Page 13 of Modern Romance May 2026 Books 5-8
Dulcie hadn’t called.
Ettore flicked his cuff back to check his watch, again, and then stopped himself.
He didn’t need to look at the time to know that it was running out.
Should he have followed her? Probably. Would it have changed anything? Almost certainly not. He had offered the biggest, juiciest bait—the chance to give Oscar real, long-term care. But Dulcie hadn’t bitten.
On the contrary, instead of snatching his offer from his hand, she had fled from him. As for staying married, it appeared he had crystallised her determination to seek a divorce.
Good job, Ettore, he thought, dropping down into the leather armchair that offered unparalleled views of the Houses of Parliament and the London Eye. For a moment, he stared at the huge wheel. At this distance it was hard to believe it was moving. Almost as hard as it was to believe that it was two years since he had last seen it.
It had been a conscious choice to avoid visiting London. The idea of being in the same city as Dulcie and not being with her would have rubbed salt in an imperfectly healed wound.
But somehow, he doubted it would hurt more than seeing her in Cambridge had.
His shoulders stiffened as he pictured her hair streaming behind her like the tail of a kite as she cycled away from him. As for that ‘Ciao’ she had tossed in his face as you might toss a crust of bread to a pigeon. It was the first word he had spoken to her, and she had been amused by the fact that it could mean both hello and goodbye. Her use of it yesterday was deliberate, he was sure. Pointed even.
There was a knock at the door. In the next-door suite, he heard his bodyguards get to their feet. But it was probably just housekeeping, and frankly he needed a distraction.
‘It’s fine,’ he called out. ‘I’ll get it.’
He strode across the room and yanked open the door.
His jaw felt slack, and he knew that he must look surprised, but it wasn’t just surprise he was feeling. Seeing Dulcie outside his room was giving him flashbacks to a different room in a different hotel in a different city when Dulcie had knocked on his door at three in the morning. Opening it, he had stared down at her face, his chest churning with hope and longing and then she had leaned in and kissed him and he had fallen into a parallel world. A world where for the first, the only time in his life he had been able to relax, to be who he wanted, to do what he wanted without needing to consider anyone but himself.
Was she remembering it too? Was she seeing the two of them in that half-empty hotel? Orphans of the storm. Strangers in the night.
Except they hadn’t been strangers when morning came. Or that was what it had felt like. But then three months later it had turned out that he hadn’t known her at all.
‘Do you want to do this here?’
Perhaps Dulcie was remembering that night. There was a rough catch to her voice, and he was so distracted by it that his brain kept replaying her question like a needle hitting a scratch on a record. Do this? Do what?
‘Or shall I come in?’ Her second question, accompanied by a tilt of her head towards his suite, brought him back to his senses and, nodding, he took a step backwards.
‘I think that would be best.’
As she stepped past him, he waited a few seconds to get his breathing back under control and then he followed her, closing the door softly and pulling out his phone to text his bodyguards that he didn’t want to be disturbed.
‘This is nice.’
Dulcie was walking slowly around the suite, her fingers grazing the smooth leather upholstery. She was dressed casually in jeans and a T-shirt, and her hair was tied back in a kind of half-up half-down arrangement that all women seemed to be able to do in their sleep. But there was a tension to her straight back, and he wondered if she was already regretting her decision to find him.
‘Your family’s business must be doing well.’
His shoulders stiffened, her words jarring. He was not a practised liar, but he was sometimes a pragmatic one.
Two years ago, he hadn’t told Dulcie that he was the son of a duke or that his family owned a castle. And not only because, unlike the rest of his family, he rarely used his title. He’d learned that people changed when they found out those facts.
But his reasons for not telling her were more complicated than that. Shortly before they’d met and after years of simply playing at being the heir, Edo had decided he wanted to step up for real. In consequence and for the first time in what felt like for ever, Ettore had slipped the leash and his security detail and escaped to Paris.
His plan had been to be himself. To find out what that meant.
Instead, he’d found Dulcie.
And it had felt like fate. His mind had been made up. Marrying her was the impetus he’d needed to walk away from a life in a gilded cage that felt narrow and not his own. All they’d needed was each other. Only then Oscar had appeared, and his new wife’s focus had switched to her brother, and he had panicked, and in his panic he had pushed her to choose between them.
She had chosen Oscar and ended their marriage.
