The Last Heir of Monterrato

‘Well, I didn’t know that then. How could I have done when you refused to ever speak of her?’ Her words were squeezed out between strangled sobs. ‘I felt like I was grieving totally on my own.’

‘How dare you say that?’

‘I needed your support but you thought about nothing but producing another baby. It was like an obsession—as if without a baby there was no point to our marriage, no point in our staying together.’

‘That’s the most preposterous thing I have ever heard.’

‘And when it didn’t happen...when all the drugs and doctors and clinics failed...I knew that I had failed. I felt depressed and empty and useless.’ Deflated now, she reached out to the angel beside her for support, to stop herself sliding to the ground.

‘Dio, Lottie.’ Rafael looked as if a part of his body had started to hurt. ‘Don’t you realise that I was trying to be strong? Watching you grieve broke my heart. The last thing I wanted was to make it worse by showing you my pain.’

Lottie sniffed loudly, trying hard to hang on, not to collapse in a pool of misery. ‘Don’t you realise that you made it a million times worse by not showing me your pain? If we had been a proper couple we would have grieved together and then thought about trying for another baby when the time was right. But that wasn’t how it was. Getting me pregnant again was all that mattered to you.’

‘No, Lottie, I won’t have this. I won’t have you rewriting the past. I was trying to rescue what was left of the disaster that I had caused. I was responsible for the death of our baby, for the fact that you could never conceive naturally again. I had to try and put things right as best I could. That is the truth of the matter.’

‘Well, that may be your truth, but that was not how it felt to me.’ The anguish twisting inside her like a corkscrew gave Lottie the strength to go on. ‘To me it felt as if you’d only married me because I was pregnant. And when we lost Seraphina you realised it had all been a mistake, that you were stuck with me for no reason. That was why you were so determined to get me pregnant again—to justify our marriage to yourself.’

‘Dio!’ Rafael turned from her, stamping a couple of paces away before swinging round again. ‘I don’t believe I am hearing this. I can only assume you have concocted this ridiculous story to try and make yourself feel better. To ease your guilt you have somehow convinced yourself that it was all my fault—that I was the one to blame when you walked out on our marriage.’

‘It’s not a question of blame. I never said it was your fault. I’m trying to explain why I said what I did.’

‘So by telling me that you had never loved me, by sneaking away in the night without even having the guts to tell me what you were doing, you were actually doing me a favour? You were freeing me from the chains of marital responsibility?’ He shook his head with vitriolic disbelief.

‘Yes.’

‘Nothing to do with the fact that you wanted out of our relationship? That you had had enough of me?’

‘No, nothing to do with that.’

‘And you expect me to believe that?’

‘Yes, because it’s the truth. And I was right. You have led a better life without me. You have moved on...formed new relationships. If it hadn’t been for your accident you would never have had to see me again.’

‘Don’t you dare tell me how I have led my life.’ Rafael looked as if he was about to explode. ‘You know nothing, Charlotte—nothing.’

‘I know that you didn’t come after me. Try to get me back.’

Incredulity raged in his eyes. ‘After what you’d said to me?’ He couldn’t bear to look at her. ‘There is such a thing as pride, you know. I was hardly going to beg. I can control most things in my life, but even I can’t make someone love me.’

Suddenly the tears were streaming uncontrollably down Lottie’s face. ‘You didn’t need to make me love you, Rafe. I have always loved you.’ She covered her face with her hands, and her voice was muffled through her wet fingers. ‘And I always will.’

CHAPTER TWELVE

RAFAEL STARED AT the forlorn figure shivering on the other side of Seraphina’s grave. She looked so vulnerable, so fragile, standing there, her cold hands trembling in front of her face. Every fibre of his being wanted to go to her, to wrap his arms around her and hold her tight. To tell her that he could make everything better. But he couldn’t.

Lottie’s revelation that she had lied to him that night had knocked him sideways. It couldn’t be true. The cruel way she had said those words, the look on her face when she’d delivered them, had left no room for doubt. She had meant them, all right. Now she had let time take her words and shape them into something more palatable, mould them into a convenient lie that would assuage her conscience.