‘Yes, you can.’
‘I can’t!’ she sobbed, shaking her head from side to side. ‘I can’t bury him. I can’t. I can’t.’
‘Hush...hush.’
He stroked her back, her hair, held her tight, whispered words in his own language—words she didn’t try to translate. She didn’t need to understand what he was saying to feel comforted.
‘I’m here with you.’
And he was. He stayed by Emmeline’s side throughout the awful, necessary ordeal. As she said goodbye to the hundreds of lawmakers, donors and friends who’d come to pay their final respects. Pietro’s mother and brother were there too, and it was strange to see them here in the church at Annersty. Her new family merging with her old.
Only they weren’t her family.
And Pietro wasn’t really her husband.
The funeral was a time to say goodbye to more than just Col. It was an ending of all things.
Late that night, when everyone had left and it was just Emmeline and her grief, Pietro found her on her knees in a room that he quickly surmised had been hers as a girl.
‘What are you doing here?’ she asked without looking, the tone of weary defeat thick in her words.
He crouched down beside her and handed her a mug. ‘Coffee?’
She took it, her eyes red-rimmed. ‘Thank you.’ She curled her fingers around it and sat down on her bottom, staring around the room. ‘I was just wishing I could lift a corner of the blanket of time and slip beneath it.’ Her smile was vague. ‘I want to be a little girl again.’
‘The room is very...pink.’
She nodded. ‘My favourite colour.’
‘I’m surprised,’ he said quietly. ‘I would have thought perhaps green or red.’
Emmeline wrinkled her nose. ‘Nope. Pink. Rainbow. Sparkles.’
She sipped her drink and then pushed herself up to stand, pacing over to the window.
‘It was a nice funeral.’
‘It was. A fitting service for a man like your father.’
Silence filled the room. A sad, throbbing ache of quiet that spread darkness through Emmeline’s soul. She wanted to lift the blanket of time and go back days, not just years. She wanted to be back in Rome, lying in Pietro’s arms, hot and slumberous from having made love to him all night, smiling as though the world were a simple place.
But she couldn’t go back. Time was a one-way train and it had scooped her up, deposited her on tracks she didn’t want to be on. Yet here she was, bound by grief and betrayal, and her destination was fixed.
‘There’s no point you being here,’ she said softly. ‘You should go back to Rome.’
‘No.’ A quiet word of determination. ‘I’m not leaving you.’
She turned to face him, her expression blank. ‘I don’t want you here. Daddy was wrong to think I couldn’t cope with this. And he was wrong to think you and he should keep it from me. It’s all wrong. Everything we are has been a mistake.’
‘It’s not the time to make this decision,’ he said stonily. ‘You have buried your father today.’
‘I know what the hell I’ve done today!’ she snapped. ‘Tomorrow, the next day—it doesn’t matter. Nothing’s going to change how I feel.’ She sucked in a breath, her lungs burning with hurt. ‘If you care about me at all, you’ll go. Please.’
His eyes were impossible to read as they locked to hers. He stared at her for a long moment and then nodded softly, turning on his heel and leaving. He pulled the door shut with a soft click but Emmeline was as startled as though he’d slammed it.
Well? She’d been emphatic. What had she expected? That he’d sweep her off her feet and carry her to bed? Lie her down and stroke her back until she fell asleep?
That spoke of an intimacy that had been a lie. How could anything make sense when trust was broken between them? And, no matter what he said or did, he’d broken their trust in the most vital of ways. Robbing her of the chance to be with her father in his last months. To love him and care for him.
She had another sip of coffee, her eyes following the moonlight that danced over the rolling hills of the estate. The trees she’d always loved...the hills she’d rolled down as a young girl.
Strange that she no longer felt the same ties to Annersty she had at one time believed unbreakable. It was no longer the home she saw when she closed her eyes. Instead, her mind was filled with visions of fruit orchards and a tumbling down farmhouse.
She blinked her eyes open, determined not to let her traitorous thoughts go there.
Emmeline slept fitfully, her dreams punctuated by loneliness and grief, her mind heavy with sadness and need. When she woke she was pale, and there were bags under her eyes. She didn’t bother to hide them. It was only the housekeeping staff here, and Miss Mavis had seen her in all modes over the years.