The Truth Behind Their Practical Marriage
‘I think we might claim one of those,’ Aidan said, ‘what do you think?’
‘I think you know perfectly well that you didn’t need to ask,’ Estelle replied.
The wine was rough, but the ribollita, a peasant soup made of stale bread, tomatoes and beans, Estelle pronounced delicious. ‘More a stew than a soup, and very filling, which is just as well,’ she said, eyeing the next dish with some trepidation. ‘I didn’t quite catch what this was?’
‘Lampredotto. Tripe. I fear it’s an acquired taste. I can just about manage a couple of mouthfuls.’
‘I cannot contemplate even that.’ She grimaced. ‘What are we to do? I can’t possibly send back my plate untouched. It would be the ultimate insult. I can imagine how Phoebe would feel.’
Aidan took a large glug of wine, before quickly tipping the contents of her plate on to his. ‘Oh, no,’ she protested, appalled, ‘you’ll be ill.’
‘Ah but I’ll have the compensation of feeling noble.’
‘Aidan Malahide, you are a true knight errant,’ Estelle said, quite seriously, ‘let me pour you some more wine to help it down.’
He nodded, concentrating on the task in hand, and she concentrated on keeping his glass full. ‘Not so bad,’ he said when he had done, pushing his plate aside with a sigh of relief. ‘I expect an Italian would feel much the same, confronted with crubeens and cabbage.’
‘What on earth is a crubeen?’
‘You call yourself Irish! A boiled pig’s foot, of course. Have you really never tasted it?’
‘Have you?’ she asked, narrowing her eyes.
‘I have it served every Saturday—to my old grandmother’s receipt.’
‘That is a fib!’
Aidan laughed. ‘It is. My old grandmother, what little I remember of her, wouldn’t have known the way to the kitchen. A woman with a strong sense of her own importance, and a strict proponent of the rule that children should be seen and not heard. Clodagh and I used to dread having to visit her. Once a month my father took us—she lived in a town house in Kildare itself, my father having had the presence of mind to forcibly relocate her from the castle when he inherited—or perhaps it was my mother’s idea, I’m not sure. Anyway, for some reason my grandmother favoured me very much over poor Clodagh. At tea there would always be a big slab of cake and a glass of milk for me, while my sister was given water and a dry biscuit.’
‘What on earth had Clodagh done to offend the old lady?’
‘Nothing, she swears, and for myself, I didn’t do a thing to endear myself to her either.’
‘Save be your charming self.’
‘At the moment, I’m a very full self. As a reward for my noble act I claim as my prize your company for a post-prandial walk, Miss Brannagh. The Parco delle Cascine is just a few steps away from here, on the banks of the Arno.’
‘I would like that very much, kind sir. Without wishing to do your sister an injustice, I can quite easily see why your grandmother thought you so charming. Do you have any other relatives wrapped around your finger?’
‘Oh, whole heaps of cousins on my mother and father’s side. A few aunts and uncles too, scattered across Ireland and England. What about you?’
‘There are cousins on my father’s side, I believe, but none who would acknowledge us. When he married Mama they disowned him, and on her side—she eloped, and so her family disowned her too. My Uncle Daniel, my Aunt Kate’s husband, is Mama’s brother and so my closest relative.’
‘The mysterious absent uncle who rarely writes?’ Aidan asked, steering her through a set of gateposts into the woodland park.
‘The same. He is an explorer, and spends all his time abroad. Exploring.’ Estelle made a face. ‘To be honest, I’ve never quite understood what exactly that entails.’
‘Haven’t you asked him?’
‘I’ve never had the opportunity. He married Aunt Kate when his father died, about twelve years ago, which was a couple of years before she took us in.’
‘You mean he’s never been back since?’
‘The whole point of their marriage was to allow him to remain abroad. It is an arrangement that has suited them both very well, I assure you. Aunt Kate’s father was the estate manager for many years, so she was ideally placed to take on Elmswood Manor, and Uncle Daniel never wanted the responsibility.’
‘Good grief. Do you mean that your uncle and aunt have spent their entire married life living apart?’
‘They have, and what’s more have been very content doing so. For my part, I think Aunt Kate and Uncle Daniel did a very sensible thing.’
Aidan caught the hand she had withdrawn from his arm. ‘I didn’t mean to imply any criticism, I’m sorry. I assumed—you see for me, the only reason to marry would be to have a family.’
‘Actually,’ Estelle said, wondering at the shadow that crossed his countenance, ‘I happen to agree with you that it is the best reason, but that is not to say it is the only one.’
‘You’re right.’ Aidan was himself again. Perhaps she had imagined it. ‘Your aunt sounds like a very practical woman.’
‘And the kindest, most loving—and in fact, she has always said that we three are the children she never had. She is only related to us by marriage, yet she took us in when none of our own relatives were in the least bit interested in our fate.’
‘And you quite rightly won’t have a word said against her. I’m sorry.’ Looking down, seeing her eyes awash with tears, Aidan cursed. ‘I’ve made you cry.’
‘It’s not your fault.’
Casting a glance along the deserted pathway, he pulled her to one side before producing a large handkerchief and dabbing at her eyes. Half-laughing, she tried to bat him away. The handkerchief fluttered towards the ground and as she stumbled trying to catch it, Aidan caught her, righting her with a hand on each shoulder. ‘Are you all right?’
‘Perfectly.’
As he never wore gloves, she could feel the heat of his skin through the flimsy muslin of her summer gown. Her smile faltered as she met his eyes, and her heart skipped a beat, then began to beat far too fast. She closed her eyes. He kissed the teardrops from her lashes and she sighed. He whispered her name, and she opened her eyes, seeing the question in his, and she lifted her face.
Their lips met hesitantly. His short beard was surprisingly soft. He tasted of wine. His lips were warm on hers, and her heart was beating wildly. Anticipation and excitement edged with slight panic, for she had no idea what to do next.
As if he sensed this, he pulled her closer, sliding one arm around her waist, pressing little kisses to her bottom lip. She sighed, her apprehension evaporating, a liquid heat pooling in her tummy as he slid his other hand up her back, caressing the sensitive skin at the nape of her neck, teasing her lips apart with butterfly kisses, then moulding his mouth to hers, moving his lips gently. She followed his lead. As their kiss deepened, her body melted of its own accord against his. She clutched at his shoulder for balance, and beneath her lids, the world turned a flaming red.
When it ended, she gazed at him, dazed. Aidan’s eyes were heavy, gazing at her in the same stunned way. There was a hint of auburn in his beard at the corner of his mouth she hadn’t noticed before. She touched it, wonderingly, and he pressed his mouth to her open palm, and she caught her breath again, and it hung in the balance for a few seconds, the possibility of a second kiss, which she would have offered freely, before he smiled lopsidedly at her, setting her free from the circle of his arms.
And then they walked on, not quite as before, but in accord, because there was nothing to be said, passing a pyramid-shaped building which proved to be an ice house, and on, until the trees gave way to a piazza dominated by a fountain, surprisingly deserted. They sat on a bench in the shade, close enough for their bodies to touch, though they kept their gaze on the tinkling fountain. The park was silent, even the birds made drowsy and muted by the heat.
‘I didn’t think I was that sort of person,’ Estelle said dreamily. ‘The kind who kisses at the drop of a hat.’
Aidan gave a huff of laughter. ‘The drop of a handkerchief, to be more precise. Ironically, until I met you, I thought I was no longer that sort of person. It just goes to show how resilient nature is.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Nothing.’ He reached for her hand. ‘You do know, Estelle, that if we were in England—or Ireland—it would be quite wrong for me to kiss you.’
‘I kissed you back.’
‘You know perfectly well what I mean. You may be well travelled, but you’re an innocent.’
‘Not so innocent that I can’t recognise that you have behaved like the honourable man I know you are, Aidan. Other men would have leapt at the offer of a second kiss, and probably pressed for a great deal more, whether it was offered or not. Not,’ she added hastily, seeing his horrified expression, ‘that I have been subjected to that, but there have been times when it could have become an issue, had I been a little less vigilant.’ She sighed, fiddling with the strings of her bonnet. ‘So please stop apologising. We agreed, didn’t we, that we would make our own rules?’
‘We did.’
Later, alone in her pension, realising she’d turned a page in her book without taking in a single word of what she’d read, Estelle cast her history of the Medicis aside. Today had been a revelation. Who would have thought that kissing could be so utterly delightful? Or more specifically, who would have thought that she could find kissing so utterly delightful? She had always found the idea of it frightening, a stormy expression of the unsavoury cocktail of hate and love which her parents felt for each other. And her actual experience, until she had kissed Aidan, had been distasteful. But kissing Aidan!
Jumping out of bed, she threw open the window to gaze out on to the piazza below. Kissing Aidan was like nothing she had ever imagined. For the first time, she understood how Phoebe’s passion for the arrogant but charismatic Frenchman could have flared. When she discovered that her twin had taken Solignac as a lover, she had been shocked to the core—not, as Phoebe assumed, because she had behaved scandalously, but because she claimed to be passionately in love. This, Estelle had always assumed, was the one emotion all three sisters were quite immune to, and happily so, given the appalling example of their parents’ tempestuous and ultimately miserable marriage. But Phoebe, thank goodness, had been cured of her passion for that French enfant terrible, and now that she’d got him well and truly out of her system, she had made a very sensible marriage much like Aunt Kate’s, which allowed her to concentrate on her true passion, for her restaurant.
Aidan, unlike the despised Solignac, was a man of honour. A man who would never take advantage of her. A man she could trust not to overstep the mark, even if she wished him to. It was likely that, this wild, insistent desire to taste more of Aidan’s kisses was a passing fancy, a fleeting passion of a very different nature than the one that had infected and driven her parents. Something to be relished, in fact, while it lasted. A little hiatus from the real world, and a much-needed break from worrying about the future.
Was she in thrall to Aidan, as Phoebe had been to her Frenchman? No, but she was enraptured, enchanted, fascinated and—oh, for heaven’s sake, attracted! They were kindred spirits who had both been alone too much, but they were also ships that must inevitably pass in the night.
Estelle threw herself back on her bed. For the next little while, she could enjoy Aidan’s company and his kisses for what they were. An interlude—an extremely pleasant one of say—a week—no, two weeks, before she left Florence for the next stop on her itinerary. Satisfied, she blew out her candle and lay back on the pillows, pressing her mouth to the back of her hand to relive today’s kisses, and to imagine tomorrow’s. If that was not being too greedy.
Chapter Four
Estelle peered at the plaque below the painting. ‘“Raphael, Portrait of Pope Leo X with Two Cardinals.” With a spyglass in his hand too. Do you think he was short-sighted? He looks to me like a man who bears a grudge. I don’t think I’d like to be in the cardinals’ shoes.’
Standing beside her in one of the portrait galleries in the Uffizi, Aidan laughed softly. ‘It does look as if they’ve brought him some very unwelcome news.’
‘Are they standing or sitting?’ Estelle peered closer. ‘Either they are sitting, and that one at a very odd angle, or they are very short.’
‘It’s about fixing the perspective,’ Aidan said, going on to explain, as he had with several paintings they had examined that morning, the mathematics and ratios behind the composition.
‘Do you think Raphael understood all this?’
‘Well da Vinci certainly did, and they were contemporaries.’
Estelle wrinkled her nose. ‘I’m afraid it doesn’t make me like it any more. I certainly wouldn’t want it hanging on my wall. Which is just as well, since I don’t have one, far less four to call my own.’
They made their way through the gallery stopping when the fancy took them to speculate, sometimes about the art, sometimes about the spectators of the art. It had been ten days since they had first met here, and they’d spent a large part of every one of those days together. Aidan had given up any pretence of studying. When he was with Estelle, the world was a golden place, with no past and no future to tarnish it. They talked of everything and nothing. Like him, she seemed content to forget the real world and to wallow in this one. There were still moments when unbidden memories caught him unawares, when he was reminded of the terrible burden he carried, but in Estelle’s company, those were quickly banished, and if she noticed them—he knew she did—she made no comment.
Did she have her own secrets? It astonished him sometimes, alone in his rooms, thinking over the day, how little he really knew of her, but what did fact and history matter, when they understood each other on a more elemental level? Mind and body, there was a connection between them that grew stronger every day. They both knew perfectly well that it would have to be severed, and soon, and they both knew that the sensible thing would be to wean themselves off it. But instead, each day they fed the flames further, greedy for more, and never quite satisfied that they’d had enough.
She made him feel alive. She made him feel young. She made him feel new. He revelled in being the person she saw, not being the man he had become. With her, he could fool himself into believing he really was that person. Though there was a part of him patiently watching, ready to pounce when he was alone, that knew this was all a lie. No, not a lie, a dream. If only he never had to awake.
They had reached the Tribuna, the most popular of the galleries, where, despite the early hour, the usual assortment of people were sketching and staring. Estelle had joined a small group in front of one of the more infamous works featuring lasciviously nude women. It made him want to laugh, the way she tilted her head, wrinkled her nose, shuffled from one side of the frame to the other, attempting to see what so fascinated the others. She had no idea she was so transparent, and no idea it was one of the things about her which he found most endearing. For such an independent, seasoned traveller, she had a surprising innocence about her. She was not naïve, but she consistently underestimated herself. It made him fiercely protective, though he was careful not to let her see that. And careful, very careful, not to let the kisses they shared lead to anything more significant.
He wanted her. There wasn’t a moment when he was in her company when he wasn’t aware of her, and she of him too. They were forever brushing against each other, their fingertips touching on table tops, while their knees did the same, hidden from view. Her hand was always tucked into his arm when they walked. Their kisses were searing, heady, delightful. He couldn’t get enough of her kisses, but he rationed them all the same, lest they lose their innocence. Such pleasurable kisses could so easily lead to more darkly sensual pleasures. Deeper kisses, more intimate caresses. Estelle would follow where he led. It was her implicit trust in him that made it easy to restrain himself—if frustrating. And he did permit himself to speculate how it might be. Such fevered imaginings!
‘If you were a painting, Aidan Malahide, I’d say that you were a man about to devour a most excellent dinner. You have a look of ravenous anticipation.’
‘Do I?’ he said, smiling. ‘My appetite for art is certainly utterly sated. I think a coffee is called for. Shall we?’
Estelle took Aidan’s arm, and he pulled her a little closer, as he always did, as they made their way to the Piazza della Signoria. The waiter waved them to what had been her table and had now become theirs, bringing coffee and pastries without asking. Above her, the sun shone from a perfect blue sky decorated with what seemed like impossibly fluffy clouds. Beside her, Aidan was idly surveying the promenade of tourists, artists setting up their easels, hawkers setting up their wares. He sat at an angle to the little table, stretching his legs out, leaning slightly back in his chair, his coat unfastened. His stomach was quite flat. There was a very pleasing breadth to his shoulders. There were any number of statues of naked men in this city, but until now, she’d never compared art to life. How would Aidan compare with Michelangelo’s masterpiece over there? Aidan was flesh and blood, not cold marble. His skin would be warm. Smooth? Pale or tanned? She had absolutely no idea. Her experience of naked male flesh began and ended with statues, and until now, she’d had no inclination whatsoever to broaden her knowledge.
Estelle Brannagh! She reached for her coffee just as Aidan reached for his, and their hands brushed each other. He smiled at her, one of his slow, lazy smiles, and her breath caught, and her stomach fluttered as she returned his smile. He couldn’t possibly have read her thoughts, but his gaze lingered on her, and something in his eyes made her hot under the summer gown she had so carefully chosen for today, and his fingers curled around hers, and he lifted her hand to his mouth and he kissed her fingertips. She’d taken her gloves off to drink her coffee, and the touch of his lips on her bare skin made her shiver in the most delightful way, and her shivering made his hand tighten on hers, and he kissed her fingertips again, his lips soft, warm. Dear heavens!
She blinked. He released her hand. A dog, one of those small, fluffy creatures with a coat so long that it almost completely obscured its feet, came racing towards them. ‘It looks like a fur-covered ottoman on wheels,’ Estelle said. ‘Do you have a dog? I feel sure you must, for all castles should have at least one dog roaming the halls. A hound of some sort, perhaps?’
But Aidan seemed not to be listening to her. ‘Ah, here comes the cavalry. Give me a minute.’
It took him three strides to catch up with the runaway lapdog, which he scooped up so suddenly that the creature’s legs were still paddling the air. The two children who had been in hot pursuit took eager charge of their pet, thanking Aidan in careful English which became a stream of Italian when he responded in their own language. He knelt down on the cobbles to converse with the pair. A boy and a girl, twins, Estelle thought, or very near in age, and most certainly brother and sister. The boy hugged the dog while the girl attached the leash it must have slipped. The girl did most of the talking, while the boy soothed the dog, setting it carefully back on to the cobblestones, shaking his head furiously at something his sister said, launching into a speech that involved much gesticulating, while the little girl watched, her arms crossed, her expression so like Eloise listening to one of Phoebe’s flights of fancy, that Estelle couldn’t help but laugh.
When the trio were interrupted by a flustered mama, Aidan seemed reluctant to leave them. They talked on, the mother smiling, garrulous, now that she had her babes safe, stooping every now and then to kiss one or other, or to include them in the conversation, and Estelle felt such a yearning, she had to look away.
Aidan sat back down beside her, waving at the departing family. ‘They’re visiting from Rome, apparently. The dog was supposed to have been left behind, but the children smuggled it on to the coach and by the time it was discovered, it was too late to turn back. The children promised that it would be no trouble, but according to Mama it has been nothing but. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to abandon you for so long.’
‘They looked like twins,’ Estelle said, her eyes still on the departing family.
‘I thought so too, but, as Carlo informed me proudly, it is because he is very big for his age.’
‘You seemed very taken with them.’
‘They were a nice family, obviously close.’
‘I’d like a family like that. I mean I’d like what that woman had—to be the centre of someone’s world, to nurture a child—no, a host of children—and watch them grow.’ Aidan looked as startled by the admission as she was herself. ‘I don’t know why I blurted that out. Ignore me.’
‘It’s a natural enough thing to want. I want it myself,’ he said, with an odd little smile. ‘But we can’t always have what we want, can we? Cashel Duairc is crying out for a gaggle of children to fill it with laughter, turn it into a home, not a draughty castle. But it’s not going to happen in my lifetime.’
‘Why on earth not?’ Estelle asked, both touched and taken aback by this confession.
‘I told you, I’m not in the market for a wife.’
‘Never? I thought you meant at the moment.’
‘I meant never.’
His tone was clipped, his expression forbidding. Mortified, Estelle could think of only one reason for this sudden change in his mood. ‘You need not worry that I have designs on you.’
His hand found hers under the table. ‘I don’t. Did I mention,’ he continued after a brief silence, ‘that I first came to university here when I was eighteen? When my father died, I was obliged to return home and therefore left before completing my degree.’
‘So you came back to pick up the reins of your misspent youth when you turned thirty?’
He smiled weakly. ‘I’m sorry to disillusion you, but I never had a misspent youth. I was a very serious young man back then, and inheriting Cashel Duairc so unexpectedly made me even more so.’
‘What happened?’
‘To my father? He was one of the main investors in the project to build the Royal Canal, and I suspect an irritating distraction to the men charged with actually constructing the thing, for he was a bit of an amateur engineer. It was when he was inspecting one of the half-built bridges that he died—the scaffolding gave way.’
‘Oh, Aidan, how awful, I’m so sorry.’
‘He wasn’t the only casualty, not by a long shot. Building canals—building anything—is a dangerous business. He was in the wrong place at the wrong time, is what it amounts to. It’s a pity that he never got to see it completed. They invited me to the opening—one of my first official duties, after I inherited.’
‘That must have been very difficult for you.’
‘I was too busy to think, most of the time.’
‘And so your studies were put on hold.’
‘Abandoned for twelve years, would be more accurate.’ Aidan picked up his empty coffee cup, frowned down at the cold grounds and signalled for another. ‘As it turns out, the world hasn’t been deprived of a mathematical genius after all. But my time here hasn’t been wasted. I reckon I’ll take some inspiration from my father and put my studies to more practical use in the form of engineering. There’s no shortage of projects to keep me occupied.’