CHAPTER TWELVE
LOUISASATAT a small table on an ancient stone terrace overlooking Lake Como. The universe had put on another perfect sunny day for her, as it had every day for the two months since she’d walked out of Matteo’s door. It hardly seemed fair when all she’d done for the first week was cry. Why couldn’t there be rain, as if the world were crying with her? But she’d been delivered sunshine and, in the end, guessed it was said universe sending her a message. That no matter walking away from Matteo had felt like an evisceration, she’d survive it.
The world kept turning. Life went on.
After leaving Matteo she’d holed up in a pensione for a day, trying not to crack and break into a billion pieces. Not to drown in the tears that had fallen when he’d rejected everything she’d offered him. Her heart. Herself. Her love. Then she’d taken a deep breath and tried to make a decision. Her first instinct was to run back to the UK, back to Easton Hall. She’d called Mrs Fancutt, who’d told her the home itself was still under repair, but the gatehouse was empty. She’d considered it, but something about going back there felt like immersing herself in the past when, for now, she needed to start dreaming of a fresh future. Because who knew what would happen with the Bainbridge challenge to the will? She wasn’t sure she could go back to Easton Hall only to have it taken away from her again.
Instead, here she sat, torturing herself in a tiny one-bedroom house she’d found on the lake for a good deal, when a long-term holiday letting had fallen through. She had money, she had time, and refused to allow memories of what had happened with Matteo taint this beautiful place. Of course, the universe had another trick up its sleeve. She looked across the wide blue expanse of water. A little boat zipping across the surface towards the small town in which she was staying. In the distance was a pale blotch on the landscape. In the days after she’d come to stay here, she’d discovered that what she could see across the lake was Villa Arcadia. Matteo’s home.
‘You’ll never survive on your own.’
She rubbed at the ache in her chest. Those words cut deep. Of all the pain she’d suffered in her life, none had hurt as much as that. She’d thought Matteo had seen her. Come to know her. What a fool she’d been about it all, about him.
Louisa stood and left the terrace to stop herself gazing at a speck on the other side of the lake, obsessing over a man who didn’t want her. She walked inside to where some sketchbooks and pencils she’d ordered online, sat on a rustic kitchen table. Here she was, surviving despite him.
She’d learned to cook with the help of the Internet and the generosity of the kind woman who owned the home. Who’d taken one look at a heartbroken English girl and had seemed to feel sorry for her, teaching Louisa how to make pasta. She’d found more work, another commission. Otherwise, Louisa tried to make sense of her life, to reorganise it, without relying on anyone.
The one good thing about what had happened was that she’d finally grown up. Her life wasn’t in stasis as it had been when Matteo had first arrived on her doorstep, when she’d been frozen in time. Now she was growing into herself as a woman. If nothing else, she had that to thank him for.
Louisa slipped on her glasses, picked up a pen, and began doodling on the page. Scribbling little curlicues and circles, allowing her mind to wander. She’d been contracted to do some illustrations for a nature-themed diary. It was easy work. She didn’t really have to imagine much. Only the changing seasons. Drawing animals, fruits and flowers. Yet her heart didn’t seem quite in it. Part of that heart, she’d left behind in a villa next to a sun-drenched lake. Not her home, but the place she’d truly found herself.
She looked at the page and found herself drawing a little frog prince. Louisa dropped the pen, the ache in her chest intensifying. A sting in her eyes and burn in her nose. Despite saying it was something she’d never wanted because she didn’t think she’d survive the inevitable loss and betrayal, she’d fallen in love all the same.
Yet here she was, alive and breathing. And even acknowledging the pain, she had to admit one blinding truth. Had she been given the chance to do it all over again she would, with no hesitation. Because those moments with Matteo were pure, unadulterated magic.
It had sneaked up and caught her by surprise under that warm Italian sunshine. All the laughter, and happiness and wanting. The sense that what was happening seemed timeless and endless. It was only at the very end that she’d realised what she’d been looking at was a future.
Then he’d taken it away from her, because he didn’t want the same.
She wondered how he was. Whether he was fighting for Easton Hall and revenge against a family who had never truly accepted him. Whether he had found the peace and belonging that she knew he so desperately needed. But she couldn’t worry about him. Revenge had no part in her life, letting the anger destroy her. Louisa knew there had been choices to make and, in the end, she’d chosen to save herself.
Which was what she was doing right now. She picked up her pen again. Turned to a fresh page, ignoring fallen frog princes. Was sketching out a few more ideas when a knock sounded at the door. Today was Wednesday. Working Wednesdays, she used to call them. Her life less rigid now, fewer fears about everything. She wondered who it could be. Perhaps the owner of the house. She’d promised to teach Louisa how to make gnocchi next, since Louisa had admitted she loved it so much. She left her chair and trundled down the stairs, opening the front door.
Against a backdrop of the glorious sunshine stood Matteo. In a polo shirt, wearing sunglasses. Hair, windswept. She gripped the door frame as her knees weakened. He was the last person she’d expected to see, and yet she drank him in like a woman dying of thirst. It didn’t seem to matter what he’d said, the emotions came flooding back. The exhilaration, the despair. Jumbled together in such a potent mix and she didn’t know whether to shout at him to leave, or fall to her knees and beg him to stay.
But his path didn’t intersect with hers, so staying wasn’t an option.
‘Lulu.’
‘Matteo.’
He winced, but he’d ceased to be Matty the day she’d walked out of the villa. When he showed her what he was prepared to do to exact revenge against a family who was not worth either of their time. Showed her exactly what he thought of her too. Rejecting her offer of love, of home.
‘May I come in?’
She held out her hands. ‘Can I stop you?’
He stood there looking as magnificent as ever. Tall, imposing. His skin a warm, tanned brown from days in the sun. Though now she noticed other things. He strangely held his shoes in his hands. His tan chinos rolled up to mid-calf, darkened with water at the bottom. They hung a little loosely against his lean hips. The stubble shading his jaw seeming to be more of a rough beard. How under his eyes had taken on as bruised an appearance as her own.
He looked like hell. It should have made her feel good, feel satisfied.
It didn’t.
He gave a pained exhale. ‘Lul—’
‘No, just no. I’m not Lulu. You’re not Matty. They were two children who should have grown up a long time ago. They don’t exist any more.’
Why, after all he’d said, did she still want to reach out and comfort him? It made no sense, but she guessed love was like that. He was the man who’d shown her herself. Held up a mirror and forced her to look. In the process she’d liked who she saw, just as she believed he’d liked her too.
‘I’ll leave if you want me to.’
The thing was, she didn’t. It made her angry. She was trying to get over him and he turned up here? How long would it take now to forget him after seeing him in the flesh? It was like some cruel game.
Still, she stood back, inviting him inside.
‘Come on through,’ she said. The space seeming to shrink with his imposing presence. He dropped his shoes inside the door then followed Louisa up the stairs to a tiny kitchen, where she put the kettle on. When the water boiled, she made a cup of tea for herself. He shook his head when she offered one to him, gripping the back of a kitchen chair till his fingertips blanched white.
‘I thought you’d be living at Easton Hall.’
‘It doesn’t feel like mine now,’ she said, leaning against the kitchen bench.
‘You have a right to be there.’
‘Do I? Really?’ Louisa took a sip of the hot tea. ‘I thought you’d be happy to find me here and not staking my claim.’
He rubbed his hand over his face. ‘There are things I need to say.’
‘I won’t stop you. But I guess you should sit down rather than looming.’
She didn’t want to be so sharp with him, but all those old hurts came flooding back. How she’d trusted him. How she’d believed in him. How she’d thought he believed in her too. And she realised in many ways that was her flaw. She’d been desperate to find things in others, things that she really hadn’t developed herself. She’d expected so much of him when, in reality, he was only human. Just as she was.
He pulled out the chair. Sat. Seemed to try to make himself...smaller in some way. Perhaps he’d taken the looming comment to heart. She pulled out a chair and sat too.
‘The family’s claim on the estate...’ he said.
She waited to hear whether they’d issued proceedings yet. Had resigned herself to the years of litigation. The crippling fear he’d reveal to the world what had happened to her, despite her wishes. No certainty over the outcome. No certainty about where she’d live. Because Matteo would tangle them up in litigation for as long as would cause the Bainbridge family the greatest pain. It was all so exhausting. So pointless.
‘It’s over, Lulu.’
Her heart rate spiked. She put her cup down on the table with a thud, although still holding on to it as if it were her only tether to reality. ‘What do you mean, over?’
His golden gaze held hers. She was afraid of what he might see if he looked too hard. ‘I needed you to know there’s no risk to Easton Hall.’
Louisa tore off her reading glasses and tossed them on top of her sketchpad. ‘What did you do?’
Matteo’s gaze left hers for a moment, settling on the little frog prince she’d drawn. His focus seemed to be distant. The corners of his mouth kicking up before he came back to himself and turned to her once more, clasping his hands in front of him.
‘Your home’s safe. They won’t be coming after it any more.’
Louisa sat there, mouth slightly open, hand clasping her cup of tea. She looked beautiful. With her hair wild and loose. Her verdant green eyes that had haunted so many of his thoughts, glimmering. It was clear she’d made changes in her life, moved on. Those changes appeared to have been good to her. When he’d spoken to Mrs Fancutt to check how the staff were faring back in the UK, she’d commented about it. Telling him he’d done well. That Mae would be happy.
Louisa’s grown into herself.
Yet he’d done nothing except cause her pain. He wasn’t responsible for her growth. It was all down to her. He realised she’d been underestimated. She’d kept her past with her mother so well hidden that no one recognised the depths of strength this woman held within herself, to merely survive.
Now, she was so cool and sharp. He deserved every part of her disdain. The hardness that seemed to coat her in a thin veneer. He hated that he might have done that to her. Might have made her somehow disappointed in life, because he was sure she was disappointed in him. That disappointment was the most painful wound she could have inflicted, because he’d realised in the days after she’d left that he’d basked in her approval like an elixir.
Craved it, because what he truly wanted was her love. A love she’d freely offered and that he’d unthinkingly rejected.
‘How did you do it?’
‘The why is probably more important.’
She narrowed her eyes. ‘Yet that’s not the question I asked.’
The burn was well deserved. She wanted answers, and he was here to give them to her. To apologise, to beg for forgiveness. To ask her to allow him to come back into her life. To say that he would take her love if she still offered it, and cherish her, rather than flinging her emotions back in her face.
‘How did I get them to call off their legal action?’ He shrugged. That had been the easy part in the end. ‘I offered them money.’
A great deal of money, but he’d come to realise it didn’t matter. Why should it, when his quest for revenge had lost him someone whose importance had become vital to him?
‘That must have hurt,’ she said.
The pain was nothing compared to the agony of watching her walk out of the door. Waiting for her to return in the assuredness she would, then realising she had no intention of coming back. Though he didn’t think she’d want to hear that, not right now.
He shrugged. ‘Money’s nothing when compared to certainty. They did a lot of posturing, so I did a little of my own. I’ve been investigating their charities but haven’t been able to pin anything on them. Just rumours, suspicions, reports that didn’t add up. I warned them they’d attracted my attention and that they could use the funds to rectify what I suspected were anomalies in their accounts. It seemed they took my advice.’
Whilst he didn’t have solid evidence, he’d seen the fear in their eyes. They wouldn’t learn. One day they’d slip, and there would be no more of his money to bail them out. The regulators would catch them. He’d wasted too much of his life on them already, the hatred, the revenge. What he wanted to focus on now was love.
‘Is that all you came to tell me?’
He had so much more to say. That life without her had become a cold, dark place. How, when she’d walked away, the meaning for everything he’d done in the past and what he’d worked towards in the future had simply evaporated. How he’d thought she was trapped in the past when the person who’d been trapped all along was him.
But even more, he wanted to reassure her that Easton Hall was safe. That she could live in it, and that he’d never try to take it away from her.
‘I came to tell you that I’ll continue with whatever repairs Easton Hall needs. Anything you want will be done. The house is your home to live in for as long as you want. For ever, if that’s what you choose. Because all I want, Lulu, is for you to be happy.’
Louisa stood up, her chair scraping on the rustic tiles of the kitchen floor. She couldn’t sit still. She wanted to pace. Only a few months ago this would have been everything she’d dreamed of. Yet she realised all of her dreams since leaving Matteo were still bound up in him. The passion, the pleasure.
That didn’t make dreams reality.
‘What if I don’t want to live there?’
‘Then you don’t have to. After what you’ve inherited already from Mae’s estate, you’re a wealthy woman but, as you’ve reminded me, Easton Hall has been your home and you still deserve part of it. If you want to move away for ever, we can calculate the value of your right to reside, and I’ll pay you for it. Then you can go anywhere you want in the world.’
What did she really want? She wrapped her arms around herself, turned away and looked out of a small kitchen window to Lake Como and the tiny dot on the other side that was Villa Arcadia.
There was so much she had to say, she hardly knew where to start. Though, where better than one of the things that had hurt her the most?
‘You said I wouldn’t survive on my own.’
She heard Matteo’s chair move out from the table. A prickle at the back of her neck. A slide of warmth telling her he was close.
‘I was wrong. You didn’t just survive, you thrived.’
Thriving might have been a bit of an overstatement.
‘How do you even know?’ she asked.
He gave a short, sharp laugh. ‘Don’t you think in the days after you left, that I didn’t look for you? I needed to make sure you were okay. I knew you’d left a pensione in the next village. Then I spoke to Mrs Fancutt and she told me you were still in Italy. In the end, I found you here.’
Her heart began to beat a quick and thready rhythm. She’d thought that he didn’t care at all, that he’d completely washed his hands of her, and yet here he was admitting that he’d known what she was doing all along. That she was just across the lake from him. Then why did it still seem like an unbreachable gulf?
Louisa wheeled round, the burn of tears threatening. Her voice catching in her throat. ‘You hurt me, Matteo. You made me feel special and then you took that all away because revenge against the family was more important than anything. It would never be me.’
He took a step forward. Stopped. A moment of hesitation as if he was unsure of himself.
‘I’ve never dwelled on my mistakes. I’ve lived a life with no regrets, believing that I was relentlessly moving forward. But, Lulu, I have regretted every moment of that last conversation with you. Analysed every word that would have caused you pain. I’ve obsessed. Immersed in a past I can’t take back but wish I could change. I came to realise that anything I wanted, revenge, business, success, money, it was all hollow without you in my life.’
Everything stilled. It was as if she forgot to breathe, as if her heart had missed a beat. ‘What are you saying?’
‘I can’t change the past, that’s what shaped me. It’s the future I have some control over, and I’ve come to realise that my past has held me hostage for long enough. I said I’d accepted that I’d never find my birth family, but I lied. To myself more than anyone else. You were right. I was searching and searching for something that never really existed. Now I’ve stopped.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘My whole life has been about temporary. I didn’t believe another person could give me love. I figured deep down that you’d walk away and leave me, so I pushed you away as if that would protect me. Instead, I came to realise whether I pushed you away or whether you walked away on your own, that knife plunging into my heart hurt just the same. My search was for family when what I’d been looking for was standing right in front of me, imploring me to choose her. When I realised that, everything became easy. I want you. I choose you. I love you.’
Her back pressed into the kitchen benchtop, hands gripping the edges to hold her up, because she could hardly believe what he was telling her. ‘You love me?’
‘How could I not?’ He began to move forwards again. ‘You said I was looking for a home. When you walked away, I realised what I hadn’t before. That home isn’t a place.’
He was talking about a home now? What about the man who travelled the world, who never stood still...?
‘You want to make Easton Hall your home, with me?’
He was so close. She tilted her head back to look up at him and the hard man of that last, awful day had simply disappeared. Melted away. All she saw was softness, for her.
She saw Matty again.
‘Did you miss the part about me saying I love you?’
She gave a tremulous laugh. Was this a dream? Could this be real? ‘No, I kind of got that bit.’
‘You’re my home, Lulu. Wherever you want to be, I’ll be too. My place is with you. What I’d really like is for you to say you still love me too. But if you don’t, if you don’t trust me yet, then I’m prepared to work at it. Diligently.’
Everything seemed so shaky in this moment and yet heat began to flood over her. ‘I really like it when you’re diligent.’
The corner of his mouth kicked up in a wry grin. ‘I hoped you might.’
‘What if I said that I’ve never really loved anybody before? It feels thrilling, it feels terrifying, and I really don’t have a single clue what I’m doing.’
He laughed. Rubbed a hand over his face. ‘Don’t worry, neither do I. We can practise together, till we make it perfect. But right now, I’d really like to hold you.’
Matty opened his arms and she walked right into them. He wrapped her tight. That comforting sense of belonging returned. As she relaxed into his embrace, his damp chinos brushed against her legs. She pulled back to look at him.
‘Why are your trousers wet?’
The corner of his mouth kicked up. ‘I motored across the lake to see you. There was no mooring, so I had to wade to shore.’
The little boat she’d seen, that was him. If she could have fallen even more in love with him in this moment, she would have. But that was impossible. Her heart was too full already. All the times she’d gazed out at his villa, just a speck in the distance. Wondering whether he was still there. What he was doing... ‘Did you look across the lake to me?’
‘Every day and every night from the time I discovered where you were.’
They’d been watching each other. Tears pricked her eyes and one escaped, tracking down her cheek. Matty gently brushed it away with his thumb.
‘Marry me, Lulu? I can’t bear the idea of another day away from you. I want to prove that we should never be apart again. We can forget everyone else and make our own family together.’
‘You don’t need to prove anything to me, Matty. I’ll marry you because I love you. I can’t think of a better reason.’
He threaded his fingers through her hair, brushed his lips gently across her mouth.
‘There’s no better reason in the world.’