by Penny Jordan
Now you are young, a boy still, but one day you will be a man, and when that time comes there are things that you will need to know.
She mustn’t read any more, Charley told herself. She must fold up the letter and hand it to Anna to send on to Raphael. To continue to read something so obviously private was a gross invasion of the privacy of mother and son. And yet she was filled with a compulsion that she could not resist to read on.
Spreading out the heavy sheets of paper, Charley continued to read.
You know already of the terrible inheritance that has come down to me through my family. I have told you stories of lives ruined and destroyed, of the horror of the cruelty and madness that has surfaced in members of our blood, and part of the reason I have told you this is so that you will understand why your father and I chose to do what we have done.
You are my beloved son, Raphael, the greatest gift life has given me along with the love of your father. From the first moment of your conception, even before I held you in my arms for the first time, I loved you. You are my son, my child, even though the source that gave you life was not me.
I made a vow as a girl that I would not pass on to a child the burden that I had had to carry—the knowledge that whilst I had escaped the taint of our blood, my children, and their children after them might not do so. When your father and I married he knew of this vow I had made and he supported me in it. However, as the years went by I yearned increasingly to hold a child of our love in my arms. That need became a sickness in me for which I believed there could be no cure, until I learned that there was a doctor—not here in Italy but abroad—who had discovered a way to enable women who could not conceive naturally to have a child of their own. Initially your father was against such a thing, but he knew of my desperation, and so in the end he gave way, and we travelled abroad to see this doctor. He warned us that it would not be easy, nor the result guaranteed, but now I had hope—the hope of having a child from the love your father and I shared that would be free of my own blood.
So it was that your life began, with the gift of life from a childhood friend of mine of good family who had fallen on hard times. A woman with children of her own, who understood my need.
Those first early weeks when I knew that I carried you inside my body I hardly dared to believe that you actually were there. I was so afraid that I might lose you, but you yourself gave me strength, Raphael, because you were there, growing. You had not rejected me or spurned my body; instead you had made yourself part of me. I cannot tell you the joy I felt because you had accepted me as your mother, because you trusted me to protect you and provide for you. With every day that went by my strength grew because of your strength. I was so proud of you, so proud to be carrying you, your father’s child, growing within me. Even before you were born I knew you and loved you.
To me you were mine every bit as much as you would have been had you been conceived from me. When after your birth you were placed in my arms I was joyful—not just because you were the image of your father, or even because I was holding you, but because I knew your life would be free of the shadows of my family past.
Over the years I have told you over and over again about that past, hoping that when the time came for me to tell you what I have written here you would understand and not turn away from me, or accuse me of deceit, no longer thinking of me as your mother. Even if you should do that, Raphael, you will always be my child, my so beloved son, who I carried with such joy and pride and who I have watched grow with equal joy and pride.
Charley lifted her head from the letter, biting her lip in an attempt to stem the tears spilling from her eyes. Every word she had written was filled with Raphael’s mother’s love for him, and reading the letter Charley had felt her emotion.
Why, though, had she hidden the letter away? There was no signature to it. Perhaps she had put it aside to be finished at a later date, but had not had the opportunity to do so?
How selfless a mother’s love could be. Raphael’s mother’s desire to ensure that her son need not fear her past had come before her own obvious fear that the truth might come between them.
The truth!
Charley sat back on her heels. She was only just beginning to appreciate herself what the letter would mean—not only for Raphael himself, but also for them!
They could be together. Now there was nothing to keep them apart. Now they could love one another, without Raphael feeling that he was denying her anything.
She wanted to jump up and dance around the room. She was filled with energy and impatience. She would drive to Rome, take the letter herself to Raphael, so that she could be there when he read it. She knew that he would not reject his mother, that like her he would know how much and how selflessly she had loved him as her own child.
Her mind was racing ahead, making plans, but then abruptly a new thought struck her.
What if she was taking too much for granted? Raphael was a duke, the holder of an ancient title and estate, a member of a group of people who tended to marry within their own class in order to produce heirs. Raphael might have seemed to care about her when he had believed that he must never have children, but what if his mother’s revelations changed that? Just as he had put his concern for her future before his own feelings, wasn’t it only right and fair that she should step back a bit now and allow him to come to her freely?
And if he didn’t? If he should turn away from her? Charley shuddered under the misery of the pain that bit deeply into her. She had to do what was right—for Raphael.
An hour later she stood and watched as the courier drove away from the palazzo, taking with him the letter she had written to Raphael, enclosing his mother’s letter to him, to be delivered by special delivery, no later than the morning.
She had been open and honest with him in her letter, admitting to reading what his mother had written, telling him how much she loved him and saying she hoped that now they could be together, but telling him as well that she would wait for him to make contact with her, and if he did not then she would leave for England, as arranged, and accept that their relationship was over.
She told herself she was worrying unnecessarily, because Raphael did love her. He had told her so himself. He had said, too, how much he wanted her as the mother of his children. It was foolish of her to have any doubts, but it was the right thing to do to wait for him to come to her to confirm his feelings for her.
By this time tomorrow he would be here, and she would be in his arms.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
IT WAS over, Charley acknowledged bleakly, as the plane taking her home to Manchester began its descent through the grey clouds to the rain-soaked tarmac of the airport. Her throat felt raw from the tears she refused to allow herself to cry. Now, with them threatening again, she had to close her eyes tightly, no doubt making the man sitting next to her think she was a nervous passenger. Charley smiled wryly.
Right up until the last moment she had gone on hoping—right up until the car had arrived for her this morning and she had finally had to accept that Raphael did not want her.
It was ten days now since she had sent him the letters. At first with every new hour she had expected to see him arrive at the palazzo, to take her in his arms and tell her how much he loved her.
But when the hours and then the days began to pass, without him making any contact with her at all, her expectation had turned to despair. Unable to eat or sleep, she had watched hollow-eyed, night after night, unable to sleep, simply staring out through her bedroom window into the darkness, hoping against hope that he would appear.
His silence meant that her pride would not allow her to contact him again—not so much as an e-mail. What was the point when he had made it so very clear that he no longer wanted her?
Soon now she would be home. Home? There was no home for her now. It was hard for her to keep her misery at bay as the plane touched down. Her only true home, the only home she wanted, was within Raphael’s heart, and there was
no place there for her. She was an outcast, denied the only place she wanted to be, the only man she wanted to love.
The arrivals hall was busy with people pressing close to the barriers, eager to see the friends and family they were there to welcome. Charley barely spared them a glance. She hadn’t warned her own family to expect her, clinging on right to the last second before her plane took off to the hope that by some miracle Raphael would not allow her to leave.
How foolish she had been—but at least she had her memories. She was past the waiting crowd now and in the arrivals hall proper, thronged with tired travellers intent on making their way to whatever transport they had arranged to get them from the airport to their homes. She would have to take a taxi—expensive, but fortunately the house she shared with her sisters in South Manchester wasn’t very far from the airport.
She could hear the sound of movement behind her—someone walking fast, someone reaching for her arm. No, not someone, she recognised weakly as she turned round. Not someone at all, but the only one.
‘Raphael…’ As she breathed his name Charley wondered if somehow he was merely a figment of her imagination, an image she had conjured up out of her own need—because how could he be here?
But he was, and he was pulling her into his arms and holding her there, his heart thumping heavily and fast against her.
‘I can’t believe you’re here,’ was all Charley could manage to say.
‘Believe it,’ Raphael responded. ‘Believe it, and believe too that I will not leave your side until you have promised that you will never leave me again.’
‘I thought it was what you wanted,’ Charley tried to protest, but her heart wasn’t in it—it was far too busy racing with joy and disbelief because Raphael was here, with her.
‘You are what I want—all I want—all I will ever want. I can’t go on without you. I thought I could, but I can’t. Will you marry me, Charlotte Wareham? Will you come back to Italy with me and be my wife?’
He looked and sounded so humble, or at least as humble as it was possible for such a naturally proud man to be, that Charley suspected she would have forgiven him anything.
‘There is nothing I want more than for us to be together, Raphael.’
‘We will be married as soon as it can be arranged. I do not intend to risk losing you again.’ He was holding her hand now, twining his fingers through her own, lacing the two of them together.
‘I have been thinking about this matter of children,’ he told her abruptly. He was looking at a point over her shoulder, and his jaw was tensing, Charley observed, as it did when he was trying to control his emotions.
‘With modern-day medical science it is perfectly possible for us to have a child that will not carry my genes—a child, that will be born of you but will not carry my genes. A child that I will love as my own because it is part of you. That way I shall not be depriving you of motherhood. And, as for myself, if the day should come when it becomes evident that I have inherited my mother’s family’s curse then I shall end our marriage and give you your freedom.’
Charley stared at him in confused bewilderment, unable to say anything as the thoughts rushed around inside her head. Hadn’t he read her letter?
‘Did you get the letter I sent to you in Rome?’ she asked him.
Immediately Raphael frowned.
‘No. I left Rome three days after we parted. I could not work, I could not sleep—I could not do anything but think about you and all that I had lost. I own a small skiing chalet up in the mountains. I went there, intending to force myself to give up all thoughts of you, but instead I came to realise that I could not bear my life without you. I began to think that maybe you were right—that maybe my anger was not a sign of what I had inherited. I wanted to believe that more than you can know, because it was my way back to you. Then I told myself that we could still have a child—a child that would carry your genes only—and my hopes grew. All I wanted was to be with you, to talk with you and ask you to be my wife, but there was an accident on my way back to Rome.’
‘An accident?’ Anxiety sharpened Charley’s voice. ‘What happened? Are you all right?’
‘It was my own fault. I was driving too fast, concentrating on being with you instead of on my driving. Luckily no damage was done other than to the Ferrari, but the hospital insisted on keeping me overnight in case I had concussion, even though I told them that it was vitally important that I be allowed to leave. Unfortunately I was too late. As I arrived at the airport your plane was taking off.’
‘But you got here before me. How…?’
‘I hired a private plane,’ Raphael told her dismissively.
‘Oh, Raphael.’ Charley blinked back her tears. ‘Are you sure about what you’re saying? About us being together and everything?’
He didn’t flinch.
‘I mean every word I have said to you. I love you more than I ever thought it possible for me to love anyone. You are my life, my heartbeat, every breath in my body. You are everything to me, Charlotte, and without you I am nothing—there is nothing. Say you will marry me. Come home with me. Tell me that you love me.’
‘I do love you, Raphael,’ Charley confirmed, ‘but there is something I have to tell you before we can talk about marriage—something important.’
She could see that he was concerned, even though he tried to conceal it from her.
‘Very well, but we will discuss this oh, so important matter in the comfort of the plane and not here.’
That would mean going back to Italy with him, and if, once he knew the truth about his own birth, he should change his mind about wanting to marry her she would have to leave all over again. But how could she deny him what he was asking after what he had told her?
Unable to trust herself to speak, silently Charley nodded her head.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
THE plane had taken off. They were alone in the comfort of its elegant interior, furnished more like a small sitting room than any kind of aircraft with which Charley was familiar.
The minute the steward had left them Raphael had taken her in his arms, kissing her so passionately and with such longing that Charley had been incapable of doing anything other than responding.
‘I cannot wait for us to be alone,’ Raphael told her. ‘I cannot wait to make you properly mine again, to hold you in my arms and love you. We will spend tonight in Florence, at the apartment, and then tomorrow we will start to make the arrangements for our marriage.’
What if she simply didn’t tell him? What if she begged him to stay with her until after they were married and he didn’t see the letter until it was too late and he was committed to her? He had, after all, said that he loved her. Why should she risk losing him when she loved him so much?
Charley closed her eyes, willing away the temptation tormenting her.
‘There is something you have to know…something you must know, just in case you should want to change your mind about marrying me.’
There—she had said it, and now Raphael was looking at her with that same haughty frown she remembered from the first time she had seen him.
‘So what is this something—this secret from your past?’
‘It isn’t from my past, Raphael. It’s from yours.’
Hardly daring to risk looking at him, in case she lost her courage, Charley plunged on.
‘Whilst I was clearing my things from your mother’s desk, by accident I found a concealed compartment. There was a letter in it. A letter your mother had written to you and for you. I shouldn’t have read it, but I did… I sent it to you in Rome by special delivery. I hoped that when you’d read it you’d come to me, and when you didn’t I assumed…that is to say…’
‘A letter from my mother? How can that affect our plans to marry?’
Charley took a deep breath.
‘Raphael, although you didn’t know it when you made that suggestion, that selfless suggestion about us having a child, you were following in your own mother’s f
ootsteps. She loved you so much—so very, very much—her love for you shines out of her letter. Reading it made me cry. She carried you in her body, Raphael, she loved you as her child, but you were not her biological child. Like you, she did not want to take the risk of burdening a child with her own inheritance, and like you she made the decision to allow medical science to provide her with the means of giving birth to your father’s child without that child having to carry her genes. The reason she told you so often about those genes was because she hoped that when you knew the truth you would understand that she had taken the steps she did take to protect you—because her love for you was such that she wanted you to be free of fear, for yourself and your descendants.’
Raphael’s face was drained of colour and his mouth was set grimly. Charley’s heart sank. Surely he was not going to reject his mother’s love for him?
‘And because of this you have doubts about marrying me?’
Charley was astounded.
‘No, of course not. There is nothing I want more than to marry you. It is for your sake that I wanted you to know. Don’t you see, Raphael? Your mother’s letter changes everything. Now you are free to marry and have children, to have an heir, you can marry anyone you wish—someone far more suitable to be the mother of your son than I am.’
‘More suitable? How could that be possible? There is no one more suitable to bear my children than you. How could there be when it is you that I love?’
‘Oh, Raphael.’
She was in his arms, holding him as tightly as he was holding her, kissing him as passionately and hungrily as he was kissing her.
‘You are my life,’ he told her fiercely. ‘My love and my life.’