Carrying, strangely, no burden of resentment. Only relief.
Relief that he had done, if nothing else, the right thing. By Paolo, by his son, and by the girl whom he now protected. Who had no one but him to do so. The strange emotion quickened. Quite different from all the emotions that had stormed through him since Jean-Paul’s first phone call to him, which seemed now to have been a long, long time ago. He tried to think what the emotion was, to identify it. Then it came to him.
It was a sense of purpose. Doing something that mattered.
A new emotion for him.
‘Where are we?’ Lizzy’s voice sounded bleary, even to her own ears. She had been roused from heavy, uneasy sleep as the car had come to a stop. She straightened up, feeling stiff. Ben was still slouched heavily against her, fast asleep.
‘Capo d’Angeli. Jean-Paul has hired a villa here for us. We can stay here as long as we want. No one will disturb us.’
She let him undo the safety catch and she scooped the sleeping Ben into her arms, while Gianni helped her out of the car. A cool breeze came in the night, and all she could make out was a house with a gravelled drive immediately beneath her feet, and a front door opening. She heard Italian spoken, and then she and Ben were being ushered inside. There were people, more Italian, but she was too tired to do anything other than carry Ben upstairs, following the tall, besuited figure ascending in front of her, blocking out of her head everything except the overriding need to get to bed. Get back to sleep.
Like a zombie, she followed him into a room—a large bedroom with a larger bed. A maid was turning it down on either side. She hurried forward to help Lizzy, and within a few minutes—blessedly so—Lizzy was laying her head down on the pillow beside her sleeping son, her eyelids closing.
She wanted to sleep for ever and never wake up. Never face up to what she had just done.
Married Prince Enrico of San Lucenzo.
Downstairs, Rico took out his mobile once more, and pressed the number he knew he had to call.
Luca answered immediately. His voice was taut with fury. Incomprehension. Rico cut him off in mid-denunciation. He called his brother a word he had never used to him before. It silenced Luca long enough for Rico to tell him the new situation. Then, slowly, in a different voice, his older brother spoke again.
‘Rico—it’s not too late. We’ll send a helicopter, and you and the boy can be back here by morning. We’ll fix an instant annulment. The girl can be taken care of—we can get her deported from Italy. We can—’
‘Wrong again.’ Rico’s voice was a tight, vicious drawl. ‘All you and our father can do is—’ He gave instructions that were crude—and anatomically impossible. ‘And now, if you please, you can inform my revered father that I am going to start my honeymoon, with my bride and my new son. And there is nothing you can do about it. Do you understand me? Nothing. They are in my care now. Mine. And if you had a shred of honour in you, you would never speak to our father again.’
He hung up.
Lizzy was dreaming. She was back in that hospital, with her sister. But her sister was not in a coma. Instead she was sitting up, cradling a baby, her golden hair like a veil. There was someone else sitting on the bed—a young man with blond hair. They were both fixated on the baby in Maria’s arms. They didn’t see Lizzy. Didn’t even look up.
Then her parents were coming into the ward. They walked past Lizzy, their arms full of presents wrapped up in baby blue. She tried to walk forward, but she couldn’t. She had a present for the baby, but there was only room to put the present on the end of the bed. It slid onto the floor. Her mother looked round sharply.
‘What are you doing here?’ she demanded. ‘Maria doesn’t need you. No one needs you. And no one wants you either.’
She reached for the curtain and drew it around Maria’s bed. Shutting Lizzy out.
Lizzy woke up.
Guilt drenched through her.
She had taken something that was not hers to take. Something she’d had no right to. She turned her head. Ben was asleep on the far side of the huge double bed, his little figure swathed in the light coverlet. Ben—her sister’s son. Not hers. Not hers at all.
Anguish filled her. Her hand reached to him, touching his hair. Soft and golden. Like his mother’s. His father’s.
Not like hers at all.
Not mine. Not mine. Not mine.
The litany rang through her head.
And now she had taken something else she’d had no right to take. Something else she didn’t deserve.
And yet she knew bitterly that the theft had come with its own punishment. Heat flushed through her—the heat of mortification. Grotesque, she had called the very idea of a marriage between them, the two most opposite people in the world. And yet she had gone ahead with it. She had inflicted herself on him because there was no other way to keep safe the child she had taken from her sister. The child she had no right to. No right to love the way she did.
She felt Ben stir and wake. His eyes opened. Trusting. Instantly content to see her. Knowing that if she was there, then all was well.
Cold iced along her veins. It had so very nearly been different.