The Consequences of That Night

through that garden. This is a lemon tree, and this is verbena...
    Just as his own mother had once done. He could still remember his mother’s warm embrace, back when he was very young and happy and thought the sunshine would last forever. He could hear his father’s deep, tender voice. Ti amo, tesoro mio.
    Cesare shuddered, blinking fast. He’d thought if he was careful not to love anyone, never to care, that he would be safe. Instead he’d accidentally created a child.
    Or had it been an accident? Some part of him must have been willing to take that risk—since he’d never slept with any woman without protection before. Not even Angélique. But then, she’d been too selfish to want a child. All she’d wanted was a man to worship her, and when Cesare had gotten too busy with work, she’d found another man to offer her the worship she desperately craved.
    Emma was nothing like Angélique. If the Frenchwoman had been cold and mysterious as moonlight, Emma was sunlight on a summer’s day. Warmth. Life.
    But he couldn’t let himself love her. She could leave him. She could die. Her cancer could return, and leave Cesare, like his father, bereft at midnight on an endless black lake.
    Looking out at Lake Como, he had the sudden impulse to throw on his clothes and run away from this house. From this wedding. Far, far away, where grief and pain and need could never find him again.
    Stop it. Cesare took a deep breath, clenching his hands at his sides. Get ahold of yourself . He couldn’t fall to pieces. He had to marry her. He’d promised. His child deserved a real home, like he’d once had. Before his parents had abruptly left, stripping his happiness away without warning...
    Closing his eyes, he took a deep breath. He ruthlessly forced down his feelings. Shut down his heart.
    Jaw tight, he opened his eyes. He would marry Emma today. Whatever he felt now, he’d given his word. He would marry her and never, ever love her.
    And no irrational nightmare, no mere terror, would stop him from fulfilling his promise.

CHAPTER TEN
    “O H , E MMA ,” I RENE whispered. Her eyes sparkled with tears. “You make such a beautiful bride.”
    Looking at herself in the gilded full-length mirror, Emma hardly recognized herself. The sensible housekeeper had been magically transformed into a princess bride from a nineteenth-century portrait. Her beautiful cream-colored silk dress had been handmade in Milan, with long sleeves and elaborate beadwork. Her black hair was pulled up in a chignon, tucked beneath a long veil that stretched all the way to the floor.
    The green eyes looking back at her in the mirror were the only thing that seemed out of place. They weren’t tranquil. They were tortured.
    Just last night, passion had curled her toes and made her cry out with pleasure. That morning, she’d risen from the warmth of their bed early to feed Sam. She had drowsed off while rocking the baby back to sleep, and when she returned later, Cesare was gone.
    But something had changed in him. All day, as they welcomed their newly arriving guests—who, with the exception of Irene, were all Cesare’s friends, not hers—he’d barely looked at her. She’d told herself he was just busy, trying to be a good host. But the truth was that in the tiny corner of her heart, she feared it was more than that. No. She knew it was more than that.
    This marriage was a mistake.
    Emma looked at herself again in the mirror, at the beautiful wedding gown. She smoothed the creamy silk beneath her hands. The decision is already made, she told herself, but her hands were trembling.
    Since she’d left his bed that morning, the day had flown by, in a succession of celebrations leading up to tonight’s first wedding ceremony, at twilight in the chapel. Emma had been genuinely thrilled to see Irene, who’d been flown in from Paris courtesy of Cesare. But as she’d shown the younger woman around her new home, Irene’s idealistic joy had soon become grating.
    “It’s all like a dream,” she’d breathed, seeing her beautifully appointed guest room, with its Louis XV furniture and accents of deep rose and pale pink. She’d whirled to face Emma, her rosy face shining. “You deserve this. You worked so hard, you put your baby first, and now you’ve been rewarded with a wedding to a man who loves you with all his heart. It’s just like a fairy tale.”
    Feeling like a fraud, Emma had muttered some reply, she couldn’t even remember what. Later, as