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‘It’s all right,’ she said, ceasing abruptly. ‘My head’s clear again now.’
‘For the love of heaven, will you tell me what’s happened? Is Sol in some sort of trouble?’
‘Yes. I’ve got to go back to England and help him.’
‘Then we must get married first. I don’t want you going back until you’re wearing my ring. Don’t shake your head. You were about to say yes—you know you were.’
‘Yes, I was. Because I was mad. But now I’m sane again. My darling, I can’t marry you. Not now or ever.’
CHAPTER EIGHT
FOR a moment Carlo didn’t speak, refusing to allow her words to alarm him.
‘You still haven’t told me what’s happened,’ he pointed out. ‘What did Sol tell you?’
‘He’s got a girl pregnant. I’m going to be a grandmother in a few months. What’s so funny?’
A roar of laughter had burst from him, but he controlled it quickly, his eyes on her face.
‘I’m sorry, cara, I can’t help it. If there’s one young man in the world I’d have thought would land in that kind of trouble, it’s Sol. Don’t tell me you’re surprised. I suppose he called you to sort it out for him?’
‘Carlo, did you hear what I said? I’m going to be a grandmother.’
‘But why make such a tragedy of it? What are you saying? That you’re going to go grey-haired and wrinkled in the next five minutes? Or are you planning to get a walking stick?’
‘Don’t laugh at me.’
‘But it is laughable the way you make a fuss about trifles.’
‘I’m going to be a granny.’
‘So what? You haven’t changed. You’re still you—the same person you were five minutes ago. You haven’t suddenly become eighty just because of this.’
‘I’ve moved up a generation,’ she said stubbornly.
‘Then I’m coming with you,’ he said cheerfully. ‘We’ll buy two walking sticks and hobble along together. Now, come back to bed. The night isn’t over, and Sol’s problem has given me some interesting ideas.’
He tried to draw her down between the sheets again, but she resisted.
‘Will you try to be sensible?’
‘What for? What did being sensible ever do for anyone?’
She loved him in this mood, but this time she couldn’t yield to him. It was too serious.
‘I wish you’d listen,’ she said. As she spoke she fended him off, which made him stop and stare at her, puzzled.
‘I’ve said that you’re still you,’ he said. ‘The woman I love, and will love all my days. None of this makes any difference.’
But she shook her head helplessly.
‘It does.’
‘But why? You haven’t aged by so much as a second.’
‘Haven’t I? I’ve suddenly seen myself aging.’
‘Because of a word? Because that’s all “grandmother” is—a word.’ He tried again to take her into his arms. ‘Cara, don’t give in to fancies. None of this matters to us.’
He didn’t understand, she realised. His words were logical, but they had no effect on the chill of fear in her heart.
‘No, it’s more than a word.’ She sighed. ‘It’s a thought with a picture attached. You saw that picture yourself—grey-haired, wrinkled, walking stick. And it’s made me face up to something that in my heart I’ve always known.’
She took his face between her hands, trying to find the courage for what had to come next.
‘I fooled myself that it could work between us,’ she said at last. ‘What we have is lovely, and I didn’t want to spoil it. I still don’t. We can have everything we want—except marriage.’
He frowned, and the light died from his eyes.
‘What kind of everything do you have in mind?’
‘It’ll take months to make the programme, and we can have that time together. Afterwards—we’ll see what happens.’
There was a silence before he said, in a strange voice she’d never heard before, ‘Afterwards you think I’ll act like a spoilt brat who’s had his fun, dumps the woman, and goes onto the next thing? That’s your opinion of me? Do you even realise that you’ve insulted me?’
‘I don’t intend to insult you. I just think we should take life as it comes and not make too many demands on the future.’
He pulled away from her and got to his feet.
‘No,’ he said harshly. ‘What you think is that I’m not sufficiently adult to make a commitment. That’s what this is really about, isn’t it? Behind all this “too old” talk, what you’re really saying is that I’m too young—not up to standard? Why can’t you be honest about it, Della?’
‘Because that’s not what I mean,’ she cried passionately.
‘Isn’t it? Della, I’m thirty-one, not twenty-one. A man of thirty-one is usually reckoned mature enough to make his own decisions, and you’d see that too if you didn’t have this fixation about being older. I may look like a kid to you, but nobody else would say so.’
‘A man of thirty-one is still young, but I’m on the verge of middle age,’ she said fiercely. ‘You may not want to face it, but I have to.’
‘That’s a damned fool argument and you know it. Perhaps it’s just a cover for something uglier?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I think you decided you needed me just so long and no longer.’
Both his eyes and his voice were cold.
‘Have you been stringing me along? Making a fool of me just to get material for your programme?’ he demanded.
‘That’s nonsense. If all I wanted was research, I’ve got people to do it for me.’
‘But not as we’ve done. Living it. Feeling it. And why not have a nice little vacation at the same time? He looks promising, so let’s pick him up and try him out. If he succeeds as a toy-boy he may even succeed as a presenter—’
‘Don’t you dare say such a thing,’ she flashed. ‘There was nothing even remotely like that in my mind.’
‘From where I’m standing, that’s what it looks like.’
‘I never thought of you as a toy-boy—’
‘You thought of me as someone to be used—someone you could treat as a kid. I should have learned my lesson that first day, when you didn’t tell me the truth about why you were in Naples. I thought I’d met the woman of my dreams, and all the time you were sizing me up, assessing whether I fitted the slot. I had my warning, but like an idiot I ignored it because—well, never mind.’
He turned and moved away from her, as though he needed to put space between them.
‘You were going to keep me around for just so long, then end it when it suited you,’ he said over his shoulder. ‘It was nothing but a game to you.’
‘I thought it was only a game to you,’ she said wretchedly. ‘It ought to have been.’
‘“Ought to have been”?’ he echoed, aghast. ‘What the hell does that mean?’
‘In the beginning—’ She stopped, for emotion was making it hard for her to speak.
‘Yes?’ he said remorselessly.
‘At the start I thought it was just a fling, for both of us. It had to be for me, and honestly I thought you were just passing the time. Carlo, be honest. Women have come and gone in your life, haven’t they?’
‘Yes,’ he said bleakly. ‘Too many. But none of them meant anything compared to you. You’ve always been different. I tried to make you understand that, but obviously I didn’t do a very good job.’
‘I thought I’d be just another of them. What we had was lovely, but I knew it couldn’t last. I thought, Why shouldn’t we enjoy ourselves for a while? I truly believed you’d be the one to end it. I didn’t think your feelings would get that much involved.’
‘You treated me as something that had no feelings at all,’ he said harshly. ‘But I didn’t stick to the script, did I? I fell deeply in love with you and wanted to marry you.’
Suddenly he began to laugh, but not with amusement. It had a bitter sound. ‘Oh, boy! What a joke! How you must have loved that one!’
‘I swear you’re wrong. Carlo, listen to me. I love you more than I ever thought I could love any man, and I’ve tried to believe it’s possible for things to work out for us. Now I know they can’t.’
‘I’ve told you I don’t give a damn about your age. It doesn’t matter.’
‘But it’ll matter later. That seven years is going to stretch. I’ll be forty-five while you’re still in your thirties. Then fifty. Fifty is a big milestone, and I’ll pass it years before you do. You’ll be in your prime and I’ll be having face-lifts and injections.’
‘Don’t you dare,’ he said at once. ‘I want you as you are.’
‘Darling, when I’m fifty we won’t be together—’
‘Stop that talk. In a hundred years we’ll still be together.’
One minute they were quarrelling, the next he was laying out their future as though nothing had happened. She wanted to laugh and cry at the same time. His refusal to see the barrier between them made her love him more, but the effort of making him understand tore her apart.
‘Maybe we will be together longer than I thought,’ she conceded. ‘I’m not saying we should separate immediately—’
‘Just when the programme’s complete. I’ll have my uses until then.’
‘No, it can be as long as you like. I won’t marry you, but I’ll live with you.’
‘How?’ he demanded. ‘When the series is over we’ll be working in different countries. Or are you planning to give up your career and follow me about the world?’
‘I can’t do that, but—’
‘Or am I supposed to abandon my career and live in your shadow?’
‘Of course not. But we could still find ways to be together as often as we can manage.’
‘A weekend here, a weekend there,’ he said bitingly. ‘Until one day I turn up a day early and you won’t look up from your computer because I don’t fit into the schedule—’
‘Or the day I arrive early and find you with some sexy little thing who’s got all the youth I no longer have—’
‘Don’t say any more!’
‘Why not?’ she cried. ‘You’re bound to face the truth one day. Why not now? It’ll happen, and I won’t blame you because it’ll be right and natural. Can’t you see that that’s the only way we can love each other—to be ready to let go when the time comes?’
‘And if I don’t want to let go?’ he demanded fiercely.
‘Then we’ll stay together as long as you want.’
‘You’re so sure I’ll be the one to break us up, that I’ll betray you,’ he raged. ‘You think my love is worth so much less than yours?’
‘No, I’ve never thought that. But those seven years matter. I know you don’t think so now, but one day you’ll see it.’
‘You mean, give me enough time and I’ll learn to agree with you?’ he said, with a touch of a sneer.
‘When you see me getting old before you, getting lined before you, losing my strength while you still have all yours—then—’
‘Then what?’
She forced herself to say it.
‘Then you’ll realise what a mistake you’ve made. But there’ll still be time to escape.’
‘Your opinion of me is really down there in the dust, isn’t it?’ he asked quietly. ‘All this time I thought we loved each other. But you were humouring me, treating me like a child to be indulged.’
She tried to deny it, but the words wouldn’t come. Dreadful as it sounded, might this be true, even a little? She’d taken it on herself to make all the decisions in their relationship, without telling him.
On the first day she’d concealed her real purpose in being there, and then she’d concealed her age, always telling herself that she was doing it ‘for the best’. Wasn’t that what mothers did? Perhaps she’d had no right?
Suddenly he began to speak more gently.
‘Listen to me, Della. I’m asking for more than your love. I want everything about you—the whole of your heart and mind and your body—for the rest of your life. I want to know that you trust me enough to commit to me, instead of arranging things for an easy escape.’
‘An escape for you—’
Her answer roused his anger again.
