‘My father’s first wife died suddenly,’ he began, ‘and he was left to raise two young sons.’
‘Carlo and Roberto,’ she said quietly, filling in the blanks, and he nodded.
‘He was devastated for a time, thrown completely by her loss and by the unexpected responsibility of deciding what happened to the next generation. My mother was enlisted to help the nanny, and she was very beautiful. When you meet Marietta you will see what I mean; she is very much like her mother, who was not only beautiful, but a rare blonde in an island filled with dark-haired people. She stood out and she was noticed. My father was still grieving his lost wife, but he was smitten with my mother’s beauty and seduced her, wanting no more than relief from the anguish of losing his wife. Meanwhile she was young and overcome by his apparent affection, and she had fallen in love with him.
‘When she became pregnant, he moved her out of the palace, but still he went to her. And still my mother took him in. I think she believed that one day he would marry her and make her his princess.
‘But she fell pregnant again. Meanwhile my father found another mistress, younger and with more time on her hands, and my mother was distraught. He sent her away, offering her a settlement if only she never returned. So she left.’
The seconds ticked away, an antique mantel clock that she never noticed except for the deepest, darkest nights, sounding like a drumbeat in the ensuing silence, with only the wind whistling outside for company.
‘Why are you telling me this?’
‘So that you know the risks.’
‘Risks?’ She battled to make sense of it all. ‘I still don’t understand. What’s your mother got to do with me?’
His eyes were so dark and deep, she felt in that moment she could fall into them and never find her way out. ‘She fell in love with a man who was incapable of loving her. I’m warning you not to do the same thing.’
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
THE wind suddenly howled outside the windows, a loose shutter somewhere banging. But inside the room, Sienna’s blood had turned to ice, her heart stilled with the cold.
‘You’re warning me off.’
Rafe nodded.
‘Telling me not to fall in love with you?’
‘Telling you how it has to be.’
‘Because you don’t love me.’
‘Because I can’t love you. I can’t love anyone.’
She shook her head, the injustice of it all threatening to swamp her, the sheer unfairness too much to comprehend. ‘But you don’t know that.’
‘I know what I saw what my mother go through. I know I will never put myself in such a position.’
‘And you’re trying to tell me that this is the only way this marriage can work, by you not loving me and me not loving you.’
He held up his hands. ‘We can still have a good marriage.’
She took a step back towards the door, the pleas of her mother running through her head, begging her father not to leave them. The sound of her father yelling back, telling her that he’d never wanted her, that he’d never loved her. The sound of the hatch slamming down, as he’d left them for ever. That was not going to be her future. But it would be if she married Rafe. She could fight and fight and do everything she could to try to make him love her, but his mind was made up. She’d already lost him.
‘No.’
His eyes narrowed, his stance more alert. ‘What do you mean, no?’ And just like his stance, the tone of his voice had also changed, shifting from conciliatory to wary in a moment when he realized he didn’t have the upper hand any more.
‘I’m not prepared to marry you on those terms. I could never marry someone who didn’t love me—who was incapable of loving me. Don’t you see? My mother was just the same as yours. She loved my father with all her heart, and he turned that power back on her and crushed her with it. And nothing, not even the child that had forced them into marriage, was enough to keep them together.
‘I made a promise to myself years ago that I would never marry a man for the sake of an unplanned pregnancy, especially without that man’s love.’ She looked at him, her eyes scanning his features, wanting to imprint his face on her memory so that she might remember every last perfect detail of him in case it was the last time she saw him this close, beginning to believe it might very well be. ‘And I was starting to think it might work. I thought there was a chance—that we could make it work. But, no. I can see that’s not possible.’ She glanced at her watch, cursing to herself when she saw the time. So much for catching up with an old colleague. The chopper was probably already gone, just one more disappointment in what had turned out to be a gut-slammer of a day. But that didn’t matter right now. She just wanted to get away, find some space, sort out a head too full of cries of injustice and a heart too shredded with pain.