Venetian Masquerade (15 page)

Alessandro came to sit beside her in an adjoining armchair.

“I know you don’t really want to discuss it, Alessandro, but just one question… Have you spoken to Giovanni about the way he effectively destroyed our relationship that night?” she asked curiously. “I would have expected you to give him a piece of your mind, if he caused you as much grief as you are implying.”

“It was Dolores’s hand behind it. She is a bitter and spiteful woman. My father had a severe stroke three years ago. He is partially paralyzed and needs twenty-four-hour care.”

“I’m sorry,” she said softly.

“I don’t think I can ever forgive them. I might never have found you again. The most important thing to me is that you and James are back in my life. If I have to settle for what we have now, I will, I promise you. I can’t force you to love me, and I will wait, just as I did when we first met, for you to give me a sign to show me that you want me. But Amy, I warn you, once you give me that signal, there will be no going back.”

He rose and wandered round the room, clearly very tense. Her own body was in torment, and she knew that one more touch from him would dissolve any token resistance. She downed the rest of her brandy in a gulp and then wished she hadn’t. She’d had wine at the restaurant without eating more than a few mouthfuls. Now she was feeling decidedly less able to make rational decisions. What she wanted desperately to do now was not rational or sensible, but her heart was aching and her body demanding to be in his arms. There seemed little point in fooling herself anymore. Whether her future would be as his wife or his mistress seemed irrelevant. She wanted him, more than life itself.

She watched Alessandro, standing with his back to her and looking out of the window, feeling her insides melting with need and longing.

As if sensing her eyes upon him, he turned suddenly to look at her. For a few seconds, they simply stared at each other, and then he moved to stand over her and ran his fingers down her cheek.

“Amy?”

Wordlessly, she rose and stood facing him, knowing it was out of her control. And then, just as she had six years before, she rose onto her tiptoes and brushed his lips with her own. He moved slowly, tantalizingly, to take her face in his hands and ran his thumbs across her lips, causing a gasp to escape them. The warm pressure of his sensual hands had always aroused her almost to screaming point, and she soon discovered, nothing had changed. He raked his fingers through her hair, pulling her face close to his and looked so deeply into her eyes, she was sure he must see her very soul. And then he began to kiss her—gently at first, with soft, butterfly touches, which whispered across her skin but which quickly deepened to intense, penetrative kisses, leaving her as limp as a rag doll in his arms.

“Oh God, Amy, you have no idea, my darling, how much I have longed to do this. Tell me you have wanted me too,” he begged her.

“Every minute of every day since I left,” she whispered.

He led her to the thick rug in front of the fire and pulled her down into his arms. Their clothes discarded, at last Amy lay naked and ecstatic as Alessandro kissed and touched her in a way she had long remembered and ached for, trawling his fingers across her skin—allowing them to stray from her taut breasts down to the softness of her inner thighs and then to touch her deeply, before following their path with his lips and tongue. He smilingly forbade her to touch him in return.

“No, sweetheart, this time, it’s my turn to drive
you
crazy; I want to remind you of a few things.”

For an almost unbearably long time, he held her at a fever pitch of pleasure, gasping and shuddering in his arms until she begged him, “Please, please, darling.”

At last, he moved across her, and a few moments later, they both cried out with joy and then lay exhausted, holding each other in tender amazement in the firelight.

“Stay with me tonight, Amy. I want to make love to you all night and to be able to look at you as dawn breaks.”

Already longing for him again, she kissed him, nodding, and quickly gathering up their clothes, they ran upstairs, giggling like school children in case Lucia should emerge from her room and catch them.

“I must go and check on James,” she told him as he pulled her towards his bed. “He will expect to find me in my room if he has a nightmare and comes looking for me.”

Reluctantly, he let her go and lay naked, aroused, and smiling on the silk sheets. “Be quick. I need you.”

She slipped on his robe and walked quickly down the corridor to James’s room.

The second she opened the door, she knew something was terribly wrong.

James had been sick on the floor and was lying on his side, moaning softly. When she touched him, he was burning with fever, and he seemed unable to focus on her. All over his body was a pink rash.

“James!” she gasped. “What’s wrong?”

“Mama,” he whispered. “Headache.” And promptly threw up again.

Amy knew instinctively that James was seriously ill and rushed back to Alessandro’s room. “It’s James,” she cried. “He’s desperately ill, and we need to get him to hospital.”

“What’s wrong?” asked Alessandro, leaping off the bed and reaching for his clothes.

“I don’t know, but he’s sick, burning up, and covered in a rash.”

“We’ll take him in the car; it will be quicker.”

Within five minutes, Alessandro was speeding through the dark streets of Rome to the hospital, as Amy cradled James, wrapped in a blanket, in the back of the car. He was barely conscious, and she was sure he would die before they even reached the hospital.

“Keep breathing, sweetheart. Don’t leave me. The doctor will soon make you well, darling; just hang on in there for a few minutes,” she pleaded with him. But his breathing was getting more and more difficult, and as they dashed into the emergency department, it stopped altogether.

“Please, help my little boy!” she screamed as they ran into the emergency department. “He isn’t breathing. He’s dying.”

A doctor came to them at a run and, after a quick glance, yelled, “He’s arrested,” and grabbed his limp little body.

Suddenly, there was bedlam as the crash team came at speed from all directions and surrounded James as he lay, looking so tiny and vulnerable, on the bed.

“Atropine and adrenaline,” called the doctor as he began chest compressions.

Amy stared in disbelief at the scene, and Alessandro held her tightly, his face white and ravaged with anxiety.

Time was suspended as the drama in front of them played out. And then the nurse uttered the most wonderful words Amy had ever heard “He has a pulse. He’s back.”

Once James was breathing for himself again, the doctor took Alessandro and Amy aside and told them that James would now be given pure oxygen while they tried to find out what was wrong with him. Tests and more tests and intensive observation would be imperative. They stood clutching each other, unable to speak, until a doctor came back to them half an hour later.

“I’m so sorry to tell you that James has meningitis,” he said gently. “He is extremely ill, and we don’t know yet what his chances are. We are giving him massive doses of antibiotic. He’s on fluids, and we have done blood tests to make sure he is getting the correct drug. He is having a lumbar puncture to relieve pressure on the brain and x-rays to check there are no other sites of infection. He will then be transferred to Intensive Care, and you can stay with him.”

“He was well when he went to bed,” whispered Amy. “How could he be taken so ill so quickly?”

“I’m afraid this illness can flare up incredibly fast. It isn’t your fault, so please, just be grateful you went in to check on him when you did. If you hadn’t, he would have been beyond hope by the morning. As it is, he’s a strong little boy, so we will pray for a good result.” He patted her hand kindly and moved away to his next patient.

“Come with me. You can sit with him.” A young nurse brought them some chairs and paper cups of hot coffee.

James lay, eyes closed, with drips and tubes attached to his little body, the bleep-bleep of the heart monitor the only sound in the room. Every few moments, a nurse came to check on him and take his blood pressure.

“How long before we will know anything more?” asked Alessandro.

“I don’t know,” she replied. “The next forty-eight hours will be critical. Try to get some rest; there’s a bed for you to lie on in the next room. You could take turns to be with him.”

But Amy pulled a chair to James’s bedside and sat holding his little hand.

“I’m staying. He will know I am here.”

All through the night, they watched over him, and grim-faced doctors occasionally came in to see how he was doing. There was no change as dawn broke, and finally, Amy and Alessandro were persuaded to go home for a rest and some breakfast.

“Amy, we’ll be back in a couple of hours,” Alessandro said, gently leading her to the door. “You are going to make yourself ill. You had no dinner, and now, you must have breakfast.”

“I couldn’t.”

“You must. You have to stay strong for James.”

With a deep sigh and a last backward glance at the small, helpless body of her son, she allowed him to lead her to the car and drive her back to his house. Lucia had been forewarned, and breakfast was ready as they walked through the door. She too looked strained and upset.

“I am desolate,” she wept. “He was sleeping peacefully when I looked at him before I went to bed. A little flushed, but he didn’t seem to be ill.”

“Lucia, no one is blaming you,” Alessandro reassured her. “The doctors have said that this illness can strike out of nowhere.”

After a quick shower and change of clothes, they made their way back to the hospital. James looked very peaceful and his temperature had dropped, but he was still unconscious.

“Talk to him,” advised the doctor. “Tell him stories, talk to him about everything he’s familiar with. He can almost certainly hear you, and it helps to stimulate his brain.”

So, all morning, they took turns telling him things, sometimes about themselves, sometimes about him and how much they loved him. Amy told him Little Red Riding Hood, and Alessandro talked about Juventus. They told him how much Snoopy would be missing him and that it would soon be Christmas. But still he lay there, oblivious to it all.

“I must go and phone my mother and Gabriel,” said Amy, rising. “He can let the others know.”

Gabriel was horrified and immediately offered to come to Rome to support her.

“No, there is nothing you can do. I promise to let you know how things are going,” she told him. “Give our love to everyone.”

“We’ll all be praying for you,” he told her.

Her mother also wanted to come straight to Rome, but Amy dissuaded her, promising to keep in close touch. She felt very strongly that she and Alessandro needed to cope with this trauma together—as James’s parents.

Disconsolately, she wandered back to James’s room and was just about to enter when she heard Alessandro speaking softly to James.

“Come back to us, James. Your mama and I are going to be together now, like a proper family. I’ll never let either of you out of my sight again, I promise.”

If it was his words striking the vital chord in James’s mind, they would never know, but his eyelids began to flicker, and slowly, he opened his eyes and turned to focus on his father.

“Amy!” whispered Alessandro urgently. “Look!”

She rushed to the bedside to see James painfully turn his head to look at her.

“Oh, thank God!” she sobbed. “James, my darling boy, you have returned.”

The doctors were quickly summoned, and they shooed Amy and Alessandro out of the room while they did a number of tests, but within the hour, they were able to tell them that they were hopeful James would make a full recovery. His reflexes were good and he recognized his parents.

“We’ll keep him in intensive care for at least twenty-four hours, but then he can go to the children’s ward. You might just about have him home in time for Christmas next week.”

When James was once again sleeping peacefully, Amy and Alessandro slipped away and went back to the house. They were both emotionally drained and physically exhausted.

“I need to sleep for a while.” Amy yawned. “I can’t see straight.”

“Then come to bed with me, Amy.”

“To sleep?” She smiled wanly, and he took her in his arms.

“To sleep.”

And so, for four hours, they slept together, and when they woke, because it was irresistible, very gently, they made love and were restored.

“Shall we go for a walk?” suggested Amy a while later. “I need some air and exercise before we go back to the hospital, and I need to talk to you.” So donning coats and scarves, they strolled through the quiet, dark streets.

“What’s on your mind?” Alessandro asked after a few moments.

“We almost lost James,” she said, a catch in her voice. “It put things into perspective, and…well, if you think it would be appropriate…I believe he should get to know his grandparents.”

“That is incredibly generous of you, sweetheart, but no.”

“Will you be seeing them soon?”

“I have no plans to.”

“Alessandro?” He had suddenly withdrawn into himself.

“Amy, I have only seen them once since you told me what my father did that night. I went round and very calmly told them that their interference had all but destroyed my life and that I would never give them a chance to do further damage.”

“I see… Did you tell them about James?”

“No. He is no concern of theirs. I told them it would be a long time before I felt the need to see them again. It’s only pure chance that brought us together again, Amy. I’m not sure I can forgive him for that.”

“But your father is old and ill.”

“Amy, please, I don’t want to talk about it. It’s a family thing.”

And I’m not family,
she thought.
But James is.

For the next two days, James remained very ill, but eventually, three days before Christmas, he was well enough to walk up and down his room and to ask when he might go home.

“We can’t go back to Venice for Christmas because the doctors want to check on you for a couple of days,” Amy told him, “So we are staying here in Rome until the doctors say you are well enough to travel. You can come back to Papa’s house on Christmas Eve—that’s the day after tomorrow—if you are well enough.”