She looked just like Felicity had. Dark rings under her eyes, stark in the harsh light. Skin so pale she was almost translucent. Memories came flooding back of Flick being taken away in an ambulance all those years ago. The old fears. He shut them down.
‘Let them look at you.’ He made his voice stern. The voice of the businessman whose staff did exactly what he asked when he asked it. Louisa’s eyes widened, mouth trembling. He wished then that his tone had been gentle. But he had no time for softness and gentleness. That had ended in his teens. And yet he couldn’t move. Heart still pounding behind his ribs as if fighting for an escape.
‘Don’t let them do anything to me.’ Her voice was the barest whisper.
What in hell’s name would they do to put that fear on her face?
‘It hurts, Matty.’
One of the last conversations he’d had with his sister as a child, when she’d been in hospital, undergoing the awful treatment that would save her life. It was as if a hand grabbed his throat and began throttling him.
Had something like that happened to Louisa? No, it couldn’t have. She’d been a healthy child the last time he’d seen her at her father’s funeral, and Mae had told him nothing. Though whatever the reason, he knew fear when he saw it.
‘I’m right here. I won’t go anywhere.’
Matteo wanted to do more. Overcome by the almost overwhelming desire to take her into his arms again. Smooth his hands over her. Tell her it would all be okay. Hold her. Yet that made no sense. Shock, that was it. Like her, it must be affecting him too. The desire to cling to the nearest life. Instead, he pinned the ambulance officers with a glare of warning.
‘They won’tdoanything to you other than check you over. Isn’t that correct?’
One of them nodded, turned to Louisa. ‘We’d like to take your blood pressure. Listen to your heart and lungs. Is that okay?’
Louisa looked at him, almost pleading.
‘I’ll hold your hand if you’re afraid,’ he said.
‘Okay,’ Louisa said, never once looking at the man and woman attending to her as they began their work. Each gently narrating what they were doing. Taking care until they finished.
One ambulance officer made way for him, and he took Louisa’s hand. Small, pale. Cold. He wrapped his fingers round hers. Gave a gentle squeeze. It brought him back to the hospital visits with Felicity. How small and scared she was. The ever-present dread that the time he saw her would be the last, till his parents sent him away and the only things he had were vague reports begged from the people who should have loved him as much as they loved their own true daughter.
His gut twisted into sickening knots. The memories that came flooding back, of the flashing lights, the medical care, the fear. Like a nightmare that had gone on for years till the news had finally come that Flick was in remission. She’d stayed in remission ever since, yet each year on that date he waited for the call that would tell him the cancer had come back, even though she was now in her twenties with no signs of relapse, and his sister was considered cured. Still...
‘Everything all right?’ he asked.
‘Blood pressure’s a little low, heart rate’s a little high. Lungs are clear. Otherwise, no injuries. We’d like her to stay here a little while, have some oxygen. Take her observations again.’
‘Are you okay with that, Louisa? I can ask them to call me over when they want to look at you again. For now, I’d like to go and check on Mrs Fancutt and talk to the others.’
The column of her slender throat moved in a swallow. ‘That’s fine.’
He stood and strode to a small group, huddled near a fire engine under some hastily erected cover. The rain wasn’t heavy any more but driven by the wind and stinging his bare legs as he held the blanket tight round him.
‘Everyone okay here?’ They all nodded, asked about him. Of Louisa especially.
‘We’re both fine.’
The housekeeper looked at him, her normally tidy grey hair a mess of being woken from sleep and the weather. ‘Are you sure?’
‘We have no injuries.’
‘That’s not what I meant. Miss Louisa hasn’t been outside the house in months, other than to attend the funeral. She hasn’t left the property other than to visit the village in far longer.’
Matteo stilled. He spent his time travelling, visiting his properties, working. He had ‘homes’ all over the world. His house in Italy when he’d sought to find his birth parents in earnest. The gleaming modern masterpiece of an apartment in New York, a chateau in the Loire Valley... He shook his head. Home was where he laid his head for the moment, not any one house or apartment.
‘How long is “far longer”?’
Mrs Fancutt hesitated. ‘Years.’
He stilled. What kind of life had she led? Louisa had talked about love but what held her here? He could hardly believe his great-aunt would compel her to stay. However, what did he know? This whole family was steeped in self-interest.
