Chapter Ten #2
It was why he saw the estate differently too now. For the first time in what felt like a very long time, he didn’t see the raw-edged, big-skied land that had belonged in his family for centuries as a burden to be carried or a privilege that required a drip-feed of sacrifice.
Now it was his living and his home, and he had fallen in love with it all over again.
As he had fallen in love with Dulcie all over again.
And her reward?
He had lied to her. He had told her that there were no secrets between them. But there were. And when she’d found out the truth, he had lost her.
And now he was losing his mind.
After Dulcie fled the hotel, he waited in Paris. Hoping, praying she would return. Leaving the hotel at dawn, he retraced his steps through the city, even returning to the hotel they had stayed in when they first met.
And then Valentina called him and said that his father had been taken ill and was asking for him and he had a choice that was not a choice. Just like the one he had forced Dulcie to make when Oscar turned up in London two years ago.
His chest ached for the pain he had caused her.
And then his pain had intensified two hours ago when he’d realised that Dulcie had paid back every penny she owed him and, finally, he was forced to accept that she had fled to England.
And that for the second time in his life, their marriage was over.
‘Ettore.’
His father was sitting up in bed with an oxygen tank on the floor beside him. He looked pale and small and relieved. Not at all like his father.
‘Papà.’
Leaning in, he kissed his father’s papery cheek. ‘How are you feeling? Valentina said you were struggling to breathe. She had to call the doctor.’
‘I’m fine.’ His father waved his hand dismissively.
‘Is that what the doctor said?’
‘Oh, I only let him come and see me to keep Valentina from calling an ambulance and the fire brigade. Sit, sit.’ He patted the bed. ‘It’s ghoulish. Keep calling the doctor every two minutes. I sent him away. Dying men should be left to die with dignity. Or better still a magnum of champagne.’
‘You’re not dying right now, Papà. And sending the doctor away is not helpful.’
‘And you want to help me, do you?’
He felt suddenly exhausted. ‘Of course I do. Is this about Sofia?’ Obviously, it was. It was only ever about Sofia.
But Edoardo shook his head. ‘It’s about you. My son and heir.’
There was something in his father’s voice that made his body tense.
His father shifted on the bed. ‘Everyone thought your brother was like me. It’s flattering for a father to be told that.
But Edo was the spit of your uncle. Your mother’s younger brother, Marco.
That’s why your mother doted on him. Spoiled him.
And he was easy to spoil. Like your sister.
Like all of your family, me included. We’re party-starters, lotus-eaters. But you, you were always different.’
Ettore stared down at his father. Where was the old man going with this?
As if to answer that unspoken question, Edoardo gestured towards a portrait of a dark-haired man with clean features and an intense, fulminating gaze.
‘You’re like my grandfather. Piero Ettore.
He wasn’t set to inherit the title but, as you know, his brother drowned when his yacht capsized, and your great-grandfather stepped up.
What you might not know is that he saved our family from financial collapse.
My father, of course, carried on the more typical family tradition of embezzling and bed-hopping behind closed doors.
It is his mess that you only recently managed to clean up. ’
Ettore shrugged. ‘It’s what I do.’ He’d done it so many times in his life, he should be an expert, and yet here he was, newly estranged from his wife for the second time. If that wasn’t a mess, he didn’t know what was.
His father’s eyes were fixed on his, and for once they weren’t languid or mocking.
‘And you do it very well.’ Edoardo took a gulp of oxygen and breathed out shakily.
‘Too well, I think. It confines you. And I’m sorry for that. But I’m extraordinarily grateful and pleased that you are my son and my heir. Edo, I think, would have struggled, and failed.’
He took another gulp of oxygen.
‘And I think he knew that. It made him angry and reckless.’
Edoardo closed his hand over Ettore’s wrist.
‘I loved your brother. I miss him every day. I know you do too. But you were not to blame for his death. Your mother was upset, horribly upset, but she was wrong to say what she did. I was wrong not to make that clear before now. I was wrong not to protect you from her grief.’
Ettore could feel his father’s pulse beating through his skin.
‘Why now, Papà? Why are you telling me this?’
‘Because the truth hurts, but sometimes it’s better to face it than hide from it. Because you are here, and Dulcie is not. And the two of you have been inseparable like a pair of heavenly twins.’
There was a gentleness to his father’s voice that he had rarely heard. The last time, in fact, had been when he gave Dulcie the bracelet.
He pulled it out and it sat glittering on the palm of his hand.
‘Dulcie isn’t here because we broke up. In Paris.’
‘I know.’
His father smiled. ‘Your wife wrote me a letter. A note, really. But she made good use of every word. Very eloquent for a scientist. It caught me off guard. Made me think about things I should have said or done. Regret a few things too. But that’s what old men do, isn’t it?’
Ettore stared at his father mutely, his blood thin and airless. In the dizzying panic of the morning and his misery and the rush of questions and conjectures Edoardo’s confession might have prompted, only one mattered. ‘Dulcie wrote to you.’
Nodding, Edoardo reached over and picked the book from his bedside table. He pulled out an envelope. ‘Here, read it.’
Ettore opened the envelope and stared down at the handwritten note.
Dear Edoardo,
I wanted to thank you for being such a wonderful host during my time at your beautiful castle, but also to let you know that Ettore and I are not together any more.
It hurts to write those words, but my pain is not your concern.
Your son’s is. Ettore loves his family so much.
He would do and has done everything to keep you all safe and secure in your way of life.
Please look after him and give him the love he deserves.
Dulcie
P.S. Don’t be stubborn about ageing. Use your sticks and your oxygen because growing old is a gift. Embrace it. And embrace your son.
Ettore stared down at the sheet of paper, his heart a dead, lead weight against his ribs, Dulcie’s words burning in his brain.
‘She says that you’re not together, and you aren’t. But it still strikes me as odd.’
‘Odd?’
‘Apparently you would and have done everything to make sure your family is safe and yet, in the same letter, she’s telling me to look after you and give you the love you deserve, which sounds to me as if she has and would do anything to ensure your happiness.
So, on paper at least, you seem very well suited to one another. ’
Ettore stared at his father. ‘I don’t know why she would write that.’
The old man shrugged. ‘And you won’t find out if you don’t go and talk to her.’
‘She doesn’t want to talk to me. And she shouldn’t. I lied to her, I manipulated her. I hurt her. I made a mess of everything.’ His voice cracked and he pressed his hands against his temples as if doing so might crush the truth of that statement into dust.
‘So go clear it up. That’s what you do, isn’t it? Clear up messes.’
‘I let her go, Papà. I pushed her away twice. Twice. I mean, once is a mistake but twice is unforgivable.’
His father snorted.
‘That sounds like something written on one of those appalling little magnets people stick on their fridges.’ Edoardo sighed.
‘I’m not good at love myself but I know it when I see it and you love Dulcie.
And as a gambling man, and judging by the changes I saw in you when you brought her here, I’d lay odds that you never stopped loving her.
Nor will you. And don’t imagine for one moment that you’ll get over her.
Absence is cruel like that. Hence, my regrets. ’
Reaching over, he patted his son’s hand.
‘But you’re not an old man like me, Ettore. You don’t need to spend your remaining days on earth marking time. You’re young and smart and you have a life to live. Not here with me, but with Dulcie.
‘And in case you’ve forgotten, you share a name not just with your great-grandfather but a great warrior.
So go and fight for the woman who wrote me this letter.
The woman who loves you. The woman you love.
Because when two people love one another, truly love one another like the two of you, nothing can keep them apart. ’