Page 47 of Bought For The Marriage Bed

‘I have not forgotten,’ Marc said, turning back to reach for Georgia. ‘It is time for Georgia’s bedtime routine. We will leave you to rest before dinner.’ He looked towards Nina once more and spoke in English. ‘Come, Nina. We will need to settle Georgia and get changed for dinner.’

Nina gave Marc’s father a small polite smile as she held out her hand to him. ‘It was nice to meet you, Signore Marcello.’

For the second time that evening Vito Marcello ignored her hand.

‘Papa?’ Marc prompted with a frown down at his father.

Vito made some inaudible comment under his breath and briefly took Nina’s hand. ‘Thank you for agreeing to bring my granddaughter to see me. I have not much time. She is all we have left of Andre.’

Nina blinked back the moisture gathering at the back of her eyes. ‘I am so sorry for what you have suffered.’

Vito pushed himself away in his chair, effectively dismissing her. ‘You know nothing of my suffering. Nothing.’

Marc took her elbow and led her away, softly closing the salon door on their exit.

‘I apologise for my father’s rudeness,’ he said as they moved towards the huge staircase leading to the upper floors. ‘He is still grieving.’ He hesitated for a moment before adding, ‘I probably do not need to tell you that Andre was his favourite son.’

Nina came to a stop and looked up at him. ‘It’s all right, Marc. I do understand. This has been a terrible time for you all.’

He gave her a rare smile, tinged with sadness but, for all that, still a smile. ‘I sometimes wonder what my mother would have made of you,’ he mused.

‘Your mother?’

He pointed to a portrait hanging on the mezzanine level a few feet away. ‘My mother.’

Nina took the remaining steps to stand in front of a portrait of a beautiful dark-haired, porcelain-skinned petite woman, her soft brown eyes sparkling with exuberant life.

‘She’s very beautiful.’

‘Yes…she was.’

The tone of his voice turned Nina’s head around to look at him.

He held her gaze for a heartbeat before saying, ‘My father has never forgiven me for leading her to her death.’

Nina made a tiny gasp but no words came out. He looked at her across the top of Georgia’s downy head as she buried it into his broad chest, her tiny hands splayed across his shirt. ‘I was late. We had arranged to meet but I was late. I called her to tell her to fill in the time until I got there.’

Nina felt her breath bank up in her chest. She could almost sense what was coming, the guilt and the blame that clung like lead weights to one’s conscience—what could have been done differently if one had only known.

‘She was across the street when she saw me. She waved and called out to me…a motor scooter clipped her as she stepped out.’

‘Oh, Marc.’

‘She didn’t see the other car. Nor did I until it lifted her and tossed her like a rag doll towards me.’ He turned back to the portrait and let out a ragged sigh. ‘If I had been just a few seconds earlier…’

‘No!’ She clutched at his arm. ‘No, you mustn’t think that!’

He extricated himself from her hold, securing his niece against him as he continued up the stairs. ‘You cannot change the past, Nina. You, of all people, should know that. We all do things on the spur of the moment that we regret later.’

Nina wished she had an answer at the ready but there was a ringing truth in what he had just said. Her own impulsive actions had already caused her incalculable regret. If only she had told him right from the first moment what was going on, maybe things would not be as they were now. He was a reasonable man, a good man, a man of sound moral principles. If she had only told him that very first day of her fears for Georgia’s safety, of her worries about her sister’s motives—surely he would not have taken Georgia out of her life without thinking of the impact it would have on her niece?

But it was too late now. She had taken a pathway that had led her to this—a lifetime of deception. She had no choice but to continue in it, the lies and deceit banking up behind her like a tide of inescapable debris that at some point would come pouring over her, weighing her down until she would surely be choked by the brackish filth of it.

‘Marc?’

Marc turned to look down at her, his brother’s child asleep in his arms. ‘Nina, this is my father’s last chance for peace. I know this is hard for you…’

‘It is not hard for me,’ she said, touching him gently on the arm. ‘I owe this to the memory of your brother. In another life, in other circumstances, he might have gladly accepted Georgia as his own. The timing was wrong. You have taken on the role as her father. I am…her mother. It is up to us to make her life what it should be.’

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