Chapter Nine #3
‘Have you got something planned?’ she asked as she dipped her croissant in her coffee.
He nodded.
‘I thought we might head out to Giverny.’
‘Really?’ She dropped her croissant in her coffee. ‘I’ve always wanted to go there.’
‘I know.’ She felt her heart flutter as Ettore fished the pastry out and swapped his cup for hers. ‘You mentioned it yesterday when we were at the botanical gardens.’
Only in passing, but he had noticed.
‘Have you been before?’ As he shook his head, she felt suddenly, stupidly elated. It was new to them both. They could discover it together.
The gardens were every bit as stunning as she had hoped.
There was an artistry and an exuberance to the planting that just blew her away.
The closest she got to artistry was doodling in her notebook.
But she could see how using plants with delicate, fluttering flowerheads such as gypsophila and bee blossom could recreate the shimmer that was so characteristic of Impressionist art.
‘This is what I want my garden to look like,’ she said as they crossed a wisteria-clad bridge over the water-lily-strewn ponds. ‘Unfortunately, I don’t have the space for a pond.’
‘You do now,’ he said softly.
‘So I can let my imagination run riot back at the castle,’ she teased.
‘Wherever, whenever you want.’
They ate lunch at a small bistro in the village, which had no menu but was clearly a favourite with the locals. Unsurprisingly, given that the food was simple and fresh and perfectly seasoned.
In the car on the way back to Paris, she checked her phone and there was a photo of Oscar wearing shorts and a T-shirt. He looked flushed and sweaty, but triumphant and the photo was captioned:
Couch to 5k. First run. To be continued…
‘That’s fantastic,’ Ettore said when she showed him the photo. He kissed her softly on the mouth. ‘Trust the process. He’ll get there.’
‘Did you check your messages?’
He nodded. ‘Just the usual. My uncle wants to talk about an investment opportunity, which is almost certainly code for some debt he’s amassed. And Gianni has a couple of things he wants to discuss but they aren’t urgent. Oh, and Carlo called.’
‘Who’s Carlo?’
‘My lawyer. He sent me a note offering his congratulations, but I’m guessing he wants to update my affairs to reflect the marriage.’
‘You mean a post-nup.’
‘Yes, but a post-nup isn’t just for me. Of course it will protect the estate. But it’s for you, too. To make sure you’re protected. And I want to protect you, Dulcie. You and Oscar.’
She bit her lip. ‘I don’t want to make any kind of claim on the estate. I know you probably think I do because I took your money.’
‘You borrowed the money. And you’ve already paid back the first instalment. How did you do that, by the way?’ he asked as the car stopped smoothly.
As they walked into the hotel, her mouth twisted into a shape that made the air in his lungs bunch in his throat. ‘I had some money I put aside for emergencies. You know, for when things get out of hand. But hopefully, there won’t be as many of those after Oscar gets out of rehab.’
‘You don’t need to rely on hope any more,’ he said gently. He hated the idea of Dulcie living in a state of high alert and, reaching out, he took her hands in his. ‘And if, if there’s an emergency, you have four hands now instead of two.’
She nodded slowly, and some of the tension left her face. ‘Thank you. And I am going to pay you back in full. I just need to get a job. I don’t want to be like your uncle or your cousins.’
‘You’re not like them.’
‘I’m going to prove that to you.’
‘You already have… What?’ His forehead creased as the lift door opened. ‘Why are you smiling?’ He let her into their suite.
‘It’s just us talking about the hard stuff like it’s easy.’
He stroked her face. ‘You make it easy.’ Their eyes met, and he felt the blue of her irises deep inside like a fork of lightning and a shiver of heat scampered over his skin.
Cazzo.
He swore silently, shoulders tightening as his phone juddered across the coffee table, and he had to force himself to glance down at the screen. No, he thought, not now.
‘Aren’t you going to answer it?’
‘It can wait. It’s just Carlo.’
‘It’s fine.’ She smiled, a sweet smile that he wanted to capture in a jar. ‘I thought we could order room service for dinner. I’ll go get the menu while you talk to him. Do you know what you want?’
‘You choose for me.’
He leaned in and kissed her softly on the lips and then his face altered fractionally, his voice too as he answered the phone, his gaze following Dulcie as she walked back into the living room.
‘Ciao, Carlo. Come stai? Sì, sto bene.’ He laid the phone down on the sofa, tapping the speaker icon so that the conversation would be audible to Dulcie when she joined him.
He would introduce her to Carlo when she returned and, in preparation, he switched to English.
Carlo worked with a lot of international clients, so he was fluent in several languages.
‘Thank you for your note. It was very kind of you and Carolina.’
‘My pleasure. I know you said you were taking a few days in Paris and as a friend I want you to enjoy your mini-moon, I believe it’s called.
But as your lawyer, and given that you’ve been married for two years, it’s my professional duty to ensure all aspects of your financial and legal well-being are secure.
As you know, marriage legally creates a binding contract with rights and responsibilities.
Financially, it can affect taxes, inheritance, and it can lead to shared assets and liabilities. ’
‘I know, and I apologise for the subterfuge of my actions. Dulcie and I met and married very quickly and when we separated we were both in shock. But neither of us wanted to end things permanently. We just had to find a way back to one another.’
Glancing up, he saw that Dulcie had returned and was leaning against the door frame, the menu in her hand, her eyes soft on his face.
Carlo laughed. ‘Well, love works in mysterious ways. But again, as your lawyer I have to say that your marriage is excellent news. Now that you’ve fulfilled the Corti-Marchesi clause in the will, I can see no further impediment to your inheritance of the estate and the title.’
Ettore felt his body stiffen. Even without looking in her direction, he could feel the impact of the lawyer’s words on his wife.
‘I need to go, Carlo.’
‘Of course, of course. Let me know when you’re back and congratulations again.’
As the lawyer hung up, Ettore switched off his phone and got to his feet.
‘Dulcie—’
‘What was he talking about?’ The stiffness in her body had edged into her voice. ‘What’s the Corti-Marchesi clause?’
‘It doesn’t matter.’
He started to walk towards her, but she held up her hand. ‘It sounded like it did. It sounded like it mattered a lot. I mean, fulfilling it means you inherit everything, right?’
Her face was blank of expression, but he could see the shock, the wound in her eyes.
‘Yes, it does, but—’
‘And to fulfil it, you had to get married?’
‘I have to be married before the current heir’s death.’
‘Must have been annoying when we split up, then. I guess you must have thought you could find a replacement pretty quick.’
‘I didn’t think that. I didn’t even know about the clause until three weeks ago.’
‘And then you came to find me.’
She blinked as if she were trying to wake up from a dream. ‘You said you wanted to make your father happy and then you offered me money to help my brother. You made me feel as though you were doing me a favour but all the time you were looking after yourself.’
‘Not myself. The estate, the castle. You’ve met my family; they would wipe out six hundred years of history and the livelihoods of an entire community in a matter of weeks if one of them inherited.
I can’t let that happen, dolcezza.’ He took a step towards her, wanting to take the pain from her eyes.
‘Don’t call me that.’ Her voice was cold like ice, but fragile too. And he knew if he took another step forward it would crack.
‘You expect me to believe that you care about those people? You didn’t want the responsibility. You told me you were going to walk away. Or was that a lie too?’
‘No, I was planning on leaving. Before I met you, when I pictured my family, I never saw myself. Fiana was the hardest place in the world for me to be happy. But then you came to Puglia, and it was the easiest.’
‘And you expect me to believe that.’
‘It’s the truth.’
‘Like it was true when you told me we needed to stay married because you wanted to make your father happy.’
‘That was true. It still is—’
‘And yet you didn’t tell me about the marriage clause, did you? Even though that was true too.’ Her mouth pulled into a smile that was utterly and heartbreakingly sad. ‘For the same reason you didn’t tell me you were a marquis. You didn’t trust me.’
‘I didn’t know you like I know you now.’
‘And I didn’t know you. I still don’t.’ Her fingertips were white where they were biting into the door frame.
‘Yesterday, you said we could make it work, make us work because we’d held nothing back. But you were lying—’
‘I wasn’t. I’d forgotten about the clause because it didn’t matter to me any more.
Look, when I came to Cambridge to find you, I was going to tell you that I wanted a divorce.
Then I saw you and I knew that I didn’t want to let you go.
I didn’t want to lose you, again. And I knew that Oscar needed help, and you needed money to help him, so I offered to pay for his treatment. ’
‘You wanted a divorce?’ She was staring at him as if he were a stranger, and then she was moving past him into the dressing room.
‘What are you doing?’ Heart pounding, he followed her in. She was shutting the safe. Her hands were shaking.
‘Here. Take this.’ She grabbed his hand, yanking open his fingers, and he looked down, his lungs seizing.
She had given him her wedding ring.
‘You wanted a divorce. You can have one.’
‘I don’t want that. I want you. I love you.’
‘You don’t know what love is. You used me.
You manipulated me. Just like my father did.
You twisted the facts to suit your agenda.
Never mind about Oscar. You let me believe I was doing a good thing, that I was bringing comfort to a dying man.
But all this time, it was about a castle?
About money? Don’t you dare tell me that’s love. ’
‘I have to, because it’s true.’
She snatched up her bag, her face pale and taut. ‘Love. Lies. Truth. Nothing you say means anything. Here. This is yours too.’ Her fingers fumbled with the clasp of the bracelet and then she tossed it to him.
‘My father gave it to you.’
‘Because you lied to him.’
‘Dulcie, wait.’ He made to grab her arm, but she was running now, out of the door and into the corridor.
She cannoned into a trolley laden with towels and cleaning products and then she was running again.
‘Sorry.’ Ettore righted the trolley for the startled-looking maid, but when he got to the end of the corridor, Dulcie had already disappeared.