Page 53 of 2 Books in One Bundle

It was like a punch to his guts.

But it was absolutely nothing like the punch that came when his PA came through his door and carefully, knowing how black his mood was, placed in front of him a sealed package that had just arrived by air courier from London.

Numbly, he tore it open and yanked out the documents within. And then, as if all the breath had been forced from him by a paralysing blow, he stared in shock at what they told him.

Connie sat on the train, staring out of the window at the sodden countryside, the leafless trees. Autumn was fast turning into winter, and the weather was miserable. She pulled her coat around her, wriggled her feet in her boots. It wasn’t her old winter coat, nor were they her old winter boots, but when she’d gone to stock up on winter clothes she’d been modest in her purchasing.

Memory plucked at her, of Dante taking her shopping in the fabled Quadrilatero in Milan. Of wandering blissfully, wonderingly, in and out of the famous fashion houses. Dante had spent a fortune on her...

Well, she would have no use for those fabulous clothes now. She’d left them all behind—even the ones she’d taken to Rome. She hoped he’d be able to sell them...they must be worth a huge amount, even second hand.

Her mind skittered away. She did not want to think about it—did not want to think about Dante. Because there was no point. Not any longer.

She felt misery clutch at her, bleak and desolate. She missed him so much.

How could she face the rest of her life—decades and decades and decades—without him?

You have to—that’s all there is to it.

And if she’d yielded to temptation that terrible morning—to stay with Dante even after what he’d revealed to her, to stay with him every single day she could until he decided it was safe to divorce her—when that time had come it would have been an even greater agony to leave him!

No, nightmare though it had been, she’d had to do what she had done. Leave him that very morning.

She felt her throat constrict even more as she remembered what Rafaello had said to her in his calm, lawyerlike way on that hideous morning when she had decided she must leave Dante. Even if she could not yet divorce him.

Rafaello had argued otherwise.

‘You should not believe, Connie, that you must prolong your marriage any further. Divorcing Dante immediately, on the grounds of irretrievable breakdown, would not invalidate the terms of his grandfather’s will because it is, after all, quite true...is it not?’

A stifled sob broke from her.

Irretrievable breakdown—

Those words were like weights, crushing her—crushing all those hopes and dreams that she had once so stupidly believed in.

I believed that what I wanted was what Dante wanted too! That he would want what we had together to last for ever. But he never did want it to last—never intended it to last. For him, it was always going to end—always!

She gave another smothered cry, thankful that the train was not crowded, that she had a no one near her to witness her misery. There was only the sodden landscape passing her by outside, as bleak and bare as the landscape of her mind and her heart.

She hadn’t wanted to come to London today, but Rafaello had said it was necessary. This next stage of the divorce was not something that could be done virtually, he’d told her. It had to be face to face.

She’d wanted to use a local West Country lawyer, but Rafaello had said that, given Dante was Italian, and she had signed a prenup, and his financial resources were so vast compared with hers, only a London lawyer of sufficient calibre would do. Fortunately Rafaello was personally acquainted with just such a suitable lawyer, and she had gone along with his recommendation.

In a remote way she was grateful to Rafaello for taking charge...guiding her through the whole hideous process with his legal expertise. It was kind of him—he must be feeling sorry for her.

But maybe he’s only doing it for Dante—to free him from me as quickly as he can.

And now the tears she had been trying not to shed spilled from her. Tears from the agonising pain of knowing that Dante—the man she had married as a stranger, who had become her friend, kind and compassionate, and then her lover, desiring and passionate, the man she had woven her stupid, delusional dreams over—had never wanted her to be the wife she had come to long to be with all her heart.

Never.

Dante sat on the plane, his expression closed. But thoughts were crowding into his head. He was keeping them all crammed down under a heavy weight. It was essential he do so.

Memory pierced him of how he’d driven down to the West Country, fury in his heart, to seek out Rafaello at that damn wedding and demand he find a way to get him out of the trap his grandfather had sprung on him.

His anger had been paramount, all-consuming. Was it anger in him now, storming beneath that heavy weight he was crushing his thoughts with? He didn’t know. Wasn’t going to look. He was simply going to go on staring at the document in his hand, taken out of the briefcase beside him.

The petition for divorce.

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