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‘Eduardo will sort it all out.’

He picked up a bedside phone and after quite a long time it would seem it was answered.

‘Pronto,’ Gabe said, and then asked Eduardo just how quickly he could arrange a wedding. Pulling all strings and such.

‘He says to leave it with him.’

‘Wow.’

She smiled, thinking how lucky they were and then Gabe said the very thing she was thinking.

‘I wish he’d known…’ He stared at her. ‘It took a year for me to work it out, but I think the thought of us marrying did give him peace.’

‘Your grandfather seemed to know before we did,’ Stella said. ‘I knew,’ she admitted. ‘Not that we’d marry, nothing like that, but I knew on those cliffs that I loved you.’

Now, when he looked out to the cliffs, he no longer saw tragedy but where love had grown.

Where Stella had known this was love.

‘I just thought I’d spend the rest of my life getting over that fact.’

Now she would spend the rest of her life with him.

Epilogue

STELLA STOOD AT the entrance to the little cappella a mere week after Gabe had told her he loved her.

Eduardo had really come into his own.

The very next morning, with Sophia in bed with them, breakfast had been served by Signora Maria, and on the tray there was a leather folder.

‘Is that the bill?’ Gabe had said, and Maria actually startled at Gabe making a joke, and then she’d laughed and teased back.

‘It is.’

Instead, it was all that needed to be done for a rapid wedding.

Though really, the only string that needed to be pulled with a centuries-old name was a call to the mayor from his lawyer.

Stella and Gabe had arrived in person at the comune and of course the municipal secretary had assumed the request for such haste and discretion was because the soon-to-be bride was pregnant.

Better than that.

Sophia was already here.

Now, a week on, she stood in the family cappella, about to become Gabe’s bride.

‘Ready, my dear?’ Sir Charles asked.

‘So ready.’ Then she asked him a question that had been niggling. ‘Sir Charles, did you first send me here to persuade Geo?’

‘Not at all.’ He shook his head.

‘I don’t know if I believe you.’

It didn’t matter now. The organ music swelled and Sir Charles walked her down the aisle. The cappella looked so pretty for this day, with green vines and myrtle cascading down the aisles, and urns full of cream blush and white flowers either side of the altar.

There were candles lit in the tiny chapel, and the scent of summer blooms.