To Wear His Ring Again

by Chantelle Shaw

  When she had married Constantin her insecurity had not helped their relationship, she acknowledged. She had believed she wasn’t good enough for him, as she hadn’t been good enough for her father. She had never questioned why Constantin hadn’t shown any emotion when they had buried Arianna because she had been too wrapped up in her own feelings to care about his, she thought guiltily.

  ‘Oh, my darling, what’s wrong?’ she whispered, dropping down onto her knees in front of him.

  He jerked his head out of his hands and stared at her through red-rimmed eyes. ‘Isobel?’ He seemed to realise he was not imagining her, and his expression became even more ravaged. ‘Why are you here?’ He ran his hands through his hair. ‘You have to go,’ he told her harshly. ‘You have to go away from me...and never come back.’

  She touched his wet cheek that she had slapped before she had run out of Casa Celeste. ‘Why do you want me to leave you?’

  ‘Because...’ He gave a ragged groan. ‘Because I’m afraid I could hurt you.’

  ‘The only way you could hurt me is if you send me away,’ she said with raw honesty. ‘When you asked me to wear your ring again yesterday I hoped it was because you wanted our marriage to work. Hearing that you had been forced into a reconciliation by your uncle in order to be appointed Chairman of DSE made me think that you...you didn’t care about my feelings. But that’s not true, is it?’

  She wished he would say something instead of allowing her to blunder on and no doubt make a fool of herself. A memory flashed into her mind of the look of worry and strain on his face when he had rushed back from New York to be with her at the hospital after the stalker had attacked her. ‘I think you do care a little,’ she said huskily.

  Instead of replying, he got to his feet and strode into the en-suite bathroom, emerging moments later rubbing a towel over his face. He seemed more in control of himself, but his chest heaved as if it hurt him to breathe.

  ‘There are things you don’t know,’ he said abruptly. ‘A secret that I have kept since I was seventeen.’

  ‘If our marriage is to stand a chance, we can’t have secrets from each other.’

  A nerve jumped in Constantin’s jaw. ‘If I tell you this secret I guarantee you will leave and you’ll wish you had never heard the name of De Severino.’

  For a moment Isobel felt afraid of what he might reveal in this house of ghosts. Whatever it was clearly haunted Constantin, and he had borne the burden of his secret alone for all of his adult life.

  ‘I think we both have to take that risk,’ she said quietly.

  He was silent for a few moments—and then, heavily, ‘So be it.’ He walked over to the window that overlooked the courtyard and stood with his back to her.

  ‘I’m convinced that my father murdered his second wife.’

  Shock sent a shiver down Isobel’s spine. ‘But...I thought Franco loved Lorena.’

  ‘He did love her. He was obsessed with her and he could not bear any other man to look at her.’

  ‘Including you?’ Once again, Diane Rivolli’s words came into Isobel’s mind. There was something quite cruel about the way Lorena deliberately encouraged Constantin’s crush on her, and the way she played father and son off against each other.

  Constantin sighed. ‘I was seventeen when my father married again. I returned to Casa Celeste from an all-boys boarding school to find I had a stepmother who was only a few years older than me.

  ‘Lorena’s idea of dressing for dinner was to wear a sarong over her bikini,’ he said with heavy irony. ‘She would flirt with anything in trousers. For a hormone-fuelled, sexually inexperienced teenager she was the ultimate male fantasy.’

  ‘Your father can’t have liked you taking an interest in his wife.’

  ‘He hated me spending time with her. There were many rows between me and my father, and my father and Lorena.’ He fell silent again, before forcing himself to go on. ‘On the day it happened...I had walked into the courtyard and I heard voices from the top of the tower. My father and Lorena were fighting as usual. She was taunting him that he was too old and she told him that she desired me more than him.’ Constantin grimaced. ‘Stupid youth that I was, I actually felt flattered.

  ‘My father was furious. He was shouting at Lorena, and the next minute I saw her topple over the balcony rail, followed seconds later by Franco.’

  ‘I can’t imagine how terrible it must have been for you to watch, helplessly,’ Isobel murmured.

  ‘I was the only witness,’ Constantin said flatly. ‘At the inquest I gave evidence that I had seen Lorena fall, and my father had reached out to try and save her but he leaned out too far and also fell. A verdict of accidental death was recorded for both of them.’

  ‘Surely your father was a hero who died attempting to save his wife?’

  ‘That was what everyone believed. I assured myself the events had happened as I had stated. But I’d blocked out much of what happened because I couldn’t bear to remember.’ Gruesome images flashed into Constantin’s mind and he could not repress a shudder. ‘There was always something at the back of my mind, something wrong about what I had seen, but I didn’t know what bothered me—until the nightmares started.’

  He turned his head and glanced at Isobel. ‘It was the weekend that I took you to Rome and we became lovers. You were unlike any woman I’d met before, beautiful, innocent, and, as I discovered when I took you to bed, incredibly sensual.’ He gave a self-derisive snort. ‘I shouldn’t have been so pleased that I was your first lover but I felt like a king.’

  Isobel swallowed. ‘If that’s true, why did you dump me the minute we got back to London? You said it had been a fun weekend but that you were not looking for a relationship, and the next thing I heard you had left the London office and disappeared back to Rome.’

  Constantin looked away from her hurt expression. ‘While we were in Rome I had a horrific nightmare about what had happened to my father and Lorena at Casa Celeste. I saw them standing on the balcony at the top of the tower. At the inquest I’d stated that I had seen Lorena fall and my father reach for her. But in my dream I saw my father reach towards Lorena before she fell.

  ‘It was the missing piece of the puzzle that had troubled me for so long. My nightmare showed me what my conscious mind had blocked out. My father hadn’t tried to save Lorena. He had pushed her from the top of the tower in a fit of jealous rage before he jumped to his death after her.’

  ‘That’s awful!’ Isobel’s words were an instinctive response to Constantin’s shocking revelation. ‘It seems unbelievable.’

  ‘I wish it was,’ he said grimly. ‘Unfortunately it’s true. My nightmares always show the same sequence of events. My father was responsible for my stepmother’s death.’

  Isobel’s brow creased in a puzzled frown. ‘If it is true, I appreciate that your father did a terrible thing. But why did your nightmares only start when you met me? Do I look like Lorena, and remind you of her?’ Was that why Constantin had been attracted to her when she had been his office assistant? she wondered.

  ‘No, you look nothing like her.’

  ‘Then why was I the catalyst that made you remember what had happened?’

  He did not reply, but Isobel could sense the fierce tension emanating from him. ‘I believe the nightmares are a warning from my subconscious,’ he finally muttered.

  Her confusion grew. ‘A warning about what?’

  ‘That I might have inherited the manic jealousy which turned my father into a murderer.’

  She tried to make sense of his words. ‘You’re afraid that you might fall in love with someone in the obsessive way that your father loved Lorena?’

  Constantin gave a harsh groan. ‘Not someone. You, Isabella, I love you. And it’s for that reason that I am going to divorce you.’

  Isobel’s heart swooped and dipped
as if she were riding a roller coaster. ‘You love me?’ she said faintly. ‘But you admitted earlier that you asked me to come back to you because your uncle had said he would only appoint you as Chairman of DSE if you reconciled your marriage.’

  ‘I had to make you leave because it’s the only way I can ensure your safety. You are better off without me in your life. I hadn’t anticipated that you would come back,’ he said grimly.

  He raked his hair back from his brow with an unsteady hand. ‘I realised when we became lovers in Rome three years ago that I was in trouble. You got to me in a way no other woman ever had. The nightmare terrified me because I wondered if I could have a jealous streak like my father, so, I backed off and ended our affair.

  ‘When you told me you were pregnant it seemed that fate had played a hand. I told myself it was my duty to marry you, but secretly I was glad of the excuse to continue our relationship.’

  ‘We were happy in those first months of our marriage,’ Isobel remembered. ‘But everything changed when we came here, to Casa Celeste.’

  ‘The nightmares started again, but they were worse, because I dreamed that it was you and I at the top of the tower, and I pushed you from the balcony in a jealous rage. I’d never felt possessive of any woman but you,’ Constantin said rawly. ‘I thought that if I stopped myself from loving you, then you would be safe from my jealousy. But after you had the miscarriage I didn’t know how to help you. I couldn’t blame you for turning to your friends from the band for support, but I hated the fact that you wanted to be with them rather than me.

  ‘Jealousy is the worst kind of poison. It seeps into your blood and eats away at your soul. When you left me to go on tour with the Stone Ladies it was almost a relief to know that you were no longer in danger from me. You had a new life, a successful career, and I assumed that you and Ryan Fellows were lovers.’

  Constantin paused, aware that he had to be totally honest with Isobel. ‘I was furious with my uncle for issuing an ultimatum to go back to my marriage. I’d seen you and Fellows on a TV chat show hinting that you were in a relationship. When I kissed you at the party in London I’d intended to persuade you to come back to me purely so that Alonso would make me Chairman.’

  Isobel bit her lip. ‘So it was all fake? Your kindness, the yellow roses you bought for me?’ His tender passion that had given her hope for their marriage, she thought, her heart aching.

  ‘When you were attacked by the stalker, my only thought was to protect you. I brought you to Rome and immediately fell under your spell again. But the evening we had dinner at Pepe’s forced me to accept that I was still a threat to you.’

  ‘We had a lovely evening,’ she said, puzzled. ‘I felt safe from the stalker for the first time in months. You made me feel safe.’

  ‘The waiter at the restaurant smiled at you and I wanted to rip his head off.’ Constantin’s jaw clenched. ‘I hate other men looking at you.’

  ‘Well, I hate women looking at you. When I saw pictures in the newspapers of you with beautiful women I felt sick with jealousy. It’s a normal human emotion,’ Isobel said gently.

  ‘My father killed his own wife out of jealousy. You can’t tell me that was normal behaviour.’ Constantin shook his head. ‘I’ve turned down the role of Chairman of DSE and resigned from my position as CEO. I asked my uncle to meet me here this morning to give him the news, but you spoke to him first, before I’d had a chance to tell him my plans.’

  ‘What are your plans? DSE is more important to you than anything else and I can’t believe you’ve resigned.’

  ‘I have no idea what I’m going to do,’ he said listlessly. ‘I had thought that if I left the company and Casa Celeste, cut myself off from everything connected to my father, you and I could start a new life together. But last night I had another nightmare, and I realised that I can’t hide from my past and I can’t change the fact that I am Franco De Severino’s son. I inherited my father’s jealous streak, and I never want to find out what it might make me capable of.’

  He stared at Isobel’s beautiful face and visualised his stepmother’s broken body at the base of the tower. ‘Don’t you see, Isabella? I can’t risk loving you,’ he said harshly. ‘For God’s sake, and, more importantly, for your sake, leave me and go and get on with your life.’

  * * *

  For a long time after Constantin had heard the bedroom door close behind Isobel, he stood and stared unseeingly down at the courtyard. It was over. She now knew that she had married the son of a murderer. She understood that De Severino blood was bad blood, and, unsurprisingly, she had gone.

  Raw emotion clogged his throat. If there was a hell, it could not be worse than the place he was in right now. His single consolation was the knowledge that he had done everything he could to protect Isobel. Telling her about his father had made him feel unclean, and, growling a savage imprecation, he stripped out of his clothes and stepped into the shower.

  The powerful spray cleansed his body but nothing could wash the darkness from his soul. Memories of Isobel filled his mind; her smile, her honey-gold hair spilling across the pillows, her lips parting beneath his. Dio, she had gone, and his life had no purpose. He tilted his head and let the spray run down his face, because that way he could kid himself that they were not tears streaming from his eyes.

  The steam from the hot water and the noise of the powerful spray blinded and deafened him, and he was unaware that he was no longer alone until a hand touched his shoulder.

  ‘Santa Madre! You nearly gave me a heart attack.’ He took the towel Isobel handed him and roughly dried himself, before hitching it around his waist. It was only a hand towel and barely covered his thighs. He saw her eyes flick down his body and felt an inevitable tightening in his loins. ‘Why are you still here?’ If she did not leave he was afraid he might never let her go. ‘If you’re worried about driving my car, I’ll call a taxi for you.’

  ‘I’m not going anywhere,’ Isobel told him calmly. ‘I went to the courtyard and looked up at the tower. I’m not sure that you could have seen clearly what took place on the balcony all those years ago.

  ‘You witnessed a terribly traumatic event when you were seventeen,’ she said gently. ‘I think you felt guilty that you’d had a crush on your stepmother and you heard your father arguing with Lorena about you. Maybe you even felt that Franco had a right to be angry with his flirtatious wife. When you saw Lorena fall you believed that your father might have pushed her in a jealous rage, but you don’t really know that he did.’

  ‘My nightmares always show the same thing.’ He closed his eyes briefly, haunted by images that sickened him. ‘Sometimes in my dreams I see you falling from the tower,’ he muttered. ‘I wake up with my heart pounding with fear because I could not bear for something so terrible to happen to you as happened to Lorena.’

  Isobel’s heart contracted as she watched his eyes darken with pain. How could she ever have thought that he was emotionless and cold? ‘You were deeply traumatised by what you witnessed that day. But, Constantin, even if you did see your father push Lorena, it doesn’t mean that you have inherited murderous tendencies. You are not Franco, you’re you, and from what I’ve heard about your father you are very different from him.

  ‘We are each of us in charge of our own destinies,’ she said fiercely. ‘You should be proud of the man you are, and all you have achieved at DSE, as I am proud of you.’

  He let out a ragged breath. ‘So, are you a psychologist now?’

  ‘No, I’m your wife who loves you with all her heart.’ Isobel held his gaze. ‘I found this on your desk.’ She held up the new divorce petition his lawyer had sent him stating that they had lived apart for two years, and tore it up. ‘I am going to remain your wife until death us do part, as we both promised.’

  For timeless seconds he said nothing, and fear curdled in her stomach that she had misunderstood
him earlier, that he hadn’t meant it when he’d said he loved her. But then he moved and hauled her against his big chest.

  ‘Dammit, Isobel, I can’t fight you when you don’t play fair.’

  ‘Why do you want to fight me?’ she said softly.

  He took a shuddering breath. ‘Because I’m scared of loving you,’ he admitted in a low tone that revealed the intensity of his emotions. ‘Because I’m scared I’ll lose you.’

  She thought of the little boy who had been forbidden to cry at his mother’s funeral, the man who had been dry-eyed when they had buried their baby daughter but who had created a rose garden in Arianna’s memory.

  ‘You won’t lose me,’ she told him fiercely. ‘I will love you for ever.’ She cupped his face in her hands and sought his mouth, kissing him with all the love inside her, with her heart and soul, willing him to take the risk and find the happiness she knew belonged to them.

  ‘Ti amo, Isabella.’ His voice shook. ‘I swear I will keep you safe, and I will never hurt you.’

  ‘Then you must promise that you will always love me.’

  ‘Let me show you.’ He swept her up into his arms and carried her into the bedroom where he made love to her with such tender passion that she could not hold back her tears. ‘Don’t cry, tesorino,’ he said huskily, ‘or you’ll make me cry too.’

  She saw the brightness in his blue eyes, his vulnerability that he no longer tried to hide from her, and her heart overspilled with love for him.

  ‘There will be times when we will smile and laugh, but there’ll be other times when we’ll cry, because that is the way of life. But we will laugh and cry together. And always we will love each other,’ she vowed.

  Constantin smiled. ‘Always, my love.’