by Pippa Roscoe
‘Really?’ she said uncertainly. ‘Because you haven’t...we haven’t...since that night.’
He sighed and she felt the gentle puff of air against her skin, sweet with the taste of ice cream.
He placed the spoon down on the counter and she reached for it, even though her stomach had finally revolted and given up any desire for food—or at least that kind of feasting.
He ran his hands through his hair and finally leaned on one elbow, resting his chin in his palm and looking at her as if he’d given up some kind of internal fight. ‘Honestly, I wasn’t sure that was something you wanted. I didn’t want you to feel that because of that night, I automatically assumed that...’
‘My husband could demand his nightly conjugal rights?’ she finished with a small sad smile. When had things got so complicated that they couldn’t simply act on their desires, or feelings? Perhaps when they had rushed into a wedding because of a child. ‘Matthieu, no one has a right to my body except me. But I have, and do willingly choose to share my body with you.’
‘Your body, yes. Perhaps. But...you?’
She bit the inside of her cheek and nodded. He wanted to know why she was so upset about seeing Sebastian.
The last time she had seen her brother was at Theo and Sofia’s wedding. In the short space of time since the night of the charity gala in Iondorra and the wedding between Princess Sofia and Theo, Maria had realised quite a number of things about herself, some of them harsh and hard to bear, and others more...empowering. The determination to focus on herself had been in some ways both wondrous and liberating. Until she had discovered she was pregnant and suddenly the thought of facing Sebastian with the consequences of her reckless actions had felt awfully like a betrayal.
‘My brother has always looked out for me. Been there for me when...when it became clear that my father was not going to be.’ Maria sighed, hating how the well of emotion catching at the back of her throat shuddered through her breath. ‘After my mother died, my father just...he seemed to give up on everything. He went through the motions for a few years, marrying Valeria, seeking one failed business deal after another, but as I got older he seemed to look at me differently. Seeing not me, but my mother looking back at him. I could tell how painful it was for him, how it was tearing at him. I don’t know which one of us started it first, but each in our own ways began to avoid each other, to ease the constant hurt that hovered between us when we met.’
Maria shivered at the memories from her childhood, hiding in various rooms within the house when she knew her father was home. She’d spent hours staring at the pictures in the family photo albums, obsessively consuming the images of the mother she had never known. Each time, Seb would come and find her. Take her out into the garden, try to distract her. Even then, all those years ago Seb had protected her.
‘When my father lost nearly everything in one last investment deal, I was about eight years old. Seb was barely eighteen and was forced to act—or we would have been declared bankrupt. He took over the decision-making, finding ways to save what little was left of the family’s finances. Everything was sold. Our home, estates, almost all the belongings in the houses, paintings, antiques and antiquities, all just enough to pay off the millions owed because of my father’s stupidity and negligence. The shame my father had brought on the Rohan de Luen name and title was enough to get us exiled from Spain.’
Across the years, Maria could hear the echoes of the arguments, the bitter accusations, Valeria’s tears and recriminations, and through it all was the almost deadly determination of her brother. To be the man her father couldn’t be, the protector, the decision-maker...
‘What Seb did at the age of eighteen was incredible. He moved us to Italy, found a school for me, started a hotel business from the one property we had left in Europe, which managed to provide enough to keep Valeria and my father if not happy, then at least within some semblance of the life they were accustomed to. But they lived elsewhere. So it was just us. An eighteen-year-old looking after an eight-year-old.’
And only now that she was pregnant with her own child did Maria truly realise what a sacrifice her brother had made. She had known, previously, what he had given up for her. The decisions and sacrifices he had made had all revolved around her needs. And Maria had never really felt worthy of it. Any of it. She had, instead, felt more of a burden. And that ache in her heart had never really gone away.
‘So your father was never really there?’
‘For a while he tried. Seemed to make some kind of an effort, at least that’s what I thought, until my sixteenth birthday.’ Maria shivered. She hated thinking of that day, let alone actually talking of it. She had never shared that day, her feelings from it, with anyone. Fearful of the two possible reactions. That she would either be told to get over it, or they would understand...and the understanding? That would make it worse, because that would mean that the sadness, the anger, the pain...were justified. And that justification would be absolutely the worst. Because it meant that her father really didn’t care...and that there was no hope for a future reconciliation.
‘Seb had arranged everything. He would return from Rio where he was doing his latest business deal and for once, the family would come together. We would go to my favourite restaurant in Siena—right by the Palazzo Pubblico—long after the tourists had gone back to their hotels. I wanted to look grown up, to look beautiful... It was my sixteenth and I was about to become a woman and my family would be there to celebrate with me. Just for once it would be about me, not Valeria, not my father, not even my mother. But me.’
Goosebumps had risen on her arms as her memories took her back to that night. She almost smiled at the way she had got ready that evening. She’d forgotten how excited she’d been that night. How she had spent an hour tackling her eye make-up, getting her eyeliner just right. How she had admired herself in the mirror, the dress she had chosen especially for that day, the v neckline revealing the beautiful sliver threads of her mother’s necklace, the way the waistline nipped in and then flared out at her hips. She felt...so grown up.
‘What happened?’ Matthieu asked gently, clearly aware that the ending to the tale was not a happy one.
Maria cast a glance to the night sky descending over the placid lake, the colours oddly reminiscent of the sky over Siena that evening.
‘Seb had sent a car for me. It took me to the restaurant where I would meet everyone. When the chauffeur opened the car door for me, I felt like a movie star.’ She laughed. ‘Everyone was looking at the beautiful girl being escorted to a table in one of Siena’s finest restaurants. And when I got to the table and saw that I was the first to arrive, that was okay. I could handle that. I was a grown up that night,’ Maria said with the same false bravado she had felt in that instant. That even though her heart had dropped, and fear had begun to creep in, she had kept that smile on her face and even ordered a glass of champagne. Because they would come. They would be there, they just needed a little more time.
‘People stopped staring after a few minutes, but as the time dragged on, as ten minutes turned to twenty and then thirty, curiosity won out and they resumed their watchful gaze on the girl who sat alone at a table for four. I hadn’t really made many friends at school, so it was supposed to be just us. My family.
‘Almost an hour later—’ she shook her head at the memory, the first genuine smile gracing her mouth ‘—he came.’
‘Your father?’
‘No.’
‘Sebastian?’
‘Nope,’ she said again, shaking her head. ‘Theo Tersi. He explained that he was a friend of Seb’s and that my brother’s flight had been delayed because of bad weather and that he’d asked Theo to come and let me know as he’d been in the area meeting with a local vintner. Theo must have seen, must have realised in an instant that my father wasn’t coming, but said nothing. Instead, he sent all the waiters in the restaurant into a
panic as he demanded the most exquisite, the most expensive things on the menu, because—he announced loudly and proudly—it was “this beautiful woman’s birthday”.’
Tears gathered even now at the memory of Theo’s kindness that night. She had never forgotten it and, in turn, it had shaped so much of the following years of her life.
‘When I got home, Theo parked his car beside Seb’s and I rushed into the house to see him, so pleased that he was home. I heard him before I saw him. He was on the phone with our father.’
She had crept up to the office where Seb was, the light from the room dimly illuminating the corridor through the partially open door.
‘What do you mean, you were busy? It’s your daughter’s birthday, for God’s sake... I don’t care about your excuses. Enough is enough. This will never happen again, do you hear me? Otherwise I will stop providing the finances for your and Valeria’s lifestyle. I will cut ties. Do you understand?’
‘My father was present the following year for my birthday, but not because he wanted to be there, but because my brother had threatened to stop his finances. After that...’ Maria shrugged ‘... I didn’t really like celebrating my birthday.’
Because what she couldn’t tell him, what she could barely admit to herself, was the fact that on her sixteenth birthday it had felt like a rejection of her, of who she was becoming. And she had never wanted to put herself, her sense of self, on the line like that again.
Silence fell between them, a silence full of sorrow and ache, of compassion—which she could see shining in Matthieu’s eyes—one that hurt almost as much as the memories of that night.
‘I’m sorry that the two people who were most important to you couldn’t have been there that night.’
Her heart juddered in her chest, as if both soothed and ripped open at the same time.
‘After that Seb became almost consumed with being there for me. Being the father that our own could not. He looked out for me, paid for my education, my travels, anything I could ever want for. In some ways he stopped being my brother. And every gift, every penny he gave me, it felt...dutiful and tainted at the same time. As if it wasn’t for me, but almost in spite of our father. And as such... I just wanted to be me. I wanted to be independent, to fund myself, to... I don’t know. I could never repay my brother financially, but I wanted so much to show him that I was worthy of his investment, that I wasn’t a screw-up.’
‘Is that how you see yourself?’
‘Pregnant and in a marriage for the sake of my child?’ She smiled sadly. ‘I just wanted not to need him, not rely on him in any way so that we could go back to just being brother and sister...’
So that I be loved by him because he can, not because he has to.
But looking deep into her husband’s eyes, she wondered whether she was still thinking of her brother.
‘Maria,’ Matthieu said, taking her hand in his. ‘I cannot make promises that I will always be there—’
‘You’re working a force majeure into a promise?’
Matthieu laughed, sudden and joyful, breaking some of the weight of the moment and bringing a smile to her lips.
‘What does my wife know of contract clauses?’
‘My brother is a leading international business figure. He calls it the Act of God clause, in case unforeseeable events prevent a contract being fulfilled.’
‘Act of God. Okay, I can go with that,’ Matthieu said, firming his grip on her hand.
‘Force majeure aside, I will do everything in my power that you should never feel such a thing again.’
As Matthieu said the words, he felt them slip deep within him and take hold. He looked at the woman sitting across from him, the pain in her eyes almost too much to bear. His family might have been taken from him at a very young age, but he had never doubted their love for him. Not once. Yet here Maria sat, unsure of love from the two people that should have loved her the most. And he hoped upon hope that he had just made a promise that he could fulfil.
He understood her need for independence, that sense of self he’d admired from the first moment he’d met her and, even more so, when she’d brushed aside the accusations she was simply after his money when she had come to tell him about their child. He could see that she hated that she was now reliant on him.
‘Maria, whether it’s clothes, a lifestyle that you think is not yours, but provided for you by me, it’s not. What is mine is yours. I meant that the day I said “I do”. No matter what. That doesn’t take away from you, who you are or what you’ve achieved. I’d like to think that you could see that it is only something that adds.’
She exhaled a long and low breath. One he wasn’t sure how to interpret. Until her eyes narrowed and transformed, an impish light breaking the seriousness of the conversation. ‘And now I’m hungry. And not for food. So, husband, are you going to make good on your promise and allow me my feast?’
He refused to withhold the smile he felt pulling at his lips. Refused to turn away from the warmth blooming within his chest. It was more than carnal desire, it was something like happiness. And if this was what it was like to live with the leash lifted ever so lightly, he wanted more. He wanted to know what life was lived like, not in the shadows of his grief, but in the light of Maria.
CHAPTER NINE
AS MARIA EXITED the car that had picked her and Matthieu up from the private airfield just outside Siena she clung to the words he had given her two nights before. Promises that she was not less than she had been for getting unexpectedly pregnant and marrying him, that he would be there for her. Always. No matter what.
She wasn’t naïve enough to expect that her father might be here today, she wasn’t really sure that he even knew that she was pregnant and married, and she couldn’t quite bring herself to care. She had long ago given up on being concerned about his thoughts and feelings towards her. But Seb? Her brother? He had given her so much...and somehow she wanted to pay that back by being worthy...or by somehow being someone he could be proud of.
She pressed down the soft silks of the beautiful dress Matthieu had surprised her with yesterday as the wind blew about her and soothed both her nerves and her restless child.
‘Are you okay?’ Matthieu asked as he came around the car to stand beside her.
Maria nodded. ‘I think our child is looking forward to meeting their uncle,’ she said with a smile and another sweep of the now very much unavoidable bump she carried before her. ‘Are you okay?’ she said, thinking of the quiet that had almost consumed him throughout their journey.
He looked confused. ‘Why would I not be?’
‘Sebastian can be a little overprotective. He is, after all, my brother.’
He shrugged a shoulder. ‘I have tackled multibillion-dollar deals with the world’s toughest CEOs. Your brother will not be a problem.’
‘If you say so,’ Maria responded, a little sceptical at how dismissive Matthieu was of her concern. Perhaps she had misunderstood the reason for his brooding.
The door swung open and there he stood in the middle of three arched domes in the centre of the estate’s façade. It was Sebastian’s most cherished holding. It had been one of the first purchases he’d made once he had secured all the Rohan de Luens’ finances. It was beautiful, perfectly formed. Not obscene as some of the estates Maria remembered from Spain, but large and nestled amongst a modest ten hectares of land, with some old and mostly untouched vineyards that Theo had always itched to get his hands on.
Seb had refused all of his entreaties, enjoying instead the wildness and untouched way it had sprawled beyond the broken, aged wooden confines and grew rampant and wild. In part, Maria liked to think that he kept it that way because it had inspired one of the first pieces of jewellery she had created.
Unconsciously she sought out Matthieu’s hand and suddenly Maria was struck by how important it was for Seb to like her husband
. Not the dark stranger she had met all those months ago, but the man she had come to know and like, the man that she was beginning to see he could be. Her inner voice scoffed at the soft word used to describe the complex emotion that had begun to form around her feelings for Matthieu.
But before her mind could follow that thought, Matthieu had started to walk forward and they were quickly face to face with Sebastian, whose eyes had rested on her very visible bump and had widened with something like...awe. And even he, though she could tell he was struggling to hold it back, couldn’t prevent the smile from forming at his lips.
Any words in her mind were cut off as he dragged her into an embrace so powerful and consuming she felt a little as if she were coming home.
When he was done, instead of returning her to where she had stood, he placed her beside him, almost putting himself between her and Matthieu.
Her brother looked Matthieu up and down, and Maria was a little surprised that Matthieu let him, given the challenge that was locked into Sebastian’s gaze. After a moment, as if Matthieu had allowed her brother his fill, he thrust out a hand and introduced himself. It was a beat before her brother accepted his hand. She rolled her eyes.
And so it begins.
‘Come,’ Seb said, apparently deciding that he needn’t introduce himself in some form of alpha power play. ‘The others are already here.’
‘Others?’ Maria hissed, trying to keep her voice away from Matthieu’s keen hearing.
‘Theo and Sofia were in the area,’ he said, brushing her concern aside.
‘You called in back up?’ Maria demanded.
‘Why would I need back up?’ he replied.
* * *
Matthieu hadn’t missed the way Sebastian had specifically positioned Maria out of his reach. Divide and conquer was a worthy route to take when being introduced to the husband of your sister, he supposed. He didn’t have a sister, never had, but would like to think that he would be as ferociously protective of her as Seb appeared to be. He didn’t have to like it, but he could most definitely respect it. Furthermore, while he could respect it, it didn’t necessarily mean he would roll over and expose whatever soft belly Sebastian might be fool enough to think he had.