by Penny Jordan
Annie couldn’t have stopped the torrent of words now even if she had wanted to. ‘Before she met Colin’s father my mother always told me that ultimately our house, which had belonged to my father’s family, would come to me. But when she and my stepfather died I found that the house had been left to Colin, and that he’d been appointed my guardian. Luckily I was well over eighteen by then, and one of my lecturers at university—I think he understood a bit of what Colin was like, because Colin had been difficult with him when he’d given me some extra tuition—helped me to get a job in London.
‘Colin was dreadfully upset. He begged me to go back home, but I wouldn’t. I knew he’d have to stay in Dorset because his business is there. It was wonderful, living and working in London. But somehow I still couldn’t let myself be the person I wanted to be. Every time I looked at a pretty dress or a short skirt I’d see Colin’s face inside my head, or hear his voice.’ Her own voice trailed away into drained exhaustion.
Annie recognised distantly that she felt very weak and slightly dizzy—and also, more importantly, semi-shocked and unable to fully comprehend what she had done.
‘I shouldn’t have told you any of that.’ The words slipped out before she could snatch them back.
‘Because your stepbrother wouldn’t like it? You shouldn’t have had to tell me. Because none of it should have happened,’ was Falcon’s response.
Did she have any idea of the grim picture she had painted of a childhood ruined by the bullying tactics of her obsessive stepbrother and her own mother’s apparent inability or unwillingness to recognise what was happening to her?
His own childhood and the childhoods of his brothers had been rendered miserable by their father’s lack of love for them, but what Annie had gone through was something of a different order altogether.
There was a sour taste in his mouth, a male anger on her behalf in his heart, and a steely determination in his head. Annie was now a member of his extended family. In Falcon’s eyes that meant that in addition to recompensing her for the damage Antonio had done to her it was also his duty to restore to her what had been taken from her.
‘After what you have just told me I can well understand why you would have ignored and tried to avoid Antonio.’
‘I knew that he was making fun of me by pretending to be interested in me. I didn’t like him at all. Thankfully I can’t remember anything about...about what happened,’ Annie told him truthfully. ‘When Susie—the wife of the author I was working for—found me, I was still half-drugged.’
‘You never reported what had happened to the police?’
‘No,’ she agreed. ‘I was afraid to—in case they didn’t believe me.’
Because she had been told so often by her wretched stepbrother that she was guilty of promiscuity simply by being female that she was still unable to trust men to believe her or protect her, Falcon guessed.
‘It was a terrible shock when Susie asked me if I could be pregnant. That had never occurred to me. Stupid of me, I know, but I just assumed that Antonio would have... Well, that he wouldn’t want there to be any risk of a child.’
‘As proof of what he had done, you mean? It was typical of Antonio that he didn’t think of that.’
‘Originally, when...when it had happened, Susie saw from my passport that I’d given Colin’s name as my next of kin. I begged her not to say anything to anyone but... She meant well, I know. And when Colin arrived in London he was so concerned that naturally...’
‘He worked the same trick on her that he had on your mother?’ Falcon supplied for her.
Annie nodded.
‘He wanted me to have a termination. He said it would be for the best. But I wouldn’t. I couldn’t. So then he started saying that I must have wanted it to happen. I told him that of course I hadn’t, but he said that if I couldn’t even remember what had happened I couldn’t say that. He said that I’d probably encouraged Antonio—otherwise I’d want to get rid of his baby. I think Susie and Tom agreed with him, although they never said so.
‘When Ollie was born Colin tried to get Antonio to acknowledge responsibility for him—even though I’d begged him not to. When Antonio refused Colin started pressuring me to have Ollie adopted. He even managed to persuade Susie to side with him.’ Annie shivered. ‘I was so afraid that somehow he’d separate us.’
As he had successfully separated her from everyone else who might have loved her or helped her, Falcon recognised. ‘That’s why, when you...’
‘That’s why you agreed to come to Sicily?’ Falcon completed her sentence for her.
‘Yes. I thought Ollie would be safe here.’
‘You thought right,’ Falcon confirmed grimly.
‘You must understand now why I don’t want to get involved with anyone,’ Annie told him tiredly.
For a few seconds she thought he wasn’t going to respond. But then, when the silence had stretched for long enough to make her feel she had said the wrong thing, he asked quietly, but with open confidence in his own correct assessment of things, ‘There’s never been anyone special for you sexually, has there? Someone who, when you look back, you recognise as the person you shared sexual intimacy with and who gave you the foundation stone of understanding and appreciating your own sexuality?’
For some reason Annie discovered that she wanted badly to cry. She had spent so many years cut off from what it meant to be a woman that she had grown to accept it as her fate. She was alone with it, and with the secret burden of its grief. Now, with a few simple words, Falcon had shone a light on that dark secret place within her, illuminating it so brightly that the brightness hurt unbearably, making her feel that she wanted to retreat back into the safety of the dark. She felt ashamed, she recognized. Ashamed and afraid.
She couldn’t answer his question. She just couldn’t. The truth hurt too much, made her feel too raw and vulnerable, and yet to her own disbelief something deep inside her was struggling against her shame and her fear, making her give Falcon an answer.
‘No. Never,’ she heard herself admitting shakily. ‘I was too young when...when Colin first started making me feel uncomfortable about...’
She had to stop now. She had already said too much, betrayed too much. It was shamefully ridiculous and humiliating that she, a woman of twenty-four, a mother of twenty-four, had never known what it was to experience the pleasure of good sex.
‘About being attracted to the opposite sex? About liking boys and exploring the sensations thinking about liking boys aroused?’
Annie wanted to cover her ears with her hands, just as though she was still twelve years old.
‘There is nothing to be ashamed of,’ Falcon was telling her. ‘That is how it starts for all of us. With curiosity and awareness, with excitement and a dread of making a fool of oneself.’
‘I can’t imagine you ever feeling like that. Worrying about making a fool of yourself, I mean,’ Annie explained hastily. She didn’t want to think about the first part of his description. It caused too much dangerous tumult inside her body, and she already had more than enough problems to deal with.
‘I can assure you that I did. Everyone does. It’s a natural and normal part of growing up—but you were denied that.’
‘I couldn’t bear the thought of someone thinking about me in the way Colin told me that boys—men—thought about women who allow them sexual intimacies. I couldn’t let myself even think about being attracted to anyone,’ she admitted.
It was disconcerting to realise how shocked and ashamed she would have been such a very short time ago to have said those things to him—things that now she could speak of so easily and openly.
‘So you suppressed your natural inclinations along with your desirability and your right to your own sexuality?’ Falcon prompted her.
‘I just wanted to feel safe.’
‘From boys, or from your stepbrother?’
Annie’s eyes widened in silent recognition of how well he understood just what she had felt.
‘I suppose I could have tried to...to be more normal when I came to London, but all the other young women I saw were so...so everything I knew that I wasn’t. I couldn’t imagine that anyone... That is to say I thought that if I did start to go out with someone, when they found out they’d either be put off or laugh at me. It seemed easier somehow not to bother. And now, of course, it’s too late. I couldn’t start a relationship now even if I wanted to. What man these days wants a woman like me? A single mother, who doesn’t know the first thing about how to give and receive sexual pleasure, or what it’s like to enjoy sex? How would I explain to them? I couldn’t tell them...’
‘Why not? You’ve told me?’
His words had her lifting her head to look at him, caught in the shock of her realisation not just of what she had done, but more importantly of how easy it had been.
‘That’s different,’ she told him weakly. ‘You aren’t... We aren’t... I know I can trust you because...’
Because what? Because of what he was or because of who he was? Annie wasn’t sure. She just knew that Falcon was different, one of a kind—a man who embodied qualities that in the modern age were very rare.
‘It must have been very hard for you to live as you have lived—to live—such an unnatural life for a young and attractive woman.’
Falcon thought she was attractive? Or was he just saying that because he felt sorry for her?
‘You needn’t feel sorry for me,’ Annie defended herself. ‘I’m perfectly happy as I am.’
‘No, you are not,’ Falcon corrected her. ‘You merely think that you are happy. But you are so afraid of being punished that you have completely disowned your sexuality. That is no way for you to live—in constant denial and fear of such an essential part of yourself.’ His voice had changed and become sternly autocratic.
‘It is the way I have to live,’ Annie told him. ‘I don’t have any other choice.’
‘But you would like that choice? You would wish, if you could, to be restored to your sexuality? To be reunited with it? So that armed with it you could have the freedom and the right to find someone with whom ultimately you might share your life?’
‘I...’ She desperately wanted to hang on to her pride and deny that she wanted any such thing, but Falcon’s words had awakened inside her such a sharply painful, yearning pang of longing for all that she could not have that it shamed her into telling him the truth. ‘Yes,’ she admitted.
Falcon looked away from her. He had come to a decision. It had been there all the time he had been listening to her. Initially it had been more of an awareness that had now coalesced into the decision that he now realised he had somehow known he must make right from the beginning.
‘There is something I have to say to you,’ he told Annie. ‘Your right to your sexuality has been stolen from you by a member of my sex, and the damage that he has done has been compounded by a member of my family. As a Leopardi, and the eldest of my brothers, I have a duty to make recompense to you and to restore to you what has been taken away. That is the law of the Leopardi family and the code by which we live.’
‘That’s nonsense,’ Annie told him unsteadily.
Something dark and steely glinted in the depths of his eyes as he turned his head to look at her.
‘It is my duty,’ he repeated. ‘A duty I owe not just to you but to Oliver, who shares my blood. He has the right to grow up with a mother who rejoices in her sexuality instead of fearing it, and who can thus show him a good example of all that a woman who values herself should be. How can he choose a partner who is worthy of him if he does not know what to look for? It is your duty as his mother to provide him with a template for that woman.’
With every word he said Falcon was making her feel more guilty.
‘It’s all very well you saying all this,’ she told him helplessly. ‘But I can’t become the kind of woman you describe.’
‘Yes, you can. With me as your guide and teacher.’
CHAPTER SIX
WITH HIM AS her guide and teacher? Did that mean what she thought it meant? Annie’s heart started to thud unsteadily.
‘Give me your hand,’ Falcon demanded.
Reluctantly Annie held out her hand, stiffening when he took it and held it between his own.
‘Five minutes ago you said to me, “What man these days wants a woman like me? A single mother, who doesn’t know the first thing about how to give and receive sexual pleasure, or what it’s like to enjoy sex.” I believe that deep down inside you do want to take back to yourself what has been stolen from you, and that you do want to walk free as a sexually confident and happy woman. Isn’t that so?’
‘I don’t know,’ Annie answered uncertainly. Her heart was racing. She felt as though she was confronting something she knew to be dangerous but that she also found enticing and exciting.
‘Yes, you do,’ Falcon corrected her. ‘You love Oliver, and you know that ultimately, in order to give him the right to grow up confident in his own sexuality, you need to be confident in yours. I can teach you how to be what you want to be. You said earlier that you trusted me?’
‘I...’
‘I promise you that you can. I promise that I will not hurt you or abuse you, or do anything that you do not wish me to do. But I also promise you that I will show you and teach you that you have the right to own your own sexuality, to take pleasure in it and give pleasure through it.’
He meant what he said, Annie recognised weakly. He was a crusader, a motivator, a man with a mission—and he meant to restore to her what she had thought was forever lost.
‘If you wish, step by step, I will help you to rediscover what has been stolen from you. You do not have to accept. I would be as bad as your stepbrother if I coerced you verbally or emotionally to accept my help. All I will say to you is that you should ask yourself what you really want and be brave enough to take it. Once you have made that decision I promise that I will be here for you and with you. There won’t be anything you can’t tell me or ask me.’
‘What you’re saying is that for Oliver’s sake and my own I need to learn what it is to enjoy sex. But we don’t...we don’t...’
‘We don’t what?’
‘We don’t love one another,’ Annie told him.
There was a gleam in his eyes that made her heart thud as though it was flinging itself against her ribcage.
‘It is not necessary to love to enjoy good sex. It is, though, important to share a mutual attraction.’
He paused whilst her heart somersaulted and thudded so much that she had to lift her hand to her chest, in an attempt to steady its frantic beat.
‘It is my belief that we share such an attraction.’
‘No...I mean, I don’t think...’
‘You don’t think what? That I find you attractive? I assure you that I do.’
Falcon was still holding her hand, and now to her shock he turned it over, then gently ran the pad of his thumb over her inner wrist.
Lightning surges of reaction hot-wired up her arm, causing her to gasp out loud and try to pull away.
Falcon was watching her closely, and Annie knew that her reaction had been plain to him and had given her away.
‘You gave me a shock,’ she told him feebly. It was the truth—even if the reality was that the shock he had given her had been entirely sexually charged rather than mentally.
‘I gave you pleasure,’ Falcon corrected her softly. ‘And your pleasure gave me pleasure. Imagine, if the touch of my thumb can give us both that pleasure, how much more intense it would be if I followed up the touch of my thumb with the caress of my lips.’
Oh, to be a Victorian virgin an
d free to swoon, Annie thought feverishly. Because that was the only guaranteed way she could think of escaping from her present situation. And by her present situation what she meant was the sheer extent of the feeling of longing that surged through her at the mental images Falcon’s soft words had created.
‘It is entirely possible to enjoy sex without loving someone, you know,’ he was telling her now. ‘Just so long as there is mutual respect and understanding, and a mutual desire to give and receive pleasure. There is nothing shameful in that—no matter what your stepbrother may have tried to make you think.’
He had released her hand now, and she was delighted that he had done so. Totally delighted. And relieved that he hadn’t thought it necessary to show her just what the caress of his lips could do. Absolutely. Definitely.
‘You don’t have to make up your mind right now. I have to fly to Florence later this afternoon, for a meeting about a building I’m involved in helping to renovate,’ Falcon told her. ‘I shall be back by tomorrow evening. You can give me your decision then. I’m not your stepbrother, Annie. I might tell you what I think would help you, but only you can make the decision as to whether or not you agree with my assessment of the situation and want to accept my help.’
* * *
Annie leaned over the still, sun-warmed water of the fish pond in the middle of the formal garden, dropping in some crumbs of bread for the fat lazy goldfish and then trailing her fingers in the water. Ollie slept in his buggy. By now Falcon would be in Florence. The castello felt empty without him.
When he came back— Her hand jerked, disturbing the basking fish, her skin burning. She didn’t want to think about his return, because that meant she would have to think about the decision she had to make before that return.