A Secret Disgrace

by Penny Jordan

  Louise didn’t hear the giveaway note of yearning in his voice, reacting instead to her own memories and everything that she had felt—everything she had suffered through going to bed with him. She had suffered dreadfully, and now he was judging her yet again. Her anger was urging her to defend herself by letting him know just how wrong his judgement of her was, driving her into a recklessly fierce, ‘No!’ quickly followed by a sharp, ‘After all I wasn’t on the pill, and you were the first man I’d had sex with.’

  It took the space of a few heartbeats for Caesar to assimilate the information Louise had just given him.

  ‘You were a virgin?’ He was every bit as terse as her own outburst. Something in her delivery of her statement not only left him aware beyond all doubt that it was the truth, but also pierced him to the heart with guilt.

  How could he not have known? Of all the memories he had of that night, any thought or indication that Louise had been a hesitant shrinking virgin was not one of them. She had given herself to him with an intensity of passion, touched him with sensual eagerness, driven him so determinedly over the edge of his own self-control. Those had not been the actions of an unwilling virgin. Not the actions of an unwilling partner, maybe, Caesar mentally corrected himself, but that did not mean that he had not been her first lover. He had not registered that. He had been so consumed by the conflict raging inside him that he had been oblivious to everything else. His taking of her had been the act of a selfish, spoilt young man, every bit as bad in its way as his shameful public rejection and denial of her later.

  The information—the facts relayed to him via the reports he had commissioned on her—had been starkly brief and irrefutable. From the time she had returned to London, unbeknown to him carrying his child, his agents had not been able to find any single solitary piece of information to suggest that she had had any kind of sexual relationship. Previously he had put that down to the shame inflicted on her and her care and responsibility for a young child, combined with the effort it must have taken her to turn her life around. Now he was forced to see it in another light. Was it because of him? Because of what had happened between them had she turned to a life of sexual self-denial?

  ‘You were a virgin?’ he repeated. His brain might have accepted that reality but his emotions were in turmoil. ‘That’s not …’ Not what I thought when we first met, was what he had planned to say. But, Louise wouldn’t let him finish.

  ‘That’s not possible?’ she finished for him. ‘I can assure you that it is. Not that I care whether you believe me or not, but at least it means that I knew exactly who Oliver’s father was.’

  ‘But you came across …’

  ‘As a little tart who was willing to give out to any boy who asked? Oh, it’s all right. I do know what others thought of me and how they judged me. I wanted to be popular. I wanted to be the centre of attention. I was jealous of Melinda and my father’s love for her. I wanted my father’s attention. I learned young that the best way to get it was by behaving badly, so I became a bad girl, and bad girls are not virgins. It was easy enough to pretend to be what I wasn’t, and to keep those boys who thought they could use me at bay whilst making my father so angry that he was forced to keep an eye on me.’

  ‘But you went to bed with me.’

  Too late Louise saw the danger she had created for herself. She couldn’t let him guess how truly stupid she had been, how she had naively convinced herself that she meant something to him.

  ‘Yes. Because of who and what you were.’

  Caesar was frowning. Any second now he’d start asking questions she knew she could not trust herself to answer.

  ‘Because I thought if my father believed that you wanted me he’d see me differently—as someone of value. After all, how could he not value me when you, the most important man in the area, wanted me? I’d heard enough from other girls, seen enough in films, to know how a sexually experienced girl should behave.’

  Caesar had to turn away from her. Why hadn’t he realised, recognised … known how vulnerable she was? He already knew the answer. It had been because he had wanted her. ‘If I hurt you …’

  The words, low and raw and so unexpected, pierced her defences as painfully as though her heart had been gripped in a falcon’s talons, Louise acknowledged.

  Such a question, such recognition, were the last things she had expected. It would be easy to protect herself by letting him shoulder the responsibility for not realising her innocence, but she could not and would not do that.

  ‘No, you didn’t,’ she told him quietly. ‘I wanted what happened between us, and I pushed you until you wanted it to happen as well. By that time I’d convinced myself that we were both part of a fairytale in which you loved me every bit as much as I thought—foolishly—that I loved you. If my father couldn’t or wouldn’t love me, then you could and did. Or so I told myself.’

  love me, then you could and did. Or so I told myself.’

  No, he hadn’t hurt her physically. Delight and pleasure beyond counting was what he had given her. And for the first time in her life the belief that she was loved. But she could never tell him that.

  ‘Of course I hadn’t reckoned on you rejecting me, or my father’s anger, never mind getting pregnant.’

  Best to make light of such things. They were all in the past now, and she loved Oliver far too much to regret for one minute that she had had him. Because of him she had turned her whole life around after all.

  ‘I didn’t have a clue, really—far from learning to love me, my father disowned me completely when he discovered that I was pregnant. Both he and my mother wanted me to have a termination. I hadn’t really thought about my pregnancy as a baby until that point, but when they tried to pressure me I just knew that I couldn’t. That’s when my grandparents stepped in. They were marvellous … wonderful. More loving and generous than I had any right to expect. I promised myself that I would do everything I could to make it up to them for all the hurt and shame I’d caused them and it was a real turning point for me. That’s why …

  that’s why it’s so important to me that I keep my promise to them. It’s the least I can do.’

  ‘I’ve put everything in hand for the committal of their ashes this coming Friday. The whole village should be there.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  Without thinking what he was doing Caesar took a step towards her.

  Louise felt her heart drop inside her chest wall with all the speed of the most dangerous of funfair rides. If Caesar were to reach out for her now—if he were to take hold of her, if he were to kiss her … A fierce shudder racked her body, its intensity nowhere near as damaging as the ache that right now was filling her lower body.

  The sight of Louise shuddering brought Caesar to an immediate halt. She didn’t want him. She was making that perfectly plain.

  ‘It’s late,’ he told her curtly. ‘You’ve had a long day. I suggest you get some sleep.’

  Nodding her head, Louise closed the doors that separated the bedroom from the sitting room. Tonight was the first night of her new life as Caesar’s wife, and the first of many, many nights when she would sleep alone despite their marriage.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  THE first thing Louise saw when their small black-clad procession entered the churchyard to the church of Santa Maria was the large mass of villagers standing respectfully in the shadows of the brooding yews. Aldo Barado was at their head, along with the priest.

  Caesar had been right. Her grandparents would have taken it as a great mark of respect to have so many people turn out for the interment of their ashes. And they would have been even more proud of the fact that it wasn’t their granddaughter, in an elegant black dress that had been one of a selection Caesar had had sent for her to choose from, who was at the head of their small family mourning procession but instead Caesar himself, walking sombrely carrying one of the two ornate gilded caskets that held their ashes, whilst Oliver walked at his side, dressed in formal black mourning c
lothes like his father, carrying the other casket.

  Even the way they held themselves and walked was exactly the same. Father and son together. Louise was walking behind them in the tradition of a society in which in some instances women were not even permitted to attend funerals. Behind her were Anna Maria and her husband and children, and the bowed heads of the waiting villagers.

  A formal funeral service had already been held for both her grandparents at their London church. Today they were simply committing their ashes to eternal rest.

  But instead of turning towards the area of the churchyard occupied by the newer plots, to Louise’s astonishment Caesar turned instead towards the imposing mass of the Falconari family crypt. Its door was already open and containers of fresh flowers were placed to either side of that opening.

  It was Aldo Barado who voiced the astonishment and disbelief that she herself could not as he stepped forward and demanded of Caesar, ‘They are to be laid to rest in the Falconari crypt?’ Disapproval was obvious in his voice and his manner.

  ‘Naturally,’ Caesar responded, the tilt of his head making him look every inch the alpha male that he was—the one in charge, the man to whom other men deferred.

  As she recognised that fact Louise found herself acknowledging that she wasn’t the only one who had grown in the years since Oliver had been conceived.

  When she looked back now, from the vantage point of her own maturity and awareness, she could judge the more youthful Caesar in a different light. Where then she had seen arrogance and a sense of entitlement, now her expertise obliged her to ask herself if his attitude had been in part a protective cloak he had used to cover the fact that he was alone in the world, taking on the role of his father—a role which meant that he had to command the respect of those for whom he was responsible. With men like Aldo Barado ready to challenge him, perhaps even thinking of him as a young upstart who could not fill his father’s shoes, she could see that he might have been vulnerable himself in ways that she had been unable to recognise or understand then.

  It was a short distance from admitting that to acknowledging that, for Caesar, having the fact that he had taken her—a girl already distrusted and disliked by the elders of the village—to bed made public knowledge would have affected the degree of respect his people had for him.

  The Caesar she was watching now, however, was a man completely in charge of himself and his destiny. A man who was not afraid to make a decision and to stand by it. A man who was not afraid to elevate an elderly couple who had suffered the most grievous shame to the position he now had.

  ‘They are Falconaris now, by virtue of the fact of my marriage to their granddaughter and the fact that my son is also of their blood,’ she heard Caesar telling Aldo. ‘Where else should they rest?’

  Where indeed? The villagers were impressed, Louise could tell, and wasn’t it the truth that she was a little impressed herself? By virtue of having their ashes interred in his family vault Caesar had lifted her grandparents above criticism by anyone. As a modern woman Louise knew she should object to such a traditional and maledominated attitude, but as her grandparents’ grandchild, and knowing how much it would have meant to them, she couldn’t. Just as she couldn’t deny her maternal pride in Oliver, later in the proceedings, as he carried out his role faultlessly, only having to look once to his father for guidance, the smile and the touch on his arm that Caesar gave him all Ollie needed to enable him to perform his part perfectly.

  After the formal ceremony had been completed everyone headed for the village square, where a buffet meal was quickly laid out beneath the ancient olive trees that shaded the square from the hot sun.

  The women of the village might be watching her and no doubt judging her, withholding their assessment of her as Caesar’s wife, Louise reflected, but there was The women of the village might be watching her and no doubt judging her, withholding their assessment of her as Caesar’s wife, Louise reflected, but there was no doubt about their reaction to Oliver.

  ‘He is every inch his father’s son,’ one elderly matriarch announced with obvious approval. ‘A Falconari through and through.’

  Oliver was every inch Caesar’s son, it was true, and he was glorying in being with his father.

  ‘They are so happy together,’ Anna Maria told Louise, coming to sit with her on one of the ancient wooden benches on the edge of the square, where Louise had gone to sit and watch whilst Caesar moved amongst the villagers, Oliver at his side.

  Louise nodded her head. Just watching father and son together, she felt a sense of peace and completeness fill her. No matter what her own feelings, her marriage to Caesar had been the right thing to do for Ollie. Gone was the downbent head, the surly defensiveness. Now he held himself proudly, was loving towards her and protective of her. Now she could see a hint of the man he would one day be under Caesar’s careful and loving guidance. Because Caesar did love his son, even if he did not love her.

  A pain as though someone had turned a knife inside her chest struck her so hard that she actually lifted her hand to place it on her ribs. Where had it come from—

  and why? She did not want Caesar to love her. For her to want that she would have to love him, and she didn’t. She mustn’t. It was all this resurrecting and dissecting of the past that was responsible, throwing her back into the emotions she had felt then. Emotions that had no place in the present. Emotions it was laughable to think could be real. They were like the early-morning mist that clothed the tops of the distant mountains, creating a landscape that did not really exist.

  Or was it the other way around? Had she used necessity to conceal what was really in her heart and what she really felt? Surely not! It was totally ridiculous to think that she had somehow secretly loved Caesar for all these years, her love like some … some inert object frozen in time that had burst into renewed life the minute he was back in her life.

  Wasn’t it?

  ‘You look a bit pale. Are you all right?’

  The shock of Caesar materialising at her side when she was in the grip of such personal and frightening thoughts was enough to have her retreating further into the shadows of the olive tree. Her ‘I’m fine,’ was so clipped and terse that it had Caesar frowning.

  ‘Well, you don’t look it. It’s bound to have been a difficult day for you, I know.’

  Far more difficult than he realized, and for a very different reason than he meant, Louise admitted inwardly. Yes, the interment of her grandparents’ ashes had been very emotional, but there had been a sense of completion of a duty about the proceedings for her, a feeling of a task properly done and a debt repaid which, allied to her pride in Oliver, had lifted her. No, it wasn’t the interment of her grandparents’ ashes that had left her feeing so weak and alone. It was the danger of the thoughts inside her own head that were refusing to be silenced.

  It had been a long day, resulting in a faintly nagging headache which was refusing to go away. The boys were already in bed, Oliver having actually fallen asleep mid–happy chatter to her about how much he had learned from Caesar during the day. Now Louise herself was yawning as she made her way from the bathroom towards the bed. Caesar was still downstairs with Anna Maria, discussing a brief trip to Rome to show Ollie something of the city. A tactful means, no doubt, of allowing her to get to bed before he came into the suite. And of course she was relieved that he had done that—just as she was relieved that he hadn’t made any attempt to seduce her.

  Ultimately, would he take a mistress to answer that need? The white-fire stab of antipathy to that thought that drove into her had her standing frozen by the side of the bed. She minded that much? It was for Oliver’s sake, because she did not want her son growing up believing that that kind of behaviour was acceptable. Liar, liar, her inner voice returned to mock her.

  Her head had started to pound painfully.

  She’d give anything for a hot, freshly made cup of tea, Louise acknowledged. There was a small but very well equipped kitchen off the suit
e’s sitting room, which Caesar used to fend for himself when he was working late rather than disturbing his staff.

  His consideration for those who worked for him had been another eye-opener, Louise admitted as she pulled on the silk robe that matched the beautifully simple and elegant silk nightgown she was wearing, and then crossed the sitting room floor in the direction of the kitchen.

  Initially, when Anna Maria had announced that Caesar had instructed her to ask some of Italy’s top designers to send a selection of clothes to the castello for Louise to choose from, Louise had been tempted to refuse to wear them. She had her own clothes, after all. But then she had reminded herself of the new role she was going to have to play, the new ‘job’ that she had in effect taken on—a job for which she would be required to dress as appropriately as she had for her previous job. She had been sparing in her choice of clothes, though, and it had been Anna Maria who had included the beautifully made lingerie which now filled several drawers in Louise’s dressing room closets.

  A quick inspection of the kitchen cupboards revealed that someone had thought to stock them with proper English teabags. Just the thought of that soothing brew was almost enough to smooth away some of the tension of her headache, and five minutes later, sipping the hot, welcome brew as she left the kitchen on her way back to her bedroom, she gave a small sigh of pleasure—only to come to an abrupt halt when the suite door opened and Caesar came in.

  It was obvious from his frown that her presence in ‘his’ part of the suite wasn’t welcome to him.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Louise apologised. ‘I just wanted a cup of tea.’ She started to walk faster, skirting round him as she forced herself to add, ‘Thank you for what you did today for my grandparents.’

  ‘I didn’t do it for them.’

  Caesar’s voice was curt, as though the words had been forced out of him against his will and represented an admission of some inner weakness he had not wanted to make. But that was impossible. Caesar would never allow himself to be forced to do or say anything he didn’t want to do or say.