* * *
She wasn't what he had expected or anticipated, Caesar acknowledged. That wheat-blonde hair wasn't Sicilian, nor those sea-green eyes-even if she did carry herself with the pride of an Italian woman. She was around medium height, fine-boned and slender-almost too much so, he thought, catching sight of the narrowness of her wrist with its lightly tanned skin. The oval shape of her face with its high cheekbones was classically feminine. A beautiful woman. One who would turn male heads wherever she went. But her air of cool serenity was, he suspected, worked for rather than natural.
And what of his own feelings towards her now that she was here? Had he expected them? Caesar turned away from her so that she wouldn't be able to see his expression. Was he afraid of what it might reveal to her? She was a trained professional, after all-a woman whose qualifications proved that she was well able to dig down deep into a person's psyche and find all that they might have hidden away. And he was afraid of what she might find in him.
He was afraid that she might rip away the scar tissue he had encouraged to grow over his guilt and grief, his pride and sense of duty, over the dreadful, shameful demands he had allowed them to make on him. So was it more than just guilt he felt? Was there shame as well? He almost didn't need to ask himself that question when he had borne those twin burdens for over a decade. Had borne them and would continue to bear them. He had tried to make amends-a letter sent but never replied to, an apology proffered, a hope expressed, words written in what at the time had felt like the blood he had squeezed out of his own heart. A letter never even acknowledged. There would be no forgiveness or going back. And, after all, what else had he expected? What he had done did not deserve to be forgiven.
His guilt was a burden he would carry throughout his life, just as it had already been, but that guilt was his private punishment. It belonged solely to him. After all, there could be no going back to change things-nor, he suspected, anything he could offer that would make recompense for what had been done. So, no, being here with her had not increased his guilt-he already bore it in full measure-but it had sharpened its edge to a keenness that was almost a physical stab of pain every time he breathed.
They were speaking in English-his choice-and anyone looking at her would have assumed from the understated simplicity and practicality of her plain soft blue dress, her shoulders discreetly covered by simple white linen, that she was a certain type of educated middle class professional woman, on holiday in Sicily.
Her name was Louise Anderson, and her mother was the daughter of the Sicilian couple whose ashes she had come to bury in this quiet churchyard. Her father was Australian, also of Sicilian origin.
Caesar moved, the movement making him aware of the letter he had placed in the inside pocket of his suit jacket.
* * *
Louise could feel her tension tightening like a spring being wound with deliberate manipulation by the man watching her. There was a streak of cruelty to those they considered weaker than themselves in the Falconari family. It was there in their history, both written and oral. He had no reason to behave cruelly towards her grandparents, though. Nor to her.
It had shocked her when the priest to whom she had written about her grandparents' wishes had written back saying that she would need the permission of the Duke-a ‘formality', he had called it-and that he had arranged the necessary appointment for her.
She would rather have met him in the bustling anonymity of her hotel than here in this quiet, ancient place so filled with the silent memories of those who lay here. But his word was law. That knowledge was enough to have her increasing the distance between them as she stepped further back from him, this time checking first to make sure there were no potential obstructions behind her, as though by doing so she could somehow lessen the powerful forcefield of his personality. And his sexuality …
A shudder racked her. She hadn't been prepared for that. That she would be immediately and so intensely aware of his sexuality. Far more so now, in fact, than …
As she braked down hard on her accelerating and dangerous thoughts, she was actually glad of the sound of his voice commanding her concentration.
‘Your grandparents left Sicily for London shortly after they married, and made their home there, and yet they have chosen to have their ashes buried here?'
How typical it was of this kind of man-a powerful, domineering, arrogant overlord-that he should question her grandparents' wishes, as though they were still his serfs and he still their master. And how her own fiercely independent blood boiled with dislike for him at that knowledge. She was glad to be given that excuse for the antagonism she felt towards him. No-she didn't need an excuse for her feelings. They were hers as of right. Just as it was her grandparents' right to have their wish to have their ashes interred in the earth of their forebears fulfilled.
‘They left because there was no work for them here. Not even working for a pittance on your family's land, as their parents and theirs before them had done. They want their ashes buried here because to them Sicily was still their home, their land.'
Caesar could hear the accusation and the antagonism in her voice.
‘It seems … unusual that they should entrust the task of carrying out their wishes to you, their grandchild, instead of your mother, their daughter.'
Once again he was aware of the pressure of the letter in his pocket. And the pressure of his own guilt … ? He had offered her an apology. That was the past and it must remain the past. There was no going back. The guilt he felt was a self-indulgence he could not afford to recognise. Not when there was so much else at stake.
‘My mother lives in Palm Springs with her second husband, and has done so for many years, whilst I have always lived in London.'
‘With your grandparents?'
Even though it was a question, he made it seem more like a statement of fact.
Was he hoping to provoke her into a show of hostility he could use against her to deny her request? She certainly didn't trust him not to do so. If that was indeed his aim, she wasn't going to give him the satisfaction. She could hide her feelings well. She had, after all, a wealth of past experience to fall back on. That was what happened when you were branded as the person who had brought so much shame on her family that her own parents had turned their back on you. The stigma of that shame would be with her for ever, and it deprived her of the right to claim either pride or privacy.
‘Yes,' she confirmed, ‘I went to live with them after my parents divorced.'
‘But not immediately after?'
The question jolted through her like an arc of electricity, touching sensitive nerve-endings that should have been healed. Not that she was going to let him see that.
‘No,' she agreed. But she couldn't look at him as she answered. Instead she had to look across the graveyard-so symbolic, in its way, as a graveyard of her own longings and hopes which the end of her parents' marriage had brought about.
‘At first you lived with your father. Wasn't that rather unusual for a girl of eighteen? To choose to live with her father rather than her mother?'
Louise didn't question how he knew so much about her. The village priest had requested a history of her family from her when she had written to him with regard to the burial of her grandparents' ashes. Knowing the habits of this very close Sicilian community, she suspected enquiries would have also been made via contacts in London.
The thought of that was enough to have fully armed anxiety springing to life inside her stomach. If she couldn't fulfil her grandparents' final wishes because this man chose to withhold his permission because of her …
Automatically Louise bowed her head, her golden hair catching the stray beams of sunlight penetrating the green darkness of the cypress-shaded graveyard.
It had been an unwelcome shock, and the last thing she had felt prepared for, to see him, and not the priest as she had anticipated. With every look he gave her, every silence that came before another question, she was tensing her nerves against the blow she knew he could deliver. Her desire to turn and flee was so strong that she was trembling inside as she fought to resist it. Fleeing would be as pointless as trying to outrun the deathly outpouring from a volcano. All it would achieve would be a handful of heart-pounding, stomach-churning, sickening minutes of time in which to imagine the awfulness of her fate. Better, surely, to stand and defy it and at least have her self-respect intact.