Well, if it were she wanted to stay asleep for as long as possible! A whimper began in her throat as she moved against Keir, her needs welling up in her as she realised that, by whatever means, she was being given another chance. Perhaps only one chance, perhaps only a chance in a dream, but whatever it was she wasn't going to let this one pass, she couldn't. Her fingers shook as she fumbled with the fastenings of his shirt under the thick pullover he wore, and Keir drew away slightly with a quickly indrawn breath.
He let go of her to find her fingers with his, holding them close against the warmth of his skin.
'Steady, Libby, my sweet,' he whispered. 'I know how you feel, but don't let's rush things. We've got some talking to do, you and I.'
Libby opened her eyes again and looked at him. 'Isn't it a dream?' she asked dazedly. 'Are you really here? The breeze touched her for a moment and she shivered, blinking. 'I thought-I thought-'
'I can guess what you thought,' Keir said gravely. 'I shouldn't have come on you suddenly like that-it was too much of a shock for you. But when I saw you here, just as I last remembered you. I couldn't help myself. Yes, Libby, I'm really here. You're touching me-don't I feel real?'
Libby felt his skin warm under her fingers and nodded, her eyes filling with tears. 'You feel real,' she answered. 'But I couldn't believe it-I've missed you so much. I didn't think I'd ever see you again. I thought-I thought I had to live my life without you.'
Keir's arms tightened around her. 'That's what we've got to talk about. Let's sit up-I find you very distracting, lying down!'
He drew Libby up so that she was leaning against him, close to the warm rock that his body made.
Something she could always lean on, she thought drowsily, and wondered again if she could be dreaming. But no, there was something very solid about Keir today, something very real about the sky and the crushed grass and the chuckle of the river. This was no dream.
'But what are you doing here?' she asked after a moment. ~Why have you come-and how did you find me?' A tll6ught struck her rather belatedly. 'And what about Pia? Is-is she all right?'
'I haven't pushed her off Ghar-Lapsi cliffs, if that's what you're thinking!' he said grimly. 'Not that I might not have been tempted ... I'll start at the end, Libby, not the beginning. I came here because Claire told me you'd gone out for the day and I just wondered if there was a chance . . . and because I had to come here anyway; To see this place again, for myself.' His voice was low as he added: 'I couldn't quite believe my eyes when I came to this hollow and found you lying in it-though. I'd seen your car in the car park and knew you must be around somewhere. '
'You've seen Claire? You've been to the house?' 'Well, of course, it was the obvious place to go when I found you weren't in London. I knew Claire would know where you were and I only hoped that you might be here in Devon. You could have gone anywhere, but I would have found you, no matter where you'd gone. The world's not big enough to hide you from me, Libby.'
'But-' Libby gazed at him helplessly '-Keir, I don't understand-'
'All right-this time, I'll go back to the beginning. Or to what seemed to me to be the end-that morning when you left Malta. I came to see the plane go, you know. I watched until it was nothing more than a speck in the sky before I could believe you'd left me.'
'I know. I saw you there.'
'And then I went back to the flat. Pia was there-I hadn't told her where I was going, or anything about you.
We'd had the father and mother of all-rows the night before when I went back-she's a real she-devil, that one.' He let his fingers stray over one cheek. 'Tore at me with her nails--I think she thought I'd find it stimulating! Unfortunately, I've never gone in for that kind of lovemaking, so it didn't work. But she seemed to have made up her mind that she'd won, and for a while I had to believe her. The child made everything different. I couldn't abandon it to the tender mercies of its mother and the best I could think of was that, once it was born, I'd take it away with me. After that, I couldn't see any kind of future-it would have to be left to fate.'
Fate, Libby thought. She had had much the same idea-to leave her future to fate. But if fate had had anything to do with the present situation, it was surely excelling itself and she would never plan anything again!
'So what happened?' she asked. 'Has Pia changed her mind? Isn't she pregnant after all-was it all a lie?
Or-' the thought crossed her mind with a kind of horror '-has she lost the baby? Got-rid of it?'
'No, she hasn't done that,' Keir told her, drawing her closer. 'None of those things has happened. But something else has-or, rather, two things did. They were connected and one sparked off the other-but their result was the same.'
'Keir, stop talking in riddles,' Libby begged. 'Tell me straight out.' She caught his eye and stopped as the truth hit her like a blow, knocking the breath from her body as surely as if she'd been punched. 'Keir! It-it is, isn't it? It's true! You've got your memory back!'
Keir nodded. His eyes were as blue as the singing sky above and as clear as the moorland stream as he caught her to him in a kiss of pure, exuberant joy. 'That's it! You've got it in one! I've remembered everything, Libby-everything. There are no shadows across my mind now, and I can't tell you how incredible it is. Not that most of the memories are particularly happy ones,' he added soberly, 'but at least they're mine, and I know what happened to me-I don't have to rely on other people's versions. It's like being handed back a slice of my life I thought had gone for ever.'
'Oh, Keir, that's wonderful,' Libby told him sincerely. 'I'm so glad. But-how did it happen? And how did it affect you and Pia?'
'Which do you want to know first?' he asked teasingly. 'Well, here's the story as it happened. It was about three days after you left-not very long, though it seemed an eternity to me at the time. I was trying to get things sorted out with Pia; she wanted me to go back to Rome for the wedding and as you can imagine the idea of marrying her anywhere horrified me so much that I just didn't want to think about it. Though I knew I'd have to do something soon, because of the baby. Well, we were arguing about that and I was still trying to get some work done, when one morning Jeremy came in with a very funny expression on his face. Said he'd met this man who seemed to be a friend of the Contessa-Pia, of course and he'd finally decided to bring him to the flat. He wasn't happy about it, but the fellow had tracked Pia down, knew somehow that she was there, and he was insisting on seeing her.' He paused, and Libby felt her heart skip. 'He showed the man in-and as soon as I saw him, I knew everything. '
'You did? But how?'
'I'll tell you that in a moment. He was an Italian; tall, dark, handsome, the answer to every maiden's prayer. Only this time he was the answer to mine. He was Raffaello Volturno, and in one fell swoop he gave me back my memory and freed me from Pia's clutches.'
'Raffaello Volturno?' Where had she heard that name before? Libby put her fingers to her forehead-and then she knew. Of course! The man who had been at the reception desk of the hotel in Valletta as she checked out. And that was why his accent had been familiar-it had been the same as Pia's!
'Who is he?' she asked, and Keir smiled.
'The man who saved my life, no less. He was one of Pia's lovers, Libby. Before I knew her-and afterwards. After we split up.'
He stopped and watched her, waiting for the effect of his words. Their meaning took a few seconds to sink in; then Libby's eyes widened.
'After you split up?' she whispered. 'Then-then you weren't still living with Pia before you left Italy? You weren't in love with her?'
'Never at any time,' he replied vigorously. 'Oh, I was smitten for a time; I have to admit that-Pia can be very charming when she likes. And I was lonely-still searching for something I knew in my heart I could only find in one woman.' His arms tightened again. 'I suppose I'd have realised it in the end and come back to see if there was a chance-any chance-for us. But at that time I could still feel the hatred you'd shown when you sent me away after your father's death. I ha
d no way of knowing if that had changed.'
'It changed gradually, I think,' Libby told him. 'I don't know just when-I just knew, one day, that I'd been wrong, that I didn't hate you any more. But I felt sure you must hate me.'
'What a lot of time we've wasted,' Keir muttered, and he buried his face in her hair.
'It was my fault,' Libby said honestly. 'I let my mother's bitterness influence me. I shouldn't have done that, and I shan't, any more. From now on, I make up my own mind.'
'My fault too. I ought to have understood, and waited, instead of taking off the way I did. I knew I hadn't caused your father's heart attack intentionally, or even carelessly. He wanted to tell me that story, Libby, he'd been wanting to for years, but because at first he couldn't talk about it, your mother would never let him. And don't think I'm blaming her-it was a situation she'd never had to deal with, and she had no way of knowing what was the right thing to do. Her biggest fault was in being over-protective, and that's a very understandable reaction, after what they'd both been through.'
Libby was silent, grateful for his insight. With Keir being a. novelist and biographer, she supposed that he would naturally have more understanding of human behaviour than most people, but somehow she had never credited him with it.
'Tell me about Pia and Raffaello,' she said at last. 'Why had he come to Malta?'
'To find Pia, of course. They'd been lovers for years, but I gather it was a pretty stormy relationship. In between times, Pia would attach herself to another man, just as she did to me--more to taunt Raffaello than because she was genuinely in love. He was accustomed to it, and generally took off somewhere until she was ready to come back to him. That was when I'd met him, when Pia and I broke up, which was after quite a short time, and he came back to the palazzo to claim her.'
'And he's done the same thing again-he came to Malta for her.' Libby frowned. 'But-what about the baby, Keir? Does he know about it? Does he intend to marry Pia himself, and is he willing to take on another man's child? Your child?' Anxiety pierced her as she twisted her head to look up into his face. 'Are you willing for that to happen?'
Keir smiled down at her and gave her shoulders a comforting squeeze. 'But that doesn't arise, Libby,' he said joyfully. 'Don't you understand-he and Pia were back together before I ever left Rome. The baby isn't mine. And as soon as I saw Raffaelo come in through the door, I knew it. I remembered the way Pia had turned to him-and when. That child couldn't possibly have been mine, and if I hadn't lost my wretched memory I'd have known it all along!'
It was as if a mist had been lifted from Libby's eyes.
The sun seemed to blaze down on her upturned face; the colours of the grass, the brown bracken, the few remaining bells of heather, were suddenly enriched with light. The murmur of the river became a joyous bubbling, its broken surface sparkling as it splashed against the rocks.
The baby wasn't Keir's! It belonged to another man, a man who evidently felt far more attached to the fickle Pia than Keir ever had. It was as if a giant broom had suddenly swept every obstacle from their path, leaving the way clear and shining.
'Raffaello is clearly tired of Pia's little games and made up his mind that this time she wouldn't escape him,' Keir went on. 'He's been wanting her to marry him all along-God knows why, but they do seem to be very well matched-and he quite deliberately made her pregnant, knowing that she would never bear an illegitimate child. What he didn't bargain for was the chance that she would repay him by conning some other man into thinking he was the father-me. My lost memory was a godsend to her, and she must have been furious when she found you already in residence.'
'Oh, she was.' Libby shivered a little, thinking of the harsh enmity, which had sounded in Pia's voice, the hatred that had spoilt the beautiful violet eyes. 'And is she going to marry Raffaello now?'
'She certainly is. In fact-' Keir glanced at his watch '-the ceremony should be taking place at this very moment. Raffaello was determined to take no more chances, and Pia herself was beginning to get anxious she didn’t want to return to Rome for the wedding and then produce a child only a few months later. I'm afraid she's been hoist with her own petard, but I think they'll make out all right. Raffaello isn't the man to stand any nonsense from his wife, whatever she did before, and Pia will probably settled down and become a good, submissive wife.'
'And is that what you want too?' Libby asked cheekily. 'A good, submissive wife?'
Keir's lips twitched as he looked down at her. 'Who says I want any kind of wife at all?' he asked. 'Maybe what I've been through lately has put me off the whole idea! Or don't you think that's possible?'
'Oh, I should think it's very possible, Libby answered demurely. 'But you obviously need someone to keep you in order-save you from yourself. Just like Pia.' She lifted her face and let her lips trail softly across his. 'Last time we were here we started something we never finished,' she murmured provocatively.
'We've wasted two whole years, Keir-and I've got a sort of superstitious feeling about it. Maybe it brought us bad luck let's tum back the clock and try again, shall we?'
Keir's eyes darkened as he looked down at her, and she felt a thrill of anticipation go through her. His head blotted out the sky, the com-gold hair a nimbus around it, and very gently he lowered Libby back to the dry ground. She felt the weight of his body on hers, the tension of desire in his firm lips; then, as her blood sang and her heart kicked into jubilant life, she began to respond to Keir's urgent caresses with all the exultant abandon that had been repressed for so long-too long, too long.
The breeze, stirring the bushes that surrounded their little hollow, the constant rhythm of the hurrying river, the singing of the birds in the trees on the opposite bank, all provided a music whose sweetness could not be surpassed in the world's greatest concert halls; it accompanied their tender, loving exploration, the excitement that drew them on, on, through a steadily mounting crescendo that led them at last to a wild explosive climax that left them both gasping, clinging to each other like survivors of a storm. As indeed we are, Libby thought dazedly as the world slowly stopped spinning and the sky reeling, and she became gradually conscious once more of the earth beneath her, Keir's weight above her and the dry, rustling grasses, the cool murmur of the water.
Keir raised his head and looked down at her, and his eyes were as dazed as hers. He shook his head slowly, as if to clear it, then laid his cheek against hers and whispered: 'That was like nothing I've ever known before, Libby. I thought I'd made love in the past, but now I know I never did. You are my first woman-just as I am your first man.'
'And last,' she breathed into his ear, and they lay silent for a long time.
This was the true beginning of their life together, Libby thought as she watched the racing clouds high above. From this morning, all worries past, they would stand together. No doubt there would be problems both she and Keir were too strong-minded not to have disputes-but there would be nothing that love could not overcome. Nothing that could match what they had already been through.
She held Keir tightly and wondered what would come next. Back to Malta, she supposed, to finish the book, but not, she hoped, until after Christmas; a family Christmas with Claire, Simon and the twins was just what she and Keir needed, and it would help to heal the rift between Keir and her mother, too. And then-well, wherever Keir's work took him next. Wherever it was, whatever he did, she would be able to work with him. A partner-not, she hoped, a 'submissive wife'!
Whatever happened, they would always have -this memory to cherish. A memory that was not, after all, a
'rooted sorrow' but one that would grow and flourish, a strong healthy plant that they would tend with care for the rest of their lives.
Table of Contents
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER
NINE
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