by Lynne Graham
But she knew she had to use that pain to give her the strength to leave now. Because strength was the only language Rafael understood—the only way to fight him. If she showed any weakness, let him see her true feelings, he would use them, twist them to his advantage, ensure that she would never be free of him. She had to be strong—for herself and the baby. He would always be its father—of course he would—but that didn’t give him the right to blight the rest of her life. Because that was how it would be if she stayed here. Nothing more than a half-life, constantly tormented by the love she had for him—a love that he would never return.
Walking around the bedroom, she gathered up her belongings, stuffing them into her suitcase. She picked up the oyster silk dress, holding it at arm’s length, watching the way the fabric shimmered down to the ground. Then, folding it over her arm, she took it over to the armoire and placed in on a hanger beside the other beautiful dresses that she would never wear again.
She caught sight of her reflection as she closed the mirrored door, shocked for a moment by what she saw: the dark circles under her eyes, the unnatural pallor of her skin. Yes, this was what Rafael Revaldi had done to her. Jutting out her chin, she attempted a defiant stance, balling her fists by her sides, practising the measured, authoritative way she would tell Rafael of her decision.
Just thinking about confronting him made her feel physically faint, but she knew it had to be done and it had to be done now. Whilst she still had the strength to go through with it.
Descending the staircase, Lottie strained to see if she could hear Rafael’s voice anywhere in the palazzo, but the only sounds came from the ballroom, where the cleaning up operation was obviously in progress.
He wasn’t in his office, or the dining room, nor in the grand salon or indeed the ballroom. Feeling increasingly sick, Lottie hurried outside. Standing at the top of the steps, she shielded her eyes from the low sun, scanning the calm vista with a thumping heart, as if Rafael might be about to jump out from behind a poplar tree at any moment.
She ran down the steps, round to the back of the palazzo, searching everywhere, anywhere she thought he might possibly be, getting increasingly frantic when there was still no sign of him. Where the hell was he? She could feel panic creeping over her, its icy fingers wrapping around her chest, restricting her breathing.
Finding herself at the edge of the woodland area, she stopped and took in a shuddering breath. A breeze had picked up and it whipped the hair across her face, catching it on her open lip, blurring her vision.
She would go to the graveyard. Go and see Seraphina—take a few minutes to calm herself down, gather her strength.
She shivered as she walked through the woods towards the chapel. The weak sunlight offered no heat as it filtered through the framework of bare trees. Finally reaching Seraphina’s grave, she slumped against the devoted angel, feeling the cold of the marble seeping into her bones. She wasn’t sure how long she’d leant there before a sudden noise had her heart thumping in her chest.
‘Lottie!’ Suddenly Rafael appeared from nowhere, crashing towards her. ‘What the hell are you doing here?’
Lottie jerked herself upright, swamped by anger, dread, and most of all pain at the sight of him.
‘I came to spend some time at our daughter’s grave.’ She threw back her head, the wind catching her hair again, lifting it from her shoulders. ‘Not that it is any of your business.’
‘Your irresponsible behaviour is making this my business.’ He sounded black with temper. ‘Per l’amor di Dio, you haven’t even got a coat on!’ What are you trying to do? Make yourself ill?’
Before she could reply he was beside her, tugging off his jacket and flinging it over her shoulders.
‘Dio, you are freezing—come here.’ He pressed her against his chest, wrapping his strong arms around her, rubbing her back through the waxed cotton fabric of the jacket.
‘Get off me.’ Her voice was muffled against his shirt and she wriggled herself free from him, stumbling round to the other side of Seraphina’s grave from where she glared aggressively at him. ‘Leave me alone.’
Rafael glared back, mystified. ‘What’s the matter with you?’ And then, as a terrible thought occurred to him, his voice dropped. ‘Is everything all right?’
‘Yes.’ Lottie forced herself to hold his stare. ‘If by that you mean the baby, everything is fine.’
Relief flooded Rafael’s eyes, but seconds later they darkened again. ‘So what, then? What are you doing here? What is going on?’
His questions shot at her like rapid gunfire.
‘Why are you behaving like this?’
‘I can behave however I want.’
‘No, you can’t. Not if it puts my child at risk.’ His voice was raw, clear and cold. ‘When it comes to protecting my baby’s life, you will do exactly as I say.’
‘Oh, you think so, do you?’ Lottie matched his anger with her own. ‘Well that is where you are wrong. As a matter of fact I have been looking for you.’ The warning look in Rafael’s eyes threatened to steal her courage but she blundered on. ‘To tell you that I am going back home—to England.’ She could feel her heart pounding frantically behind her ribs at the enormity of what she was saying. ‘For good.’
There was a beat of silence between them, pierced by the single caw of a raven overhead.
‘No. You are not.’ Rafael’s voice was dangerously quiet, his eyes burning with fire.
‘Yes.’ Lottie squared up to him as best she could, shivering violently beneath his jacket. ‘I’ve made up my mind.’
‘Well, you can just unmake it.’ The lash of his words whistled across at her. ‘I can assure you, Charlotte, you are doing no such thing.’
‘You can’t stop me, Rafael. I’m going to go back to England and have the baby there and—’
‘Charlotte, if you think, for one tiny second, that I would let you leave the country, take our baby away, then you have seriously misjudged me.’ His breath escaped in angry puffs of condensed air. ‘What’s all this about anyway?’ The depth of his scowl all but closed his eyes. ‘What is going on?’
‘I’ve told you what is going on. I’ve made up my mind and I am returning to England.’
Rafael shook his head, fury slowing the movement. ‘And I am saying you are doing no such thing. I have no idea what has brought this on, but I do know that you can stop this nonsense right now. My baby will be born here and will be raised here—by its father—at the Palazzo Monterrato.’
He hesitated, his scowl turning to a sneer.
‘You have run away once and I’m sure you are capable of doing that again. Should you choose to leave after the baby is born, then so be it. But the baby will stay here. And for the time being you are going nowhere.’
The word resonated with ruthless force.
Lottie fought to control hot tears of fury and despair. His words were like a fish hook in her flesh. The more she struggled the worse the pain. If she had wanted proof of his feelings for her she had it right there. Should you choose to leave after the baby is born, then so be it. She meant nothing to him—nothing at all. Without the baby she might as well not exist.
Biting back the searing pain, she rounded on him, using anger to mask the agony, covering her misery with its red cloak.
‘I’m sure you would love that, wouldn’t you?’ She spat the words at him. ‘Once the baby has been born there is nothing you would like better than for me to disappear completely.’
Rafael stared at her. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘I’m talking about you—me—the whole ridiculous idea that we could ever live together, have any sort of meaningful relationship, baby or no baby.’
‘Look...’ Making a visible effort now, Rafael lowered his tone, inched towards her as if dealing with one of his feral horses. ‘I don’t know
what this is all about, but maybe if you were to just calm down...’
He stretched out an arm towards her but she batted it away furiously, the jacket sliding off her shoulders.
‘It’s about the fact that I mean nothing to you— nothing! I am no more than a surrogate—worse than a surrogate. Because you can’t just pay me off and forget about me. Instead you have to lock me away in some far-flung corner of the palazzo. But I am your last, your only chance of providing an heir for Monterrato and you hate me for it. Don’t even try and deny it.’
Her voice was reaching a harridan screech as it picked up speed, denying Rafael any sort of reply.
‘If it hadn’t been for your accident you would have been rid of me for good. You would have carried on living your self-indulgent bachelor lifestyle for as long as you liked, eventually choosing a suitable mother for your precious children when the fancy took you from any number of painted, perfect, pouting women like the ones who were fawning all over you last night.’
A cold quiet descended as Lottie gulped in a shuddering, juddering breath that racked through her whole body.
Rafael just stared at her.
‘So is that what this is about? This ridiculous behaviour?’ Realisation coloured his words. ‘Some petty rivalry with the women at the dinner last night? Perhaps you should be careful, Lottie.’ His eyes glittered coldly, his voice suddenly terrifyingly soft. ‘We wouldn’t want to misinterpret this little outburst as a fit of jealousy, would we? Fool ourselves into thinking that you actually care. We both know better than that. Perhaps I need to remind you that who I see, who I take to my bed—’
‘Stop!’ With a piercing scream Lottie covered her ears. ‘I don’t want to hear any more.’
‘Is none of your business.’ His rapier tongue hadn’t finished with her yet. ‘You left me...remember?’
His words floated across the stillness of their daughter’s grave. Across the great chasm of misunderstanding and pain that had blighted their lives.
‘It’s not something I am likely to forget.’ Washed with grief, Lottie’s words were barely audible.
That lie—that terrible lie. ‘I don’t love you Rafael, and I never have.’ Delivered in a moment of tortured panic and accepted, just like that, as brutal, irrevocable fact.
‘Well, that makes two of us.’ He gave a derisive snort. ‘You had me fooled, Lottie, I’ll give you that. I had no idea—no idea at all—that that was coming. Idiot that I was, I thought we were for ever—imagine that? And all the time I meant nothing to you—you were desperate to be rid of me. When you finally came out with the fact that you had never loved me, well...’ He stopped, his throat moving as if he had swallowed something sharp. ‘If you want the truth, I will tell you. It crucified me, Lottie, totally crucified me.’
This was more than Lottie could bear. Her own pain she could cope with. She had to cope with. But seeing the suffering that twisted the muscles of Rafael’s beautiful face made something snap inside her.
‘I lied.’
‘Chiedo scusa? I beg your pardon?’
‘I lied, Rafe. When I said I didn’t love you.’ Her voice was very small.
‘Sì, right—of course you did. I was there, Lottie, I heard you say the words, saw the look in your eyes as you spoke them.’
‘I lied because I had to—because I knew it was the only way you would let me go.’
‘Che diavolo?’ Rafael snarled at her. ‘If this is some misguided way of trying to make me feel better then don’t bother.’
‘You were talking about telling the truth—well, this is my truth. When I said what I said it was for your benefit, so you would be free of me.’
‘How very kind.’ The sarcasm in his voice was chilling. ‘And why exactly would I want to be free of you?’
‘Because our marriage was a mess—nothing but endless trips to fertility clinics and failed IVF attempts. Because I saw no reason for Seraphina’s death to ruin both our lives.’ Lottie gulped in a breath of cold air. ‘I thought if I left I could take the pain of Seraphina’s death away with me. That you would be better off without me.’
Fury contorted Rafael’s face. ‘Don’t you dare bring Seraphina into this. You have never had the sole rights to that pain, no matter what you might think. She was my daughter, my little girl, every bit as much as she was yours, and I felt the pain of her loss—still feel the pain of her loss—every bit as deeply as you. More so, in fact, as I shoulder the guilt for her death.’
‘Well, I didn’t know that then. How could I have done when you refused to ever speak of her?’ Her words were squeezed out between strangled sobs. ‘I felt like I was grieving totally on my own.’
‘How dare you say that?’
‘I needed your support but you thought about nothing but producing another baby. It was like an obsession—as if without a baby there was no point to our marriage, no point in our staying together.’
‘That’s the most preposterous thing I have ever heard.’
‘And when it didn’t happen...when all the drugs and doctors and clinics failed...I knew that I had failed. I felt depressed and empty and useless.’ Deflated now, she reached out to the angel beside her for support, to stop herself sliding to the ground.
‘Dio, Lottie.’ Rafael looked as if a part of his body had started to hurt. ‘Don’t you realise that I was trying to be strong? Watching you grieve broke my heart. The last thing I wanted was to make it worse by showing you my pain.’
Lottie sniffed loudly, trying hard to hang on, not to collapse in a pool of misery. ‘Don’t you realise that you made it a million times worse by not showing me your pain? If we had been a proper couple we would have grieved together and then thought about trying for another baby when the time was right. But that wasn’t how it was. Getting me pregnant again was all that mattered to you.’
‘No, Lottie, I won’t have this. I won’t have you rewriting the past. I was trying to rescue what was left of the disaster that I had caused. I was responsible for the death of our baby, for the fact that you could never conceive naturally again. I had to try and put things right as best I could. That is the truth of the matter.’
‘Well, that may be your truth, but that was not how it felt to me.’ The anguish twisting inside her like a corkscrew gave Lottie the strength to go on. ‘To me it felt as if you’d only married me because I was pregnant. And when we lost Seraphina you realised it had all been a mistake, that you were stuck with me for no reason. That was why you were so determined to get me pregnant again—to justify our marriage to yourself.’
‘Dio!’ Rafael turned from her, stamping a couple of paces away before swinging round again. ‘I don’t believe I am hearing this. I can only assume you have concocted this ridiculous story to try and make yourself feel better. To ease your guilt you have somehow convinced yourself that it was all my fault—that I was the one to blame when you walked out on our marriage.’
‘It’s not a question of blame. I never said it was your fault. I’m trying to explain why I said what I did.’
‘So by telling me that you had never loved me, by sneaking away in the night without even having the guts to tell me what you were doing, you were actually doing me a favour? You were freeing me from the chains of marital responsibility?’ He shook his head with vitriolic disbelief.
‘Yes.’
‘Nothing to do with the fact that you wanted out of our relationship? That you had had enough of me?’
‘No, nothing to do with that.’
‘And you expect me to believe that?’
‘Yes, because it’s the truth. And I was right. You have led a better life without me. You have moved on...formed new relationships. If it hadn’t been for your accident you would never have had to see me again.’
‘Don’t you dare tell me how I have led my life.’ Rafael looked as if he was
about to explode. ‘You know nothing, Charlotte—nothing.’
‘I know that you didn’t come after me. Try to get me back.’
Incredulity raged in his eyes. ‘After what you’d said to me?’ He couldn’t bear to look at her. ‘There is such a thing as pride, you know. I was hardly going to beg. I can control most things in my life, but even I can’t make someone love me.’
Suddenly the tears were streaming uncontrollably down Lottie’s face. ‘You didn’t need to make me love you, Rafe. I have always loved you.’ She covered her face with her hands, and her voice was muffled through her wet fingers. ‘And I always will.’
CHAPTER TWELVE
RAFAEL STARED AT the forlorn figure shivering on the other side of Seraphina’s grave. She looked so vulnerable, so fragile, standing there, her cold hands trembling in front of her face. Every fibre of his being wanted to go to her, to wrap his arms around her and hold her tight. To tell her that he could make everything better. But he couldn’t.
Lottie’s revelation that she had lied to him that night had knocked him sideways. It couldn’t be true. The cruel way she had said those words, the look on her face when she’d delivered them, had left no room for doubt. She had meant them, all right. Now she had let time take her words and shape them into something more palatable, mould them into a convenient lie that would assuage her conscience.
Well, he wasn’t falling for that—he wasn’t going to let her hurt him again.
He could still feel the searing pain of her cruel statement, even after all this time, and that gave him strength. The strength he so badly needed to stop himself from reaching out to her, from holding her tearstained face in his hands, from raising her lips to meet his and kissing away the heartache of this whole wretched business.
