It felt very different, looking back.
‘We were good friends growing up.’
‘Could you be again?’
Raul was about to give a derisive laugh, but then he thought for a moment. ‘I don’t know...’
And it was nice to lie in bed talking with another person, rather than trying to make sense of things by himself.
‘I think that my mother had problems for a very long time. Perhaps even before she was married. I don’t even know if I’m my father’s son.’
‘Does it matter?’
‘I think it did to him.’
‘Is that why he beat you?’
He had never told her that Gino had given him those scars on his back, but it was clear now and Raul nodded.
And when he examined those times without hate and with her by his side things were easier to see.
His hand was on her stomach, and he could feel the little bump. It was starting to sink in properly that he would be a father.
She felt his hand there and wondered at his thoughts. ‘I’m not a gold-digger, Raul.’
‘I know. I had to put that statue in your case, remember?’ He had gone over and over that time.
‘I don’t think I took the Pill every day, even though my mother had insisted I should be on it. I had no intention of sleeping with Bastiano, and maybe I should have known I wasn’t covered. I didn’t think.’
‘Lydia, you could have been wearing a chastity belt that night and I’d have rung for wire cutters. I could have insisted we use a condom. Have you told your mother about the baby?’ he added.
‘No.’
‘When will you?’
‘When I’m ready to.’
‘I’m glad you told me first,’ Raul said.
‘She was a mess when I got back. I think losing my father finally caught up with her. She kicked Maurice out. She’s staying at her sister’s now. She’s agreed the castle should go on the market.’
‘Lydia. I’ll look after your mother, but not him.’
Maurice he could never forgive.
Lydia lay in his arms and gave a soft laugh at the way he’d spoken of Maurice, but then she thought about what he’d just said about her mother.
‘You don’t have to do that.’
‘Of course I do.’
‘No, Raul, you don’t.’
‘We’re going to be a family, Lydia. Marry me?’
She lay silent. She could feel his hand on her stomach and put her hand over his. Lydia knew how she felt about Raul. But she also meant what she’d said—a baby wouldn’t save them.
‘You don’t even like children.’
‘No, I don’t,’ Raul agreed. ‘I’ll like ours, though. Please believe that I’m not asking you to marry me because of the baby.’
‘I know that.’
She almost did.
But by his own admission Raul was a manipulative liar, and there was still the tiniest niggle that he was simply saying the right things to appease her.
But then she thought of his look of horror when she had exposed him. So unlike Arabella, who hadn’t even flinched at being caught.
He seemed so loath to hurt her.
She was scared, though, to believe.
And as her mind flicked around, trying to find fault with this love, Raul lay sinking into his first glimpse of peace.
That feeling—not quite foreboding, but almost—was fading. His constant wondering as to how she was had been answered. He thought of that first surge of jealousy when he’d thought that she and Bastiano might be lovers.
And now they lay there together and he looked at her. ‘Were you jealous at the thought of Allegra and me?’
‘Of course I was.’
‘Are you now?’
‘No.’ She shook her head.
‘She really was looking for you for weeks. And,’ he added, ‘I’ve just found out she’s pregnant too.’
And then she knew she wasn’t jealous any more, or suspicious of Allegra, because he answered a question she wasn’t even thinking.
‘It’s not mine.’
‘I would really hope not.’
And he smiled, and when he did, for Lydia it was easy to smile too, but he could see the little sparkle of tears in her eyes on what should be their happiest night.
‘Marry me?’ he said again.
‘Raul...’
Oh, she knew he cared—and deeply. And she knew how she felt. But there was still a tiny part of her that was scared that he’d asked in haste.
That without a baby there wouldn’t be any ‘them’.
She would just have to deal with it, Lydia knew. She would just have to accept never quite fully knowing if they were only together for the sake of their child. Because in every other way it felt perfect.
Stiff upper lip and all that.