Chapter Fourteen #2
A cry broke from her, and her hands gripped his so tightly it hurt. ‘Don’t leave me!’ It was a cry from her heart. The heart she had thought broken. Broken for ever. ‘Don’t leave me,’ she said again, a whisper now. A plea.
His arms came about her, slipping from her gripping hands, holding her close, so close.
‘I will never,’ he said, ‘leave you.’
And in his voice was all that she had ever longed to hear. And more as well.
‘I will never leave you because I love you. To leave you would be to cease to exist.’ He drew back a fraction, cupping her face now with his hands, so warm, so strong, so dear. Her tears were wetting them, but he did not seem to mind. His eyes were gazing into hers.
‘Come back to me,’ he was saying now. ‘Come back to me and let me exist again. Live again. Live—I pray, and hope, and beg, and plead—with you at my side, all, all my life.’ He smoothed away her tears with his thumbs, easing across her streaming cheeks.
‘Come back to me, my dearest, most treasured, most beloved Eleanora—the wife I love—’ she heard his voice catch now ‘—so, so much.’
She clutched at him with emotion, so, so much emotion, which for so long had been only anguish and pain and loss and heartbreak, now transformed—radiant, wondrous—filling her. She could only say his name, so she said it again and then again. Even as the tears poured from her eyes.
He wrapped her in his arms again, and on his broad, strong chest, in his strong, cherishing arms, she cried out all her pain and anguish, and in their place flowed what would always, always be there now. Joy and love and the happiness of her heart for ever.
And when the exchange had taken place, and her tears had ebbed and she was sitting back now, cradled against him, his arm around her shoulders, holding her close, so close, his hand warm on her upper arm, even as his free hand was folded over hers in her lap, she lifted her face to his.
‘I didn’t dare love you,’ she told him. Her eyes were stricken.
‘Even though I knew I was falling in love with you, I didn’t dare, because I knew the time would come when the Palazzo was complete, and then we would be divorced.
But as that time came closer, it became agonising.
I had to force myself, brace myself, prepare myself for our parting to arrive.
That’s why I made myself talk about it that Sunday morning. ’
His face twisted. ‘It shocked me to the core. I hadn’t seen it coming.
Saw no reason—’ his voice changed ‘—for it to come. Because—’ he took a breath, a ragged one ‘—why should it? When there was no need for it—a divorce—not any longer.’ He paused, looked into her eyes.
‘I thought,’ he said, ‘you knew. Felt the same as I did.’
‘Oh, Sanzio, I did! I felt it every, every day! But you…you never said.’
He looked rueful. ‘I didn’t think I had to. I thought—’ he drew breath again ‘—it was obvious.’
He lifted one of her hands, grazed it with his mouth, eyes holding hers. ‘What a fool I was, not to stake my claim on you!’
She gave a twisted smile. ‘And what a fool I was, to listen to Tonia’s lies when I so stupidly went to meet her the morning after the gala, telling me you only married me, only took me to bed, to make her want you back after she’d jilted you.’
He lowered her hand to her lap again.
‘Let’s get this clear. She,’ Sanzio said, ‘did not jilt me. It was I who broke up with her!’
Eleanora stared. ‘But she told me—’
‘Yet another lie. Of course she did! Do you really think Tonia,’ he said cynically, ‘would ever admit to being rejected?’ He shook his head.
‘I admit…confess…that at first, I thought your sister would make an ideal trophy wife for me, but then the more time I spent with her, the more I realised what she truly was. Her selfishness, self-obsession, her avarice and her totally repellent personality, superficially disguised by her much-vaunted allure for my cretinous sexnot to mention her looking down on me for being self-made!- finally succeeded in repulsing me totally. So I dumped her.’ He said it with distinct satisfaction.
Eleanora’s eyes widened. ‘No wonder she wanted to lure you back! So she could prove you couldn’t resist her!
‘And she failed. Totally—and humiliatingly.’ He paused.
‘I want you to know,’ he said, ‘that on that nightmare Sunday, when I… I panicked, and thought that making you jealous might make you want to keep me instead of divorce me, which backfired on me so completely and only hurt you and drove you away, for which I can never, never forgive myself… I want you to know that the last words I said to her were to tell her to go to hell, and to call her what I thought her.’
He said the name he’d called her—crude, and coarse and, Eleanora could not help but agree, one hundred percent accurate.
‘Ouch!’ she said.
‘She deserved it,’ Sanzio said. He pressed her hands.
‘And now,’ he said decisively, ‘we are going to dump your toxic sister from our lives, for ever and for good. We,’ he told her, ‘are going home—home to the Palazzo we love, which is ours and only ours, and will one day be our children’s too.
And we have saved it for them, and for our children’s children.
And at the Palazzo, my adored and precious and most beloved Eleanora, my wife and my love and the beauty of my life, we,’ he told her, and his gaze on her was filled with all she had longed to see so, so much, ‘are going to live happily ever after.’ He gave his crooked smile. ‘Will that suit you?’ he asked her.
She answered his smile with hers. ‘Perfectly,’ she told him. ‘Just perfectly.’
He kissed her then. A kiss of reconciliation, of reverence, of tenderness and love.
And she returned the kiss with just the same.
Then, lifting his head, he spoke, a quizzical look in his eye now. ‘Do you think,’ he said, ‘we could let your mother know that everything is all right between us? You see,’ he went on ruefully, ‘she’s threatened to throw me to a herd of stallions in heat to trample me to death if I upset you!’
Eleanora gave a laugh. ‘Only mares come into heat, not stallions,’ came her reply. She wasn’t her mother’s daughter for nothing. ‘Stallions—’ she cast a glance at him ‘—are eager to mate with any mare who, um, shows willing—’
Sanzio drew her to her feet. Looked down at her lovingly. She felt her heart turn over. Over and over. Happiness, she was discovering, was almost too much to contain. It was spilling out of her…radiating out of her. She was embracing him with it, the man she loved so, so much, desired so, so much.
‘I know the feeling,’ Sanzio said. ‘Providing,’ he added, ‘that female is you.’
He kissed her again, then threw her a questioning look. ‘Do you think,’ he asked, ‘we could make use of that very handy guest casita we had on our honeymoon?’
‘Both bedrooms again?’ Eleanora posed, a smile tugging at her mouth.
‘This time,’ Sanzio said firmly, ‘just the one.’