‘Yes…’
His frown was so deep it joined his eyebrows like a bridge over his eyes. ‘Is that all you can say?’
Eliza put her glass down before she dropped it. ‘I was going to tell you.’ She hugged her arms across her body. ‘I would’ve told you days ago but you forbade me to even speak his name out loud.’
‘That is not a good enough excuse and you know it.’ He glared at her, but whether it was with anger or frustration she couldn’t quite tell. ‘You could’ve insisted I listen. You could’ve told me the first day I came to see you. For God’s sake, you could’ve told me the first night we met. And you damn well should’ve told me the night I proposed to you.’
‘Why?’ She tossed him a glare right on back. ‘What difference would it have made?’
‘How can you ask that?’ His tone was incredulous. ‘I wanted to marry you. I still want to marry you.’
Eliza noticed he hadn’t said he loved her. He just wanted a wife and a stepmother for his daughter. Wasn’t that what the press had said? ‘I’m not free to marry you.’
He came over and put his hands on her shoulders. ‘Listen to me, Eliza. We can sort this out. Your fiancé will understand. You just have to tell him you want to be with someone else.’
She pulled out of his hold and put some distance between them, her arms going across her middle again. ‘It’s not that simple…’ She took a breath that tore at her throat like talons. ‘It’s my fault he’s in that chair.’
‘What do you mean?’
She looked at him again. ‘I ended our relationship. He left my flat upset—devastated, actually. He was in no fit state to drive. I should never have let him go. It was my fault. If I hadn’t broken our engagement that night he would still be a healthy, active, intelligent, fully functioning man.’ She choked back a sob. ‘I can’t even tell him I’m sorry. He doesn’t have any understanding of language any more. He’s little more than a body in a chair. He can’t even breathe on his own. How can I tell his mother I want to be with someone else after what I’ve done to her son?’
‘You didn’t tell her you’d broken off the engagement?’ Leo asked with a puzzled frown.
Eliza shook her head. ‘When I got the call, she was already at the hospital. She was shattered by what the doctors had told her about his condition. He wasn’t expected to make it through the night. How could I tell her then?’
‘What about later?’
‘I couldn’t…’ She took another shaky breath. ‘How could I? She would think—like everyone else would—that I was trying to weasel my way out of a life of looking after him. It would be such a cruel and selfish and heartless thing to do.’
‘Aren’t you being a little hard on yourself? Would you have expected him to give up his life if you had been the one injured?’
Eliza had thought about it but had always come up with the same answer. ‘No, because he would never have broken up with me without warning. He would have prepared me for it, like I should’ve done for him. We’d been together since I was sixteen. It was wrong of me to dump it on him like that. He loved me so much. And look at what that love has cost him. It’s only fair that I give up my future for him. I owe him that.’
‘You don’t owe him your future,’ Leo said. ‘Come on, Eliza, you’re not thinking rationally. His mother wouldn’t want you to give up your life like this. Surely she’s told you to move on with your life?’
Eliza gave him a despairing look. ‘I’m all she has left. She lost his father when Ewan was a little boy. Now she’s as good as lost him, too. How can I walk away from her now? I’m like a daughter to her and she’s been like a mother to me. I can’t do it. I just can’t.’
‘What if I talk to her? I’ll make her understand how it’s unfair of her to expect so much of you.’
Eliza shook her head sadly. ‘You’re so used to getting whatever you want, but sometimes there are things you just can’t have, no matter how hard and desperately you wish for them.’
‘Do you think I don’t know that?’ he asked. ‘I have a child I would do anything on this earth to help.’
‘I know you would and that’s exactly what Samantha is like. She’s a wonderful mother and a wonderful person. It would devastate her if I was to go away and live with you in Italy.’
‘What if we moved to London? I could work from here. It would be a big adjustment but I could do it. There are good schools for the blind here. Alessandra will soon adjust.’