A Secret Disgrace

by Penny Jordan

  Thinking of her son’s defensive and prideful nature, Louise gave a reluctant nod.

  ‘I see your point. But what will we tell him about our past?’

  He had an answer for that too—as he seemed to for everything.

  ‘That you and I parted after a quarrel, during which you told me never to contact you again, before returning to London in the belief that I would not want to know about my child.’

  Louise wanted to object to the half-truth, but the practical side of her recognised that for a boy of Ollie’s age such a simple explanation would be far easier for him to deal with and accept than something more emotionally complex.

  him to deal with and accept than something more emotionally complex.

  ‘Very well,’ she agreed grudgingly, ‘but before anything is said to Oliver he needs to have the opportunity to get to know you.’

  ‘I am his father,’ Caesar told her, ‘and because of that he knows me already via his genes and his blood. The sooner he is told the better.’

  ‘You can’t just expect me to tell Oliver that he is your son and for him to welcome that.’

  ‘Why not?’ Caesar demanded with a dismissive shrug. ‘If the way Oliver has already responded to me is anything to go by, he wants a father desperately. Can’t you accept that maybe there is something that goes beyond logic, and that he and I instinctively sense we have a blood tie?’

  ‘You are so arrogant,’ Louise protested. ‘Oliver is nine years old. He doesn’t know you. Yes, he wants a father, but you must be able to see that because of his situation he has created an idealised version of the father he wants.’

  ‘And whose fault is that? Who refused to allow him to understand and accept the real situation?’

  ‘What I did, I did for his sake. Children can be just as cruel as adults—even more so. Do you really think I wanted him going through what I had to endure myself, and with much less reason? I was to blame for my own situation. I broke the rules. I shamed my family. All Ollie has done is be born.’

  She really loved the boy, Caesar recognised as he heard the protective maternal ferocity in Louise’s voice. With the pride he could hear ringing in her voice it must have been hard for her to bear the condemnation of society for so long. Whilst he had had no payment to make at all. Other than within himself, of course.

  There he had paid over and over again.

  ‘We shall be married as quickly as it can be arranged. I have a certain amount of influence that should help to speed up the necessary paperwork. It is my belief that the sooner we are married the more speedily Oliver will be able to settle down in his new life here on the island, with both his parents.’

  Louise’s heart jerked as though someone had it on a string. Although Caesar had said they must marry, somehow she’d been so preoccupied with worrying about how Oliver would react to the news that Caesar was his father that she had put the issue of the actual marriage to one side. Now, though, Caesar’s words had put the full complexity of the situation in front of her like a roadblock.

  ‘We can’t get married just like that,’ she protested. ‘I have a job, commitments. My home is in London—Oliver goes to school there. We can tell Oliver that you are his father and that we plan to marry, then Oliver and I can return to London, and in a few months’ time—’

  ‘No. Whatever you choose to do, Oliver stays here with me. I can make that happen,’ he warned her when she started to shake her head.

  Louise could feel her body starting to tremble inwardly. She knew that what he was saying was true, and she knew too how ruthless he could be when it came to protecting his own interests. Oh, yes, she knew that. She wasn’t going to give up without a fight, though. Not this time.

  ‘I have responsibilities. I can’t just abandon my life to marry you.’

  ‘Why not? People do it all the time. We’re two people who engaged in a passionate night together which resulted in the birth of a child,’ she heard Caesar continuing bluntly. ‘We parted, and now life has brought us together again. In such circumstances no couple would wait months in order to be together. Apart from anything else, I don’t think it would be good for Oliver. Knowing that we quarrelled and parted once could lead to him becoming anxious about the same thing happening again.’

  ‘People are bound to talk and gossip.’ Louise knew that it was a weak argument, but something deep within her, a vulnerability and a fear she didn’t dare allow herself to acknowledge for what it really was, had sent her into panic mode.

  She was frightened of being married to Caesar. Why? The foolish, reckless girl who had had no thought of protecting herself from emotional self-harm had gone.

  She was a woman now. That brief foolish longing to find what she had believed she so desperately needed in Caesar’s arms and in Caesar’s bed had been analysed and laid to rest a long time ago. She had no vulnerability either to Caesar himself or to the intimacy the institution of marriage was supposed to represent.

  ‘Briefly, yes, but once we are married, and it can be seen that we are just as any other couple with a child to bring up, such talk will soon be forgotten. Once we are married my people will be far too delighted to know that I have an heir to dwell on past scandal.’

  He looked at his watch.

  ‘It is time for us to collect Oliver.’

  It was the reality of what lay ahead of her that pierced her heart so sharply, Louise assured herself as they left the castello, and not that small word us.

  ‘And he really is my father?’

  It was gone eleven o’clock at night. Oliver was in bed in their hotel room and should have been asleep, but instead he was wide awake and still asking questions almost non-stop after Caesar had made his calm announcement to Oliver that he was his father.

  ‘Yes, he really is,’ Louise confirmed for the umpteenth time.

  ‘And now we’re going to live here and you are going to get married?’

  ‘Yes, but only if that’s what you want.’

  Louise still felt it would be far better to give Oliver more time to adjust to the fact that Caesar was his father and to get to know him more before any future commitments were made, but Oliver, it seemed, shared his father’s views on the subject of them immediately forming a legal family bond—as he had made very plain to her.

  ‘You and Dad will get married soon and we’ll all live together here like a proper family, won’t we?’ he pressed her.

  ‘Yes,’ Louise agreed hollowly, before reminding him, ‘It will mean a big change for you, Ollie. You’ve got your schoolfriends in London, and …’

  ‘I’d rather be here with Dad and you. Besides, they were always asking me why I didn’t know who my father was and making jokes about me. I’m glad that I look like him. Billy’s dad said so when he saw us together. I look more like him than I do you. Why didn’t you tell me before?’

  ‘I was waiting until you were older, Ollie.’

  ‘Because you’d quarrelled and he didn’t know about me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Watching him stifle a yawn, Louise could see that the events of the day were catching up with him. Switching off the lamp, she walked out onto the small balcony, closing the door behind her to give Oliver time to fall asleep.

  Watching Ollie with Caesar earlier, she’d had to admit against her will how alike they were—not just in looks but somehow in temperament and mannerisms as Watching Ollie with Caesar earlier, she’d had to admit against her will how alike they were—not just in looks but somehow in temperament and mannerisms as well. It was as though being with his father had brought to life that proud lordly Sicilian male inheritance that was so much a part of Caesar’s personality. No one seeing them together earlier could have doubted that they were father and son. But what had surprised her most of all, when it had been time for them to part, had been the unexpected but totally natural way in which Caesar had hugged his son, and Ollie, who was normally so wary of being touched even by her, had hugged him back.

  For a handful
of seconds watching them together she had actually felt shut out and excluded. Afraid that Ollie would form such a strong bond with his father that he would resent and blame her if she tried to delay things. Ollie was too young to understand that all she wanted to do was to protect him from any possible future hurt.

  But Ollie wasn’t the only one Caesar had embraced before he left.

  It was a warm balmy evening, and there was no real need for her to give that small shudder as she walked out onto the balcony—unless of course it was because her flesh was remembering the way in which Caesar had turned to her after he had hugged Ollie goodnight, his hands curling round her upper arms, bare beneath the cream wrap she had worn over a plain cream dress. She didn’t have many formal clothes. There was no need, given her almost non-existent social life, and the dress was only a simple linen shift—nowhere near as glamorous as some of the outfits she had seen other hotel guests wearing. It was three years old, and she had noticed that it was hanging a little loosely on her, but then that was surely only natural with the upset both she and Ollie had suffered with the death of her grandfather.

  What surely wasn’t natural, though, was the way in which her own hands had now moved to the place where Caesar’s had held her upper arms before he had leaned towards her in the privacy of the corridor after he had escorted them both to their room, the height and muscular leanness of his body blotting out the light.

  She could feel the self-conscious burn of angry embarrassment heating her skin even though she was alone on the balcony. How stupid it had been of her to close her eyes like that—as though … as though in anticipation of his kiss. What she had really wanted to do was blot out his image, just as given the chance she would like to blot Caesar himself out of their lives completely.

  A fresh shudder ripped through her as she relived the sensation of Caesar’s warm breath against her face, the unexpected smoothing movement of the pads of his thumbs against the vulnerable flesh of her arms, her awareness in every pore of her physical proximity to him and how once she would have given anything and everything for that proximity. And that was the reason—the only possible reason—why she had felt that telltale unstoppable rush of overpowering female awareness of him as a man rushing through her body. It was a reaction that belonged to her past. It meant nothing now. It certainly could not be allowed to mean anything.

  The shudder that gripped her was one of self-revulsion. And fear? No! She had nothing to fear in any kind of reaction she might have to Caesar Falconari. And that ache that had permeated her body so treacherously? A delusion. Nothing more, brought on by her sensitivity to Ollie’s obvious and naturally immature longing for his parents to be ‘happy’ together. For a second, because of their closeness, her body had read her son’s wish and translated it—briefly—into physical reality.

  That meant nothing. She would not allow it to mean anything.

  Their marriage was to be a business arrangement, a pact between them that they had made and would keep for Ollie’s sake. There was nothing personal in their relationship for her, and nor did she want there to be.

  In the library of the castello Caesar frowned as he looked down at the papers on his desk. They had been faxed to him earlier in the evening by the team of very discreet investigators he had commissioned to report to him on every aspect of Louise’s life—past and present. She was the mother of his child and it was only natural that he should want to know everything there was to know about her—especially in view of what he already did know about her—for the sake of their son.

  It had been obvious to him from the minute he had seen her in the churchyard that there had been a profound change in her from the girl she had been to the woman she now was. He had been prepared for the reports to confirm that change. What he had not been prepared for had been to see laid bare, in economical words that somehow made the revelation all the more unpalatable and shocking, the reality of what the child Louise had had to endure at the hands of both her parents but specifically those of her father.

  The report simply stated facts; it did not make judgements. What it had said, what it had revealed, was that even before her birth Louise had been rejected by the father who had seen her only as an obstacle to his own ambitions. He had in effect blamed Louise for her own conception, and had gone on blaming her and rejecting her throughout the whole of their relationship whilst she had tried desperately to win his love.

  To have the reality of what she had suffered laid bare before him in a form that he couldn’t ignore or reject filled Caesar with a mix of anger, pity and guilt.

  Anger against the father who had treated his own child in such a way, pity for that child herself and guilt for his own part in Louise’s shaming and humiliation. Why had he not taken the time to look more deeply, to question more closely and see what he should have seen instead of closing his eyes to it? Did he really need to ask himself that question? Wasn’t the answer that it had been because he had been too wrapped up in his own fury against himself for wanting someone he had considered unworthy of his desire?

  She had come to him wanting a connection, the bond she had been denied by her father, but he had not allowed himself to see that. Instead he had dismissed her, because selfishly he had been afraid of the intensity of his longing for her and the emotions she had aroused in him. He hadn’t taken the time to look beneath the surface. Just like everyone else in her life apart from her grandparents he had dismissed her and her feelings as unimportant. Caesar swallowed hard against the bitter taste of his own regret. He prided himself on his care of his people, on taking the time to listen to them and help them with their problems, on having wisdom and compassion and seeing beyond the obvious. He prided himself on extending all of those things to others but he had withheld them from Louise, who had probably had more need of them than anyone else.

  Because he had desired her. Because somehow she had touched a place within him that made him burn for her. That had made him feel humiliated, so he had punished her for that and for his own vulnerability.

  His behaviour had been unforgivable. Unforgivable and shameful. It was no wonder Louise was so hostile towards him.

  But the reality was that between them they had created a child—their child, his son. Oliver whom they both loved. He looked at the report again. What courage and strength it must have taken for a girl hurt and rejected, humiliated and shamed as Louise had been, to deliberately and willingly subject herself to the most intense kind of professional soul-bearing and to come through that experience, to rise from it as she had done. He admired her for that. He admired her and she despised him. But she would marry him—for Oliver’s sake.

  CHAPTER SIX

  ‘I NOW pronounce you man and wife. You may kiss the bride.’

  ‘I NOW pronounce you man and wife. You may kiss the bride.’

  Louise tensed as Caesar leaned towards her to kiss her formally and briefly on the lips. The second kiss to seal their marriage, since they had already gone through the formal service once in Italian before it had been repeated in English.

  The ceremony was taking place in the private chapel of the Falconari castello itself. The Bishop, a second cousin of Caesar’s, had travelled from Rome to marry them, and to Louise’s surprise the wedding was being attended by several local dignitaries and by Caesar’s older cousin and her family—her husband and their three sons, the youngest of whom was only eighteen months older than Oliver.

  Anna Maria and her family had arrived within three days of Caesar’s formal announcement of their marriage, and unexpectedly—indeed reluctantly at first—

  Louise had quickly discovered that she genuinely liked the no-airs-or-graces Anna Maria, who never used her title and whose husband was an untitled businessman. She had even found herself agreeing to Oliver accompanying Anna Maria and her family on the sightseeing trips they had planned during their visit.

  She’d agreed because she had seen how much Oliver enjoyed their company, however, rather than because, as Anna Maria h
ad suggested, she and Caesar needed time together on their own. Time alone with Caesar was the last thing she wanted.

  Louise knew that Anna Maria had been given Caesar’s official version of their past relationship, because whilst thankfully Anna Maria hadn’t asked her any difficult questions she had made it very plain that she fully accepted and welcomed both Ollie and Louise herself into the family.

  It was only now, with the full weight of the formality of what marrying a man in Caesar’s position actually meant upon her, that Louise was able to admit just how daunting she might have found the rush of events and the traditional hoops to be jumped through prior to the ceremony if it hadn’t been for the fact that Anna Maria had been on hand to answer her questions and support her when she had needed support.

  Louise had wanted the ceremony to be little more than a brief legal formality, and at first had balked at Caesar’s plans for something grander, but he had insisted that this was necessary—unless she wanted it to look as though he was ashamed of her and thus give rise to gossip that she might have used Oliver to push him into a marriage he didn’t really want. That suggestion had incensed her so much that she had angrily reminded Caesar that he was the one who was pushing her into marriage, and not the other way around.

  Somehow in the ashes of the heat of the argument that had followed she had discovered that Caesar was to have his way after all, and that their marriage would have all the pomp and circumstance that Caesar felt necessary in order to show his pride in his newly discovered son and his wish to honour the woman who had borne that son—as he had put it to her. He had even arranged for there to be a public proclamation to that effect, something which had delighted Oliver, who was slotting into life at the castello with an ease that sometimes made Louise feel just a little bit shut out from a side of her son’s personality that she could see now came entirely from his father.