A Royal Wedding(32)
CHAPTER TEN
THE applause rang out loud and long in the Washington auditorium, and Dr Grace Hunter smiled in her sensible suit and bowed one final time to the audience, finally able to withdraw to the quiet of the room generously labelled her dressing room—little more than a closet to store her things, really, but at least it provided her with a bolthole.
The lecture in London three months ago had been such a resounding success that she’d been booked almost solid ever since. City after city wanted to hear the story of the lost pages, wanted to see her presentation and hear the lost messages from the fabled book of healing.
She felt a fraud every time—tonight more than ever. How could it be a book of healing, she wondered, when she felt so heartsick every minute of every day? And yet she had the fame she had sought. She had the respect of her peers and her colleagues. She had a book deal and offers of chairs at universities all around the world. Even, in her latest coup, a last-minute slot on a prime time chat show.
How was it possible, with all that success, to feel so wretched?
Or had Alessandro been right? Was she the most cursed of all, loving a man who could not return her love?
She peeled the jacket from her shoulders and pulled the court shoes from her feet, remembering another outfit—a waterfall of silk atop silver sandals that shimmered with every step. His fiancée’s dress. Had he realised how much he’d hurt her when she’d heard that? Or hadn’t he cared because in his mind she’d already ceased being his fiancée before she had died? Whatever, she supposed she should be thankful that at least he’d taken the trouble to find her something that had never been worn. And it had been a beautiful dress.
She sighed, picking up her programme folder to remind herself of where she would be next. There was no point focusing on the past. She must look to the future. She had career decisions to make and continents to decide between.
There was a knock on the door and she pushed herself from her chair reluctantly, remembering the drinks organised for after her presentation. No doubt a reminder call. She was probably already late.
She pulled open the door, ready to make her excuses, but the words dried up in her throat, incinerated by the lightning bolt that coursed through her. She blinked up at him, her eyes moving past his beauty and his horror to drink in the man himself.
‘I heard your lecture,’ he told her, when he clearly realised she was incapable of speech. ‘You were amazing.’
She swallowed. ‘You heard it?’
‘I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.’ And then, perhaps because he sensed she was incapable of rational thought, ‘Perhaps you might invite me in?’
And she shook her head to scatter her woolly thoughts and remembered her manners. ‘Please, Count Volta.’
‘Alessandro,’ he corrected, and her stunned heart—not yet ready to hope—warmed just a little.
There was barely room for the two of them. He refused to sit, his wide frame shrinking what little space there was. ‘What’s happened?’ she asked, knowing what it must have cost him to leave the castle—knowing what it must have cost him in the stares and whispers of strangers, in the camera flashes of the paparazzi. ‘Why are you here? Someone will have seen you.’
His tortured eyes confirmed it, but he shook his head, as if dispensing with that mentality. ‘You once said to me that I should not define myself by my scars—’
‘No—please. I had no right. I had no idea of what had really happened.’
‘Grace,’ he said, taking one of her hands in his own, ‘you had every right. You were right.’ He took a breath, and then another, and she could see how much it was costing him to tell her this. ‘Don’t you see? I became my scars. I hid behind them because it was easier to live in the dark. Because it was easier than facing the light.’
‘It’s okay,’ she said, wanting to spare him any more pain, knowing what it must have cost him in media attention to get here, suspecting there was a pack of photographers waiting outside right now to see him. ‘You don’t have to explain it to me.’
‘But I do. Don’t you see, Grace?’ He took hold of her other hand, held them both up in his. ‘You brought me back the light. You were the one who chased the darkness away. You made me see it was all right to live again.’
Her heart skipped a beat, and then another, because she didn’t want to believe what it might possibly mean. ‘I did?’