‘Signora, your husband is known to be a very different man at home to the man he is, well, when he’s away.’
‘You’re telling me that this isn’t the first time?’ Delphine asked. ‘That I am the last to know that my husband has been unfaithful throughout our marriage?’ How had she been so naive as to not see what he was doing? ‘You’re saying that he has had mistresses before?’
Martina looked away, as if this last part was perhaps the hardest to break. ‘Yes, Signora. I understand that your husband?—’
Delphine held up her hand, feeling she could not stomach any more information. ‘Thank you for your honesty, Martina. I won’t be needing to hear any more, I think that’s quite enoughfor one day.’ This time the tears were impossible to fight, and they escaped and began to slip furiously down her cheeks.
Martina stood and came closer, holding her as a mother would a child, as Delphine cried for what she’d lost, but what she’d known in her heart was the truth. They had married for convenience and nothing more, and despite her best efforts to be a doting and attractive wife, his feelings had never developed into anything deeper despite all the years they’d been together.
‘Any man would be lucky to have you as his wife, Delphine,’ Martina whispered as she rubbed her back. ‘It’s always been a mystery to me why that man doesn’t love you in the way…’
‘That a husband should?’ Delphine asked, looking up at her, blinking through her tears. ‘Is that what you were going to say?’
Martina nodded, and Delphine wondered what it was that she didn’t have, what it was that made her the desired wife to bear his children, but not to fall in love with. Why he would go to another woman’s bed, and not the bed of his young wife who sat up night after night waiting for him, hoping that he’d finally choose to love her. Was she not pretty enough? Was there something about her that repulsed him? Something she didn’t know that she was supposed to do?
‘Would you come with us?’ Delphine asked as she straightened, quickly wiping her cheeks and clearing her throat. ‘Is there any way I could persuade you to come to Geneva, even if only to settle us into the new house? It would mean the world to me, and to the children.’
‘It would be my pleasure,’ Martina said, patting her shoulder as she stepped back. ‘Since my Salvatore passed away, I’m happy with any excuse to keep busy, and I’ve always fancied travelling outside of Italy. Until my children have children of their own, I’d very much like to stay with you and your family.’
Delphine studied her kind, loyal lady-in-waiting, the way her face had changed when she spoke of her late husband. Clearlytheirs had been a very different marriage to the one Delphine had been bartered into.
‘Martina, may I ask you a personal question?’
Martina nodded.
‘Throughout your marriage, did you and your husband share a bed? Did he come to you, well,willingly?’ Delphine’s cheeks burned, but she was simply a married woman asking another woman’s advice.
‘Yes, Signora. I could not have imagined not sharing a bed with my Salvatore.’
Delphine inhaled as she thought of the way she’d waited for so many weeks and months after Isabella’s birth for her husband to come to her quarters again. Six years later, and she was still waiting.It appears that I should not bother waiting any longer.
‘Do you think it is strange that my husband does not, that he?—’
‘I think your husband has rocks in his head when it comes to his stunning young bride, Signora, and I have thought that for a very long time. But then I think that there are husbands throughout the country who probably behave in the same way, who don’t realise how fortunate they are for the wife at home waiting for them.’
‘So, I am not alone, that is what you’re trying to tell me? That my loneliness is not unusual?’
‘Si.’
‘Thank you for your honesty, Martina. I know I don’t have to ask, but if we could keep what has been discussed between us…’
She received a nod and a kindly smile in response.
Martina left her then, and Delphine resumed writing the letter she’d started to her sister. It seemed that the only thing she had to count on in this world was the love of her children, and the support of the women closest to her.
There’s nothing to be embarrassed about, she told herself.Plenty of Italian men have mistresses. It’s perfectly normal.
But as her hand began to shake, making it almost impossible to hold her gold-nibbed pen, she knew that nothing about her husband taking up with another woman, orwomen, was normal, at least not to her. In fact, the very thought made her want to be sick right there at the priceless antique desk he’d bought for her as a wedding present. She hadn’t beenin lovewith him for a very long time, but until now, she’d thought they were, at the very least, faithful to their wedding vows.
Delphine drummed her fingers against the wooden desktop. She would never dare to confront him, but she wasn’t going to give up on her marriage without a fight.
6
PRESENT DAY
Georgia was nothing if not exceptionally ambitious when it came to her work. At age seventeen, she’d realised she had a knack for business and writing software, and had a highly paid part-time job with a tech firm that meant she was earning more than someone twice her age while she was still studying. She’d left university with a business plan, refusing to accept that there was a problem she couldn’t solve; lost every penny with a terrible tech start-up that had failed miserably within its first year. But by the day before her twenty-seventh birthday she’d made the ‘Forbes 30 Under 30 Europe’ list, sitting one place higher than her best friend and co-founder, Sam. Their idea to create a company within the beauty space, with its patented colour-match technology and their make-up range, had grown faster than either of them had expected, and her second attempt at launching a company had most definitelynotbeen a failure. They’d sold the company just after their thirtieth birthdays.
It had been a decade of extreme ups and downs, and she’d realised along the way that she’d been as determined to prove herself despite her past as she was to do well for Sam’s parents—to prove to them that they’d been right to take her in and giveher a chance, to have given her a home and an education that she might not have otherwise received.
