His stunning gaze widened to smouldering gold eyes of challenge. ‘You think I went over there to be with her?’
‘What else was I supposed to think?’ Lizzie asked tightly. ‘You left me in anger...’
‘I wasn’t angry with you, I was angry with her!’ Cesare exclaimed in full-volume contradiction and Lizzie hastily backed to the door to close it firmly shut. ‘How dare she have the insolence to approach my wife with the tacky details of an affair that happened a decade ago? I’d never heard such rubbish in my life and I was determined to finally have it out with her.’
Tacky details scarcely dovetailed with Serafina’s suggestion that the barn episode had been a very precious memory for them both. Furthermore Lizzie was transfixed by the idea that he had rushed out of the house in a rage because Serafina had dared to approach his wife. Lizzie went pink over her misreading of the situation. ‘And did you have it out with her?’
‘Sì...I said a lot that she will not forget in a hurry. If she wasn’t so vain, she would have accepted a long time ago that I would sooner chew off my own arm than have anything to do with her again. How could you think that of me?’ Cesare raked at her in apparent wonderment. ‘A woman who walked out on me because I wasn’t rich enough? A disloyal, deceitful woman with the morals of a whore... She first offered herself back to me three years after she married Matteo and she did it again last night, which outraged me.’
Lizzie was so astonished by what she was finding out that she was rooted to the floor where she stood. Not only did he no longer care about Serafina, he evidently despised her and her eagerness to get him back. There was nothing fake about the driving derision he exuded. ‘And of course you said no?’
‘I never thought about her again after that first incident,’ Cesare admitted flatly. ‘By that stage I was grateful that, by marrying her, Matteo had saved me from making a serious mistake. No sane man would want a treacherous woman but, unfortunately for him, Matteo was besotted with her.’
Lizzie nodded slowly.
‘Serafina won’t be bothering either of us again, I assure you,’ Cesare spelled out. ‘She told me that she’s bored with the countryside and will be moving back to her home in Florence.’
Lizzie was thinking about him having spent hours searching for her the night before because he was concerned that she might have met with an accident. Even though she was a seasoned outdoorswoman, she could not help but be touched by his naive assumption that she required his protection. She had made so many silly assumptions about Serafina and suddenly it was obvious that she had been listening to an extremely vain and spoilt woman spouting her belief that she was both irresistible and unforgettable. Cesare, on the other hand, had recovered from Serafina’s betrayal by appreciating what a narrow escape he had had. That, she recognised, was absolutely in line with his character while rushing off to be with Serafina while he was married would not have been.
‘I’m glad she’s moving...I didn’t like her,’ Lizzie confided in a case of severe understatement. A light-headed sensation engulfed her and she gripped the back of a chair. ‘Sorry, I get a bit dizzy now and again.’
‘Is that like being only a tiny bit pregnant?’ Cesare enquired, scooping her up as she swayed and planting her carefully down into the armchair. ‘You need to be taking more rest and eating more food.’
‘And what would you know about it?’ Lizzie mumbled, momentarily giving way to the heaviness of her body and slumping into the depths of the chair like a sagging cushion.
‘Possibly as much as you,’ Cesare dared. ‘I contacted an obstetrician for advice.’
Her lower lip dropped. ‘You did...what?’
‘It’s my baby too,’ he countered defensively. ‘I had no idea how to look after you properly. It made sense to consult someone with the relevant knowledge.’
Her eyes stung again. Against all the odds, he was making su
ch an effort to put across the point that, although he didn’t want a real marriage with her, he did care about her welfare and their child’s. Her throat convulsed. The tears she had been holding back were gaining on her, no matter how hard she tried to hold them back.
As Cesare stared across the barrier of his desk he saw two tears rolling down Lizzie’s cheeks and his last defences fell to basement level. He had caused this fiasco. He had made her unhappy.
‘I’m sorry...I’m so sorry,’ Cesare told her gruffly.
Lizzie opened her wet eyes to find Cesare on his knees at her feet, stunning dark golden eyes stricken. ‘Sorry? What about?’
‘I’m sorry I hurt you. For years I had this set of rules with women,’ he breathed raggedly, grabbing both her hands and crushing them between his. ‘I never got involved. I never got involved with anyone after Serafina. And then I met you and I...I thought it would be the same with you and I tried to stick to the same rules but you were too much for me, only I didn’t see it...’
‘Slow down...’ Lizzie begged, struggling to work out what he was telling her in such a rush. ‘What are you saying?’
‘That I’m mad about you, that I love you and I never want to lose you,’ Cesare told her, crushing the life out of her poor fingers, his physical intensity as great as the emotional intensity now clear in his eyes.
Her lashes fluttered in bemusement. ‘But you said—’
‘Forget what I said. I was still trying to stick to my rules but it was idiocy,’ he told her with a fierce fervour that was in itself impressive. ‘I drove to Serafina’s in a rage because she’d dared to try and upset you and I was driving back, thinking about what a vicious witch she is and thinking about you too...and that’s when I realised.’
‘That you love me?’ Lizzie probed numbly, unsure what to believe, her thoughts spinning.
‘I think I was scared to deal with what I was feeling for you, so I avoided thinking about it altogether...’ Cesare hesitated. ‘You know, I’m not much like Goffredo. I don’t spend much time thinking about feelings and stuff.’
Lizzie was pleasantly surprised to learn that he had spent any time thinking about feelings but she couldn’t smile when she was in shock. For the first time ever outside the bedroom she was seeing Cesare without the cool front he wore to the world and he wasn’t half as smooth with words in the emotional category as he was with other things. Yet there was something hugely endearing about that inept surge of sentiment and confession because every syllable of it rang with raw honesty.
‘So, you think you love me?’ she pressed a little shakily, scared to hope, scared to dream, scared he didn’t yet know his own heart.