He took her hand, looked at the ring glittering on it, and made a wry face. ‘Take this off, Antonia; I can’t bear to see it on your finger.’
‘Not yet, not tonight, Patrick,’ she said and saw his face tighten, his eyes lift to look at her angrily. She had given Cy that promise, yet she couldn’t let Patrick think she was undecided. She had to explain. ‘Promise me you won’t tell anyone else yet,’ she pleaded. ‘But...well...I’ve already told Cy that I won’t marry him...’
That shook him. His eyes narrowed, startled. ‘You have? Why didn’t you tell me earlier? Why let me think you might go on with it? You put me through torture.’
‘I’m sorry, Patrick, I didn’t want to...but, you see, I promised Cy I wouldn’t tell anyone until he had left Venice again. He’s going immediately. But he asked me to keep my ring on until he had gone, then put it in the safe at the palazzo. He didn’t want anyone here to know yet, and I felt I had to agree. Cy has a strong sense of his own dignity, his status here in Venice. He’s such a serious man; he hates being embarrassed, and hates even more the idea of losing face. He wanted to get back to Boston, where nobody knew me. I expect he’ll tell all his friends there that it was he who broke the engagement.’
Patrick watched her with shrewd, thoughtful eyes. ‘You don’t say you’re afraid you’ve hurt him badly, I notice. He didn’t really love you, did he?’
She shook her head, smiled at him wryly. ‘No, you’re right. He never did.’
‘I suspected it right from the beginning, although I didn’t know the guy, and could only guess,’ Patrick said. ‘He’d got engaged to you then flown back to the States and left you here. I worked out that that could mean one of two things. Either he was crazy about you and was afraid to stampede you in case he panicked you and you ran away from him, so had gone back to New York to let you get used to the idea of marrying him—that was a possibility, and would mean he was a very shrewd guy with the confidence to risk leaving you here alone—or, on the other hand, he was a cold fish who wasn’t in love with you at all.’
‘Cy isn’t so much cold as cool, but you’re right. He wasn’t in love with me. He just decided it was time he got married, and I was there at the right time, and seemed a suitable choice. He was very frank about that tonight. I hadn’t realised what he was really like or what he really wanted from me.’ She broke off and sighed. ‘Well, it doesn’t seem fair to him to talk about that. He didn’t hurt me, and I didn’t hurt him. That’s all that matters.’
Patrick nodded. ‘You’re right. It’s easy to hurt other people without meaning to. I’m glad you didn’t have to hurt him.’
Antonia watched his face uncertainly. ‘Patrick, we’ve never talked about...about Laura... Don’t you think we should?’
He gave a short sigh, shrugged. ‘You know everything important, Antonia. I was in love with her, and we were going to be married, and then she met someone else and fell in love with him. At the time I was very bitter, but since I met you I’ve realised what happened to her, because it has happened to me now.’
Happiness flooded through her; her eyes shone like the sea on a summer day, and Patrick smiled down at her passionately.
‘Laura got engaged to me because I asked her and there wasn’t anybody else in her life then. But I was just someone she liked and was fond of—she was never in love with me—and when she met a man who really turned her on she realised she’d made a mistake. If she had married me we would both have been unhappy once I realised she was never going to love me the way I did her.’
Antonia caught her breath, jealousy and pain stabbing her, and Patrick looked down at her, searching her expression.
‘Darling, don’t look like that.’ He kissed her softly, stroking her cheek with one long index finger. ‘Don’t you see? I got over Laura long ago. She doesn’t matter a damn to me now; I’ve accepted she made the right decision. In fact, ever since I met you again, found myself falling in love with you, I’ve been grateful to her. I love you far more than I ever loved Laura.’
‘But that night...in Bordighera...you only looked at me because you thought I was like her,’ Antonia whispered.
‘That was why I first stared at you,’ he admitted. ‘But then I saw you didn’t look like her, and I still found myself attracted... When the police accused me of attacking you I was confused enough not even to be sure I wasn’t guilty, because I knew I’d wanted you while I was looking at you at that party. In fact, that was why I was so angry at the time. I was furious with myself for wanting you that way, especially after I heard what had happened. I almost felt it had been me—’
She was pale, shaken. ‘Patrick! And I used to dream...’ She stopped, biting her lip, and he stared, frowning.
‘Dream?’ He watched her shrewdly, then slowly said, ‘That it had been me?’
She nodded silently, seeing the shock and anger in his face, and frightened of his reaction.
‘So that was why you were so terrified when you met me again? Why you were scared to admit you wanted me to make love to you?’ he said harshly.
Afraid of his rage, she clung to him, burying her face in his chest, mumbling into his shirt. ‘Don’t look so hurt! Don’t be angry with me!’
He held her, kissed her hair, his voice rough. ‘I’m not angry with you, darling. If I’m angry it isn’t with you, it’s because of what happened to you.’
‘I felt it was my fault,’ she confessed at last, her face hidden against his shirt, hearing the strong beat of his heart very close to her, and reassured by the rhythm and strength of it. ‘I wanted you that night; I fell in love with you at first sight and I had to follow you down to that beach, and that’s why...why...it happened.’
‘Oh, my God, is that what you’ve been thinking all this time? I knew there was something you were holding back, that it wasn’t just the obvious fear; I sensed something else was upsetting you,’ Patrick ground out. ‘You’ve been blaming yourself for what that swine did to you. How could you believe that anyone would think it was your fault?’
‘I thought it was!’ she said with a little muffled sound, half sob, half anguished laughter. ‘I know my parents would have been shocked if they’d known I had followed you down to that beach because I was so attracted to you. They’d have said I was asking for what happened.’
His brows met angrily. ‘In this day and age? I’m sure they wouldn’t, Antonia.’
‘But it’s true, in a way. If I hadn’t followed you it wouldn’t have happened—you can’t deny that—and you had made it crystal-clear that you weren’t interested in me! You gave me that brush-off.’
He groaned. ‘Darling...’
She smiled at him quiveringly. ‘No, it wasn’t your fault. You were unhappy over Laura. I understood that later. But ever since I’ve had such strange dreams; it was all so mixed up in my head—my feelings about you, about what had happened. It was as if I’d been punished for feeling that way about you. I was left scarred, afraid to feel anything for any man after that, in case I got punished again.’