The Marchese's Love-Child (22 page)

Sandro smiled back at her. 'Not,' he said softly, 'while the key for that door remains unaccountably missing. Perhaps you would have the goodness to search for it again.'

Just open, Polly told the floor silently. Just open and swallow me—please.

'In fact,' Sandro went on remorselessly, 'you may bring my wife all the keys. She can hardly embark upon her new duties without them.'

The delicate blusher that the contessa wore was suddenly like a stain on her white face. Her drawn breath was a hiss.

'You intend her to manage the palazzo. A girl from nowhere, without family or position? A girl for whom you sacrificed my Bianca, and broke your father's heart? And whose only accomplishment has been to bear your bastard?'

Her strident laugh broke in the middle. 'Are you insane? You see for yourself that she cannot handle your servants. And who will ever accept her?'

'I have,' Sandro said with deadly quietness. 'Nothing else is necessary.' He paused. 'Ever since Paola came here you have attempted to undermine her, but each time she has proved to be more than your equal. Today was one such moment. Nor will I allow her to endure your insults any longer.'

He looked at the older woman, his mouth hard and set. 'My father offered you a home, and I acceded to his wishes and permitted you to remain, setting convenience against my better judgement. But my tolerance is now exhausted.'

'No,' she said hoarsely. 'No, Alessandro. You cannot do this.'

He went on as if she had not spoken. 'Out of respect for my father, I shall provide you with a house. I shall also consult with my lawyer on a suitable supplement to your income. But you must and will leave Comadora.'

'But I helped you find her.' Her fingers were twisting together like claws. 'I searched for this—sciattona in England because you still wanted her.'

'No, contessa’ Sandro said softly, 'you discovered somehow that I wished to find her, and told Emilio. What did you do, I wonder? Listen at a door? Read my correspondence?' He shook his head. 'It would not be the first time.

'And Emilio sent you to England on his own behalf, hoping to buy lurid details of my affair with Paola, and discredit me at last.' He shrugged. 'But, unluckily for both of you, I guessed what you were doing, and found her first. So you had to pretend you had been working for me all the time.'

His mouth twisted. 'How galling that must have been. How much had Emilio offered for your services?'

Her thin body was as taut as a wire. 'I would have done it for nothing,' she spat back. 'How could I have known you would forget everything that was due to your name, and marry your discarded whore?'

There was a terrible silence. Polly turned away, feeling sick, her hands pressed to her burning face.

Sandro walked to the fireplace and reached for the bell rope, but as he did so there was a knock on the door, and Teodoro came in with the tray of coffee.

He checked instinctively, his glance darting from one to another, but Sandro beckoned him forward. 'Please escort the contessa to her room,' he said. 'She is unwell. Call her doctor, and tell her maid to stay with her.'

Teodoro set the tray on a side-table, and offered the contessa a deferential arm which she ignored, walking slowly and stiffly to the door. Where she turned.

'You will be sorry for this.' Her tone sounded almost conversational. 'In the past I have argued against Emilio's wish to have the inquiry into Bianca's death reopened. But no longer. This time, marchese, you will appear and answer for what you did. And your loyal accomplice, Giacomo Raboni, will be made to tell all he knows—in public. Emilio will see to that.'

Another lightning flash lit up the room. In its momentary glare, Sandra's face looked carved from granite, the scar livid against his cheek.

He said, 'If he hopes to buy Giacomo, he is wasting his time.'

The contessa shrugged. 'Everyone has their price, my dear cousin,' she said softly. She sent Polly a malevolent glance. 'Including, if you remember, the little gold-digger you call your wife. Where will she be, I wonder, when you come out of jail?'

Teodoro, his face rigid with shock, seemed to grow another six inches in height. He took the contessa's arm without gentleness and hustled her from the room.

The thunder roared again, and rain began to fall, huge, heavy drops beating a tattoo on the terrace, and hurling themselves in gusts against the window.

Polly sank down on one of the sofas, because her legs would no longer support her. Resting her elbows on her knees, she buried her face in her hands and waited for the shaking to stop.

Eventually she became aware that Sandro had come to sit beside her, and she raised her head and looked at him.

She said in a small, quiet voice, "That was so—terrible.'

'I am sorry, Paola.' He spoke gently. 'You should not have had to endure that. I did not realise she was so near the edge.' His hand covered hers and she realised he was trembling a little too.

She said on a rush, 'I—I should go up to the nursery. Charlie may be frightened of the storm.'

'In a moment,' he said. 'But stay with me now. We need to talk.'

'Yes.' She ran the tip of her tongue round her dry mouth. I— I suppose we must.' She paused. 'I always knew the contessa didn't like me,' she said slowly. 'But—it was more than that. It was hatred. Not just for me—but also for you.'

His mouth tightened. 'Until now, I only saw the bitterness, and thought I understood. When she came here twenty years ago, I think she believed that my father would eventually offer her marriage. Only he had no such intention. His relationship with my mother had brought happiness to neither, and, after her death, he was content with an occasional discreet liaison.

'When Antonia saw she had nothing to hope for from him, she diverted all that fierce energy into preparing Bianca as a bride for me. Perhaps she felt her own thwarted dreams would be fulfilled by the next generation. But it was not the usual matchmaking that older women sometimes indulge in.

Even as young as I was, and as careless, I sensed there was something wrong. Something obsessive—and dark. Just as I felt...' He paused. 'Well, that is not important. Let me say that I began to spend as little time as possible at Comadora.'

'But why did your father go along with her scheme if he saw how you felt?'

Sandro hesitated. 'He saw marriage as a business arrangement, not a matter of emotion,' he told her slowly. 'Also I believe he felt guilty, so his encouragement was a form of recompense to Antonia for having disappointed her so deeply himself.'

Polly thought of the portrait of the late marchese which hung at the top of the stairs, remembering the harsh lines of the dark face beneath the grizzled hair, the thin mouth and piercing eyes that she felt followed her as she passed. Not a man, she thought, who looked as if he ever suffered from remorse, and she repressed a shiver.

'When the accident happened to Bianca, the contessa must have felt as if she'd died herself.' she said quietly. 'Perhaps we shouldn't blame her too harshly. Especially...' She stopped hurriedly, aware that she'd been about to say when there are so many questions over what really happened.

'Especially?' Sandro had noticed her hesitation.

She said, 'Especially when you have lost someone that you love so much.' She remembered the weeks after her return to England . The greyness of her life as one bleak day followed another. The nights she'd spent in bitter weeping, her eyes and throat raw with grief and bewilderment. Her stunned sense of isolation, caught as she was between her mother's anger and her father's disappointment.

'She'll feel as if she's in an abyss,' she went on, half to herself. 'With no way out, and no one to turn to. Facing an eternity of emptiness.'

Her own turning point had come when she'd felt the first faint flutter of her baby moving inside her, she realised. And from somewhere she'd found the strength to reclaim her life and sanity.

If there hadn't been Charlie, she thought, I could have ended up like the contessa, corroded with anger and bitterness.

He said with faint grimness, 'Almost you persuade me, cara, but not quite. She cannot remain here.'

'But you can't make her go,' Polly said passionately. 'Can't you see she means what she says? She and Emilio will rake up everything that happened three years ago and use it against you. You know that they will.'

He was very still suddenly. And when he moved, it was to release her hand.

He said quietly, almost conversationally, 'You speak, cara, as if I had something to fear. Is that what you think?'

'How do I know what to think?' The loss of the gentle clasp of his fingers round hers made her feel suddenly bereft. 'All I hear is that the inquiry wasn't told everything. That Rafaella's grandfather, who found you, is sworn to secrecy. My God, you've just admitted as much.' She swallowed. 'So I have to believe you have something to hide—and that the contessa and your vile cousin will move heaven and earth to uncover it. And once these things start, who knows where they can lead?'

'Clearly you imagine they could lead to prison,' Sandro drawled. 'Unless I decide instead to submit to blackmail. Neither option has much appeal, bella mia. And I would not be much of a man if I were to choose either of them without a fight.

'But then you do not have a very high opinion of me, anyway,' he added with a shrug. 'Is that why you have been trying to persuade Giacomo to meet you through Rafaella? And why you have had no success?

'Unfortunately for you, whenever an attempt is made to contact him, he immediately informs my lawyers, and they tell me. And that, my loving wife, is one of the other reasons I decided to make an early return, to suggest that you waste no more time on these fruitless enquiries.

'But then, what does it really matter?' He got to his feet, stretching lithely. 'Except that I am once again the villain,' he added mockingly. 'But that is something I shall have to live with.'

He paused. 'And now I am going to shower and change,' he went on. 'Under the circumstances, I shall dine in the town tonight. I would not wish to spoil your appetite by forcing you to eat with a murderer.'

'I never said that,' Polly protested. 'I never would.'

His smile was grim. 'But I swear it must have crossed your mind, mia adorata. And the knowledge of that might turn my stomach too.'

As he strode to the door, she said huskily, 'Sandro—please. I just need to know the truth.'

'Truth,' he echoed contemptuously. 'It is just a word, Paola, like so many others. Like love, for example, and loyalty. Like honour and faith. Just words to be used and forgotten, as we will eventually forget today ever existed.' He inclined his head curtly, and was gone.

Polly sat staring at the closed door. She knew she should go after him, pour out all her doubts and fears—all her confused emotions. Make him listen. Make him, somehow, understand.

He had clearly expected her to trust him without question, but how was that possible when she was still dealing with the nightmare of the past, and his betrayal?

We both loved him, she thought wretchedly. Both Bianca, and myself. And he wanted neither of us. The only difference is that I survived, and she didn't. The margin is that small.

And I still love him, no matter what he does, or what he is. And I know now that beyond logic, beyond reason, I always shall, because I can't help myself. He's part of me—my flesh, my blood, the pulse of my heart. Because, in spite of everything, I only feel safe with his arms around me.

And, like the contessa, that's a tragedy I have somehow to endure.

She gave a long, shaking sigh. The abyss was back, it seemed, and deeper than ever. And with as little hope for escape.

After a while she got up wearily, and went to the table where the forgotten coffee waited. It was still hot, and it provided her momentarily with the jolt she needed.

She and Sandro might be a million miles apart, but upstairs was a child who might need her.

When she reached the nursery she paused, taking a deep breath before she went in. If she walked into the usual wall of resentment, she wasn't sure she could bear it.

Dorotea was there, seated in one of the big rocking chairs that flanked the hearth, knitting busily, while opposite her sat Julie with Charlie on her lap, fast asleep.

The older woman looked up at Polly hovering in the doorway, and her plump face creased into an equally hesitant smile.

She got to her feet, indicating respectfully that Polly should take her seat, then signalled to Julie to transfer the little boy to his mother's arms.

This safely achieved, Dorotea stood for a moment, and patted Polly awkwardly on the shoulder as Charlie murmured drowsily and pushed his small round head against the familiar curve of her breast.

'Bene,' she said. 'Is good now, vossignoria, si’

'Si,' Polly agreed, her throat tightening. 'This—is good.'

Dorotea beckoned to Julie, and they both disappeared into the night nursery, leaving Polly alone with her child. Leaning back, eyes half closed, she listened to the storm retreating over the hills. Just the act of holding Charlie quietly seemed to offer a kind of peace amid the turmoil of emotions that assailed her.

Whatever Sandra might feel about her, she told herself, whatever darkness there might be inside him, his love for Charlie was unqualified and beyond doubt, and she could cling to that. Because even if her husband never smiled at her again—never touched her—their son remained an indissoluble link

between them.

She was suddenly aware she was no longer alone, and, glancing round, saw Sandra standing in the doorway, watching her, his mouth hard, the dark brows drawn together.

She wanted to speak, but what could she say? Tell him that as long as they were together, nothing else mattered? But they were not together, and how could they ever be, when there was so much to divide them?

Unless you came to me now, she thought, her heart in her eyes as she looked back at him. Unless you held us—your wife, and your child. And if you would promise to try and love me a little as you love him. Then I wouldn't care about anything else.