A Secret Disgrace

by Penny Jordan

  ‘Of course he told me.’

  With that he had walked away, leaving her with no option other than to return to her family. Her father had been furious with her, pacing the tiled floor of the terrace as he gave vent to his feelings. He was a man who didn’t like being criticised by anyone over anything, and he had held nothing back as he had accused her of being involved in something that proved all over again how undeserving she was of being his daughter.

  ‘When I think of the time and money I have lavished on you—and this is how you repay me, putting me in a position where I have to listen to the criticism of a man who is little better than a goatherder. My God, if this ever got out to anyone at the university I’d become a complete laughing stock—and all because of you.’

  ‘Darling, I did warn you that you were spoiling her,’ Melinda had put in with a faux tender smile. ‘She really doesn’t deserve to have such a wonderful father.

  I’ve said so over and over again.’

  It had been the hurt she’d seen in her grandparents’ eyes that had caused her the most pain.

  She shouldn’t have come back here, but what choice did she really have? Making sure they had the final resting place they had wanted was far more important to her than her own feelings. She had to admit, though, that she had been taken off guard by her grandfather’s actions in writing to Caesar, on what would have virtually been his deathbed, to tell him about Oliver.

  Despite the warmth of the night Louise folded her arms around her body as though to protect it from the cold—but this cold was an inner cold, not an outer one, an icy chill that came from knowing that potentially Caesar had power over her.

  Once again her thoughts were drawn back to the past. After the headman had left and her father had had his say he and Melinda had stopped speaking to her, as though they could hardly bear to look at her. Only her grandparents, obviously distressed by the whole awful experience, had continued to speak to her—even though she’d seen how shocked and upset they were. She’d been shocked and upset herself, of course, and brutally forced to recognise what a fantasy world she’d been inhabiting. She’d tried to talk to her father but he’d cut her off, telling her furiously that he no longer wanted her in his life.

  The return trip to the airport had been a nightmare. As they’d driven through the village on their way back to the airport those villagers who had been in the town square had turned away from the car, and some of the young men had even thrown stones at it. Her father had been furious with her, but it was the memory of the tears in her grandfather’s eyes that still hurt her the most.

  She wasn’t eighteen any more, Louise reminded herself. She was nearly twenty-eight, and a highly qualified professional in her field, who had to deal daily with problems within relationships and emotionally driven people who’d had experiences that were far, far worse than her own. The problems of her past were not hers alone. Others had shared in their creation.

  Her main responsibility now was doing what was best for Oliver. She might remain trapped in the present, yes, because of the events of the past, but she did not have to be trapped within her own pain. She had been foolish in creating her fantasy around Caesar, and she had paid for that folly and come through the trauma of it. Caesar, she suspected, because of his position and the deference accorded to him, would never experience the stripping-down of his personality to reveal to him its inherent flaws; he had never been humiliated, never been humbled, never been told that he was cruel—and that, in her professional opinion, was his loss. He had denied her and now he wanted to claim his son. The idea filled her with terror. She would never allow anyone, least of all Caesar, to hurt and humiliate Oliver the way she had been hurt.

  She wished passionately that it wasn’t necessary for her to have to have Caesar’s permission for the interment of her grandparents’ ashes, but she wasn’t going to give up just because of the past. She was determined to repay the debt she owed them. And if Caesar’s price for that was Oliver’s DNA test …? Well, she would be ready to do battle for her son … and for her very soul.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  HIS title and standing on the island opened many doors, Caesar acknowledged as the manager in charge of the children’s club at the hotel escorted him onto the tennis court where Oliver had just finished playing. Caesar had told him that he was thinking of enrolling his cousin’s sons for lessons when they arrived later in the week for their annual summer visit. It need not be a lie. His cousin had mentioned that it was becoming increasingly difficult to keep her teenage sons fully occupied.

  Oliver, who was focused on his computer game, only looked up briefly when Caesar’s shadow fell across his screen.

  Oliver’s colouring wasn’t only entirely Sicilian—olive-coloured skin, a mop of dark curls—it was also entirely Falconari, Caesar recognised as the boy’s eyes registered wary hesitation at the approach of a stranger.

  In Caesar’s jacket pocket were the results of the DNA test, and they were beyond doubt. They showed absolutely clearly that Oliver was his son. Looking at him now, Caesar was caught off guard by the ferocity and surging intensity of the father-to-son connection he felt towards him. It was so strong that it was almost as though an actual cord somehow connected them. Immediately he wanted to go to Oliver and take hold of him, lay claim to him, mark him by his touch as his own.

  The power and the unexpectedness of the personal nature of the emotions gripping him almost stopped him mid-stride. He’d already known what it would mean to him as the Duca di Falconari to know that Oliver was his son, but this feeling went far beyond that and was very personal.

  Thankfully, though, he did have some experience of boys around Oliver’s age through his contact with his cousin’s sons, so he held back and merely remarked conversationally, ‘You played well.’

  ‘You were watching me?’

  With those words the look Oliver was giving him and his wariness dropped away, to be replaced with a pleasure that underlined more clearly than anything else could have done the issues his great-grandfather had raised in his letter:

  The boy needs his father in his life. Louise is a good mother—she loves him and protects him—but the unhappiness she experienced with her own father has cast a long shadow, and that shadow falls on Oliver as well. He needs the genuine love and presence in his life of his father. I can see the same craving in him that Louise herself suffered. You are his father. You have a duty to him that I believe your honour will oblige you to meet.

  This isn’t about money. Louise has a good job, and I know she would refuse to take any kind of financial help from you.

  This isn’t about money. Louise has a good job, and I know she would refuse to take any kind of financial help from you.

  From what he had seen so far of Louise, Caesar doubted that she would be willing to take anything from him.

  He had been relieved, or so he had told himself, when he had returned from Rome to find her gone—even if his twenty-two-year-old’s pride was still stinging from being accosted by the village headman. Especially as, when he’d initially heard the brief knock on his bedroom door, he’d thought it was Louise returning to him. Knowing that he had felt a leap of joy added to the weight of his guilt and his confusion about his inability to control his reaction to Louise, and had been enough to make him feel obliged to listen whilst the headman warned him that he had seen Louise leaving the castello. He’d guessed what had happened and told him that if Caesar wanted to prove he was fit to wear his ancestors’ noble shoes, that he was aware of his duty to his people, then he could have nothing more to do with Louise.

  ‘That just isn’t possible,’ Caesar had told him. ‘Her family are staying here. They are part of our extended community. It is expected that I make them welcome.’

  And Louise? He had wanted to make her welcome too—in his bed. And in his heart …? How torn he had been between the raging desire that she had released and his awareness of the customs of his people. But his desire for Louise was somethin
g he had to control and deny, he had warned himself. Just as he had controlled and denied any public display of the shock and grief he had felt at the loss of his parents. It was not seemly for a Falconari to allow himself to be controlled by his emotions, so he’d absented himself until his fear that his ability to control his emotions had been breached for ever had gone.

  Was it seemly for a Falconari to take the coward’s way out? What was the point of asking himself these questions? There was no point—just as there was no point in allowing himself to remember the emotional agony he had felt in Rome, the sleepless nights, his desire to find Louise … Another example of her ability to breach his self-control—just like the letter he had eventually sent her, asking for forgiveness. A letter to which she had never replied. Not even though by then she must have known she was carrying his child.

  He looked down into Oliver’s eyes. Exactly the same colour and shape as his own. His heart pounded uncontrollably.

  ‘How are you liking Sicily?’ he asked.

  ‘It’s much better than home ‘cos it’s warm. I hate the cold. My great-grandparents were Sicilian. My mum’s brought their ashes here to get them buried.’

  Caesar nodded his head.

  Another boy was coming towards them, swinging a racquet and accompanied by a man who Caesar guessed must be his father.

  ‘Hi, Oliver.’ The man smiled. ‘I see you’ve got your dad with you now.’

  Caesar waited for Oliver to deny their relationship, but instead, almost instinctively, he moved closer to him, so that Caesar could put his hand on Oliver’s shoulder in much the same way the other man was doing with his son.

  Oliver’s bones beneath his tee shirt felt thin and young, vulnerable and very precious. So this was how it felt to have a child … a son …

  And that was how Louise saw them as she came to collect Oliver, her pace quickening along with the anxious, angry too-fast beat of her heart, until both were racing as she almost ran up behind Oliver, reaching out to wrench him out of Caesar’s hold.

  They turned towards her at the same time, father and son, the truth stamped so indelibly on both sets of features that the shock of it sent her heart into a flurry of frightened hammer-blows. Even worse was seeing the way in which Oliver immediately moved closer to Caesar when she tried to part them.

  Caesar still had one hand on Oliver’s shoulder, and now he lifted the other hand to cover hers where she’d grabbed Oliver’s arm. Immediately a sensation of physical danger sent a trail of fiery sparks burning through her veins. Her whole body was reacting so frantically and fearfully to Caesar’s touch that she was forced to ask herself if her panic was on Oliver’s account or on her own. The awareness that was pulsing through her right now wasn’t just maternal anxiety and she knew it. It was something else. Something very different. Different and totally unwanted. But not totally unfamiliar.

  It was like lightning coming out of nowhere to tear apart the sky, its brilliance throwing piercingly sharp light into previously hidden places. Louise could feel the impact of the blow on her memory breaking apart the locks she had put on it. Wasn’t it the unpalatable truth that this was the way Caesar had made her feel all those years ago? The very thought made her shudder with horror and self-loathing. How could her body possibly find Caesar attractive either now? He had humiliated her, shamed her, treated her with contempt.

  She tried to snatch her hand from beneath his but he refused to let her go, so that she was forced to stand there whilst the three of them completed a small intimate circle.

  ‘I was just on my way to look for you,’ Caesar told her. ‘We have a great deal to discuss.’

  ‘The only thing I want to discuss with you is the interment of my grandparents’ ashes,’ Louise told him fiercely.

  ‘You can come and watch me playing tennis tomorrow if you like,’ Oliver was saying to Caesar in an offhand manner that did nothing to conceal from Louise just how quickly and easily her son could become vulnerable to his father.

  Frantically she wondered if it would be possible to change their flights so that they could leave as soon as possible. She could leave her grandparents’ ashes here with the priest, surely, and deal with the practical matters of their interment from the safety of London. Caesar couldn’t really want to be involved in Oliver’s life.

  Even though as yet he didn’t have legitimate children, it would only be a matter of time before he married and set out to produce the next Duca di Falconari.

  Knowing that should have reassured her, but her heart-rate was refusing to slow down and her body was a mass of jangled nerve-endings. Even when she finally pulled her hand away from beneath Caesar’s her body was still tingling and, yes, aching with the sensations his touch had aroused inside it. Sensations of anger and

  … and loathing, Louise tried to reassure herself. Given what he had done, how could it be anything else?

  ‘If Oliver’s ready, it’s time for our junior photography class,’ the pretty young girl who was in charge of the children’s activities announced, coming over to them.

  Both her statement and her smile were for Caesar, Louise noted grimly. She could also see that her son was reluctant to absent himself from the side of his new friend. He scowled at her when she pushed him gently in the girl’s direction, and then shook off the hand she had placed on his arm. She didn’t like the anger Oliver was showing towards her, but that didn’t mean she was willing to accept Caesar’s interference, Louise decided.

  But immediately Caesar remonstrated with Oliver, telling him calmly, ‘That is not a good way to behave to your mother.’

  Oliver looked both upset and mortified, reacting to Caesar’s rebuke and disapproval with far more concern that he ever did to hers.

  ‘You had no right to speak to Oliver like that,’ she told Caesar as soon as Oliver and the children’s activities girl were out of earshot. ‘He is my son.’

  ‘And mine,’ Caesar told her calmly. ‘I have received the DNA results and they show that quite clearly.’

  Her heart did a double somersault, sending the blood pounding through her veins. Treacherously, shockingly, in a series of unwanted flashbacks, images of the intimacy they had shared to create Oliver played in front of her eyes. She could even feel the emotions she had felt then—the excitement, the longing, the need to be intimacy they had shared to create Oliver played in front of her eyes. She could even feel the emotions she had felt then—the excitement, the longing, the need to be wanted that had been so intense it had driven her to delude herself that she was wanted, that she mattered.

  Pain as cruelly stabbing and merciless as it had been then gripped her again. In many ways she might have been the cause of her own misfortune, but Caesar could have treated her more gently. But he was Oliver’s father, and there was enough of her grandparents’ Sicilian teaching and upbringing in her for her to be unable to deny that that mattered—much as she wished she could.

  Even so … ‘There is no need for you to tell me the identity of my son’s father,’ she informed him grimly.

  She was like a small soft-boned cat, spitting and hissing her anger as a defence measure, Caesar recognised inwardly. And, like that cat, would she also purr warmly with delight when she was stroked and pleasured?

  The way in which his body reacted to that question was like a shockwave of tidal proportions, re-awakening emotions and needs he had thought long suppressed by his self-control.

  ‘We have a great deal to talk about, and I would suggest that the best and most private place for us to do that would be the castello.’

  ‘Oliver …’ Louise began but Caesar shook his head.

  ‘I have already spoken with the children’s activities manager. Oliver will be taken care of until you return.’

  The castello. The scene of Oliver’s conception. Although it was hardly likely that on this occasion she would be visiting Caesar’s bedroom. Not that she wanted to do that, of course. Not after the price she had paid for being there before.

 
‘I don’t …’ she began, but somehow or other Caesar had taken possession of her arm and was guiding her towards the foyer of the hotel and then through it, to where a long black limousine complete with driver was waiting for them.

  It was only a twenty-minute drive from the hotel to the castello. Caesar probably had a financial interest in the hotel, Louise reflected, since it must have been built on land that belonged to him.

  As the car swept through the magnificent gardens to the front of the castello Louise tried not to be impressed, but that was almost impossible.

  The Falconari family had been on the island for many, many generations. They had married well and accumulated great wealth and it showed. The emblem from their crest, the falcon itself, was emblazoned above the main entrance to the castello and incorporated everywhere in the intricate carvings ornamenting the building.

  The family’s stamp on their property. Just as Oliver’s looks were his father’s stamp upon him.

  Louise gave a small shiver. There had been something about the way Caesar had held Oliver earlier, about the way her son had looked up at him, that had hurt her inside—in that place her own childhood had left raw and unhealed. Instinctively, but without wanting to admit it, Louise knew that no child of Caesar’s would be denied proper paternal concern. That was the Sicilian way, and the Duca di Falconari Caesar was not just honour-bound but had been raised from birth to respect and follow that code. And what did that mean?

  Louise did not want to think about what it meant. Oliver was hers. She had borne him and brought him up alone, and she was fiercely protective of him. She had given herself to his father with all the innocence of her longing to be wanted and valued. Now, in a different way, she had seen in their son’s eyes his readiness to turn to his father. She was not going to allow Caesar to hurt and reject their son the way he had done her.

  The car came to a halt alongside an imposing flight of marble steps.

  No one could fault Caesar’s manners, Louise acknowledged as he came round to open the car door for her before escorting her up the steps. But it took more than the outer vestments of showy good manners to make a man a worthwhile human being—the kind of human being who was going to be a good father. Her heart jumped inside her chest wall. Why was she thinking that? Caesar was not going to be Oliver’s father. And yet Louise knew that it was going to be hard for her to forget the way Oliver had turned to Caesar and not her just before they had left him, moving closer to Caesar and looking almost pleadingly at him.