by Sara Craven
She’d learned this from Mrs Morton, who was still fighting the good fight in the garden, even though her days there were numbered, because, as she said, the new owners were bound to have their own outside staff.
‘The builders move in next week,’ she’d told Marisa. ‘I’m almost sorry, although it’s good that such a lovely place will realise its full potential at last.’ She smiled. ‘Someone else must have fallen in love with the view, my dear.’
Marisa made herself smile back. ‘Well, I hope Adriana approves of them, that’s all.’
‘Ah,’ Mrs Morton said softly. ‘So it was that old story that drew you back?’ She paused. ‘Will you tell me something, my dear? Because I’ve often wondered. When you were here before, there was a young man who used to come and stand at the gate each day and watch you. Tall and very attractive. Did you ever meet him?’
The breath caught in Marisa’s throat. ‘Someone at the gate?’ she managed. ‘I never knew…’
‘He would never come in,’ said Mrs Morton. ‘Which made me sorry, because it seemed to me that he was just as sad as you were alone, and I hoped that somehow you might find each other.’
Hurt, Marisa thought, and lonely. Ottavia had apparently been right. She looked at the kind face and forced a smile. ‘We did—for a while,’ she said. ‘But it didn’t last.’
‘Because you were already married, perhaps? I don’t judge, my dear, but I can’t help notice you’re wearing a ring now.’
‘Yes,’ Marisa said quietly. ‘Exactly because I was…married.’
Mrs Morton had completed her tasks and left, returning to her apartment, her husband, the waiting drink on the terrace and the comfortable discussion of the day’s events. Her marriage, in fact.
And I should leave too, Marisa thought, sighing. In fact, I should never have come back to this place, with all its resonances. Because there’s no comfort or peace here for me any more, and I was a fool to expect it.
I don’t have faith and hope to sustain me, as Adriana did, and I can’t sit here, letting my life drift by, eternally waiting for something that reality and my own common sense tells me will never happen.
She thought again of what Mrs Morton had said. That Renzo—Renzo—had followed her here each day and never said anything—then or later…
If I’d only known, she thought, and stopped with a little gasp. Because, she realised suddenly, she had known. She’d been aware, so many times, of something—some presence—that had made her feel less lonely but which she’d dismissed, telling herself that she was simply letting Adriana’s legend get to her rather too much.
She lifted her head and stared at the restless sea, her eyes stinging with the tears she’d refused to let herself shed since she’d left Tuscany.
Oh, darling, she whispered silently. Why didn’t you come in? Why didn’t you walk down the garden and sit beside me?
Not that it would have made any real difference, she reminded herself in anguish. Their story would still be ending, like that of Adriana and Filippo, in separation and loss. But at least they would have had all those other wasted months together. Another store of memories for her to draw on in the utter blankness ahead.
‘Maria Lisa.’ She might have imagined his voice, born out of her own desperate yearning, but not the hand on her shoulder.
‘Renzo!’ She turned to face him, acutely aware of the blurred eyes and trembling mouth she hadn’t allowed him to see at their last meeting. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘Following my wife,’ he said. He came round the bench and sat beside her. ‘And I would have been here much sooner if I had not seen your passport was gone and wasted time looking for you in England.’ The dark, haggard face tried to smile. ‘Your business partner now thinks I am insane, bursting in on him like a wild man and demanding you back.’
He paused. ‘And then I remembered this place, and I wondered.’
‘Oh, God,’ she said hoarsely. ‘Couldn’t you have shown a little mercy and just—let me go?’
‘Never,’ he said. ‘Not while I have life. How could you not know that?’
‘But I can’t be your wife. Not any longer,’ she whispered. ‘For your family’s sake you have to have an heir, and I can’t have children. You know that. So you have to find someone else to marry, who won’t fail you. Someone you can love—’ She broke off, swallowing. ‘And I can’t— I won’t stand in your way.’
‘But you do stand in the way, Maria Lisa,’ he said gently. ‘And you always will, mi amore. Because all the love that I have is for you. I see no one else, hear no other voice, want only you.’
His shaking hands framed her face as he kissed her wet eyes, her cheeks and parted, unhappy lips.
‘Believe me,’ he whispered between kisses. ‘My love, my sweet one, believe me, and come back to me.’
‘But when you came to see me in hospital,’ she said huskily, ‘you were so cold—like a stranger.’
‘They told me that you were heartbroken,’ he said. ‘That it had been impossible to calm you. Therefore it was impressed upon me that I could not give way. That, as your husband, I had to be strong for us both or your emotional recovery might be impeded. So I dared not come near you. Dared not touch you or kiss you, carissima, or I too would have been lost. Because I knew that all I wanted was to lie beside you, put my head on your breasts and weep. I told myself—tomorrow will be different. Tomorrow we can find comfort in our love for each other.’ He gave a shuddering sigh. ‘And then I came back from Zurich with Papa and you were gone, leaving just that little note. And then I did weep, Maria Lisa, sitting alone in the room we’d shared. Because I thought that maybe I was wrong, and that you had not begun to love me during these last happy weeks together. That, after all, your independence mattered more to you than I did.’
He shook his head. ‘But I also remembered all your warmth and sweetness—how Zurich had been hell without you. And I told myself that I would get you back, no matter how long it took or whatever obstacles were in the way.’
She touched his cheek with hesitant fingertips. ‘I was so unhappy I just wanted to die,’ she said. ‘But it makes no difference.’ She paused. ‘Darling, your grandmother came to see me, and even though I hated everything she said I knew she was right. That if I loved you I would have to give you up.’
‘She telephoned me,’ he said grimly. ‘Telling me that she grieved for me but hoped, once you had gone, I would be sensible and do my duty.’
‘But don’t you see?’ she said in a low voice. ‘If you hadn’t wanted a child you wouldn’t have married me or anyone else.’
‘That may have been true once,’ Renzo admitted wryly. ‘But when you came to stand beside me in church, and I put my ring on your finger, I knew I would not have changed places with anyone on earth. And that somehow I had to persuade you to feel the same.’ He shook his head. ‘But that was my failure, and I can never forgive myself for it, or for what followed. Those weeks of our honeymoon were a living nightmare, carissima. I wanted so badly to put things right between us, but I did not know how to begin.’
‘Was that why you used to follow me, but never let me know?’
‘I needed to find out what drew you here every day,’ Renzo said simply. ‘And as you seemed contented I could not intrude and spoil it for you.’
‘But if you felt like that,’ she said shakily, ‘why—why did you send me away?’
He said roughly, ‘Because I heard you crying and I thought you could not face the prospect of having to live with me as my wife. That I had scared and disgusted you too much.’
‘No,’ she said softly. ‘I was crying because I knew I’d really wanted our baby so that there would be someone in my life I could love without reservation.’
‘And I wanted you to love me,’ he said. ‘To give me another chance to make you happy. That was what I tried to say in all those letters you did not read.’
He slipped off the bench and knelt beside her, his head in her lap.
�
��So will you take me now, Maria Lisa?’ he asked, his voice uneven. ‘Will you believe that our marriage means more to me than anything in the world, and love me as I love you, mi adorata, and even after this sadness live with me, let us build our future together?’
‘Yes,’ she said, stroking his hair. ‘Oh, my dearest love, yes.’
Perhaps Adriana was right, she thought, as later they walked from the garden, hand in hand, knowing they would never come back there. That they had all they needed.
Perhaps faith and hope would always prevail. And then healing could begin.
Or that was what she would believe.
And Maria Lisa Santangeli smiled up at her husband.
All the characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author, and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all the incidents are pure invention.
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First published in Great Britain 2008
Paperback edition 2009
Harlequin Mills & Boon Limited,
Eton House, 18-24 Paradise Road, Richmond, Surrey TW9 1SR
© Sara Craven 2008
ISBN: 9781408907634
