car on the way back.’
‘That’s no reason not to wake me! I wouldn’t have cared! Just to see his face…’
The words became choked with disappointment and she had to stop.
‘I did come in to tell you he was home,’ he said quietly. ‘But you looked very peaceful in your sleep. You were—’ he frowned ‘—smiling. And yet you had an air of exhaustion. I did not have the heart to wake you. I’m sorry if it was the wrong decision, but my mother agreed that another night wouldn’t make much difference, and that both of you needed to rest.’
‘Because of my illness,’ Miranda muttered mutinously, sweeping her hair behind her ears.
She trembled a little. It gave her an odd feeling to know that he’d watched her sleeping.
‘I’m sorry about that, I should have warned you about the story I’d invented to cover your absence, but I wasn’t expecting Mama to turn up,’ he explained. ‘When I left England so unexpectedly with Carlo I didn’t know what to tell her—or anyone else for that matter. I couldn’t bring myself to reveal the truth.’ His face darkened. ‘Whatever happened, I didn’t want our child to discover one day how badly you had behaved. So I lied while I worked out what to do for the best.’
‘You didn’t lie to your chauffeur.’ She looked him directly in the eye.
‘How do you know that?’
‘The way he treated me. Without respect.’
‘I will speak to Luca. My chauffeur,’ Dante said quietly.
‘Do that. What exactly did you tell him?’ she demanded.
‘The bare minimum. Luca drove Carlo and me from Malpensa—Milan Airport—after…after I found you that evening,’ Dante replied in a low tone. ‘He knew I was in a terrible state. Kept Carlo amused with songs and stories. Fed me coffee and brandy, bought a toy for Carlo at the service station on the Autostrada to entertain him. Somehow I let slip that you’d been unfaithful.’
‘Dante! How could you?’ she cried in dismay.
He frowned. ‘He is one of the few I trust—apart from Guido, of course—who wouldn’t dream of tarnishing the family honour with any revelations. As far as Luca is concerned, I wish I’d kept my mouth shut, but I wasn’t in full possession of my senses,’ he said tightly. ‘But he’ll say nothing, for my sake. His father worked for mine. Luca has been my European driver since he left school and is totally loyal and reliable. He won’t even have said anything to his wife. You can be sure of that.’
And she’d speak to Luca, too, she vowed. Put her side of the story.
Dante opened a massive carved door at the top of the stairs and politely stood to one side in a gesture that still made her feel cherished. Luca forgotten, Miranda smiled in anticipation, her eyes searching the darkened room within as she stepped breathlessly into the room. Dante softly closed the door behind them.
A small lamp glowed by the bed, its soft light illuminating…
She frowned, staring at the vast canopied four-poster, elaborately decorated. Rich brocade hangings.
Her senses alerted, she quickly scanned the bedroom. It was very masculine, despite the elegant eighteenth-century furniture. Seeing Dante’s honey-coloured silk robe on a chair, she stopped breathing.
No sign of Carlo. This wasn’t a child’s room at all. Almost certainly it belonged to Dante himself. And why would he bring her to his bedroom…?
In a fury she whirled around. ‘You rat! Let me out—!’
She didn’t finish the sentence. Dante had caught her arms in warning.
‘Be quiet!’ he whispered fiercely. ‘You’ll wake him!’
Before she could gather her wits, she found herself being pushed towards the bed. Her head whirled. She felt strangely dizzy. It was as if she were in a time warp; those hands holding her—though she remembered them as being more brutal—and a sense of being trapped and helpless…
‘There! Now will you believe me?’ Dante muttered.
Despite the rising terror, she blinked away the fog and focused. The fear vanished in an instant when she saw the dark head of her sleeping child.
‘Carlo!’ she whispered. Dante released her. She ran to the bed and knelt in a fever of joy. ‘Oh, my darling, I’ve missed you!’ she breathed, somehow holding back her intense longing to catch up her son and crush him in her arms. He looked utterly content, the long black lashes settling thickly on his baby cheeks, the rosebud mouth pursed in sleep. ‘Mummy’s here,’ she said, choked. Maybe in his dreams he’d hear what she was saying. ‘Mummy’s come back.’
Tentatively she reached out an alarmingly shaky hand and touched the chubby little arm clad in the dinosaur pyjamas with dinosaur buttons which she’d bought for him shortly before he’d disappeared. Carlo sighed and then he smiled his creamy smile.
Speech was beyond her. Miranda’s own face lit up with a soft radiance because she imagined that he really did know she was close by. And her heart melted completely when his mouth began making little sucking noises as if he were still at her breast.
Gently she replaced the covers, which Dante had drawn back so that she could see her son. Carlo snuggled into them, his dark head almost disappearing. From a few feet away it would be hard to know he was there.
With loving motions she smoothed the oyster silk bedspread and hungrily watched her son sleeping. She was filled with happiness, with choking emotion, with uncontainable love.
Two weeks. It had been an eternity. Days, hours, minutes, seconds of interminable misery. But they would not be parted again. Dante had promised…
Remembering him, she looked around. He was watching her, his dark eyes silvery from the reflected light of the moon. For a moment it almost seemed as though they were full of tears but she knew it was an illusion when he growled in a surly tone,
‘I think I’m owed an apology.’
Her eyes widened and she rose unsteadily to her feet.
‘Why?’
‘You thought I’d brought you to my room to seduce you. Or do you think I might have tried rape?’ he grated.
Her elation faded and she bit her lip. She pushed her hand through her tumbling curtain of hair, trying to tidy it.
‘You’re right. I’m sorry. I panicked when I realised this was your room. It never occurred to me that Carlo would be here. It only goes to show how little I trust you, doesn’t it?’ she finished sadly. ‘Why is he in your bedroom, anyway?’
He stalked to the door and motioned for her to leave. Once outside, he launched into a tightly controlled explanation.
‘Carlo wouldn’t sleep on his own. Each night he stayed up with me, constantly asking when you were coming home. He would only fall asleep if I held him in my arms. If I put him in a bed of his own he knew, even in his sleep, that he wasn’t being cuddled and he’d wake up yelling.’
Miranda
