His Wedding Ring of Revenge

by Julia James

  He paused, a strange expression coming into his eyes, as if he were seeing darkly down the corridors of time.

  ‘She was a virgin. I could see it at once. The two friends that she was with were not—I could see that too. And I knew that because she was a virgin I really, really should leave her alone. But I couldn’t. And I didn’t want to. I wanted to go to her, talk to her, get her away from the party—which was no place for her. Get her to myself. But not to have sex with her. Though I longed to—how could I not? She had hair like spun gold and the clearest, most beautiful eyes I’d ever seen in a woman. She talked to me about Michelangelo, and the Renaissance, and Latin writers and Italian history. And all the time she talked she never tried to flirt—not once. She just looked at me with those clear, beautiful grey eyes, her hair like a shining waterfall and her face…ah, her face…like a Botticelli painting. After I’d driven her round Rome, shown her the city by night, I took her back to her apartment and said goodbye to her. Knowing I must not see her again.’

  He drew breath, then kept going. ‘But by the morning I knew I had to. So I went back to her apartment and took her out again. Every day. For two weeks. I showed her Rome and Ostia and the Lazio, spent every day with her. She soaked it up—every last bit of it. And every day, every hour, I was drawn to her more and more. I didn’t dare touch her. I knew that if I did I would never let her go. But she made it hard for me—so hard. She was so beautiful, so lovely—so…pure. I don’t mean just sexually, but…spiritually. She had an ardency about her, a passion, but it was not venal. It was a flame, burning in clear air, not an appetite to be sated. I was…enchanted…by her. I wanted to make her mine.

  ‘And so the last night before she had to return to her real life, when the summer moon was riding high, its pale light giving her face yet more unearthly beauty, I knew that I could resist her no longer. She wanted me. I knew she wanted me. She tried to hide it, but she could not. It bewitched me even more that she should be so shy about it, so hesitant about her desire. But her hesitation dissolved in a second, an instant, when I kissed her, when I made love to her.

  ‘She was so beautiful, so lovely—and she gave herself to me in all her beauty. There had never been a woman like her for me. And I knew there never would be again. She was mine. Safe in my arms. All through that long, blissful night.’

  As he spoke, his words like a healing balm upon her, something loosened inside her. That tight, knotted lump, that hard, stony canker that had been inside her so long, for seven long years, began to dissolve.

  ‘Do you mean it, Vito? Do you really mean that? That that was how it was for you?’

  Her voice was a whisper. A plea.

  ‘Yes—until the morning. Then all my illusions were ripped from me. And I realised that the beautiful, grey-eyed, silk-haired girl that I had made my own was nothing more than the willing tool of my father’s mistress, who had used her for her own machinations.’

  Rachel’s eyes shadowed.

  ‘She didn’t. Oh, God, Vito—I swear she didn’t know I was there—she didn’t even know I was in Rome! I never told her—I knew she would never have given her permission. She told me…afterwards…that she had always been fearful of you. That you might have thought it amusing to seduce me just for the hell of it, to get at her!’

  She looked at him, a pained, wounded expression in her eyes.

  ‘I know I should have told you who I was the moment I realised you didn’t remember that I was Arlene’s daughter—but I couldn’t bear to! I knew you’d hate me, just like you hated my mother. You wouldn’t have come near me—and I couldn’t have borne that! It was so magical, so wonderful, when you took me up, spent your time with me! I couldn’t spoil it all. I just couldn’t!’

  He looked at her sombrely.

  ‘It’s true—I would not have stayed with you had I known who you were. That’s what made my anger that morning so great. Discovering I’d been played for a fool all along. That you were not the person I had built you up to be.’

  He paused. ‘But all along you were, and you are that person. You are that most beautiful girl, mia bella ragazza. The girl I held in my arms that night—never the other one. Never! And to know—to discover—’ there was a crack in his voice as he spoke ‘—that my illusions were not illusions after all. That you were—are—the person I thought you first. Oh, dear God, you do not know how much that means to me! Rachel—’ The crack in his voice came again, and his dark eyes were filled with an emotion that flowed from them, stopping the breath in her throat.

  His hand curved around her cheek and she felt herself yearn to lean into it, to feel its strength supporting her. But she dared not. The canker inside her had grown for seven long years. It would not loosen its grip without a struggle.

  ‘Rachel…’ He said her name again softly, his gaze melting through her. ‘Mia bella ragazza—my beautiful girl…’

  His kiss was like the first time his lips had ever touched hers. And in that sweet, exquisite moment she felt a tearing, a cracking, as though something hard and cruel and ugly were finally being cut from her body.

  Releasing her from its consuming grip.

  The tears slid from her eyes and her hands slowly, so slowly, curved around him, to hold him, just hold him, as he kissed her.

  He eased her from him.

  ‘Come,’ he said, and took her hand. She clung to it, going with him blindly, fatefully.

  In the dimness of his bedroom he took her garments from her one by one, until her body glimmered in the night. He did not touch her until he was naked too, and then he led her to the bed and laid her down upon it, her hair like a veil across the pillows.

  He leant over her and smoothed her hair.

  ‘My beautiful girl,’ he said, and softly kissed her mouth, her eyes, her breasts and all her body, until she was a single, pale burning flame.

  ‘Vito…’ she breathed, and his name was an invocation and a blessing, a healing and a benediction.

  He lifted her arms above her head, one and then the other, holding her hands with his. He arched over her, bending to kiss her mouth with one last, soft kiss before his body slid into hers and found the union he sought.

  She cried out, a high, keening cry, and for a moment he hesitated. Then she strained her hips to his.

  She cried out again, this time his name, the pale flame flaring.

  Setting fire to him.

  He lifted his head, bearing down upon her raised hands, his spine arching back, and when the final thrust of his body took her the burning flame sheeted through her body like a flash fire. And as her body burned in its intensity she saw that he was burning too, his body incandescent.

  She drew him down to her, folding her arms around him, feeling the smoothness of his skin beneath her fingers, caressing him until he lay still and quiet in her arms.

  At peace again.

  His voice was shaken when he spoke.

  ‘I should have trusted you—trusted myself. The body does not lie—it cannot! What we had that night was the truth! Everything that came after was the lie.’ He looked into her face, his eyes pained. ‘And if you hadn’t come to me, to offer me back the emeralds, the lie would have lasted all our lives. Its poison festering still.’

  His expression changed suddenly.

  ‘Why did you try so hard to get in touch with me after you’d gone back to England? After what I’d said to you, what you thought I’d done to you?

  The question had come out of nowhere, and she felt herself tense in his arms.

  He looked across at her, a troubled look in his eyes.

  ‘Seven years ago you tried to get in touch with me and I wouldn’t let you. Why? Why did you do so? I’d rejected you so totally. Were you trying to convince me that you had no part in what I’d accused you of? Yet why should you plead your case to me if you thought me the one who was guilty?’

  As he spoke he saw the apprehension in her eyes. The reluctance to answer his question. From nowhere, a sliver of doubt began to w
orm into his mind.

  ‘It’s so long ago, Vito—it doesn’t matter now. Truly it doesn’t.’

  The worm eased forward, insinuating itself into his consciousness. He found his breath quickening.

  ‘But tell me all the same. God, Rachel—day after day you phoned, and I would never talk to you! Even when you managed to get through to me I hung up on you! Why did you keep phoning? It torments me that you were so close and I turned you away! We might have made our peace if you’d convinced me of your innocence! Was that what you were trying to do?’

  Her eyes clouded. Had she pulled back from him slightly? He did not know. But a coldness was seeping through him. She was hiding something…

  Hiding something just when he’d thought that all the poison had been drawn, that the way between them was clear and clean.

  ‘Tell me!’ There was an edge in his voice.

  Her face tightened, and this time she did draw away from him, straining back against the circle of his arms. Instinctively he tightened his hold on her.

  ‘Tell me!’

  For one second longer she hesitated, that look of apprehension in her eyes deepening.

  ‘I…I wanted to borrow money from you, Vito.’

  The words fell from her mouth and he could not believe them.

  ‘What?’

  She flinched. ‘I needed money. I…had to…to disappear. I couldn’t go to my mother for money, and I had none of my own. So…so I went to you, because you were rich…’

  He stared at her, disbelief in his face. ‘After what I’d said about you, you thought I would lend you money?’

  She seemed to flinch again, and though it hurt him he could feel the anger begin to well up in him—anger and doubt, seeping their poison through him.

  ‘I…I thought it would be in your interest.’ Her voice was flat.

  ‘Why?’ His voice was hard.

  ‘Please! Please don’t ask me, Vito! It’s a long time ago. It’s over!’

  She strained away from him again. But his hands pressed against her back, holding her.

  ‘Tell me!’

  Something shifted in her eyes—something that made the worm writhe in his mind.

  ‘Have I been wrong about you after all?’ he demanded. ‘Have you been making a fool out of me even now? Tell me!’

  She told him.

  ‘I was pregnant. I thought you would be willing to lend me enough money to disappear—just to tide me over until I could get settled and claim benefit…or…or get a job…Anyway, be independent financially, able to bring my baby up on my own. I thought that it would be in your interest to help me because if my mother had discovered I was pregnant she’d have…she’d have made such a fuss, and it would all have started up again…her trying to make you marry me when you didn’t want to… I thought you would be willing to lend me money to get rid of me, make sure she never found out. But…but in the end it didn’t matter. I miscarried at thirteen weeks, so I didn’t need any money after all. And I got a job, and started night school instead…’

  Cold ran through him. Icy, freezing water that deluged through his body.

  She was talking again, and as he heard her words the icy, freezing water deluged through again.

  ‘I’m sorry! I’m sorry, Vito! I should never have told you! I knew you’d be angry—discovering that I came to you to get money. I knew you’d think I was trying to blackmail you, trying to get a pay-off from you! But I swear I wasn’t— I swear! I just needed enough to…to tide me over. So I could disappear.’

  Disappear…

  The word tolled in him.

  His arms around her went slack.

  She pulled away from him, getting out of bed. She seemed to be stumbling, finding it difficult, her movements jerky, uncontrolled.

  Pregnant. She’d been pregnant.

  She’d been pregnant—and broke—and desperate.

  Desperate enough to force herself to keep trying to get in touch with him, day after day, accepting every rebuff, every curt, cold refusal to talk to her…

  I turned her away. She was carrying my child and I turned her away…

  Guilt so great that he thought it must kill him pierced him to the core.

  He thought of the rage he had felt only a few hours ago, when he’d thought that a man might have impregnated her and walked away.

  I was that man. It was me—I did it to her. And I turned her away when she came to me…

  For one long, endless, horror-filled moment he watched her reaching for her clothes, trying to pull them on with those jerky, uncontrolled movements.

  Then in a single bound he was there, clutching her, clutching her with a desperation that filled his soul.

  ‘I’m sorry—dear God, I am so sorry…’ The words choked from him, painful and agonising. ‘I thought I had cause to hate you. But you… Christo! You have cause to hate me a hundredfold! And what burns me even more than knowing that I turned you away—turned you away when you were carrying my child—what burns me even more with shame is that you were not even hoping for anything more than that I would be glad—glad to get rid of you! Glad to give you the money to disappear…’

  His voice dropped. His head bowed.

  ‘And you lost our child. Our child died. If you had had care, physical and emotional, it might not have happened—if you had been with me, if I had been looking after you…it might not have happened.’

  His hold crushed her.

  ‘I’m sorry—so sorry.’

  She was crying, the tears pouring from her silently, ceaselessly. He held her in his arms, cradling her and rocking her, slowly, gently, while the tears flowed.

  And in his own eyes the welling moisture stung like acid.

  He carried her back to bed, carried her in strong arms that would never let her go again, and held her against him while she wept for what had been lost.

  When she was still, when all the pain for their child’s brief, doomed existence had ebbed, he spoke.

  ‘So much has been wasted, and this is the most final waste of all. But we have been given a new chance, and I beg you—I beg you, my dearest love—that this time we will keep faith with each other. Stay with me, and be with me, and I with you. Ti amo—I love you—and with all my being I pray that you can love me as I love you.’

  Rachel heard the words, but she could not believe them. Emotion was still pouring through her—at last the grief she had felt for the loss of her baby, so long ago, at last, the acknowledging of the pain of that loss. So much emotion was overwhelming her, and through the pain and grief came something so wonderful that she could not believe it.

  Dared not believe it.

  Vito had never set out to debauch her, to use her to wound her mother. Never! What had happened that magical fortnight in Rome had been between them only—her and him—as if there were no Arlene, no Enrico, no tormented, tortuous convolutions of infidelity, adultery, torn loyalties…

  What we had was real—real and true and ours, just ours…

  And now they had it back.

  After seven long, bitter, cruel years of hating and despising, loathing and misjudging, they had it back.

  And they would never let it go again.

  Never.

  Ti amo…I love you…

  Had he really said that? Had Vito Farneste, the most beautiful man in the world, really said that to her?

  She felt a glow in her—a glow that would keep her warm, she knew, for the rest of her life. The warmth of being loved, so wondrously, so miraculously, by the man that she loved…

  At last I can say it—at last I can say what I have felt for him ever since that time in Rome, when I fell in love with him and gave myself to him. I tried to tell myself afterwards that it was nothing more than a stupid schoolgirl infatuation, and then, later, nothing more than lust, desire, wanting.

  But it was love.

  Love all along…

  Happiness filled her, so deep, so profound that it overwhelmed her, pouring through her like a rich,
costly blessing. A blessing on them both.

  We have found each other again, and we can never lose each other now…never again…

  And then, into her happiness, her wonder, came a dull draining of her joy.

  How could happiness be theirs?

  The past stood between them. Not their past, but their parents’.

  A sob half broke from her, and she stifled it.

  ‘Oh, God, Vito—it’s all no use! No use! We can’t love each other—we can’t!’

  He lifted from her, his eyes filled with concern.

  ‘How can we be together? How? My mother was your father’s mistress—your father betrayed your mother to commit adultery with mine!’

  Vito’s face tightened.

  ‘The past has spread enough poison into our lives, mi amore—they made their choices, each of them. Your mother to be my father’s mistress. My father to commit adultery. My mother to stay with him when she could have left him because of his betrayal. They made their choices and we—’ he took a deep, sharp inhalation of breath ‘—we must make ours.’ He looked at her, deep into her eyes. ‘I choose you, my most beautiful girl, my dearest one, my beloved. I choose you. To be my love, to be my heart, to be my wife and my soul, for all our days.’

  His mouth lowered to hers, and with a kiss he sealed his promise, his choice.

  EPILOGUE

  ‘VITO, you don’t have to do this—truly you don’t.’

  Rachel’s voice was diffident as she paused outside the door in the quiet carpeted corridor.

  He took her hand. ‘Do you think so ill of me that I would begrudge a dying woman her final peace?’

  She shook her head. ‘Her death changes none of the cause you had to hate her.’

  He gave a low sigh.

  ‘It was not my place to hate her. I hated her because of the pain she caused my mother.’ His voice dropped. ‘I know she might have been the mistress, but the adultery was my father’s. And, for all my calling her predatory and greedy, my father was never one to be taken advantage of. The greater fault was his, not hers. It was just more…convenient…to make her the villainess. My father was a difficult man—your mother earned her place with him. So—’ he squeezed her hand ‘—please don’t be afraid that I will say anything now to upset her.’