LITMIR.BIZ

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island of Ortigia.

      When her gaze drifted to the left she could just make out Mount Etna in the distance, shrouded in one of her hazy mists. The volcano had been very active lately, spewing out the most spectacular paratactic displays throughout the long hot summer. Now winter was here, and although the days were quite warm for December, the gentle plume of smoke she could see rising from Etna’s peak said the volcano had cooled her ardour to suit the cooler temperature—for now, at least.

      ‘How does she look?’ she asked after a minute.

      ‘The same,’ came the flat reply. ‘As beautiful as ever, if not—’ More so, was the observation left hanging in the air. ‘She reminded me of her mother,’ Louisa added huskily.

      Nina smiled a bleak little smile. The beautiful dark-haired Lucia had produced a beautiful dark-haired daughter and oh, how Louisa had always envied her twin for doing that.

      ‘What are you going to do?’ her mother asked after another of those heavy silences.

      Do—? Nina turned to face the room again, wearing a smile that was so paper-dry it actually hurt her lips as they stretched. ‘Rafael paid a high price for my loyalty and he’ll have it, whatever he decides to do. I’ve already told you that you’re talking to the wrong person about this.’

      ‘Oh Nina…’ The pained sigh matched her mother’s expression as she watched Nina cross back to the table. ‘How did you and Rafael ever get yourselves into this state?’

      ‘Money, darling,’ Nina drawled in her very best boarding school English as she sat down again. ‘Our appalling lack of it and his abominable excess.’

      ‘Rubbish,’ Louisa dismissed. ‘You adored each other. Rafael was besotted with you from the first moment he looked at you, and you were so in love with him that even that—that prissy manner your father insisted on breeding into you used to melt for him.’

      A game, Nina cynically named that little deception. It had all been just a very clever game they’d played out for the sake of anyone who happened to be interested. Rafael had set the rules by which their marriage would run and Nina had agreed to keep to them—for a price. They were to show a loving front to the world, and in return he would keep the great Guardino name clear of bankruptcy.

      Some price for him to pay for what had only been a face-saving exercise, Nina conceded, recalling just how much it had cost him to bail her grandfather out. But then saving face had always been of paramount importance to Rafael. The monumental size of his pride demanded it.

      That and some deeply hidden hang-ups he never spoke about but which ruled his life far more than he realised.

      ‘It was the sole reason why she went away in the first place,’ Louisa insisted. ‘Once she realised what was happening between the two of you she really had no other option but to step back and leave the field clear.’

      And there, Nina thought, was the deception. ‘Yes,’ she agreed.

      Rafael had been hovering on the brink of asking her beautiful cousin to marry him when Marisia had discovered something about him she couldn’t accept and walked out. She’d walked out on his love, his fabulous wealth and, most important of all, she’d walked all over his precious pride as she went.

      ‘You used to be so happy together.’

      ‘Delirious.’

      ‘Rafael used to eat you with his eyes and he did not care who saw him doing it.’

      Nina found a wry smile for that observation—wry because in an odd way her mother was right. Rafael had eaten her with his eyes.

      With his eyes, his lips, his tongue, his…

      But that had only been for the first few wild months of their marriage, when they’d set out to fool the world and had done it so successfully that they’d actually managed to fool themselves at the same time.

      And the special ingredient to aid and abet this deception?

      Sex. She named it grimly. They’d been so bowled over by the discovery of a wildly passionate and very mutual sexual attraction to each other that it had shocked them stupid for a time. Blinded them to the reality of what they really felt for each other.

      Blinded her anyway, Nina amended as something worryingly close to despair began to swell up inside her. Blinded her enough to let her believe that they were actually in love.

      Love. She could scoff at the very word now. As far as Rafael was concerned he had simply played the game, as any man would play the game, and taken what was on offer because it had been there to take, whereas she…

      Well, blinded as she had been, she had committed the ultimate sin in his eyes, by taking their relationship one step further—unwittingly crossing into forbidden territory—and in doing so had forced Rafael to open her eyes to the size of her mistake.

      Since then—nothing.

      Nothing, she repeated, feeling the desolation of that nothing echoing in the deep, dark void of her now empty heart.

      Louisa must have seen it, because she reached across the table to cover one of Nina’s hands. ‘I know you have been through a bad time recently, darling,’ she murmured very gently. ‘God knows, we all suffered the loss with you, believe me…’

      Nina stared at their two hands, resting against pristine white linen, and wished her mother would just shut up.

      ‘Your grandfather still blames himself.’

      ‘It was no one’s fault.’ Her reply was quiet and stilted, her thoughts even more so—cold and bleak.

      ‘Have you told him that?’

      ‘Of course I have. Countless times.’

      ‘Have you told Rafael the same thing…?’

      Suddenly she wanted to run from the room again. ‘What is this?’ She sighed. ‘An inquisition?’

      ‘He worries me—you worry me—No, don’t get angry…’ Louisa begged as Nina reclaimed her hand and shot back to her feet. Louisa stood too, her tone suddenly anxious. ‘It’s been six months since you lost the baby…’

      Six months, two weeks and eight hours, to be precise, Nina thought.

      ‘Before that the two of you were never seen apart and now you are never seen together! You just shut everyone out, Nina—Rafael more than anyone! And—OK,’ Louisa said, ‘I understand that you needed time to recover, but after what I’ve just told you, surely you must see that it is time for you to put that tragic loss aside if you don’t want your marriage to end in tragedy too!’

      For an answer Nina spun on her heels and walked away, hating everything—everyone—and despising herself. She didn’t want to think about her poor lost baby; she didn’t want to think about Rafael!

      Her heart ached, her bones ached. She caught a glimpse of herself reflected in the mirror hanging on the wall and was shocked into stillness by what she saw. Her skin was pale by nature, but it had now taken on the consistency of paste. Her eyes looked bruised, her mouth small and tight. Tension was gnawing at the fine layer of flesh covering her cheekbones, making her look gaunt and wretched—and she was not going to cry! she told herself furiously. She just was not going—

      ‘He is not a man to neglect like this, cara,’ her mother persisted. ‘She wants him back. And you have just got to face it!’

      I won’t faint if you say her name, you know,’ she drawled.

      It was like a red rag to a bull. Her mother’s response was incensed. ‘Sometimes I find it difficult to believe that you’re my child at all! Do you have any of my Sicilian blood? Marisia—yes—that is her name, and you did not faint! Your cousin Marisia was in love with your husband long before you came on the scene, and by the way she is behaving I would say that she is still in love with him—yet

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