His Virgin Bride: The Fiorenza Forced Marriage / Bought: For His Convenience or Pleasure? / A Night With Consequences. Margaret Mayo

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      Her grey-blue eyes flared with shock or was it anger? He couldn’t quite make up his mind. ‘Are you suggesting I did something to hurry up your father’s death?’ she asked.

      ‘You stood to gain by it, though, did you not?’

      Her face paled. ‘I told you, I had no idea what was in your father’s will. This is your home, Rafaele. I think deep down your father wanted you to have it.’

      ‘He went a strange way about it,’ Rafaele growled.

      ‘Yes, but sometimes the things we have to work the hardest for are the things we end up valuing the most,’ she said. ‘Perhaps your father was trying to tell you something.’

      ‘My father was always trying to tell me something,’ he said bitterly. ‘Like how I was the one who should have died that day, not Giovanni.’

      Emma stared at him with wide, shocked eyes. ‘Surely he didn’t say that?’

      He gave her a grim look. ‘He did not need to. It is true. I should have been the one to die.’

      She put a hand to her chest. ‘Oh, Rafaele…’

      ‘I was the older brother, I was supposed to protect him, but instead I killed him.’

      Emma felt her stomach give a sudden lurch. The atmosphere between them had changed. She hesitantly pressed him for more details. ‘W-what happened?’

      His eyes looked soulless and bleak. ‘I was teaching Giovanni to play cricket… It was his turn to bat. I didn’t think I had thrown the ball too hard, I was always so careful, but somehow it hit him on the temple and he fell like a stone.’

      Emma gasped. ‘No one could blame you for that. No one,’ she insisted hoarsely.

      ‘Perhaps some would say I was just a child myself and could not be held responsible,’ he said. ‘But I did not see it that way and neither did my father. I spent the next eight years apologising for my existence. Every time my father looked at me I saw the hatred and disappointment on his face.’

      Emma felt her heart tighten at what he had gone through. She could see the pain etched on his face, the deep grooves at the side of his mouth and the almost permanent lines on his forehead making her realise he was not the shallow, selfish man she had first thought. He was a deep and complex man, a man who had been cruelly hurt by the vicissitudes of life, a man who had locked away his heart to avoid further pain. A man almost crushed with a guilt that should never have been laid upon his shoulders.

      A man she was one step closer to falling in love with…

      ‘Thank you for telling me about it,’ she said softly. ‘I can only imagine how painful it must be to do so. It explains a lot…about everything…’

      ‘This place is full of my guilt, Emma,’ he said, waving his hand towards the giant shadow of the house to the left of him. ‘Even the floorboards creak with it. My father left Giovanni’s room the way it was to drive home the point.’

      Emma bit her lip. ‘Maybe you’re reading too much into that,’ she said. ‘A lot of parents find it very hard to let go after the death of a child. Getting rid of their things is like saying they didn’t exist. It’s a way of holding on to them for as long as possible.’

      ‘For twenty-three bloody years?’ he asked.

      She let out a little sigh. ‘I guess everyone has their own time frame.’

      ‘Stop defending him, Emma,’ he ground out. ‘He wanted me to suffer.’

      ‘You were ten years old, Rafaele. Just a little boy. You were not to blame. It was an accident. Can’t you see that?’

      ‘Do you know what it is like, Emma?’ he asked, his dark gaze almost black with pain. ‘Do you know what it’s like to be holding your dead brother’s body in your arms, begging God or whoever is out there to breathe life back into his lungs until your throat is red raw from screaming?’

      Emma felt a sob catch at the back of her throat. ‘I-I’m so sorry…’

      He raked a hand through his hair. ‘I would have given anything to save him. We had already been through so much with the loss of our mother. He looked to me for everything, but in the end I killed him.’

      Emma couldn’t speak. The anguish on his face was too heart-wrenching. She wanted to reach out and hold him to her, to offer what comfort she could, to help him move on from the pain of the past.

      ‘After we came home from Giovanni’s funeral my father didn’t speak to me for months afterwards. He could barely be in the same room as me. I was packed off to boarding school and on the rare occasions when my father was here at the villa when I was on holiday he kept himself busy with his latest mistress, usually a young woman not much older than me. After I finished school I left the country. I had no reason to think he was anything but relieved when I finally packed my bags and left.’

      Emma put a hand on his arm. ‘Rafaele…you need to forgive yourself,’ she said. ‘You can’t carry that guilt for ever. Your father was wrong to put that on you, but perhaps he was feeling guilty himself. Why wasn’t he out there playing cricket with his young sons? Have you ever thought of that?’

      ‘I have thought about it a lot,’ he said. ‘But even if he did feel marginally responsible he never let on. I do not even know where he was the day Giovanni died. He would never say. All I know is it seemed an eternity before he got back…’

      Emma brushed her tears away with the back of her hand. ‘I’m so sorry…so very sorry…’

      He drew in a deep uneven breath as he looked at the house. ‘I am going to make a start on clearing out Giovanni’s room in the next day or so. It should have been done years ago.’

      ‘Would you like me to help you?’ she asked.

      He turned back to look at her again. ‘No, thank you all the same. This is one job I probably need to do alone.’

      A little silence crept from the shadows of the garden towards them.

      Rafaele got to his feet. ‘I am going to take a walk around the gardens,’ he said. ‘Do not wait up. I will see you in the morning.’

      She stepped up on tiptoe and pressed a soft-as-air kiss to his cheek. ‘Goodnight, Rafaele,’ she whispered.

      Rafaele stood and watched as she made her way back to the house, the soft, ghost-like tread of her bare feet making no sound on the dew-kissed, spongy grass.

       CHAPTER EIGHT

      WHEN Emma came downstairs the next morning Rafaele was out on the sun-drenched terrace with a pot of freshly brewed coffee beside him, the morning paper spread out before him on the wrought-iron garden setting. He was dressed similarly to her, in a close fitting white T-shirt and shorts to counteract the early heat of the day. He had recently showered, his hair was still damp and she could smell the sharp citrus tang of his aftershave as she came closer.

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