Chapter 25

An ebony brow quirked. 'He lives in Rome. He's also one of the world's leading authorities on amnesia.'

'Oh.' Catherine almost choked on her dismay. 'I treated him as if he was just anybody!'

'Catherine, one of your greatest virtues is the ability to treat everyone from the lowliest cleaning-lady up in exactly the same way,' he murmured, unexpectedly linking his fingers with hers, a smile curving the formerly hard line of his lips. 'Let us at least agree that your manners are a great deal better than mine. By the way, I have some papers for you to sign before we can get married. We should take care of them now.'

She accompanied him into the library where he had been with Rafaella earlier. It was packed with books from floor to ceiling, and a massive desk sat before the tall windows. Fierce discomfiture gripped her when she saw the sheaf of documents he lifted. Forms to fill in…bureaucracy. With Luc present, her worst nightmare had full substance.

'This is the…' Luc handed her a pen but she didn't absorb his explanation. There was a thunderbeat of tension in her ears. 'You sign here.' A brown forefinger indicated the exact spot and stayed there.

The paper was a grey and white blur. Covertly she bent her head. 'I just s-sign?' she stammered, terrified that there was something else to do that he wasn't mentioning because he would naturally assume that she could easily see it and read it for herself.

'You just sign.'

She inscribed her signature slowly and carefully. Luc whipped the document away and presented her with a second. 'And here.'

More hurriedly, less carefully, she complied. 'Is that it?' Struggling to conceal her relief at his nod of confirmation, she lifted the document. 'You once told me never

to sign anything I couldn't read,' she joked unsteadily.

'I was more obtuse than I am now.' He studied her. The strain etched in her delicate profile was beginning to ease but her hand was shaking perceptibly. 'It's in Italian, cara,' he told her very gently.

'I wasn't really looking at it.' Clumsily she put it down again.

Before she could turn away, lean hands came down to rest on her tense shoulders, keeping her in front of him where he lounged on the edge of the polished desk. 'I believe it's more than that,' he countered quietly. 'Don't you think it's time that we stopped playing this game? Whether you realise it or not, it's caused a lot of misunderstanding between us.'

Her face had gone chalk-white. 'G-game?'

He sighed. 'Why do you think I choose your meals for you when we dine out?'

'I…I dither; it saves time,' she muttered, making an abrupt move to walk away, but he was impervious to the hint.

'And I'm just naturally insensitive to what you might choose for yourself?' he chided. 'Catherine, I've been aware that you have trouble reading since the first week I spent with you in London. I saw through all those painfully elaborate little stratagems and, I have to admit, I was pretty shocked.'

Her stricken gaze veiled as tears lashed her eyelids in a blistering surge. She wanted the ground to open up and swallow her. His deep voice, no matter how calm and quiet it was, stung like a whip on her most vulnerable skin. Her throat was convulsing and she couldn't speak. All she wanted to do was get away from him, but his arms banded round her slim waist like steel hawsers.

'We are going to have this all out in the open,' Luc informed her steadily. 'Why didn't you tell me right at the beginning that you were dyslexic? I didn't realise that. You were ashamed of it and I didn't want to hurt your feelings, so I pretended as well. I ignored it but, in my ignorance of the true situation, I hoped very much that you would do something about it.'

'I can't!' she gasped. 'They did all they could for me at school but I'll never be able to read properly!'

'Do you think I don't know that now? Will you stop trying to get away from me?' he demanded, subduing her struggles with determined hands. 'I know that you're dyslexic, but I didn't know it then. I thought—'

'You thought I was just illiterate!' she sobbed in agonised interruption. 'I'll never forgive you for doing this to me!'

'You're going to listen to me.' He held her fast. 'I was at fault as well. I took the easy way out. What I didn't like, I chose not to see. I should have tried to help you myself. Had I done that, I would have realised what was really wrong. But you should have told me,' he censured.

'Let go of me!' she railed at him, shaken by tempestuous sobs of humiliation.

'Don't you understand what I'm trying to tell you?' He gave her a fierce little shake that momentarily roused her from her distress. 'If I had known, if I had understood, I wouldn't have been angry when you made no effort to improve your situation! I'm not getting through to you, am I?'

'You're ashamed of me!' she accused him despairingly.

Sliding upright, he crushed her into his arms and laced one hand into the golden fall of her hair to tip her head back. 'No, I'm not,' he contradicted fiercely. 'There is nothing to be ashamed of. Einstein was dyslexic, da Vinci was dyslexic. If it was good enough for them, it's good enough for you!'

'Oh, Luc!' A laugh somewhere between a hiccup and a sob escaped her as she looked up at him. 'Good enough? I probably have it worse than they did.'

'I don't know how I could have been so blind for so long,' he admitted. 'You have no sense of direction, you can't tell left from right, the tying of a bow defeats you, and sometimes you're just a little forgetful.' There was a teasing, soothing quality to that concluding statement.

She was still shaking. Her distress had been too great to ebb quickly. She buried her face in his jacket, weak and uncertain, but beyond that there was this glorious sense of release from a pretence that had frequently lacerated her nerves and kept her in constant fear of discovery.