Claiming His Scandalous Love-Child

But of all those emotions, clashing and contradictory, what was the one emotion that remained?

She knew its name. Knew it because it was the emotion that leapt in her every time her hand shaped her body, cradled the life growing within.

But if that was not what Vito felt she must not name it.

Coward!

The word stabbed at her, shocking her.

More words came, forced their way in.

You don’t dare tell him because you fear his rejection! It was his rejection in Rome that slayed you! His rejection yesterday that did the same! But Vito isn’t your father! So tell him—tell him now what it is you want!

She looked at him again, so short a distance away. Their lives would be linked for ever now, because of the child she carried. They were bound indissolubly because of that.

And for one reason more. A reason that would bind her to him all her life.

Slowly she spoke, never taking her eyes from him. Declaring everything.

‘I want, Vito, you to love me and our child as I love you and our child. That is all I wan

t,’ she said. ‘All I will ever want.’

Her eyes dipped. What would he say? How would he reply? She could not see his face, with her eyes lowered, but she heard his voice. It was strange...so strange.

‘All my life,’ he said slowly, in that strange new voice, ‘I have wanted to find a woman I would love as dearly as my father loved my mother. Their marriage, to me, seemed all that marriage should ever be! And when I lost my father it was...unbearable. It still is, Eloise. Every day I miss him, grown man though I am. A father is for life—’

He broke off, and her eyes lifted, going instantly to his face, where emotion shadowed his eyes.

Then the shadow lifted. ‘Eloise, that is why I was so harsh with you! I couldn’t bear to think that you might have taken our child from me! That you might have thought a child did not need its father—’

‘But I don’t! Vito—that’s why I feared to tell you! I couldn’t have borne it if you’d rejected our child as my father rejected me!’

Her voice was a cry.

‘Never! As God is my witness, never will I reject our child—and never, Eloise...oh, Eloise...never will I reject you!’

He came towards her, caught her hands. Emotion was pouring through him, a tidal wave.

‘Do you mean it? What you said? That you want only my love?’

She lifted her face to his. Tears swam in her eyes.

‘Yes! Oh, yes! But only...’ the shadow was there in her eyes again ‘...only if you love me...’

Her answer was a kiss. As swift, as swooping as a summer swallow, silencing her doubts.

‘If you had told me even a second before I found out I would have embraced you as I do now!’

As he spoke from his overflowing heart his arms came around her, holding her close, so close against him.

‘Oh, Eloise, my Eloise, my precious, beloved Eloise—how could you think I would not cherish a child between us? I understand your fears—now that I know them—but you never had need of them! Not for an instant!’

A breath shuddered through him and he held her a little away from him now, so he could speak to her. His gaze poured into her.

‘It was my fears, Eloise, that made me condemn you. The thought of what might have been... To have had a child growing up here, away from me, unknown to me, kept from me by the very woman I had fallen in love with.’

Her face worked. ‘If I’d only spoken earlier...’