Chapter Nine #2
‘Nonna,’ Dante interrupted with an affectionate smile that was just about the last affectionate anything Charlotte could take from Dante.
She’d gone from knowing they needed to give a stellar performance to feeling like she was drowning in a sea of confusion.
Because he was so good at playing this part and she was so good at bouncing right back off of him, that it all felt so incredibly natural and dangerously, terrifyingly real.
She needed some space and she needed it immediately.
‘You’ll work it out,’ Allegra confided.
‘I had thought you would enjoy staying in the east wing, but a newly-engaged couple likes, more than anything, some space, so I have asked Rosaria to set up the pool house for you. It should be done, by now.’
‘Nonna,’ Dante’s voice was lined with warmth. ‘Please stop making Rosaria run around like this. Charlotte and I can take care of ourselves.’
‘Oh, nonsense. You know she loves to fuss.’
‘I know she loves you and would do anything you asked of her.’
Allegra’s smile was one of genuine pleasure. ‘Yes, dear. But lucky for her, I feel quite the same. Now, off you go, I’m going to take a little nap before the evening.’
Dante reached down and pressed a kiss to his grandmother’s cheeks.
‘I’m glad you came home, my darling. It never feels quite right without you.
’ Then, turning to Charlotte, ‘And I am very pleased to meet you, Charlotte. You are quite lovely and I can see for myself how happy you make him. It has been a long time since he’s been happier.
I’ve wondered, sometimes, if he’d ever—,’
Charlotte felt Dante bristle beside her.
‘But no matter. He is happy now and you must hurry up and get married, so I can once again feel a baby San Marino in my arms.’ She clapped her hands together, totally unaware of the way Dante seemed to have almost stopped breathing.
But Charlotte was. She felt it. She saw it.
She just knew the throwaway line was wreaking havoc with his senses.
‘I’m not getting any younger, you know,’ she waggled a finger in their faces, laughed, and turned, leaving them alone on the terrace—Dante with a face that was ashen beneath his tan and eyes that swept shut just as soon as he could be sure his grandmother would not notice.
‘Dante?’ she moved to stand in front of him. ‘Are you okay?’
He almost seemed to sway. She wondered, briefly, if he might be about to faint and quickly did the calculations on how someone of her size and stature might save a falling Dante from cracking his head against the ground.
But a moment later, he opened his eyes and seemed to stare right through Charlotte, almost like she didn’t exist. ‘I’m fine.
’ His smile was tight and dismissive, ice-cold and laced with rejection.
It was in such stark contrast to the way he’d been looking at her whilst Allegra put them through their paces.
Like the sun being rolled over by thick, grey storm clouds. She couldn’t help but shiver.
‘You don’t look—,’
‘I said, I’m fine. I just need a breather from all that fakery. I’ll get Rosaria to show you to the pool house. Excuse me.’
* * *
‘The pool house’ was a heck of a misnomer, if ever there’d been one, Charlotte thought, as the housekeeper—a woman in perhaps her late fifties—showed Charlotte through the grounds.
It was a short walk from the main house, over a red brick path that was lined on either side by lushly overgrown lavender bushes, fragrant with their bristly purple flowers reaching towards the sky.
She reached for one as she passed, lifting it to her lips and trying to take some kind of comfort from the familiar scent.
Her mother had a line of bushes, not dissimilar to this, surrounding her potager.
In truth, she needed to stay completely focused on the moment to keep Dante’s harsh words from her mind.
And the effect they’d had on her—acting like a lead weight so she was sucked ruthlessly quickly out of the lovely, warm, accepting bubble Allegra had so easily created for them on the sunlit terrace.
‘It is not locked,’ Rosaria said, her accent far thicker than Allegra’s. ‘There is no need. The estate is secure.’ Her smile beamed. ‘You can press this button,’ she gestured to a small white panel near the door. ‘Any time. It connects to the housekeeping team.’
‘Oh, good. So, it won’t just bother you?’
‘Not at all. There are a few of us, but Allegra prefers me above all else,’ Rosaria said, her cheeks flushing with pleasure.
‘How long have you worked here?’ She asked.
‘Oh, a very long time, now,’ she said, rocking back on her heels a little, as if considering that. ‘About a summer before—,’ she glanced towards the house and lowered her voice. ‘The accident.’
Charlotte’s eyes narrowed. ‘So you knew Dante back then.’
Rosaria nodded.
‘So very sad,’ she murmured, not meaning to pry, even when she totally did want to pry.
‘A great tragedy. Allegra has never really been the same. Only with Dante does she light up, again. And for a while, with—,’
‘Jamie,’ Charlotte supplied, to save the other woman’s obvious reluctance to mention Dante’s ex-wife.
‘It’s okay,’ she reassured her. ‘I know how much she meant to Allegra. And Dante, come to think of it,’ she said, glad that the words emerged without any hint of jealousy—as was appropriate, given that this was a fake relationship, admittedly with a serving of sex on the side.
‘Yes, but now they have you,’ Rosaria smiled brightly. ‘Such wonderful news.’ She glanced over Charlotte’s shoulder. ‘Should you need anything, just press the button.’
And with that, the housekeeper was gone.
* * *
Dante wasn’t proud of himself for running away, but that was, nonetheless, exactly what he did.
Despite the heat of the day, he set off from the villa in a long-legged stride that carried him through the rose garden, past the koi pond and the potager, over a large field that sometimes housed goats and, finally, to the olive grove, with the lines and lines of thick-trunked trees and their silver leaved foliage.
There was something so familiar about this part of the estate, from the trees themselves to the way they smelt, to the sound of the leaves, rustling in the last afternoon breeze.
He strode between their trunks, memories of his childhood particularly thick here, dousing him with a sense of history he wanted to fight.
He hadn’t hesitated to bring Charlotte here.
Obviously, it was the only way to convince his grandmother he was happy, that she could finally stop worrying about him.
To give her the gift of complacency at the end of her life.
But then, he hadn’t really properly prepared for the reality of Charlotte being at his family home.
Of seeing her dazzle his grandmother with her charm and quick wit.
Of seeing her wrap the older woman around her finger, so to speak.
He hadn’t been prepared for how completely at home she’d seem here, how much she’d almost seem to belong.
In a way Jamie never really had.
Jamie had always been so nervous, like a meek little mouse, scared to break anything, scared to say the wrong thing, even when Allegra had blunted all her more forthright instincts and been gentle and soft.
No, Jamie was very different to Charlotte. But she’d still belonged, Dante reassured himself, with a slick of unpleasant disloyalty making him remember the past properly. Jamie had been his wife, his other half. And as such, she’d become a part of the family.
Why hadn’t that been enough for her? Why couldn’t she just accept that they weren’t able to have children and move on?
He shook his head in frustration, dragging a hand through his hair, thinking back to their marriage.
Trying to pinpoint the exact moment he’d recognised what was happening.
How fruitless it was to keep trying because she was starting to hate him.
To resent him with the kind of bitterness that could never be erased.
Whatever love there’d once been between them had died and they had both been simply going through the motions.
Whether out of sheer stubbornness or loyalty, he couldn’t say.
In some ways, it felt like a lifetime ago.
But when his grandmother had mentioned children, on the terrace this afternoon, he’d had a trauma response, plain and simple.
Every part of him had seized up. He’d panicked.
And he’d taken that out on Charlotte, Punishing her when she’d done nothing but play the part of his fake fiancé with absolute aplomb.
Even when that had involved sharing more about herself than she might have liked.
She’d done her best for him and he’d thanked her by being rude and obnoxious.
She deserved, at the very least, to know why.