Charley felt the weight of his words as though they were the onset of an avalanche that was going to crush the life out of her. In the short space of time it took Raphael to say them, the happiness with which she had awoken had turned to fear.
‘Last night?’ she repeated.
Raphael nodded his head.
‘Last night should never have happened. The blame for the fact that it did lies entirely with me. I should have had more self-control; I should not have come here and given in to my…need. It mustn’t happen again. It will not happen again.’
Charley couldn’t hide her distressed anguish.
‘I don’t understand,’ she protested. ‘You want me, and I want you.’
‘Yes.’
Raphael’s voice was terse. He wasn’t looking at her, and Charley could see the way his jaw tensed.
‘Then why can’t we be together? I love you, Raphael.’
‘Yes, I know, and that is part of the reason why it must end. I cannot give you… There is no future for us. It is better, kinder, fairer to you, that we end things now.’
No future for them? Pain and anger filled Charley.
‘Why is there no future for us? Because I’m not good enough for you, The Duke? Is that why you said what you did about me not conceiving your child? I’m not good enough to be the mother of a baby with your precious blue blood, is that it?’
She was working herself up into a fury because it was the only way she had of stopping herself from begging him to change his mind. She had to hold on to her anger because it was all she had to cling to.
‘No. Never that.’ Raphael swung round as he uttered the tormented denial, the sunlight revealing the new thinness of his face, his expression that of a man emotionally tortured beyond his own bearing.
‘Tell me what it is, then,’ Charley insisted. ‘Tell me.’
She could see his chest expanding as he took a deep, ragged breath.
‘Very well, then. You saw for yourself how I reacted last night—how my anger overwhelmed me, how I took hold of you in anger and violence.’
‘Because you were afraid that the car would hit me.’
‘I wish I could believe it was only that that motivated me, but I cannot let myself accept that. Last night I broke every vow I have ever made to myself. It must never happen again. I am not saying that things must end between us because I do not want you to have my child, but because I will not put you in a position where I might hurt you. Just as I will not pass on to any child the poisoned inheritance that is in my own genes.’
Whilst Charley looked at him in shocked bewilderment, Raphael loosened the tension out of his shoulders with a tired movement.
‘You will want to know what I mean?’
‘Yes,’ Charley agreed.
‘It is a long story—as long as the history of my mother’s family. She was descended from the blood-line of one of the most bloodthirsty of all the Beccelli family. During the fifteenth century his cruelty and sadism was such that it was expunged from all family documents. His greed knew no bounds. In order to empower himself he waged war on his neighbours, amongst them my mother’s family, giving orders that the sons of the family should be killed along with their parents, whilst taking for himself their daughter to be married to one of his own sons—but not before he had raped her and impregnated her.’
Raphael heard Charley’s indrawn gasp.
‘His cruelty was unimaginable—the product of a twisted and sadistic mind. Finally he was brought to rough justice when he was murdered by his own sons, who then fell out amongst themselves, killing one another and leaving behind them the young raped bride who was carrying the child of her abuser. From that time down through my mother’s family there have been those who have manifested sadism—men and women who have carried out acts of unspeakable cruelty. My mother’s own great-grandfather was one of those people, as was a male cousin—who ended up being murdered in a brothel. There were other members of her family—less openly affected but possessed of terrible tempers, given to uncontrollable rages. Because of her dread of passing on the curse of that inheritance my mother had sworn never to marry or have a child, so that no future generations would be contaminated by her inheritance. But then she met my father. They were passionately in love with one another, and he persuaded her to marry him. She told me over and over again during my childhood how she had promised herself that she would not burden future generations with the burden she herself had had to carry, how madness brought on by guilt as well as sadism destroyed the lives of so many who shared her blood.’
Charley had to swallow hard before she could speak. Raphael’s revelations had filled her with pity for him, and a fiercely protective love.
‘But you are neither of those things,’ was all she felt able to say. ‘You are no sadist, Raphael, and you are not mad.’
‘Not yet—although that is not to say that I will never be, nor that my child will not be.’
It took several seconds for the full horror of what he was saying to sink into Charley’s mind.
‘But you can’t know that it will happen,’ she managed.