Page 174 of Modern Romance September 2026 Books 5-8

That would be ending soon, too.

Everything will be ending…

She made herself reply, hiding what she felt. There was no place for it.

‘A quiche for lunch, and an apple cake for when you get hungry again at teatime.’

‘Teatime?’ He laughed, the laugh she loved to hear but which would not be hers to love much longer. ‘Your British side is showing!’

‘Afternoon tea—a national custom, like Sunday roast and Sunday baking.’ She gave an answering smile.

A notion struck her—a way for her to be brave, as she knew she must. Right now. Not put off any longer what she had to start.

She took a breath. It felt like a razor in her throat. But it must not show.

‘Speaking of baking—cooking—I’ve been thinking…’ She halted, not wanting to continue. But gritted resolve filled her. She had to go on. Must. With effort, she made her voice steady, as if there was nothing exceptional about what she was going to say, as if it was something quite, quite innocuous, when all along it was a dagger in her. ‘There’ll need to be a kitchen in the main section of the Palazzo, a fancy one, with all the kind of gear you’ve got in the Rome apartment.’

Sanzio looked at her, surprised. ‘Why? I thought we were going to update the existing kitchen. Won’t that do?’

She shook her head. ‘Well, it will do for me, yes, but you’ll need one for the main section. That is—’ she made herself continue, made her voice sound casual; it was costing her, but she made herself do it ‘—if you go with the idea of splitting the Palazzo into the main section for yourself. And then…’ she forced herself on, forced her voice to stay casual ‘…and then the old servants’ wing where I lived before…before we married…can just go on being mine. It would be the simplest way, Sanzio, of dividing things up.’

He was looking at her blankly.

‘Dividing things up?’

Eleanora swallowed. The razor was still in her throat. But she had to keep going—had to show him she knew, understood, accepted—how things must be once the restoration was complete.

‘Yes, once everything’s done, and the Palazzo is ready to be lived in again, the main section, that is. Then we divide things up.’

He was still staring at her, coffee cup frozen in his hand.

‘Why does that mean—dividing things up?’

Eleanora’s mouth was dry. Dry as parched bone. ‘Well, that was the plan all along, wasn’t it? That I would get some access, some portion, whatever you want to call it, where I could…could go on living, tucked away. While you…you had the rest of the Palazzo.’

‘You’re not making sense.’ His voice was clipped.

She went on holding his eyes. They were darkening, or, rather, something was changing in them. She didn’t know what. It was taking all her effort just to keep going. Her fingers tightened around her coffee cup. For all the world, she longed not to keep going, to let the subject go. But it would remain, all the same. So she had to face it.

‘Well, I’m trying to,’ she said. ‘I’m trying to think ahead, of what will be fair and…and practical.’

He set down his coffee cup. ‘What are you talking about?’ There was blankness in his voice as well as his eyes. But something else too.

Her lips pressed together, awkwardness filling her. Why was he making this so hard?

I don’t want him thinking I don’t know what is going to happen when the restoration is complete. I don’t want him thinking I’m assuming that, just because we are lovers, that anything has changed about our marriage.

‘I am talking,’ she said, each word a heavy weight, ‘of how we should best organise things when the restoration is complete. When,’ she said, and now the weight of each word was concrete, but somehow she had to say them, cost her what they would, ‘when, as planned, we go our separate ways.’

There was nothing in his face now. Nothing at all.

So she heaved the last leaden words into the air, past the razor in her throat, cutting her to pieces…

‘When we divorce,’ she said.

Chapter Thirteen

‘Divorce?’ The word fell from Sanzio’s lips as blankly as his expression.