‘It was my own fault. I was driving too fast, concentrating on being with you instead of on my driving. Luckily no damage was done other than to the Ferrari, but the hospital insisted on keeping me overnight in case I had concussion, even though I told them that it was vitally important that I be allowed to leave. Unfortunately I was too late. As I arrived at the airport your plane was taking off.’
‘But you got here before me. How…?’
‘I hired a private plane,’ Raphael told her dismissively.
‘Oh, Raphael.’ Charley blinked back her tears. ‘Are you sure about what you’re saying? About us being together and everything?’
He didn’t flinch.
‘I mean every word I have said to you. I love you more than I ever thought it possible for me to love anyone. You are my life, my heartbeat, every breath in my body. You are everything to me, Charlotte, and without you I am nothing—there is nothing. Say you will marry me. Come home with me. Tell me that you love me.’
‘I do love you, Raphael,’ Charley confirmed, ‘but there is something I have to tell you before we can talk about marriage—something important.’
She could see that he was concerned, even though he tried to conceal it from her.
‘Very well, but we will discuss this oh, so important matter in the comfort of the plane and not here.’
That would mean going back to Italy with him, and if, once he knew the truth about his own birth, he should change his mind about wanting to marry her she would have to leave all over again. But how could she deny him what he was asking after what he had told her?
Unable to trust herself to speak, silently Charley nodded her head.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
THE plane had taken off. They were alone in the comfort of its elegant interior, furnished more like a small sitting room than any kind of aircraft with which Charley was familiar.
The minute the steward had left them Raphael had taken her in his arms, kissing her so passionately and with such longing that Charley had been incapable of doing anything other than responding.
‘I cannot wait for us to be alone,’ Raphael told her. ‘I cannot wait to make you properly mine again, to hold you in my arms and love you. We will spend tonight in Florence, at the apartment, and then tomorrow we will start to make the arrangements for our marriage.’
What if she simply didn’t tell him? What if she begged him to stay with her until after they were married and he didn’t see the letter until it was too late and he was committed to her? He had, after all, said that he loved her. Why should she risk losing him when she loved him so much?
Charley closed her eyes, willing away the temptation tormenting her.
‘There is something you have to know…something you must know, just in case you should want to change your mind about marrying me.’
There—she had said it, and now Raphael was looking at her with that same haughty frown she remembered from the first time she had seen him.
‘So what is this something—this secret from your past?’
‘It isn’t from my past, Raphael. It’s from yours.’
Hardly daring to risk looking at him, in case she lost her courage, Charley plunged on.
‘Whilst I was clearing my things from your mother’s desk, by accident I found a concealed compartment. There was a letter in it. A letter your mother had written to you and for you. I shouldn’t have read it, but I did… I sent it to you in Rome by special delivery. I hoped that when you’d read it you’d come to me, and when you didn’t I assumed…that is to say…’
‘A letter from my mother? How can that affect our plans to marry?’
Charley took a deep breath.
‘Raphael, although you didn’t know it when you made that suggestion, that selfless suggestion about us having a child, you were following in your own mother’s f
ootsteps. She loved you so much—so very, very much—her love for you shines out of her letter. Reading it made me cry. She carried you in her body, Raphael, she loved you as her child, but you were not her biological child. Like you, she did not want to take the risk of burdening a child with her own inheritance, and like you she made the decision to allow medical science to provide her with the means of giving birth to your father’s child without that child having to carry her genes. The reason she told you so often about those genes was because she hoped that when you knew the truth you would understand that she had taken the steps she did take to protect you—because her love for you was such that she wanted you to be free of fear, for yourself and your descendants.’
Raphael’s face was drained of colour and his mouth was set grimly. Charley’s heart sank. Surely he was not going to reject his mother’s love for him?
‘And because of this you have doubts about marrying me?’
Charley was astounded.