Page 60 of Forgotten Mistress, Secret Love-Child
After being surrounded by servants, getting used to her new life as the Contessa Mattani, and absorbing the overwhelming reality of her role as Alessandro’s wife, she’d been eager for a ‘normal’ day with people who hadn’t a clue who she was. Had it been a mistake?
By the time she reached the aisle, Rosina had gone and the ferry was coming in to dock. People rose, ready to stream ashore.
Yet Alessandro stood unmoving, as if riveted to the spot. Fear made her heart thump so hard it seemed to catapult around her chest.
She hadn’t wanted to care for him, but somehow he’d deviously wormed his way back into her heart. He pleasured her to within an inch of her sanity, comforted her when she needed it, made her feel…special.
She could no longer pretend she didn’t care. Didn’t love.
Carys swallowed a welling knot of anxiety. ‘Alessandro?’
He turned and for a moment it seemed as if he didn’t see her. His gaze was blank, inward looking. Then he blinked, focused, and snagged her close, away from the people thronging towards the door.
‘Bruno has Leo? Good.’ He sounded just the same as ever, but he looked…different.
‘What is it, Alessandro?’ He met her eyes for a moment before looking away, towards the passengers. Somewhere in that crowd was the woman who’d talked to him so earnestly.
‘Come.’ He curved his arm around her back and led her to the door. ‘It’s all right. Leo and Bruno are on their way.’
It wasn’t all right; Carys could see the pinched line of his mouth and the deep crease in his forehead.
Yet it wasn’t till they were ashore and a waiting car had delivered them to the villa, that Carys got any answers. Alessandro gave a sleepy Leo into his nanny’s arms, and as if too edgy to settle indoors, led the way to the private path along the lake. He seemed distracted, forgetting to shorten his long pace so she had to scurry to keep up.
‘Please, Alessandro.’ The look on his face, as if he’d just seen a ghost, frightened her. ‘What’s wrong? What did Rosina want?’
He turned then, the expression in his shadowed eyes unreadable. ‘You remember her?’
‘Of course. She was kind to me.’ At a time when Carys had felt lost. ‘Does she still work for you?’ Carys realised she didn’t even know if he’d kept his mountain home.
He shook his head. ‘When I went to hospital, the house was shut up. She took the retirement she’d put off and moved away to be near her daughter. When I came out of hospital I settled into the family villa instead.’
Was that wistfulness in his voice? The home he’d built had been so like him, vibrantly unique and attractive. Did he miss it?
‘But she said something to you.’ Something significant.
Alessandro shrugged, walking ahead as her steps slowed.
‘She said it was good to see me again, all recovered. Good to see us,’ he added after a moment.
Carys started forward. ‘She remembered me?’ He nodded. ‘What else did she say?’ There was more. Shadows darkened Alessandro’s face, each line etched as if on a lifeless mask.
‘She congratulated us on our wedding. She read about it in the papers.’
‘And?’ Alessandro was stonewalling. After living with him she knew that much.
Suddenly he stopped and turned. ‘She was there the day you left.’
The day Alessandro had told her to go. The day he’d found her, dishevelled from holding Stefano Manzoni at bay, and leapt to the conclusion she’d been fooling with her lover, not fighting off a predator.Alessandro’s fury had been instantaneous and all consuming, as if the incident had thrown fuel on a long-smouldering fire.
Carys groped for the balustrade between her and the water as memories she’d tried to forget came rushing back.
‘I see.’
‘No. You don’t.’ Something in his voice made her turn. His expression baffled her. ‘She said that after you left, I couldn’t settle. I paced the house from end to end.’
That didn’t surprise her. He’d been in a towering rage, for all that he’d kept it tightly leashed. Even his order to leave had been delivered in a lethally quiet whisper that had cut Carys to the bone and slashed through her last hopes that he could ever love her.
‘Twenty minutes later I raced out to the car. Apparently I said I was going to bring you back.’
Carys gasped. Her heart stuttered then eventually took up something like its usual rhythm.
Alessandro had gone after her? He’d wanted her back?
Her eyes opened so wide they stung. Did that mean he’d realised his accusations were baseless? Now her heart pounded like a locomotive and adrenaline pulsed in her blood.
