One Night: Red-Hot Secrets: A Secret Disgrace / Secrets of a Powerful Man / Wicked Secrets

Another matter? She had been about to pick up her latte but now she left it where it was. Her heart-rate had picked up and was thumping heavily as alarm bells started ringing throughout her body.

‘You see, just prior to your arrival here, and following on from your late grandfather’s demise, I received a letter from his solicitors which he had written and given instructions to be posted to me following his death.’

‘My grandfather wrote to you?’

Her throat had gone dry and her breath caught.

‘Yes. It seems he had certain concerns for his great-grandson’s welfare and his future. He felt he could not entrust you to deal with them, so he felt it necessary to write to me.’

Louise struggled to prevent her pent-up breath leaking away in an unsteady jerky movement that might betray her to him. It was true that her grandfather had had concerns about the growing anger and resentment Ollie was demonstrating towards her. He had even warned her that with so many families in their community knowing what they believed to be the story of her disgrace it wouldn’t be long before Ollie was given that version of events at school. Children could be cruel to one another, both deliberately and accidentally, and Louise knew that Ollie already felt alienated enough from his peers because of his inability to name and claim a father, or even the family of his father, without the situation being made worse. However, as her grandfather had known, her hands had been tied.

It came as a dreadful shock to know that despite everything they had discussed, and despite the fact that she had believed her grandfather understood and accepted her decision, he had fallen victim to centuries of tradition and in his last weeks of life reverted to the Sicilian way of life she herself so much resented. Despite her love for him, and all that she owed him, after listening to Caesar Falconari’s revelation it was impossible for her to stop her anger spilling over.

‘He had no right to do that even if he did think he was acting in Ollie’s best interests,’ she said sharply. ‘He knew how I felt about this whole Sicilian community thing of referring everything that is seen as some kind of problem to the community’s patronne for judgement. It’s totally archaic.’

‘Basta! Enough! Your grandfather did not write to me as his patronne. He wrote to me because he claims that I am Oliver’s father.’

The pain was immediate and intense, as though someone had ripped away the top layer of her skin, flooding her emotions, opening the locked gates to the past with all its shame and humiliation. She was eighteen again, shamed and disgraced, filled with confusing and only half-understood emotions that had come out of nowhere to change the path of her life for ever and marked her out in public as a fallen woman.

She could still see her father’s face, with its expression of anger mixed with rejection as he’d looked at her, whilst Melinda had given her a gloating smile of triumph as she’d drawn her own daughters close to her and taken hold of her father’s hand so that they formed a small close group that excluded her. Her grandfather’s face had lost its colour, and her grandmother’s hands had been trembling as she’d folded them together in her lap. No one seated in the popular café-bar in the small village square could have failed to hear the awful denunciation the headman of her grandparents’ home village had made, labelling her as a young woman who had shamed her family by what she had done.

Automatically she’d turned to Caesar Falconari for support, but he had turned away from her, getting up from his seat to walk away, leaving her undefended and unloved—just as her father had done.

Hadn’t she already been punished enough for her vulnerability and foolishness, without the added horror of this?

Louise winced, unable to stop that small betraying reaction to her memories of the past. She was still sensitive to his rejection. That should have been impossible. It was impossible, she assured herself. Her body was merely reacting to the memory of the pain he had once caused her, that was all. She needed to be here, in the present, not retreating to the past.

The very fact that he had spoken to her in Italian, with a harshly critical edge to his voice, was enough to warn Louise that Caesar was losing his patience with her—but why should she care about that when she had so much more to worry about? Oliver was her son—hers. He had nothing to do with Caesar, and if she had her way he never ever would. Even if Caesar had fathered him.

Caesar watched and saw the emotion she was struggling to suppress. The muscles in his own body tightened as he recognised that he would have preferred it had she immediately flown into a practised and fluent verbal assertion that her grandfather was right rather than accept that she was very obviously shocked, angry and afraid, and fighting not to show any of those feelings instead of laying claim to them. Hardly the action of a woman who wanted to claim him as the father of her child.

Louise shivered inwardly. How could her grandfather have done this to her? How could he have betrayed her like that? Shock, disbelief, pain, fear, and anger—Louise felt them all. And yet at the same time part of her could understand what might have motivated him.

She could so vividly remember that night—beaten down by the insistence of both her parents that she should have her pregnancy terminated, weeping in her grandmother’s arms, feeling abandoned and afraid. She had finally told her grandparents what she had previously kept a secret: namely that, far from there being any number of young men to have potentially fathered her child, as the headman of the village had insinuated, there was only one who could have done so. And that one was no other than Caesar Falconari, Duca di Falconari, overlord of the vast wealth and estates on Sicily that had been her grandparents’ birthplace.

Her grandparents had promised her that they would never betray that secret—but then they must have recognized, as she had known herself, that no one would ever believe her if she were to make such a claim. Especially not when Caesar himself … But, no. She was not going to go down that road. Not now and not ever. The bitterness of her past was best left buried beneath the new flesh she had grown over her old wounds. And besides she had Oliver to think of now.

She lifted her head and confronted Caesar. ‘All you need to know about Oliver is that he is my son and only my son.’

He had been afraid of this, Caesar admitted. His mouth compressing, he reached into his jacket pocket and produced the envelope containing her grandfather’s letter, which he removed and placed on the table. As he did so the photographs her grandfather had enclosed with the letter fell onto the table.

Louise saw them immediately, her breath catching in a sharp drawn-in sound of rejection.

How different she looked in that old photograph taken that summer … They had all come here to Sicily, supposedly for a family holiday that would establish the new family dynamics that were being put in place following her parents’ divorce. It had been Melinda’s idea that she and her girls and Louise’s father should join Louise and her grandparents on their visit to their original home, whilst Louise’s mother was spending the summer with her ‘friend’ in Palm Springs.

Right from the start Louise had been in no doubt about Melinda’s motives for suggesting the holiday. Melinda had wanted to reinforce yet again how unimportant she was to her father, and in contrast how important she and her own children were. That had been made obvious right from the start. And she had stupidly reacted exactly as Melinda had no doubt hoped she would, by doing everything she could to focus her father’s attention on herself by the only means she knew—behaving so badly that he was forced to take notice of her.

Looking at herself in that photograph, it was hard for her not to cringe. She remembered that she had been attempting not just to emulate what she had naively perceived as Melinda’s ‘sexy’ dressing, she had also attempted to outdo it. So she had translated the smooth sleekness of Melinda’s dark brown hair into a black-dyed stringy mess that had clung to her scalp stiff with product. Melinda’s favourite clingy short white jersey dress she had translated into a far too short, tight black jersey number, which she’d worn with stiletto heels instead of the pretty sandals of Melinda’s choice. The tongue stud she had had put in in a mood of defiance at fifteen, long-gone now, had still been in place then, and black kohl surrounded her eyes. Her face was caked in far too much make-up.

On the face of it the photograph might depict an eighteen-year-old who looked far too sexually available, but the image looking back at her stabbed at Louise’s heart. It wasn’t just because she was looking at herself that she could see the vulnerability behind the overt sexuality. Anyone with her training and experience would be able to see the same thing. A caring father should surely also have seen it.

Louise looked again at the photograph. All that holiday she had deliberately worn clothes so provocative that it was hardly surprising she’d had virtually every boy in the village looking for easy sex, hanging around the villa they’d been renting. She’d looked cheap and available, and that was how she had been treated. Of course her grandparents had tried to suggest she wore something more discreet, and of course she had ignored them. She’d been very young for her age, despite her appearance—sent to an all-girls school, and just desperate to fit in and be accepted by the coterie of girls who mattered there. By changing her appearance she’d wanted to provoke her father, to force him to notice her. Of course he had not wanted anything to do with her, preferring instead to be with Melinda and her two pretty little girls.

What a fool she had been. And more than a fool.

‘Quite a change,’ Caesar couldn’t help saying wryly when he saw her looking at the photograph her grandfather had included in his letter to jog his own memory about the identity of the young woman who had conceived what the dying man had claimed was his son. ‘I wouldn’t have recognised you.’

‘I was eighteen and I wanted …’

‘Male attention. Yes, I remember.’

Louise could feel her face beginning to burn.

‘My father’s attention …’ she corrected him in a cool voice.

Was it the way she was looking at him or his own memories that stung with such unpalatable force? He had been twenty-two to her eighteen, newly in full control of his inheritance and free of the advisers who had previously guided him, and very much aware that his people were judging his ability to be the Duke they wanted—one who would preserve their traditions and way of life.

At the same time he’d been searching for a way to discreetly pursue his own plans for modernisation in the face of hostility to any kind of change amongst the older generation of headmen in charge of the villages. In particular the leader of the largest village, where Louise had been staying, had vetoed any idea of new developments—especially when it came to the role of women who, as far as he was concerned, must always be subservient to their menfolk and their family. That headman, Aldo Barado, had been able to marshal the support of many of the leaders from the other villages, which had led to Caesar feeling he had to tread very carefully and even make some concessions if he was to achieve his goals.

Whilst time and the growing insistence of the younger members of the community on modernising had helped to bring in many of Ceasar’s plans, Aldo Barado remained unconvinced and still insisted on the old ways.

Louise’s modern views, and her determination to be herself, had immediately caused Aldo Barado to be antagonistic towards her. He had come up to the castello within two days of Louise’s arrival in the village to complain about the effect she was having on the young people, especially the young men, and even more especially on his only son who, despite the fact that he was engaged to be married in a match arranged and sanctioned by his father, had been openly pursuing Louise.

Of course Caesar had had no option other than to listen to the headman’s demands that he do something about the situation and the girl who was openly flouting the rules of their society, and that was the reason and the only reason he had gone down to the village to introduce himself to her family—so that he could observe her behaviour and if necessary have a word with her father.

Only the minute he had set eyes on Louise any thought of remaining detached and ducal had been swept away, and he had known instantly, with gut-wrenching certainty, just why the village youths found her so compellingly attractive. Not even her atrocious hairstyle and choice of clothes had been able to dim the light of her extraordinary natural beauty. Those eyes, that skin, that softly pouting mouth that promised so much …

Caesar had been shocked by the force of his own response to her, and even more shocked by his inability to control that response. From the day he had been told of his parents’ death, at six years old, he had developed emotional strategies to protect himself from the bewildering and often frightening aloneness he felt. He must be brave, he had been told. He must be strong. He must remember always that he was a Falconari and that it was his destiny and his duty to lead his people. He must put them, his family name and its history first. His own emotions didn’t matter and must be controlled. He must always be a duca before he was a vulnerable human being.

After Aldo Barado’s visit to complain about Louise he had, of course, tried to behave as he knew he should—even going to the extent of seeking out her father to express the headman’s concern. But he knew now, after receiving Louise’s grandfather’s letter, that whilst he had listened to Aldo Barado, and to Louise’s father and his wife-to-be, he had not made any attempt to listen to Louise herself. He had not looked beneath the surface. He had not seen what he should have seen.

Now, knowing how she had been rejected and treated by her father, he had to ask himself how much of that was down to him.

He looked at the photograph again. He had been so caught up in his own fear of the emotions she aroused in him that he had not seen what he could so plainly see now, and that was the unhappiness in the eyes of the girl in the photograph. Because he had not wanted to see it. It was guilt that was fuelling his anger now, he knew.

‘And you expected to get your father’s attention by going to bed with me?’ he demanded caustically.

He was right. Of course he was right. Her behaviour had driven her father away, not brought them closer. Encouraged by the combined denunciations of both Aldo Barado and Melinda, her father, who had never been able to deal well with anything emotional, had turned on her, joining their chorus of criticism.

How naive she had been to expect that somehow Caesar would materialise at her side as her champion, her saviour, and tell them all that he loved her and he wasn’t going to let anyone hurt her ever again. Caesar’s very absence had told her all she needed to know about his real feelings for her, or the lack of them, even before the headman had told her father that he was acting on Caesar’s instructions.

Now, when she looked back with the maturity and expertise she had acquired, she could see so clearly that what she had taken for Caesar’s celebration of a shared love and a future for them, when he had abandoned his self-control to take them both to the heights of intimate physical desire, had in reality been a breaching of his defences by an unwanted desire for her that he had bitterly resented. Those precious moments held fast in his arms in the aftermath of their intimacy, which had filled her with such hope for the future and such joy, had filled him with a need to deny that what they had shared had any real meaning for him.

He might want to deceive himself about his own motivations, but she wasn’t going to lie to him about the motives of that girl he had hurt so very badly.

Lifting her head, she gathered herself and let him hear the acid truth. ‘Well, I certainly didn’t go to bed with you so that I could be publicly humiliated by the headman of my grandparents’ village whilst you remained aloof and arrogant in your castello! My father was furious with me for being, as he put it, “stupid enough to think that a man like Caesar could ever have wanted anything from you other than physical release.” He said I’d brought shame on the whole family. My poor grandparents bore the worst of everything. Word spread quickly through the village, and if I wasn’t actually stoned physically then I was certainly subject to critical glares and whispers. All because I’d been stupid enough to think I loved you and that you loved me.’

She paused for breath, savagely enjoying the release after keeping her pain locked away.

‘Not that I’m sorry that you rejected me like that now. In fact I believe that you did me a favour. After all, you’d have dropped me anyway sooner or later, wouldn’t you? A girl like me, with grandparents who were little more than your family’s serfs, could never be good enough for il duca. That’s what Aldo Barado told my grandparents when he did your dirty work for you and demanded that we leave.’

‘Louise …’ His throat felt dry, aching with the weight of the emotions crushing down on him. Only just like before he could not afford to give in to those emotions. Too much was at stake. Right or wrong, he couldn’t turn his back on so many centuries of tradition.

He could apologise and try to explain. But to what purpose? In his letter Louise’s grandfather had warned him of Louise’s antagonism—not just towards him but also towards everything he represented. In her eyes they were already enemies, and Caesar knew that what he was going to tell her would only increase her hostility towards him.

Her grandfather had claimed in his letter that the intimacy he had shared with Louise had led to the birth of a child—a son. That should have been impossible, given that he had taken precautions. But if this child was his …

The heavy slam of his heart was giving away far too much and far more than he could afford to give away—even to himself.

She might not be able to defend her grandfather’s behaviour in telling Caesar Falconari that Oliver was his son, but she could and would defend her own past, the victim she had in reality been, Louise decided grimly.

‘When children grow up in an environment in which bad behaviour is rewarded with attention and good behaviour results in them being ignored, they tend to favour the bad behaviour. All they care about is the result they want,’ she informed him.

And Caesar’s love? Hadn’t she wanted that as well? She had been too young, too immature to know properly what love—real love—meant. She speedily dismissed such a thought.

Louise was very much the educated professional in that statement, Caesar recognized.

‘And you, of course, speak from personal experience?’

‘Yes,’ Louise agreed. She wasn’t going to make excuses for her past—not to anyone. The love and forgiveness her grandparents had shown her had taught her so much, been such priceless gifts. She knew that Oliver’s life would be the poorer for their loss.

‘Is that why you trained as a specialist in family behaviour?’

‘Yes.’ There was no point in her denying it, after all. ‘My own experiences, both bad and good, made me realise that I wanted to work in that field.’

‘But despite that your own grandfather believed you were not dealing properly with your own son?’

It was too late now to regret that she hadn’t been able to deal more positively with her grandfather’s concerns about the way in which Oliver was reacting to his lack of a father. She herself believed that her son had certain distinctive character traits that could only have come down from the Falconaris—chief amongst them perhaps pride, and the hurt it caused to that pride that he did not have a father.

‘Oliver has issues over the identity of his father,’ she felt forced to admit. ‘But, as my grandfather was perfectly well aware, I plan to put him in possession of the facts when I think he is old enough to deal with them.’

‘And those facts are …’

‘You know what they are. After all, Aldo Barado made them public enough. I came here to Sicily with my family. I went to bed with you. According to the headman of my grandparents’ village I chased after and seduced his son. According to my father and Melinda I disgraced myself and shamed them by hanging around with boys who were quite obviously only after one thing, and then running after you. And they were right. I did humiliate and shame myself by going to bed with you. I wanted my father to sit up and take notice of me and—naively—I thought that being bedded by the most important man in the area was a good way to do that.’

She certainly wasn’t going to tell him of the other reason she had pursued him so relentlessly. She could hardly bear to admit to herself even now the existence of that unfamiliar, shockingly sweet and half-frightening burgeoning of an emotional ache within her that had driven a genuine longing for physical intimacy with him.

For so long all Louise’s emotional drive had been embedded in her quest for her father’s love, so the sudden urgency of her feelings for Caesar had been her first true experience of the dangerous intensity of sexual desire. The strength of her instinctive impulse to reject that feeling had been almost as strong as the feeling itself. Initially she hadn’t wanted anything to come between her and her goal. But over the days and weeks of their time in Sicily something had changed, and she had begun to see in Caesar, very dangerously, her future as the woman Caesar loved.

How naive she had been—and how vulnerable. And how blind to everything else. Brushing off the unwanted attentions of the headman’s son as a mere nuisance, not realising how much her continued rejection of him had damaged his pride, in a way that would demand retribution. That retribution had been the lies he had told about her when he had claimed she had seduced him. Lies that both his father, her family and Caesar himself had been all too ready to believe.

From a professional point of view she could see how much Caesar had been trapped in the demands imposed on him by his culture. She was lucky. She had escaped from its confining strictures. She was her own woman. Although wasn’t it the truth that she was still tied to the past via her son? Like her, Ollie craved his father’s love, and his presence in his life.

Friends and colleagues had urged her to be open to the prospect of a new relationship with a man who would be a good role model for Ollie—a relationship based on love and mutual respect—but no amount of professional self-awareness or knowledge could banish her determination not to love again. For Ollie’s sake as much as her own. The raw truth was that she simply didn’t trust herself not to love yet another man who would hurt her. She had given everything she had to give to Caesar and he had rejected her, allowed her to be humiliated and shamed. Now, for her, the thought of sexual desire and of abandoning herself to that desire was locked into a fear of giving too much. Better not to allow any man into her life and her bed than risk that happening.

‘I used a condom on the night we had sex.’

She could hear Caesar even now denying the son he had fathered, just as all those years ago he had denied her. Well, she didn’t care. Neither she nor Ollie needed him in their lives—even if her grandfather had believed otherwise. Her heart thumped heavily against her ribs. If only her grandfather hadn’t died. If only he was still here to guard and guide Ollie’s growth to adulthood. If only she had never met Caesar. If only she had never gone to bed with him.

And never had Ollie? No … never.