held high. Jaw clenched hard. Eyes narrow, spitting fire.
‘Just you watch me.’
Matteo paced through his Como villa, to a window overlooking the lake. The day outside gleaming beautiful and bright. Blue skies and sunshine. A perfect day for exploring the small inlets, villages and surrounding countryside. Yet nothing about this was perfect. In a place he’d always felt settled, nothing seemed to fit any more. He didn’t fit. It had been a week since Louisa had turned her back and walked away. In his arrogance, he’d been sure she’d return within an hour after she’d left. Then time had ticked by and night had fallen. There’d been no tearful return. Only silence.
A sensation had clawed at him. Fear. That she was alone and he wasn’t protecting her as he’d promised. Damned promises. He’d gone to the village and searched. Silently stalking the streets and laneways. Visiting the trattoria they’d dined in, but she’d melted away. He might have called the police, had he not received a message via his assistant saying Louisa had been in touch to ask that he pack up her things and she’d provide a forwarding address.
That address hadn’t yet come. Now thoughts of her plagued him. Was she safe? Did she have enough to eat? How would she cope without her familiar things? His gut wrenched at the worry that she was alone, together with a terrible sense that he’d forgotten something or, even worse, lost something irreplaceable. Because she hadn’t walked away and left everything behind. She’d walked away and left him.
That distinction was vital.
He’d reflected on their final, terrible conversation. At first not understanding why she couldn’t see that every living Bainbridge should be punished for what they’d done. To her, to him. That he had the means to lash out and destroy, as if that would somehow blunt the pain. However, he’d come to realise that the pain had turned inwards and now flayed him alive.
She’d offered him her love, and he’d thrown it back in her face. All because of fear.
Matteo turned away from the view that had once given him peace, and now reminded him of what he’d lost. He’d convinced himself that he didn’t want relationships. Had spent most of his adult life alone, travelling, making his fortune. He still had everything he’d started this journey with, and had a fight ahead over Mae’s will. As Louisa had requested, he’d asked staff to pack up her things, ready to send them to her whenever she gave word. They’d almost finished the job. There was one room left, which he’d told them to leave till the end. The room containing her drawing table and her art supplies...
He wasn’t sure why he’d asked for that space to be packed up last. Hoping that she’d return, perhaps? But she wouldn’t. Like his birth mother, like his adoptive parents. It was a familiar pattern. Everyone left him behind. That was why he kept moving. If you didn’t stop, you couldn’t be left. People had trouble catching you. Matteo started walking then. Not really knowing where he’d end up, yet at the same time finding himself unsurprised that he’d made his way to where Louisa had done her illustrations. After it had been so important to her, he’d found it hard to fathom her abandoning everything here. It told him how much she’d wanted to get away.
Her sketchbooks were stacked in a neat pile. He ran his fingers over the spiral bindings. The need to open them, to look, as if that would somehow connect him to her, became overwhelming. To immerse himself in the joy and innocence of her illustrations. Except he’d stolen that innocence from her. Tried to corrupt her. Taken a woman who deserved so much more than the cracked and broken man he was. Tried using her to satisfy his own needs.
He’d dismissed her as if she’d meant nothing to him at all. It was no wonder that she’d walked away without looking back.
He rubbed at the ache in his chest as he slid a random sketchbook from the pile. Flicked through book after book of whimsical drawings, sketches that he didn’t understand. All the while the pictures connected him to her inner beauty. He marvelled at how untainted she’d been by what life had thrown at her. How she’d retained any sense of wonder at all was a miracle.
Shewas a miracle.
He took out the final book, one that looked a little different from the others. Opened the first page. Stilled.
An illustration of a little girl with flaming-red hair and a little boy, in a forest. A title page...
Matty and Lulu’s Stupendous Adventuresby Louisa Cameron.
It was as if his heart forgot to beat. Time simply stopped. He flicked through page after page. Stories of a sun-drenched summer where two sad and lost children found each other and made their own magic.
The memories of that time blazed on the pages. Funny, glorious. He’d forgotten how they’d found a nest of hedgehogs. Tried to catch fish with their hands in the stream. Sneaked through the secret passageways of Easton Hall, pretending to be chased by ghosts.
The only ghosts now were the ones he’d created for himself and they haunted him with a vengeance.
Back then he’d been a scared boy, full of bravado. He questioned how much had actually changed. The fear gripped him now, of what else he might find as he turned those pages. What other stories it would show. And yet there on the pages were tales of a holiday when two children were simply allowed to be themselves. A little boy, a little girl. Both of them perfect and innocent.
Somehow in the intervening years he’d lost that innocence, whilst Louisa had retained it. He’d spent his life building a business, accumulating money and for what? Because he realised it now. That childhood summer was one of the best times of his entire life.
No. There was something that eclipsed it. This present summer, before Lulu had gone.
How had he not recognised it? How everything had seemed softer focus, in so many ways, gentle. A glowing warmth that had nothing to do with the weather outside but was carried around inside him. An emotion so foreign he hadn’t understood it.
Happiness, and something more.
Something expansive, that hinted at a future. Something vast, unfamiliar. Never-ending.
A choking sensation throttled him, an inability to breathe. Lulu brought out something in him, a side that was patient, thoughtful. That could care and take care. Matteo gripped her art desk, riding the wave of panic and realisation. This emotion was all-encompassing. Something like he’d never experienced before, and that could only mean one thing.
He’d loved her yet had refused to believe it because everyone he’d loved had walked away. Like Louisa, except in truth that was a lie he’d told himself. He’d pushed her away. Ended it when she’d refused to be trapped in the same hatred and anger that had consumed so much of his life.
Hadn’t he done the same to his sister as well?
He sat down with the book and finished reading the stories. Some he remembered. Like eating berries till their fingers were stained and bellies were full. Others he’d forgotten, like trying to talk to the bees after Mae told them she’d knocked on the hives in the days after Great-Uncle Gerald had died, letting them know that he’d gone but she would look after them. Whilst reading, he searched for a skerrick of that innocence inside himself. He wanted that again, the optimism. He craved it.
Almost as much as he craved a woman with flaming-red hair and a beautiful heart.
He slid his phone from his pocket. Thinking of the people he’d pushed away in the fear they would somehow leave him anyway. Losing them all the same because he hadn’t had the courage or faith that he was enough to keep them close. That stopped now.
He looked at his sister’s messages. Texts. The attempts to reach out that he’d tried to ignore. Took a deep breath. Called her number. She picked up immediately.
‘Matty?’
‘Flick. I’m sorry I haven’t been in touch. It’s been...busy. How are you?’
He tensed, waiting for the response. Was she well? Was she sick?
‘I’m really well. Busy too! Hey...’
The conversation washed over him, about a trip she was taking to Australia nannying for her employer, as did the relief. One bridge being rebuilt. And he needed to learn how to do that properly before he attempted to mend what would be the most important, if that was possible. His biggest failing and greatest loss.
Lulu.
She’d offered herself. Opened her heart and made a place for him in it. For the first time in his life, he’d felt settled. Now it dawned on him that she was right. He’d been searching for a home. His surprise was finally acknowledging that he’d found it. Not in a place, but a person.
He needed her innocence. He needed her love.
He needed her.
And he would fight to get her back.