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CHAPTER THREE
LAURA sat on the bed in the bedroom she’d been shown to by one of the household staff, and stared out of the window. The view was beautiful. Formal Italianate gardens, just like in a guidebook, and then a vista of olive groves, narrow dark cypresses and rolling hills.
She turned away. She didn’t want to see it. Didn’t want to be here. Didn’t want to be in Italy, in her grandfather’s villa—
He’s not your grandfather—don’t think of him that way!
Genes didn’t make you family. She had half her father’s genes, but that didn’t make her his daughter. It certainly hadn’t in his eyes, anyway.
She lay back on the bed. She was tired. She’d had to catch an early bus to Exeter, then the coach to Heathrow, then the flight here. Her eyelids grew heavy…
She must have nodded off, because the next thing she knew there was a maid in the room, informing her that dinner was served. Reluctantly Laura went downstairs, prudently taking a book with her. She’d have rather eaten in her room, but didn’t want to be a nuisance.
A manservant waiting at the foot of the sweeping stairs conducted her to a room opening off the hall. She walked in, and stopped dead.
Allesandro di Vincenzo was there, already seated at the table. As she clomped in he got to his feet. There was a sheaf of papers beside his place, and he’d obviously been reading them.
‘I thought you’d gone,’ she blurted, before she could stop herself.
‘Alas, no,’ came his reply. It was smooth, but terse. And very unfriendly. ‘Much though I would have preferred to return to Rome, I would not dream of abandoning a hospitalised Tomaso to nothing more than your loving presence.’
Laura felt colour mottle her cheeks.
‘How is he?’ she asked, as she went and took the only other place laid at the vast table—directly opposite Allesandro. It made him seem closer than she wanted him to be. But then she didn’t want him anywhere near her at all anyway.
The feeling was doubtless mutual, she realised, intercepting a black look from him as she pulled in her chair.
‘His condition is stable,’ he said. ‘As if you care.’
Her colour mounted. ‘I don’t want him to die—I told you that.’
‘And as I told you—that’s big of you,’ Allesandro returned. He frowned. ‘Do you have nothing better to wear for dinner?’ he demanded, his eyes flicking dismissively over her clothes.
‘No,’ said Laura. If she’d known he was going to be here she’d have insisted on a meal in her room. He was the last person she wanted to spend time with. She opened her book and started to read. To her relief, her unwelcome dining partner returned his attention to his papers.
The meal that followed was ludicrously formal, to Laura’s mind. There were too many courses, and it went on for ages. The only compensation—for the company was even worse than the formality and the length of the meal—was the food, which was incredibly delicious. As she scraped up the last of the delicious sauce accompanying the beautifully cooked lamb, Laura realised she was under surveillance.
‘Do you always eat so much?’
Laura stared blankly. She liked food. She always had. Comfort eating, the magazine articles called it, but she didn’t care. Her lifestyle was not sedentary, and with all the sheer physical slog of looking after Wharton, plus the long, solitary walks she loved to take through the countryside, she had a good appetite. ‘Sturdy’ her grandmother had always called her. Probably she would run to fat when she was middle aged—as her grandmother had.
Now, she swallowed the last mouthful, put her cutlery back on the plate, and said baldly, ‘Yes.’
Then she went on reading.
Allesandro glowered from his seat across the table. None of the women he knew could put food away like that. Even though it was impossible to see her figure in those shapeless clothes, if she were eating like that she could hardly be anything but overweight. He went back to his report on market conditions in South America. Laura Stowe could be the size of an elephant for all he cared.
The following day the hospital phoned to say that Tomaso was up to receiving visitors. Relieved, Allesandro marshalled Laura into the waiting car. As she sat, her hands twisting uneasily in her lap, he suddenly asked, ‘What is wrong with your hands?’
She glanced down. ‘Nothing. Why?’
He hadn’t noticed them before. But then, it was hard to when there was the rest of her unappealing appearance to attempt to ignore.
‘They are covered in scratches,’ he said.
She shrugged. ‘They’re healing. I was clearing some brambles in the garden the day before I came out here.’ She turned her hands over. The palms were just as scratched, plus rough and callused.
‘What do you do to yourself?’ he demanded.
She looked at him expressionlessly. ‘I work. Wharton doesn’t look after itself.’
His face tightened. ‘You have staff, surely?’
She rolled her eyes. ‘Oh, yes—four housemaids and just as many gardeners!’
He took a breath. ‘Well, perhaps now, with the money I paid you, you can afford to hire some help.’
‘I doubt the Inland Revenue will see it that way,’ she said dryly.
‘Como?’ Allesandro’s eyebrows drew together.
‘Your cheque paid off the first tranche of death duties I owe. That’s why I accepted it. I’d have torn it to shreds otherwise. But…’ she shrugged, looking at him defiantly ‘…I’m going to fight tooth and nail to keep Wharton. And you’ll get your money back, Signor di Vincenzo. I assure you. When I’m finally earning money from holiday lets at Wharton—’
‘You think someone will pay to stay there?’ Allesandro interjected incredulously. ‘It’s a rain-sodden, decaying wreck!’
Her chin lifted. ‘I’ll renovate it,’ she said. ‘I won’t sell up unless I’m absolutely forced to!’
Allesandro was looking at her strangely.
‘You are attached to the place?’ He made it sound as though she enjoyed eating rotten meat.
‘It’s my home,’ she said tightly.
He gestured with his hand around him. ‘But you have a new home here, for the asking,’ he said.
Her expression tightened even more.
‘And also,’ he went on, with the same strange look in his face, ‘you now need have no more money worries. Your grandfather will lavish on you whatever you want.’
A hard light entered her eyes. ‘What a pity the man he fathered didn’t think to lavish the one thing on his daughter that she actually would have valued—his acknowledgement of her existence!’
Allesandro’s expression changed. ‘Stefano was a—a law unto himself. He did what he wanted. He was—’
‘A bastard,’ said Laura. ‘Like me.’
Her jaw was set. She looked belligerent.
Cussed. Sullen. Ill-tempered.
The familiar adjectives scrolled in Allesandro’s mind. Then another one entered. Where it had come from, he had no idea. But suddenly it was there all the same.
Bleak, with an empty look in her eyes.
He thrust it aside. Laura Stowe wasn’t someone he wanted to feel sorry for.
At the hospital his instructions were terse.
‘Say anything to upset Tomaso and you will be sorry, I promise you.’
Laura only looked away. The last time she’d been in a hospital ward it had been to see her grandfather, the day he had finally died of heart failure, mere months after her grandmother’s death. As she followed Allesandro into the intensive care room, and saw the solitary figure surrounded by instruments and electronics, his body wired up to them and a drip in his arm, she swallowed hard.
The figure in the bed was so frail. As frail as her grandfather had been.
But this is my grandfather. The thought pierced her suddenly.
She shook her head. No—no, it wasn’t! She wouldn’t let him be. She wouldn’t let anything of this touch her. She would block it out of her mind, her life, her existence.
This is nothing to do with me! Nothing!
But as she walked in, the head lying on the white pillow turned towards her.
‘Laura—’
The voice was thin, but it had lifted on her name.
Silently, with clear effort, a frail hand was held out to her.
‘You came,’ he said. Dark eyes rested on her. In them Laura thought she saw something she had not expected to see.
Gratitude.
She walked forward. She didn’t take the hand, and Tomaso let it fall back on the bed. A little of the light went out of his eyes. It made Laura feel bad, but she did not want to touch him.
‘How—how are you?’ she said, her voice stiff and awkward.
There was a flicker in the dark eyes. ‘Better for seeing you. Thank you—thank you for staying. For allowing me—’
He took a breath. It sounded difficult and rasping.
‘Please, won’t you sit down?’
Heavily, she sank down into the chair by the bed. Tomaso’s gaze went past her to the figure standing in the doorway.
‘I’m staying,’ said Allesandro in Italian. ‘I don’t want her upsetting you.’
Tomaso’s expression changed. ‘I think I will be safe enough. Thank you for bringing her to me, Allesandro, but now—’
Reluctantly, Allesandro left. The heart monitor would give the alarm if the crash team were to be needed precipitately. Moodily, he went on pacing up and down the corridor.
Inside the intensive care room, Tomaso’s gaze returned to Laura. She bit her lip. Tension wracked her body. Her throat was as tight as a drum.
‘Laura—my child. I have something I must say to you. I ask you, most humbly, to allow me to say it.’ The rasp in his voice came again. ‘Then, if you still wish, leave and return to England. With my blessing. Should you want it,’ he added, and there was a wry ruefulness in his voice.
He paused a moment, as if he were gathering strength. From the corner of her eye Laura could see the oscilloscope pulse to the beating of his heart. Her own heart seemed to be thudding heavily inside her.
She wanted to go. Wanted to bolt, run, get out of here. March away on heavy, hard feet. March all the way back to England. To Wharton. Shut herself in the house and never come out. Never. But she couldn’t. She couldn’t bring herself to do it. Something kept her glued to the chair. It was probably tension. Nerves. What else could it be?
She felt Tomaso’s gaze on her—as if, she realised, he was steeling himself to say something more. As if he was wary of her reaction. Anxious, even. Then, with that weak rasp still in his voice, he spoke. His eyes rested on her, and his head turned towards her.
‘Lying here has given me time to think. To remember. And I have thought much and remembered much. I have remembered Stefano. Not as I last saw him—not as he was in those last years of his life—but long ago. When he was your age. Younger. Even younger.’
He took a breath, then went on. ‘But I don’t have very many memories of him. Nor as a boy. You see…’ his eyes wavered a moment ‘…I did not spend a great deal of time with him. I was busy making money. Stefano I left to his mother. She doted on him.’ His gaze wavered again. ‘I was too busy to spend much time with her, either. So she lavished on him all the devotion and attention that I was too busy to accept from her. Stefano was always wild, obsessed with his power boats.’
He was silent a moment, whether to gather his strength or to dwell on his dead son Laura didn’t know. She only knew that she was stretched tight, like a pulled wire. She wanted Tomaso not to have spoken. Not to have drawn an image of a boy, a young man, half-neglected, half-spoilt, taking what he wanted and ignoring the consequences.
And that included my mother! He took her and dumped her! And be damned to the consequences—including getting her pregnant!
Anger, familiar like an old hair shirt, rubbed against her.
Tomaso was speaking again. His voice had changed now.
‘A man wishes to be proud of his son. But how can I be proud that my son seduced and abandoned the mother of his child? Ignored her existence—and yours.’ The eyes rested on her, and she could see pain in them. And remorse.
‘It was crass of me. Stupid, insensitive—and selfish—of me to think you could have any wish to know your father’s family,’ he said heavily. ‘All your life you have lived knowing what my son did to your mother, and to you. And for me to think that in an instant everything could be forgiven and forgotten was stupid of me in the extreme. There is anger in you—a lifetime of anger—and I cannot ignore that. I must not.’
He took another breath. His eyes hung on hers.
‘Go home, if you wish. I have no right to you at all. None. I have been foolish and greedy. I wanted to do well by you, but I cannot wash away the past. I cannot undo what Stefano did to you, to your mother, and to her parents. I have not been a good father, Laura. I wished to make up for that by being a good grandfather to you, but…’
His voice trailed off.
Laura went on sitting there. She could hear small sounds—the click of an electrical unit, the sound of a bird, a car, some muffled voices in the corridor outside.
It was very quiet.
Then, suddenly, it burst from her.
‘How could he do it? How? How could he just ignore her like that? It wasn’t as if he even wrote back to say he didn’t believe the baby was his! He just totally ignored her! She wrote and wrote, and he never, ever got back in touch. She was just a nuisance! That’s all she was to him! And so was I. He didn’t even want to know.’
There was a horrible cracking noise in her throat.
‘He didn’t want me,’ she said.
Two spots of colour were burning in her cheeks. They did not flatter her. She got to her feet. It was an abrupt, jerky movement. She turned away, towards the door, taking a sharp, agonising breath. She took a step forward, not looking at the man who stood in the doorway. Not looking at anyone or anything.
‘But I want you, Laura.’
Her head whipped round.
Tomaso had reached out his hand again.
‘I want you,’ he said again. There was an impulse in his voice, an urgency. ‘It is too late for Stefano, but I ask—I ask if it will not be too late for me. You are my only kin. All I have. Give me a little, just a little of your time. I shall not ask for much. Only the chance, poor as it is, to pass a little time with you.’
His eyes were holding hers, as if they were cast upon a lifeline. Slowly, very slowly, not sure what she was doing, let alone why, or whether she should turn, and walk on heavy, rapid feet, as far away as possible, Laura reached out and touched the tips of his fingers held out towards her. Then she dropped her arm to her side.
‘Thank you,’ said Tomaso quietly.
Laura was silent on the way back to the villa, staring out of the car window. Allesandro let his gaze rest on her from time to time. She’d closed herself up, like a clam. But there was something different about her. Something…softer.
He frowned. Could that really be true? Surely not. It was an absurd word to use about Laura Stowe. She was as hard and as unyielding as granite, her manner as abrasive. Harsh and unlovely.
His eyes studied her as she stared out of the window, locked in on herself. Yes, it was there still, that change in her expression. Almost imperceptible, but there all the same.
And there was something else about her, he realised frowningly, trying to put his finger on what else had changed about her.
Then it came to him.
Somehow—he didn’t know how—with that slightly, oh, so slightly softer expression—she didn’t look quite so awful.
He shook the thought aside. It was nothing to do with him what she looked like—only whether she was going to make good on what she had said to Tomaso or not. He needed to know. If she were staying, then at last the way would be clear for Tomaso to make good on his promise to him and hand over the chairmanship.
‘So,’ he heard himself ask abruptly, ‘what are you going to do now? Bolt back to England? Or give your grandfather some of your precious time?’
His voice sounded brusque in the confines of the car. Brusquer than he’d meant. Laura turned her head.
‘I’ll…’ She swallowed. ‘I’ll stay for a bit. Till he’s better. I suppose I don’t have to go home right away.’
Any time would be too soon to go back to that rain-sodden dump, thought Allesandro, thinking unpleasurably about the wreck she lived in. What on earth did she want to keep it for? Anyway, if she made her peace with Tomaso, as she might just have done now, she wouldn’t need it any more.
Just as Tomaso would not need the chairmanship of Viale-Vincenzo any more.
A spurt of impatience went through Allesandro. He wanted to be off, back to Rome. Away from all this. Preparing to take full control of the company.
Enjoying Delia Dellatore.
Deliberately, he let his thoughts conjure her image in his mind. Chic, fashionable, sensual.
His eyes flickered sideways one last time.
The contrast between the woman in his mind and the female sitting there like a sack of potatoes couldn’t have been more different.
He looked away. She was nothing to do with him. And now he was done with her. The moment they were back at the villa he’d return to Rome. He slid out his mobile, phoning his PA to let her know his plans. Relief washed through him. He was getting out of here, prontissimo.
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