‘Miss you?’
‘Don’t say that.’
‘It’s the truth.’ He leaned in, pressing his cheek to hers, pushing back her bonnet, smoothing her hair. ‘When you leave Florence, the spell you’ve cast over me will lose all its power, and I’ll go back to the real world, and you—you’ll go on to work your magic somewhere else, spellbind some other lucky fellow.’
‘I don’t want to spellbind any man, I thought you understood that.’
‘I do. I meant—Ach, I don’t know what I mean. Let’s not spoil the day.’
‘You’re right.’ She nuzzled her cheek against his, the smooth skin, the contrasting roughness of his beard, sending a frisson of pleasure rippling through her tummy. ‘Let’s not.’
Their lips met, and their kiss was gentle, an apology, smoothing away the rough edges of their discord. Then it changed as the desire which all the little touches during the day kept simmering beneath the surface broke free from its leash. Their kisses deepened, their tongues touching, and their hands drifting, from shoulder to back, to waist. They fell back on to the grass, still kissing, and Estelle ran her fingers through Aidan’s hair, and he smoothed his hands from her waist, down over her flank. She could hear herself making odd little noises, panting, pleading, as their kisses went on, deep, delicious, heady kisses, and she instinctively rolled closer to him.
But as she did so he moved away, as ever, the one to show restraint. She could see, from the dazed look in his eyes, that it took a huge effort, but she also knew that later, when her body had ceased protesting, she would be grateful for it.
‘We’d better get you back. You’ve an early start ahead of you,’ he said.
She nodded, her body aching, throbbing, crying out in protest, but following his lead because, innocent as she was, she knew that it would be madness not to.
Chapter Five
Aidan realised, as soon as he saw the crest on the hand-delivered letter which arrived the next morning, that Estelle’s removal from the scene and this polite but firm summons were connected, no mere coincidence but evidence of a co-ordinated plan. It would appear that their behaviour had not gone entirely unnoticed by her local surrogate guardian. He supposed he’d been naïve to imagine they were unobserved, for Florence was awash with Englishmen and women with as much interest in the activities of their fellow countrymen as they had for fine art.
His instincts were to consign the instruction disguised as an invitation to the fire, but in the end he relented, and went in order to preserve Estelle’s illusion that her life passed free from scrutiny, hoping to persuade the letter’s author she was not at risk.
And knowing that to do so, he’d have to agree to terminate their relationship. Which they’d all but agreed they’d do of their own accord anyway, yesterday in the Boboli Gardens. Their idyll was coming to a premature but timely end, just as it ought to. Time to quit the glass dome, to use Estelle’s rather whimsical analogy. The fact that he didn’t in the least want it to end was clear evidence that it should.
Sir George, Minister Resident and the most senior British diplomat in the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, did not honour him with his presence, but the man assigned the delicate task of sounding him out was no minion. Aidan thought at first he was misreading the veiled suggestions and hints. When it became clear that he was not, he was incredulous. ‘Am I to understand that you have been checking up on me?’
‘Merely verifying your suitability as a companion for Miss Brannagh,’ the nameless man replied, with a bland smile. ‘You will be delighted to know that the results of our enquires were very positive.’
‘Indeed! May I ask in what way?’
‘In every way, Mr Malahide. Financial health, estates, reputation. Given your personal circumstances, it was obvious that your intentions towards Miss Brannagh could only be genuine and honourable.’
Aidan gritted his teeth. ‘What circumstances?’
The man offered him a conciliatory smile. ‘I understand it has been almost three years since you were afflicted by tragedy. A long time for a man to be alone, sir, if you will forgive my commenting on such a personal matter. Especially a man in his prime, as you are.’
‘Who the devil have you been talking to? What business is it of yours?’
‘You are upset.’
‘Damn right I am. I’m bloody furious.’
‘Understandably so,’ the man answered with another of his conciliatory smiles. ‘However, our primary concern is Miss Brannagh’s welfare. Ours is a temporary and quite unofficial responsibility of course, for she is fully of age and perfectly entitled to make her own decisions. The Earl of Fearnoch made it very clear that we have no legal status.’
‘What the devil has the Earl of Fearnoch to do with the matter?’
For the first time, the diplomat looked put out. ‘He is married to Miss Brannagh’s sister. A most respected man in diplomatic circles—I had the honour to meet him myself once, several years ago. An intrepid type. You were not aware of the connection?’
‘I knew that Miss Brannagh’s sister was married to a man of influence.’ A great deal of influence, it seemed, and probably far more than Estelle realised.
‘Indeed. Though his interest in Miss Brannagh, as I said, has no legal basis he has, quite rightly, a natural concern to do as much to keep a young woman travelling on her own as safe as it is possible to be. Which is where we come in, Mr Malahide. As we see it here, we have been invested with a duty of care towards Miss Brannagh while she is in Tuscany. A duty we intend to discharge diligently.’
Aidan struggled to control his temper. Though he would happily have discharged his right fist into the face of the supercilious oaf before storming out, he owed it to Estelle to do no such thing. ‘So now you’ve vetted me and failed to find me wanting, you’re keen to know what my intentions are?’ Taking a deep, calming breath, he unfurled his clenched fists. It was, after all, precisely what he’d expected. ‘I’ll spare you the trouble. When she returns from her very conveniently arranged trip to Siena, Miss Brannagh will continue on to Venice. Alone, I need not add.’
‘And you, sir? Will you resume your studies?’
‘My future plans are none of your business, since your duty of care will have been fully discharged upon Miss Brannagh’s leaving Tuscany,’ Aidan said curtly. His return home loomed, but he would deal first with losing Estelle. ‘I would prefer that you kept this encounter of ours from her. She thinks herself free to come and go as she pleases, and would not take well...’
‘...to the discovery that her elder sister has sent an invisible chaperon to accompany her on her travels.’ The diplomat smiled thinly. ‘We shall consider the matter closed, Mr Malahide. I am sorry to have offended you, but you must understand, though we are in foreign climes, it is our duty to uphold British values. Such intimacy as you and Miss Brannagh have developed would never have been tolerated back home, unless formal overtures had been made.’
‘Getting to know one another when the promises have already been made and it’s too late to change your mind,’ Aidan said sardonically. ‘The British rules of courtship are somewhat perverse, don’t you think?’
* * *
The nameless man made no attempt to rebuff Aidan’s criticism, and the meeting ended with his surprising assurance of his best attempts to provide his assistance in any future matter, should it be required. Aidan left the building in an odd mood, restless, uncertain, confused, and unable to pinpoint why he felt any of those things, as he walked aimlessly in the heat of the afternoon. Though he and Estelle had tacitly agreed that what they called their friendship must come to an end, they had not set a firm date. The outcome of his strange encounter with officialdom was that their parting needed to be finalised as soon as Estelle returned from Siena. Otherwise, the wheels of diplomacy would turn, and he didn’t doubt that she would be summoned for a more explicit warning off. He didn’t want that. S
he’d be mortified and angry, hurt by what she’d see as her elder sister’s lack of trust in her, and quite unable to understand her very natural concern. And so their little idyll must end before that risk became reality.
The idea that he would never see her again was like a punch to the gut. Every fibre of his body rebelled against it. But they could not continue as they were, he knew that. Estelle had to move on. He had to return to Ireland and face the reality that he had temporarily escaped.
Ireland. Aidan’s stomach gave a sickening lurch. He didn’t want to think about Ireland, though he’d have to, and soon, for his sabbatical was nearly over. Heading for the nearest café, he ordered a coffee and stared morosely at a scrawny cat sunning itself on a window ledge. This year had been exactly what he’d hoped for, at first. The bright light of Tuscany, the red-tiled roofs of Florence, the busy piazze, the food—all had served to make him forget home. And the university too, had been the distraction he’d needed, for he’d had to wrestle hard to get his rusty mind working again and he’d thoroughly enjoyed the challenges of trying to catch up with more than a decade of progress in his field. Then just when that distraction was starting to pall, and his thoughts were once again turning, bleakly, to home, along came Estelle.
He drained the thick black coffee in one gulp and signalled for another. He’d thought of her as a diversion, their time together as an interlude, but this afternoon it had been made clear to him that others saw it very differently. So it must end. The conclusion was inescapable. As was his own next move.
Ireland. As the diplomat had pointed out, and as Clodagh told him when he gave her the chance, it had been almost three years. Time to put the past behind him. It appeared that the Florentine tittle-tattlers observing him with Estelle had assumed he was doing exactly that, thinking their friendship a courtship, assuming that promises had been secretly made. It was ridiculous of course, Estelle didn’t want a husband any more than he wanted a wife. Though ironically, what the pair of them wanted more than anything was a family.
He stirred a lump of sugar into his second coffee. The image of the little boy and girl and their dog, in the Piazza della Signorina popped into his head and he recalled the wistful expression on Estelle’s face as she watched them. It was an expression of yearning he was horribly familiar with, and he knew, only too well, the bitter consequences of such heartfelt dreams not being realised.
‘We can’t always have what we want,’ he’d told her at the time, though he’d given her no clue as to the pain and devastation lying behind the trite little phrase. He thought he’d stopped wanting the impossible. He had come to Florence to find an alternative, and he had one now, dammit, in his decision to build something—not a family, but a few bridges, a canal or two maybe. So why was he even wasting his time thinking about this most painful topic? He was a mathematician. The logic was incontrovertible. Nature was the variable in his equation for happiness, one that he had no control over. He would never risk testing it again.
Never? Even if it meant that there was a tiny chance that he and Estelle could have what they both wanted? Aidan groaned. A mathematician, he called himself, and here he was, defying logic. But he was also a man, thinking not with his head, but with another part of his body entirely. He didn’t want to bid Estelle farewell. He wanted them to continue living in their little glass dome, forgetting all about the real world, and while he was indulging in this little fantasy, why not admit that he ached, yearned, agonised with the desire to make love to her. Just once. Just once, to let their kisses be the beginning and not the end of things. He wanted to lie naked with her. To kiss every bit of her delectable body. To watch her eyes become lambent as he touched her, roused her, feel her tighten around him, slick, hot as he entered her...
Aidan cursed viciously under his breath. Mortified and impatient with himself, he threw a handful of change down on the table before making for the banks of the Arno. His mind raced, trying to order the various elements of his dilemma into a new equation, one that would miraculously produce the desired result. But by the time he reached the entrance to the Parco delle Cascine he had given up. What Estelle wanted and what he wanted coincided but could not be reconciled, and that was an end to it. When she returned from Siena, the day after tomorrow, they must say their goodbyes and put an end to their little idyll.
* * *
‘So, it sounds like it was an enjoyable trip, then?’
‘Yes, it was.’ Puzzled by Aidan’s somewhat abrupt interruption of the Siena anecdote she’d been recounting, Estelle steered their steps towards a bench in the shade of the amphitheatre of the Boboli Gardens, with a view to the Neptune fountain. ‘You don’t seem yourself, Aidan. Did something happen while I was away? Have you received some bad news from home?’
‘No, nothing like that.’ He stretched his legs out in front of him, ran his fingers through his hair, then sat up again, squaring his shoulders. ‘The days felt longer. It brought home to me how very much I’ve enjoyed our time together.’
‘You know I feel the same.’ Truth be told, Estelle thought, beautiful though Sienna was, she had been counting the minutes until she returned, from the moment she left Florence. She sighed. ‘But we both know it will have to come to an end at some point.’
He dug the toe of his shoe into the hard-packed earth. ‘I think sooner, rather than later, would be best. In six weeks my sabbatical year will be over. I’ll probably head back to Ireland when you leave. Florence won’t be the same without you.’
‘I’m thinking that I might curtail my travels too. It’s time I went home, faced the music, so to speak, made a start on the rest of my life.’
‘Your idea of establishing a school of music? You could always return to Ireland and set it up there. There’s a sore need for education of every kind.’
‘Back to the old country,’ Estelle said, in an exaggerated brogue.’
‘I would be happy to let you set it up on my estate, gratis.’
‘You know, if it were not for the fact that you are dead set against marriage and I refuse to entertain having a husband I want to kiss, then you would be the paragon I’ve been searching for and I wouldn’t have to set up a school.’
‘Estelle...’
‘I was teasing, Aidan.’
‘I know. It’s not that.’ He picked up a stone that he’d dug up with his toe, turning it over in his hand before letting it fall back into the dust. ‘Even if you did find your paragon, there’s no guarantee that nature would co-operate with your desire for a family.’
‘Co-operate? That’s a very strange way to describe the most natural process in the world.’
‘Then I’ll put it in mathematical terms. Any equation which contains a variable has an unpredictable outcome. In your case, nature is the variable in your recipe for a perfect husband. Suppose you find someone who is more interested in being a father than a husband, who likes you but doesn’t adore you, who respects you but doesn’t revere you—do I have all that right?’
‘I couldn’t have put it better myself, but...’
‘Suppose you find him, Estelle, and you get married. Remember, the only reason you married is to have children, but nature doesn’t co-operate, as I said, and you can’t have children. You’ll have failed.’
‘I don’t think I’d see it as a failure, precisely, though I take your point.’
‘My point is that you would see it as failure, eventually, and you’d be utterly miserable. Trust me, I know.’
She stared at him, shocked to the core as realisation dawned. ‘You’re speaking from experience.’
He paled, but met her gaze unflinchingly. ‘Yes, I am.’
‘You’re married,’ she said, beginning to shake.
‘What? No, God no, Estelle, I’m not married. Not any longer. But I’m not the bachelor I led you to believe. I’m a widower. My wife died almost three years ago.’
The blood wh
ich had drained from her face now flooded her cheeks with colour. ‘Oh, Aidan, I’m so sorry.’ Her hand instinctively reached for him, but he shook his head, stiffening, and she withdrew it immediately.
He shifted on the bench, creating a space between them. ‘Being with you these last few weeks has made me feel like a new man—or rather, I suppose, I’ve remembered the man I used to be. It’s not that I’ve been lying to you, but while I’ve been with you, it’s been very easy to forget.’
‘I wondered why you were so set against marriage. It never occurred to me...’
‘That I was set against trying again? With good reason,’ he said heavily. ‘You see, in some ways I had what you say you want—the ideal spouse. A woman from the same background as me, who wanted the same things as me. We got on. We shared a dream. But when the dream wasn’t realised—I swear to God, Estelle, I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.’
‘Oh, Aidan! What happened?’
‘It’s a sorry tale, but I’ll tell you if you can bear to listen.’
‘Of course I can, though I don’t want to upset you further.’
He smiled crookedly. ‘You confided in me that morning we saw the children with the dog, it’s only fair that I return the favour.’ He stared off at the fountain for a moment before turning back to her, visibly bracing himself.
‘I was twenty-two when we met in Dublin. I’d already been in sole charge of Cashel Duairc for four years, and I was ready to settle down and start populating a nursery. My wife was born and raised in County Wicklow, just next door to Kildare, and on a very similar estate to the Cashel Duairc lands. We were well suited, as I said, and of one mind when it came to wanting a big family. A perfect match, everyone said.’
Estelle felt a mortifying twinge of envy. What had she looked like, this perfect wife? she wondered, immediately chastising herself for being so venal. The poor woman must have died tragically young. Aidan must have been heartbroken.
The Truth Behind Their Practical Marriage (Penniless Brides 0f Convenience Book 3) Page 7
