‘I didn’t mean to make you cry.’
‘Hearing you talk about your father, it’s—’ She took a breath to steady herself. ‘None of my friends have lost a parent, so they’ve never truly understood what I’ve been through, what the depth of that loss is like.’
‘It’s as if a dark hole opens that can never be filled, no matter how many months or years pass,’ he whispered, dabbing away one last tear from her cheek. ‘Just like not a day goes by that you don’t think of something you wish you could tell them.’
Luca opened his arms to her and she stepped into his embrace, her cheek to his chest as they stood and stared at the paintings before them. She felt safe in his arms as they wrapped around her, warm in a way she hadn’t felt in such a long time, and she wished they were in London, that she wasn’t simply embarking upon a holiday fling.
In a way, she knew nothing and everything about Luca. On the one hand, they’d opened up to each other, but on the other she knew absolutely nothing about him and his life.
‘I think we should go to a winery for lunch,’ he said, his mouth moving against her hair as he kept hold of her.
She nodded, indulging in one more breath against his chest, one more moment feeling as if she were cocooned against the pain and uncertainty of the outside world.
‘Luca, can I ask you something?’ she finally said. She kept her cheek to his chest so she didn’t have to look at him when he answered. ‘If I sold you the sapphire, if this all came to an end, would it give you and your family some closure? To know that the mystery was solved and the tiara was whole again?’
‘Georgia, for all we know, the tiara might belong to you. We won’t know any more until we see the lawyer tomorrow.’
She nodded. He was right; she needed to wait until they’d talked to the lawyer, to see if it helped her piece together any more of the mystery.
Luca ran his hand the length of her hair, stroking down her back. ‘My father searched for years, most of his adult life, actually, for the sapphire. But it wasn’t about seeing it whole again that he yearned for. It was understanding how it had become separated in the first place. It was the mystery that he couldn’t solve that drove him to madness.’
‘So, you’re saying that we need to solve the mystery to complete what he started?’ Georgia asked. ‘That that’s what would have been important to him?’
Luca stepped back and took her hand, lifting it and pressing a kiss to it. ‘If we do that, if we can solve the mystery, then yes. I will have a sense of fulfilling my father’s legacy.’
Then that’s exactly what we’ll do.
17
LAKE GENEVA, SEPTEMBER 1951
Delphine felt like the entire restaurant was staring at them when they walked in. She leaned into Florian, her arm through his, her head tilted ever so slightly to his shoulder as they made their way to their table. It was tucked in the corner near the kitchen—private and romantic—with a single candle on the table. Once he’d outlined his plan for them to be together, as the two of them lay tangled in the sheets of his bed the night before, she’d agreed that she would go out in public with him. Although now that they were actually doing it, she was wondering if she’d made a terrible mistake. There had been something so intimate about seeing each other in private, about not sharing what they had with anyone else, and she almost wished they’d left it that way. But according to Florian, the announcement of both of their divorces, or at least their formal separations, would be imminent. He was a powerful man with more money at his disposal than she could comprehend, and she believed him when he said that he could make the impossible happen.
‘Is it just me, or is everyone watching us?’ she whispered.
He laughed as he pulled out her seat and bent to kiss her cheek. ‘They’re not staring at us, they’re admiring you.’
She blushed. Florian was always telling her she was beautiful, that he couldn’t take his eyes off her, but after so many years with a man who never seemed to find her attractive, she still found it hard to believe he was telling her the truth.
‘So, what do you feel like tonight, future Mrs Delphine Lengacher?’
Warmth spread through Delphine as he said her name. She was under no illusions that her divorce from Giovanni was going to be straightforward, but she knew that once it was done and she was legally married to Florian, she would finally be happy.
‘Shall we have steak to celebrate our first night out in public? Or would you like the fish?’ Florian continued.
Delphine laughed. ‘We’re hardly in public. We scurried around the corner here as if we were movie stars not wanting anyone to see us.’
Florian laughed with her. ‘That might be so, but it’s a start. Soon we’ll be able to go anywhere without a care in the world.’
‘Well, steak it is,’ she said. ‘And we might need champagne.’
He raised a brow. ‘Champagne? What’s the occasion?’ Florian grinned. ‘Or is us being together the occasion?’
A shiver ran down Delphine’s back as she stared at Florian from across the table. She’d been wanting to tell him as soon as she realised, as soon as she’d woken up that morning and understood why she felt different. No one else knew. Not even Martina, who had been her confidante for so long now, and who was the only person in the world who knew the details of her relationship with Florian. It had been two months since she’d last had her monthly courses, but she’d been caught up in such a whirlwind of excitement with Florian that she hadn’t even noticed.
Florian began to talk then as he held up the menu and pondered the best meal to go with champagne, and she gave her best impression of listening, even though her mind wasa million miles away. She trusted him more than she’d ever trusted a man in her life before, even her father. She’d grown up thinking her family loved her more than anything else in the world; she and her sister had had a wonderful upbringing, filled with love, and all the things a child would need. But now she was a grown woman, she realised she had been nothing more than a pawn that had been used to further her father’s business arrangements.It was the same reason Giovanni had married her—to further his business interests and those of his family. No one had ever cared about how she felt, no one had ever let her make her own decisions, until now. Florian listened to her, he made her feel alive; he made her feel as if her opinion mattered. Florian was the man she had been waiting for her entire life.
‘You seem distracted,’ Florian said. ‘Do you have something on your mind? If you’re truly uncomfortable being here, we can always just leave and wait until…’ His voice trailed off. ‘Delphine?’
