One Night: Red-Hot Secrets: A Secret Disgrace / Secrets of a Powerful Man / Wicked Secrets

A tiny wire of pain drilled through her, but her pride refused to allow her to dwell on it, commanding her instead to suppress it.

‘That’s none of your business. Just as Oliver himself is none of your business.’

‘He’s my son, and in my book that makes him very much my business—as I have already told you.’

‘And I have already told you that I am not going to allow you to force my child to grow up as your illegitimate son—even though here in Sicily that is perfectly acceptable for a powerful man like you. I will not have my son forced to grow up as someone who is second best—an outsider to your life, forced onto the sidelines to look on and witness your legitimate and more favoured children …’ Abruptly Louise stopped speaking, knowing that she was allowing her emotions to betray her, and took a deep breath before continuing more calmly. ‘I’ve experienced first-hand the damage that can be caused to a child by its longing for a parent who cannot or will not engage emotionally. I will not allow that to happen to Oliver. Your legitimate children—’

‘Oliver is and will be my only child.’

The quiet words seemed to reverberate around the courtyard before giving way to a shocking silence that Louise was initially unable to find the words to break.

His only child?

‘You can’t say that. He might be your only child now, but—’

‘There will be no other children. That is why it is my intention to recognise and legitimise Oliver as my son and my heir. Oliver will be my only child. There can be no others.’

Louise looked at him, wishing that he wasn’t sitting in the shadows and she could see his expression better. His voice was giving him away, though, telling her quite clearly how hard he had found it to make such an admission. It wasn’t just his pride that would have made it hard either. Any man would feel a blow to his maleness at making such an admission.

And was she weakening towards him because of that? Did she feel sympathy for him? How could she? She could because she was human and she knew what it was to suffer, Louise told herself. That was all. She would have experienced that same sharp pang of disbelief followed by sympathy for anyone making such an admission in a way that told her how hard it was for them to do so. It did not mean … It did not mean what? That Caesar still meant something to her?

His admission, she realised, had her own heart slamming into her ribs and her lungs tightening with disbelief.

‘You can’t know that,’ she protested.

‘I can and do know it.’ Caesar paused, and then told her in carefully spaced, unemotional words, ‘Six years ago, when I was involved in an aid project abroad that my charitable foundation was helping to finance, I was on site when there was an outbreak of mumps. Unfortunately until it was too late I didn’t realise that I’d fallen victim to it. The medical results were incontrovertible. The mumps had rendered it impossible for me to father a child. As there is no other male of our blood to inherit the title that meant I had to reconcile myself to the fact that our line would die out with me.’

There was nothing in his voice to betray what that must have meant to him other than a slight terseness, but Louise didn’t need to hear it to understand the emotions he must have felt. Knowing his history, knowing the Sicilian way of life, knowing his arrogance, she could easily imagine what a searing, shocking blow such news must have been to him.

‘You could adopt,’ she pointed out logically.

‘And have countless generations of those with Falconari blood turning in their graves? I think not. Historically Falconari men are more used to fathering children on other men’s wives than accepting another man’s child as their own.’

‘Droit du seigneur, I suppose you mean?’ Louise challenged him cynically.

‘Not necessarily. My ancestors did not have a reputation for needing to force women into their beds. Far from it.’

There it was again, that arrogance and disdain, and yet against her will Louise was forced to acknowledge that it would be unbearably painful for a man with Caesar’s family history to accept that he could not father a child—especially a male child.

As though he had read her mind he told her, ‘Can you imagine how it felt for me to have to accept that I would be the first Falconari in a thousand years not to produce a son and heir? And, if you can imagine that, then I ask you to imagine how I felt when your grandfather’s letter arrived.’

‘You didn’t want to believe him?’

He gave her a look that enabled her to see the bleakness in his gaze.

‘On the contrary. I wanted to believe him very much indeed.’

So much so that the reins to his self-control had slipped from his grasp, and if Louise hadn’t come out to Sicily herself Caesar knew he would have gone to seek her out, even though he had warned himself that doing so could expose him to ridicule and rejection.

‘I just didn’t dare allow myself to believe him, in case he was wrong, but the DNA tests are completely conclusive—even if Oliver had not so physically obviously been a Falconari.’

‘My grandparents always said that he looked very like your father as a boy,’ Louise admitted reluctantly. ‘They remembered him from when they lived in the village.’

‘Now no doubt you will understand why I wish Oliver to grow up as my acknowledged son and heir, and I hope that has put your mind at rest with regard to the supremacy of his position in my life as my acknowledged son. Oliver will never need to fear that he will be supplanted by another child. And as I know what it is to grow up without parents you may also be sure that the fathering he receives from me will be true fathering. He will grow up here at the castello and—’

‘Here?’ She shook her head vehemently. ‘Oliver’s place is with me.’

‘Are you sure that is what Oliver himself wants?’

She had been right to be wary of him.

‘Of course I am. I am his mother.’

‘And I am his father—as the DNA test confirms. I have a father’s rights to my child.’

Caesar could feel her rising panic in the air surrounding her. She was like a lioness fighting to protect her cub, he acknowledged with reluctant admiration. She might be having problems with Oliver now, as he grew towards manhood and needed a man’s guiding hand, but Caesar knew from the enquiries he had been making about both Louise and Oliver that she was a very good mother. To have grown from the girl he remembered to the woman she was now must have demanded great strength of character and determination. A child sometimes needed a mother who understood what it meant to be vulnerable. Right now, though, he needed to banish any thought of sympathy he might have towards her. Oliver was his son, and he was determined that he would grow up here on Sicily.

‘I won’t have him spending part of his time here and part in London. It wouldn’t be fair on him. He’d be torn between the two of us and two separate lives,’ Louise announced.

Silence.

She tried again.

‘I will not have Oliver sacrificed to some … some ancient role you want him to play. He’s a boy. He knows nothing of dukedoms and the history of the Falconaris.’

‘Then it’s time for him to begin to learn.’

‘It’s too much of a burden to put on him. I don’t want him growing up like you.’

The gauntlet had been thrown down now, and it lay between them in the swirling silence.

Why wasn’t Caesar objecting to her comment? Why wasn’t he saying something? Why was she feeling so panicked and anxious? Why did she feel that somehow she had walked into a carefully baited trap and that the walls of the courtyard garden were actually closing in on her?

‘Then you will no doubt agree that the best way for you to ensure that Oliver grows up with equal input from both his parents, and that he knows your views, is for you to be here with him.’

The statement was delivered smoothly, but that smoothness couldn’t conceal the formidable determination Louise could sense emanating from Caesar.

‘That’s impossible. I have a career in London.’

‘You also have a son who, according to your own grandfather, needs his father. I would have thought that he is more important to you than your career.’

‘You’re a fine one to say that when the only reason you want him is because he is your heir.’

Caesar shook his head.

‘Initially when your grandfather wrote to me, yes, that might have been true, but from the minute I saw him, even before I had the results of the DNA test, unbelievable as it may sound to you, I loved him. Don’t ask me to explain. I can’t.’ He had to turn away from her a little because he felt so vulnerable, but he knew that he had to be honest with her if he wanted his plan to succeed. ‘All I can tell you is that in that moment I felt such love, such a need to protect and guide him, that it was all I could do to stop myself from gathering him up to me there and then.’

His words evoked some of what she had felt after giving birth to Ollie, after looking at the child she hadn’t wanted, a boy so like his father—she had known immediately the surge of fiercely protective love that Caesar had just described.