“With Chiara?”
“I never loved her. She was safe. But my parents. They used to yell and scream and—I’ve seen it too many times, with everyone I know. However happy Cesare and his wife look now, it will end that way with them too. Love always ends. Either in hatred, or in death.”
Reaching out, she grabbed his hand. “You’re right. Life ends in death. Hatred is optional. So is love. But if we’re afraid to feel either one, what are we left with except emptiness? What is that, but killing ourselves while we’re still alive?”
For a moment, Alex felt the magnetic pull of her, of the emotional longing in her lovely brown eyes. All he had to do was surrender. All he had to do was give in—
But if he let himself feel, thirty-five years of repressed emotion might swallow him whole, drown him.
He looked away. “I can’t be like you. Perhaps you can love like that. I cannot. I don’t have the capacity. I never learned how.”
“That’s not true. If you’d only—”
“I can’t,” Alex cut her off. “I’m sorry.” He exhaled, then looked down at her. He repeated in a low voice, “I’m sorry.”
“All right.” With an intake of breath, she tried to smile, even while her eyes were luminous with unshed tears. “I’ll try to live without it.”
Without love? Alex looked at her beautiful yet miserable face.
Could she? And could he let her do it?
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“YOU’VE BECOME A DOORMAT, ma chérie.”
The next morning, after Rosalie had stumbled out of the small cot in the nursery, exhausted from a night tossing and turning and getting up twice to feed the baby, she came downstairs with Oliver to see if the housekeeper had made coffee. She looked out the windows and saw bright sunlight pouring over golden fields and clusters of trees i
n vivid autumn reds and oranges.
So beautiful it hurt.
She found Odette alone in the kitchen. The white-haired Frenchwoman handed Rosalie a steaming china cup of coffee laden with sugar and cream. But as she breathed her gratitude and took her first sip, her great-aunt had said those words that burned through her heart.
Swallowing hard, she looked down at her baby prattling happily against her hip.
“I’m not a doormat,” Rosalie told them both.
Odette shook her head. “You look like you need something for strength. I’m making you an omelet.” Pulling down a copper pan from a hook, before whisking eggs and then adding ingredients, her aunt said, “Last night, I had my window open. For fresh air.”
Rosalie swallowed. “What did you hear?”
Her aunt met her gaze. “I heard my precious niece beg for the love of her husband, and accept it meekly when he refused her.”
Rosalie blushed, horrified. Setting the china cup down on the counter, she said in a low voice, “What else can I do? Alex is right. He told me from the beginning he could not love me.”
“Why did you marry him, then?”
Rosalie gaped. “You were the one who said I should!”
“I said your baby needed a stable home and father,” the older woman corrected. “I never said you had to marry him.”
Hadn’t she? Rosalie struggled to remember.
Odette looked at baby Oliver, with his chubby cheeks and good nature. “Do you want your son to grow up thinking this is normal in a marriage? That he should have no feelings and ignore his wife and child?”
Rosalie sucked in her breath. “I cannot force Alex to love me. So what choice do I have?”
“Plenty.”