Raphael ignored Charlotte’s stifled protest.
‘I shall, of course, compensate you financially…’ he continued.
‘Pay me off, you mean? Like a discarded toy you don’t want any more? Is that how you always treat the women you sleep with, Raphael—by paying them off once you have had what you wanted from them?’
White-faced with grief, Charley flung the words at him, retreating to the top of the bed when he strode towards her, to grasp her shoulders and almost shake her.
‘You will not say that,’ he told her. ‘You will not demean what we shared together and yourself by speaking in such a way. The money has nothing to do with our personal relationship. It is to compensate you because you will be losing your job.’
It was because his emotions were so raw that he was angry with her, Charley knew. The thought crossed her mind that if she increased that anger, if she really, really pushed him, then that emotion might spill over into a passion that would result in them making love, giving her a chance to prove to him that what they felt for one another was too strong to be ignored. Shame flooded through her. She must not taint what they had shared last night by attempting to manipulate him. She did not want her memories soured by her own shame.
Raphael released her, stepping back from her, removing the temptation to ignore her better self.
‘It will take some time for everything to be sorted out—a couple of weeks at least, I imagine—and during that time it will be necessary for you to remain here at the palazzo.’
‘And where will you be?’ Charley had to ask him.
‘I shall be in Rome. I cannot be here,’ Raphael told her bleakly. ‘Not now. It would be too much—for both of us. Do not look at me like that,’ he warned her. ‘I am doing this for your sake, and one day you will thank me for it.’
Charley shook her head, her vision of him blurred by the tears filling her eyes.
‘No,’ she told him brokenly. ‘I will never do that, and I will never stop loving you.’
He was walking towards the door. She couldn’t let him go.
‘Raphael, please,’ she begged him, running towards him, the sunlight splashing her naked body with golden light.
He had reached the door.
She put her hands on his arms and pleaded, ‘We could be together. I understand now why the garden and its restoration is so important to you. It’s because it is what you will give to posterity, isn’t it? Instead of your children—your son. We could do it together, Raphael; together we could restore and create something of great beauty to give to your people.’
Charley felt the shudder that ripped through his body.
‘Trust a woman to find some ridiculous and fictitious emotional fairytale and insist on substituting it for reason,’ said Raphael, dismissing her statement, but he knew that she had touched a nerve. Her words were like the careful, gentle touch of an archaeologist, brushing away a protective covering to reveal something unbearably fragile beneath it. Only in his case what she had revealed was not some priceless piece of antiquity but instead his pitiful attempt to find a substitute in his life for all that he could not have—to find a purpose and a meaning that would compensate him for what he had to deny himself.
Charley’s naked body was pressed close to his own, her face turned up to his, her gaze brimming with love and hope. All he had to do was open his arms to her and she would be his for ever. There would be no turning back. He would have her love to sustain him through the darkest of dark nights.
‘A garden lives and breathes, Raphael, it gives love and joy to those who come into it. We could share that. It could be ours…’
The pain was almost too much for him. It reached out to every single part of him, along with the awareness of all that would be lost to him. He had to resist temptation. He had to endure the pain—for Charley. Desperately, Raphael formed a mental image of Charley—not as she was now, but as she would be holding her child in her arms, her whole body alight with the love she felt for it. Her child, but never, ever his.
‘No!’ he told her harshly, reaching for the door handle, forcing her to release him and step back from him.
It was over. There could be no going back.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
SHE would be leaving Florence in ten days’ time. Everything was arranged. She had her ticket; she would be picked up and driven to the airport—all she had to do was ensure that her paperwork was left in order and her appointments cancelled.
Charley started to pull open the drawer in the desk, to remove the desk diary she kept as an extra backup reminder of the appointments stored electronically, determined to make sure that professionally nothing was overlooked. Her misery overflowed into irritation when the drawer wouldn’t open properly. Kneeling down in front of the desk, she felt inside the drawer, quickly realising that the diary had become wedged against the underside of the desk. Picking up her ruler, she used it to try and prise the diary free, exhaling in impatient relief when she finally succeeded. The force of her probing, though, had sent the diary skidding right to the back of the drawer, with a definite thud of sound, obliging her to pull the drawer further out. Only when she did so, to her dismay, there was no sign of the diary and the back of the drawer itself was missing.
She had damaged Raphael’s mother’s desk. Horrified, Charley pulled the drawer out completely, and then frowned as she realised how much shorter it was than the full depth of the desk. Very carefully she slid her hand and her arm into the empty space where the drawer had been, feeling her way to the back of the space. It was more or less the same depth as the drawer, and indeed a good ten inches short of the depth of the desk. Curious now, Charley re-examined the space, pressing against the back wall and then exhaling in triumph when it suddenly gave way. It must be a hidden compartment, operated by a spring, and she must have inadvertently touched it when she had pushed her diary free. It was too deep for her to reach inside it, so she had to use her ruler again to edge out her diary and bring it within her reach. Only it wasn’t just the diary she had edged out. There was something else as well: several thick sheets of expensive notepaper, poking out of an envelope that had obviously never been s
ealed.
Uncertainly Charley turned the envelope over, her heartbeat accelerating as she stared at what was written on it.
To my beloved son, Raphael…