by Penny Jordan
It was obvious that he wasn’t pleased by her refusal to accompany them to Rome. Louise had a strong suspicion from the grim look he was giving her right now that he knew that she was making an excuse not to go because of him. But did he know why she felt she needed to make that excuse? Louise profoundly hoped not.
It might only be a handful of days since she had made the shocking, heart-stopping discovery that she loved him, but those three days had been an agony of torment and dread as she did everything she could to keep as much distance between them as possible.
Her behaviour on the night of her discovery had shown her just how vulnerable she was to his physical presence and his physical touch. She could not trust herself not to give away her feelings—just as she could not trust herself not to respond to him should he choose to touch her again. How had it happened? How had it come about that she had fallen in love with him and that she was now spending her nights lying awake in her bed—his bed—aching with longing for him and at the same time filled with a dread of revealing that need to him because she knew that he would never return her love?
‘Well, if you’re sure …’
‘I’m sure,’ Louise confirmed to Caesar’s cousin, returning her affectionate hug and then feeling her heart soften when Ollie came over to her and hugged her as well. He was at that age now when he was normally embarrassed by public displays of maternal love, but she had noticed how much more physically affectionate he had become towards her since Caesar had come into his life.
‘I’m sorry you aren’t going to be with us, Mum,’ he told her.
‘It will be good for you and your father to have some time together,’ Louise said truthfully, making herself smile reassuringly.
‘Very noble,’ Caesar murmured wryly when it was his turn to say his goodbyes to her. ‘Or at least it would be if it wasn’t perfectly clear to me that you’re motivated more by keeping your distance from me than giving me and Oliver time together.’
‘Do you blame me?’
‘Because I showed you that you are a woman as well as a mother?’
‘Oh, you two, it’s obvious you’re newly married. Look at the two of you whispering sweet nothings to one another,’ Anna Maria teased them.
Caesar was bending his head towards her, his hands on her upper arms keeping her imprisoned and motionless. His kiss was light, the mere brush of his lips against hers, but still her mouth trembled beneath it and she had to fight to stop herself parting her lips, inviting him to kiss her more intimately and winding her arms around his neck to pull him closer.
If he didn’t let her go now he’d end up picking her up and carrying her to his bed, Caesar acknowledged, and once he had her there, making love to her until she admitted that she wanted him just as much as he wanted her. Instead, however, he forced himself to release Louise and step back from her.
It had shocked him to discover how much he wanted her. Having her in his arms again had taken him straight back to that first time. The fierce, surging need for her was possessing him now just as much as it had done then. Why? Why out of all the women he had known did she have this effect on him? Surely only love could make a man ache and need so much?
Love? He was a mature, rational human being. It was surely impossible that he could have fallen in love with a girl who represented everything he disliked and then gone on loving her without even knowing it for so many years simply because his body had never stopped wanting her?
Was it? Had he forgotten that fierce savage stab of emotion he had felt when he had first read Louise’s grandfather’s letter? That visceral knowing and wanting what he was reading to be true—and not just because it would mean he would have a son? On the face of it, before he had seen her again, Louise should have been the last woman he wanted to be his son’s mother, but what he had felt had been a gut-wrenching rush of joy.
Louise. He turned to look at her but she had already turned away from him, rejecting him as she had done in his bedroom. Rejecting him even though her body had told him that she wanted him.
He took a step towards her, suddenly reluctant to leave, but then Oliver urged him, ‘Come on, Dad,’ and he had to turn back to the small group waiting for him.
Determinedly Louise pinned a smile to her face as she stood and waved the two cars away, standing there until they had disappeared from sight.
It was over an hour’s drive to the airport. Caesar had Oliver and Anna Maria’s son who was closest in age to him in his car, whilst Anna Maria and her husband had the other two boys with them. Oliver had been chattering away happily to Carlo in the back of the car when suddenly Carlo broke off excitedly, to draw Oliver’s attention to the dark clouds massing over the mountains behind them.
‘Just look at that! It means there’s going to be a real storm over the castello, doesn’t it, Uncle Caesar? With lots of thunder and lightning!’
A brief glance in his driving mirror showed Caesar that Carlo was right, and that the castello was likely to be in the path of the storm gathering in the mountains.
‘Remember last year when the lightning hit that tree?’ Without waiting for Caesar to reply Carlo spoke again to Oliver. ‘It was really scary, and Uncle Caesar told us that sometimes lightning strikes the castello itself. I’d love to see that, wouldn’t you?’
Oliver had gone very pale, even though he managed to nod his head. They had now reached the airport, and as he headed for the reception area for the private jets Caesar frowned. The thought of the storm obviously frightened his son. He wanted to reassure him that it was nothing to worry about and wouldn’t affect them
—such fierce storms did happen at this time of the year, but only in the mountains—but he didn’t want to draw attention to Oliver’s fear in front of Carlo.
As soon as he’d stopped the car and made sure it was safe for the boys to get out he drew Oliver to one side, keeping his hand protectively on his shoulder, whilst Carlo joined his parents.
‘There’s no need to be afraid of the storm, Ollie. It won’t affect us,’ he said quietly.
‘It’s not me that gets frightened,’ Oliver told him immediately. ‘It’s Mum. She hates thunder and lightning.’
Louise was frightened by storms and thunder and lightning? The desire Caesar immediately felt to protect her confirmed what he already knew about his feelings for her.
‘She’ll be perfectly safe in the castello. It’s been there a very long time and has survived an awful lot of thunderstorms,’ he reassured Oliver.
Oliver didn’t look reassured, though. His head was bent, the tips of his ears red.
‘Mum gets really scared, though. She tries to pretend that she isn’t but I know that she is. Because I saw her once when …’
‘When what, Ollie?’
His son was looking so anxious and upset that Caesar knew he needed to get to the bottom of his concern—and all the more so because it involved Louise.
‘I’m not supposed to say anything. Mum doesn’t know that I saw her, or that I know, and great-grandad made me promise that I wouldn’t, but it’s different telling you, isn’t it?’ Oliver asked, lifting his head to look directly at his father.
‘Yes, it is different telling me, because it’s my responsibility now to look after your mother. Lots of people don’t like thunderstorms, you know. It’s nothing to feel ashamed about. I can phone the castello and make sure that the shutters are closed so that your mother doesn’t have to see the storm if you think that will help.’
Oliver shook his head.
‘That might make it worse. There was an awful storm in London a couple of years ago and Mum was … she was so afraid … Just shaking and crying, and Great-grandma was sitting with her in her bedroom holding her. Great-grandad told me that Mum wouldn’t want me to say anything about it to her. He told me it was because of something that had happened when she was a little girl. Lightning struck a tree in the garden when she was staying with her father and out playing in the garden, so she ran inside to her father, crying.
He was angry with her because he was busy, and when she wouldn’t stop crying he locked her in a cupboard under the stairs and left her there until the storm was over. Great-grandad said that Mum has been terrified of thunderstorms ever since, and that she hates being alone during them.’
Caesar closed his eyes briefly as he held his son close. What an unbelievably cruel thing to do to a vulnerable, frightened child.
‘But Mum won’t be alone in the castello, will she?’
‘No, she won’t, Oliver.’
Releasing his son, Caesar went over to his cousin.
‘I have to go back to the castello,’ he told her quickly. ‘All of you go on to Rome. Oliver can go with you.’
‘You want to persuade Louise to change her mind, don’t you?’ Anna Maria smiled. ‘I could see that you weren’t keen on leaving her behind. You go ahead—
and don’t worry about Oliver. He’ll be fine with us.’
Nodding his head, Caesar went back to his son.
‘I’m going back to the castello to make sure that your mother is all right. You’re to go on to Rome with Anna Maria.’
‘You won’t tell Mum what I told you, will you?’ Oliver asked anxiously.
‘No, I won’t,’ Caesar assured him, giving him a fierce hug before heading back to the car.
Ahead of him the storm clouds were banked up on the horizon, darkening the sky, and jagged flashes of lightning accompanied the distant sound of thunder.
Although he’d tried telephoning the castello there was no reply. It wasn’t unusual for these ferocious storms to affect both the power supply and the cell-phone networks. He might love the magnificence of such storms, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t relate to Louise’s terror—especially after what Oliver had told him. The more he learned about her father the greater his angry contempt for the other man grew.
Just thinking about the fear Louise must be experiencing had him pressing down harder on the accelerator pedal of his car.
The storm seemed to come out of nowhere, the clear blue of the sky turning grey and then black over the mountains, but it wasn’t until she heard the first dull rumble of thunder that Louise really started to feel afraid.
Apprehensive, she moved from room to room, her attention drawn to each window—especially those with a view of the mountains. Her pulse was racing and the adrenaline of fear was pouring through her body, increasing her heart-rate and drying out her mouth whilst her stomach turned sickening somersaults with nausea.
In the main salon she saw the housekeeper, going the other way.
‘I’m just going upstairs for a rest,’ she told her.
‘I’ll make sure that no one disturbs you,’ the housekeeper assured her, sighing as another clap of thunder caused her to raise her voice. ‘These storms, they are so violent and noisy,’ she added, before continuing on her way.
Her fear made her feel ashamed and guilty, Louise acknowledged, just as her father had made her feel all those years ago, when she had run in screaming from his garden after seeing the tree in his garden hit by lightning. Her father had been working, and when she had tried to run to him, wanting to be picked up and held safe in his arms, he had been angry with her, pushing her away and telling her to stop making a fuss. Instead of stopping her panicked tears, his refusal to comfort her, accompanied by another flash of lightning right outside the French windows, had caused her instead to scream out in fear.
She had been half-hysterical when he had lost his temper with her and dragged her to the large cupboard beneath the stairs, pushing her inside and locking the door, telling her that she couldn’t come out until she could control herself. Her behaviour, her father had said when he had eventually released her, was ridiculous for a big girl of eight.
The whole experience had left her with not only a terrible fear of thunderstorms but of her own reaction to them. Her father had been so angry with her. She had disgraced herself with her hysterics. She must never, ever let herself down like that again. Despite all the counselling she had been given, her fear of her reaction to thunderstorms had been something she’d never been able to conquer. For that reason she tried to avoid them, but if she had to endure one then, ironically, her greatest need was to seek out somewhere dark and enclosed, where she could shut herself away so that no one else could see her fall apart. The only place to shut herself away in the castello was Caesar’s suite.
It seemed to Louise, as she made her way up the stairs and then along the long gallery with its many sets of windows, that the lightning seemed to leap from window to window, mocking and taunting her as she fought not to give in to her driving instinct to run. She knew that hearing thunder so close at hand, seeing vivid lightning split open the growing stormy darkness of the sky, would not help her, and yet she could not turn away from it. Her gaze was fixed on the spectacle outside, watching the storm grow ever closer.
The sitting room of the suite smelled faintly of Caesar’s cologne, and the recognition momentarily distracted her as she breathed it in and tried not to let herself wish that he was here. Not, of course, that Caesar’s reaction to her weakness would be any different from her father’s. She couldn’t imagine Caesar being at all tolerant of such vulnerability.
From the sitting room window Louise saw the lights across the courtyard flutter and then dim, surging back into bright life only to be extinguished by a blinding flash of lightning which pierced the darkness, silvering the room with its metallic light. In the mirror in the sitting room Louise caught sight of her own reflection, her expression reflecting her fear. Soon now the storm would be overhead. Soon she would be reliving that awful moment in the garden when the oak tree had been struck and she had feared that she would be the storm’s next victim.
She looked at the bed. Even with the curtains closed she would still be able to see the storm. A new crash of thunder—surely there were only seconds between them now?—galvanised her into instinctively seeking the security she needed by running towards the door to Caesar’s dressing room and pulling it open.
Inside the windowless room it would have been completely dark if it hadn’t been for the light from the open door, which showed her way to the sofa on which Caesar now slept. Like the sitting room, Caesar’s dressing room smelled faintly of his cologne and of him.
Louise had no idea why that should have the effect of both accelerating her pulse and calming her fear; she only knew that, just like Ollie when he had been little and had needed his comfort blanket, she wanted to draw the scent of Caesar close to her for her own comfort.
Closing the door, she picked her way to the sofa in darkness, her legs trembling. The sound of another thunderclap, this one surely almost overhead, froze her to the spot where she was standing. Then she curled up in a small terrified ball when the noise had stopped, releasing her from her terrified imprisonment.
Caesar cursed beneath his breath. Even the powerful windscreen wipers of his car were unable to cope fully with the pouring rain.
Lightning illuminated the dark, unlit bulk of the castello, its lightless windows picked out by his headlights as Caesar pulled up in front of the entrance.
In the hallway he found his housekeeper, instructing some of the staff to get the generator working and others to start lighting candles. If she was surprised to see him she didn’t show it.
‘My wife,’ Caesar asked, ‘where is she?’
‘In your suite, Your Excellency. She said that she wanted to rest and that she wasn’t to be disturbed.’
Because she didn’t want anyone else to witness her fear, Caesar recognised as he took the stairs two at a time. He felt as though someone had closed a fist around his heart and was squeezing it hard as he thought of what it must have been like to be that child, terrified by a violent storm and punished for that fear by the person she had turned to for understanding and comfort.
If only all those years ago he had known about her what he knew now. If only he had had the wisdom, the insight, the compassion to look beyond the obvi
ous and see the person she really was.
As he raced along the portrait gallery lightning was striking just beyond the castello, and the noise of the thunder was deafening. Soon the storm would be fully overhead.
He had reached the suite. He pushed open the door, cursing himself for not thinking to bring some form of light with him as he moved from the sitting room to the bedroom, his eyes adjusting to the darkness and his heart plunging in anxiety as he saw the smooth, untouched emptiness of the bed.
Where was she? She sought out dark, safe places, Oliver had said.
Caesar strode over to the door to Louise’s dressing room, its emptiness revealed by the stuttering flicker of the power returning as the generator kicked in. Like her dressing room, the bathroom too was empty.
Where was she?
Where was she?
Fear for her gripped him by the throat. If he had needed any further proof of just how he felt about her, just how much she mattered to him, just how much he loved her, then everything he had felt from the moment Oliver had told him about her fear of storms had provided it. There was no way he could hide from the truth now, and no way he wanted to. All he wanted was to find Louise and tell her that she was safe, that he would hold her and love her and protect her for as long as he lived, and that she would never, ever again have to fear reaching out to someone only to be rejected.
But first he had to find her.
He returned to the bedroom and then came to an abrupt halt as he saw a thin light shining beneath the door to his own dressing room. His dressing room? Surely the last place she would go to seek refuge—just as he was the last person she would turn to. But he knew he hadn’t left that light on. Something—a small glimmer of hope, a small surge of joy like the fluttering of a candle in the wind—trembled within him.
He pushed open the door.
She was lying curled up in a tight little ball on the sofa, covered in one of his jackets, so that all he could really see of her was her legs and a few strands of blonde hair that weren’t covered by the jacket she had pulled up around herself.