Millionaire Tycoon's English Rose Page 14

  Francesco said little, but as they all sat at dinner that evening Celia felt him touch her gently now and then, as though seeking reassurance. She looked forward to the moment when they would be alone together later that night, and she could ask him to confide in her.

  But before that there was a phone call that changed everything.

  It came just as the meal was ending. Hope answered her cellphone, listened for a moment, then said tersely, ‘Very well. I’m coming.’

  ‘What’s happened?’ Toni asked her.

  ‘Lisa is awake and wants to see us.’

  ‘All of us?’ Toni asked softly.

  ‘Me—and Francesco.’

  Nobody could have told from Toni’s face that this meant anything unusual to him.

  ‘Come with me,’ Hope begged.

  ‘No, cara. I have no place in this. I’ll wait for you here.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Go,’ he said, with sudden intensity.

  Hope didn’t reply, but she put her arms about her husband and kissed him.

  ‘Francesco,’ Toni said in a low voice, ‘go with your mother.’

  ‘Yes, Poppa.’

  His hand was tight on Celia’s. He didn’t ask her to accompany him, but neither did he release his grip. They went out to the car together.

  Franco met them in the corridor outside his wife’s room.

  ‘Lisa is conscious,’ he told Hope, ‘and she has something she wishes to say—to ask you. All these years it’s been on her mind. I’ve tried to—’ He lapsed into the helpless silence of confusion.

  ‘What have you told her?’ Hope asked.

  ‘I’ve denied it,’ he said heavily. ‘But nothing I say seems to bring her peace.’

  ‘And that’s the only thing that matters. Say whatever you have to, Mamma.’

  It was Francesco who had spoken, making the others stare at him.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Hope asked.

  ‘You know exactly what I mean. Aunt Lisa is dying. Help her.’

  Celia heard the click as the door opened, and the faint sound of Hope’s footsteps, then a faint, husky voice from within the room. She waited, expecting either that Francesco would lead her forward or that the door would close, shutting her out. Neither happened. By accident or design Hope had forgotten to shut the door.

  Lisa’s eyes were open as Hope moved quietly towards the bed, and she managed a faint smile.

  ‘Thank you for coming,’ she said. ‘There’s something I need to know. I always lacked the courage before.’

  ‘I understand,’ Hope said softly.

  ‘It’s about Francesco—Is he—is he Franco’s son?’

  Francesco, standing in the doorway, saw his mother raise her head and look directly at Franco on the other side of the bed.

  ‘Tell me,’ Lisa said weakly. ‘I must know before I die.’

  At last Hope spoke.

  ‘My dear, I wish you’d asked me years ago, then I could have told you that it’s not true. Francesco isn’t his son. I’ve never told anyone his father’s identity, but I never meant to cause you a moment’s unease. You should never have doubted Franco. You are everything to him, just as my Toni is everything to me. Now I will leave you.’

  She gave Lisa a brief kiss on the cheek and backed out of the room. Her last view was of Franco in his wife’s arms. This time she closed the door.

  ‘Mamma,’ Francesco said, putting his arm around her, ‘was it very hard?’

  ‘I said what had to be said,’ Hope told him. ‘Giving her peace was all that mattered. You were right about that.’

  ‘It was a good lie,’ Francesco said.

  Hope gave a little smile.

  ‘Not everything I said was a lie. All those years ago he stayed with her because she was his true love. She was. Not me.’

  ‘And the other thing?’ he wanted to know. ‘About Toni?’

  Hope didn’t answer in words, but her gaze went over Francesco’s shoulder, so that he turned and saw what she had seen. The next moment Hope had gone.

  ‘What’s happening?’ Celia asked.

  ‘It’s Toni,’ Francesco told her. ‘He came after all. He’s been sitting at the end of the corridor.’

  ‘Where he could be there for Hope but not intrude on her,’ she said.

  ‘Yes, I think so. But now she’s walking towards him. He’s seen her—he’s got to his feet—she’s started to run—he’s opened his arms to her and—’

  ‘Let’s go,’ Celia said softly. ‘There are some things that nobody’s eyes should see.’

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  IT WAS the early hours of the morning when they arrived back at the hotel. Francesco had been silent since they’d left the hospital, but Celia sensed that it wasn’t the same silence as before. She no longer felt shut out from his thoughts. Rather he was immersed in them, struggling to find a way out, but his continual clasp on her hand told her that she was part of everything going on inside him.

  Since the beds were so large she hoped he might be tempted to join her, but he slipped quietly into his own. She came to sit by him and said a soft, ‘Good night.’ He didn’t answer, and actually turned away, but before doing so he raised her hand to his lips.

  They had slept barely an hour when she was woken by the sound of his voice. She was alert in an instant, slipping out of bed and going to sit beside him, listening for the old cry of, ‘Get out.’

  But it didn’t come. Instead, he was muttering feverishly, ‘What did I do? What did I do?’ Over and over again the words poured out, intense, anguished.

  ‘Caro,’ she said, shaking him gently. ‘Wake up. It’s me.’

  She reached out, touching him, running her fingers over his face. He seized her hands, holding them tight against him, but still he seemed unable to wake.

  ‘Why?’ he cried. ‘Tell me why? What did I do?’

  Driven by desperation, she moved until she was close to his ear and said firmly, ‘You didn’t do anything. It’s not your fault—not your fault.’

  She repeated the words like a mantra, with no idea of their meaning, desperately hoping that she’d found the key to whatever tormented him. At first she thought it was hopeless, but gradually his voice slowed, the words became less frantic, but imbued with a kind of despairing resignation.

  ‘It’s not your fault,’ Celia repeated.

  ‘Yes, it is—it was something I did—or why did he throw us out? Why? Why?’

  Briefly she wondered if it was their own quarrel and its aftermath that tormented him, but he’d spoken of ‘he’ and ‘us.’

  She gave him a shake, determined to wake him because she didn’t think he could bear this any longer. But instead of waking he began to mutter, ‘Get out, get out, get out—’

  ‘Wake up!’ she cried. ‘Francesco, please wake up.’

  Suddenly he went still in her hands, and the sound of his gasp told her that he was awake.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ he whispered.

  ‘I’m always here. Whenever you want me. Francesco, tell me what happened. You kept saying, What did I do? And then you started saying “Get out” again. What was your dream?’

  ‘It was more than a dream,’ he groaned. ‘It was all happening again, just like last time.’

  ‘Tell me quickly, while you can still remember. Why do you say, “Get out”? Did I give you the nightmare, by saying that when we quarrelled?’

  ‘Not really. You triggered it with those words, but it goes back long before you. Only I couldn’t remember. That’s what was so terrible. It was always there, waiting to come back, but I couldn’t see it or confront it.’

  ‘But tonight—’

  ‘Yes, tonight he came back. As he’s been waiting to do for years.’

  ‘He? Who is he? Is he a real man, or did you imagine him?’

  ‘He was real once. He’s been dead for years, but to me he’ll always be real.’

  ‘What happens in the dream?’

  ‘He towers over me,�
� Francesco said hoarsely. ‘So high he seems almost to reach the ceiling. He looks like a giant because I’m only three years old. I’m terrified of him, and I want to run away, but I don’t because only cowards run. He taught me that. He taught me lots of things—we were so close. I learned everything he had to teach. I thought he was wonderful.’

  ‘But who was he?’

  ‘His name was Jack Cayman—Mamma’s first husband, the man I once thought was my father. I can see him, leaning down to me—I couldn’t take my eyes off him—and screaming, “Get out! And take this little bastard with you.”’

  Celia held him tightly. ‘Go on,’ she urged.

  ‘He just screamed, “Get out, get out!” again and again. I didn’t know what he meant, or what had happened, but I know we left the same day. He must have found out the truth—that he wasn’t my father.’

  ‘You said you were close?’

  ‘Yes, he made a favourite of me. The joke is that he used to say that of us three boys I was the one most like him. Luke was adopted, Primo was his own son, but for some reason he latched on to me as the kind of son he truly wanted. I loved that. The best thing in the world was when he swept me up in his arms, tossed me the air, then caught me, grinning all over his face. I guess I was a bit of a chauvinist, like boys of three tend to be. Mamma came in handy at feeding time, but the one who mattered was my dad. His love, his approval—they were what made the sun come out.

  ‘Then suddenly, in one hour, it was all taken away. And I didn’t know what I’d done wrong. I just knew that warmth and safety had vanished without warning, leaving a terrible emptiness.’

  ‘Poor little boy,’ she mourned.

  ‘Of course, I learned the details later. He was livid because he’d found out that he wasn’t my father, and it wasn’t anything I’d done, but it was too late to make any difference, and what happened that night got blotted out. All I knew was that the words Get out always had a strange impression on me. If I heard them, it was as though a switch had been thrown.’

  ‘But surely you didn’t hear them often? How many people would dare tell you to get out?’

  He gave a faint bark of laughter. ‘One or two have tried. There was one lady who was so determined to be rid of me that my feet barely touched the floor.’

  ‘She sounds like a very stupid woman to me,’ Celia said, lying down beside him, her face close to his.

  ‘No, she was a very clever one. I realised that she was right when I got over my shock enough to do some thinking. I’ve always been a bit forceful, and nobody had really stood up to me before, you see. But it wasn’t just real people. If I was watching television and one character told another to get out the words triggered something in my mind. And I’d be in a black mood for hours, without understanding why. But it passed, and I’d forget again.’

  ‘But then I screamed the words at you, just like him?’

  ‘Yes, and that’s when it really began to haunt me. Because it was actually aimed at me. But it was more than that. It was losing you. Everything that I treasured—warmth, safety, love—had vanished again, leaving me stranded in a desert. And then tonight—coming here, seeing Franco, everything they talked about—it came back. Suddenly I could remember everything that happened that night, and the last brick slipped into place.’

  ‘What happens now?’ she asked anxiously.

  ‘It’ll be all right now. I can cope because I can confront it.’ He turned his face to her on the pillow. ‘Mind you, I’m never going to be sweetness and light.’

  ‘Well, I guess I knew that,’ she said, snuggling contentedly against him. ‘But you know me—I like to live dangerously.’

  ‘You don’t want sweetness and light?’

  ‘Bor—ing!’ she sang out. ‘Bor—ing!’

  He felt for her. ‘Why are you lying outside the duvet?’ he asked.

  She scrambled under the covers. ‘Is that better?’

  ‘You’re still overdressed.’

  ‘So are you.’

  They solved the problem at once, not disrobing slowly, to tease, but quickly, like people who couldn’t wait to get to their destination. They urgently wanted to be naked together, and when they were they lost no time seeking the moment of complete fulfilment. There would be time for tenderness later. This was important.

  For Celia it was almost like making love to a different man. He didn’t need to tell her that his shadows had begun to fall away; she could sense it in every movement. But she knew, too, that he needed her presence to escape them completely.

  Afterwards they lay together in sleepy contentment, until she said, ‘How lovely that Toni came to the hospital.’

  ‘He was bound to. It was always there in the way his eyes followed Mamma around.’

  After a moment, he said, speaking hesitantly, ‘To be honest, that’s the only thing I mind about you being blind. I’ll never know if your eyes would have followed me.’

  ‘Then you haven’t been looking properly,’ she said. ‘Because they do—all the time.’

  They went to the hospital next day, to hear the news that they had expected.

  ‘She fell asleep finally about an hour ago,’ Franco said in a slightly unsteady voice. ‘She was conscious almost until the end, and I was able to tell her how much I loved her.’

  ‘She had no real cause to doubt your love,’ Hope said gently. ‘And in her heart I think she really knew that. You were together for such a long time—nearly forty years.’

  Long ago, when they were young and their passion had been at its height, they could have been together. But he had chosen to stay with his wife. The truth behind that choice was there now, as they stood there in the hospital corridor, the slanted sunbeams from the windows falling on their white hair.

  As they walked away afterwards Della fell in beside Celia, taking her arm so that Francesco could give his attention to his parents.

  ‘For a man in his sixties Franco’s incredibly handsome,’ she said in low voice, not to attract attention. ‘He must have been dazzling when he was young. Toni’s delightful, but I doubt if he was ever dazzling.’

  ‘It’s got nothing to do with a man’s looks,’ Celia told her. ‘If it had, I could never fall in love.’

  ‘And you are in love, aren’t you?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ Celia murmured. ‘Yes, I am.’

  ‘Is everything all right with you and Francesco?’

  ‘It’s getting better, but we’ve a way to go yet.’

  Toni had remained behind to talk to his brother, and Francesco took the chance to draw his mother’s arm through his and say, ‘Is it all right, Mamma? You know what I mean.’

  ‘Yes, all is well, my son. I knew years ago that he loved Lisa more than he loved me. So when he offered to stay with me I told him no.’

  ‘He did offer?’

  ‘Oh, yes. But I knew I must not accept. If he’d left Lisa for me he wouldn’t have forgiven me in the long run. Not just because of his children, but also because she was his true love.’

  She gave his arm a slight pressure.

  ‘Sometimes the only way you can show how much you love someone is to let them go.’

  Lisa’s funeral was held three days later. The whole family was there to see her coffin, covered with flowers, being laid to rest. Despite what Celia had said, Della couldn’t help wondering what Hope was feeling now. Had the past come back to her, making her heart ache with its loss? Had Franco, too, become sharply aware of what had come and gone?

  But Franco’s eyes were fixed unwaveringly on the coffin, and his expression was heart-rending. Della stole a glance at Hope, but Hope was looking at Toni.

  On the surface life went on as before. The society apologised that Celia’s new dog would not be ready as soon as hoped, but Francesco seemed untroubled by the delay.

  Things had reached a strange pass between them. They were lovers again, spending nights in each other’s arms, just as in the past, yet they never spoke of the future, and an air of impermanence hung ov
er them. There were still decisions to be made, but neither of them wanted to face them for a while.

  ‘We’re cowards,’ she murmured dozily one night, from the shelter of his arms.

  ‘What’s wrong with that?’ he wanted to know. ‘We’ve tried being brave, and nuts to it.’

  She giggled and blissfully snuggled down farther. The big problems still lurked outside the tent, but in the meantime there was a lot to be said for cowardice.

  She supposed it was a sign of losing her nerve that she often kept her cellphone turned off, lest the call come from L’Esperienza, demanding that she make her dive from a helicopter. She owed it to the firm that she’d promised to support, but she didn’t want to face that decision yet. Eventually she would feel guilty and turn it on again.

  In the end the decision was taken out of her hands, when she slipped up to the flat above to return a CD, assuring Francesco that she could manage that little distance alone. It was half an hour before she returned, having got caught up in cheerful gossip.

  ‘There was a phone call for you,’ Francesco informed her. ‘A journalist wanting to know when you’d be ready to go skydiving. He says he has a space in the paper all ready, and it can be a good story, but it has to be you, not Sandro.’

  ‘What did you tell him?’ she asked.

  ‘I told him I thought you were free any time, and you’d call back tonight to fix the date.’

  Astonishment held her silent, staring.

  ‘You told him I’d go skydiving?’ she echoed in disbelief.

  ‘Yes—and could you call him back quickly? Because he’s going out, and he wants to get it settled.’

  He left the room abruptly, before his resolve weakened and he said what he really thought—that she must commit herself quickly before he broke down and begged her not to do it.

  It was his mother who had given him the clue, saying, ‘Sometimes the only way you can show how much you love someone is to let them go.’

  He’d heard the words without truly realising what they meant. Now he discovered the reality for himself, and it was terrible. Sweat stood out on his brow, and he had to call on all his stubbornness.