The Italian's Secret Child

by Catherine Spencer

  He nodded.

  “Good. That is as it should be. Did you see lots of butterflies and birds?”

  “Yes, but I didn’t find the fishpond.”

  “Then you’ll have to come back another day. There is much here that a young man your age would like to explore. Now let us hurry. How fast can you run, my beautiful boy?”

  “Very fast,” he said.

  But Stephanie, following at a slower pace and watching, was terribly afraid there was no way either of them could outrun a past which suddenly seemed bent on catching up with them.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  AFTER the Leylands left, Baptiste brought a fresh pot of espresso out to the terrace. Once she’d served it and they were alone again, Corinna took her cup, stretched out in her favorite sun chaise, and said to Matteo, “You have a very unhappy face, caro. Care to tell me why?”

  “You have very beautiful legs,” he replied, not about to get into it with her, “and I’d much rather talk about them.”

  “My legs are exactly as they were two hours ago. You, however, are not. Before our guests arrived, you were relaxed and in good spirits. Yet by the time we sat down to lunch, you appeared troubled, and so angry that you barely touched the very excellent mussels I’d ordered, and which you normally enjoy immensely. Even now, you are brooding.”

  She was right. Out of sight didn’t necessarily mean out of mind, and Stephanie’s stinging remark had stayed with him. It infuriated him—not that she’d said what she had, but that he gave a damn. He should have known better than to think she might have changed. “I’d forgotten that I have a limited tolerance for the Leylands,” he said. “Too much of their company turns my stomach.”

  “I found Anna and Brandon Leyland thoroughly charming.”

  “Oh, the grandparents are different. They’re wonderful people and I’m very fond of them. Andrew’s pretty decent, too.”

  “But you dislike his father and brother, the Signors Bruce and Victor?”

  Matteo curled his lip in distaste. “I loathe them.”

  “Because?”

  “Because they’re bloated with self-importance, jump to unwarranted conclusions, and hold opinions on everything under the sun, regardless of whether or not they know the first thing of what they’re talking about.”

  “They were agreeable enough to me, today.”

  “Don’t be fooled by that, Corinna. They saw how you live, how you dress, how you entertain—all things which, in their eyes, made you socially acceptable.” He grimaced. “And of course, it didn’t hurt any that you’re easy on the eye. But despite your looks, if you’d been the one serving the meal, instead of Baptiste, they wouldn’t have spared you a second glance. If they’d seen you in the market buying fruit, or down on the quay choosing fish for dinner tonight, they’d have dismissed you as a nobody.”

  “I’m not so naive, Matteo!” she said, with a smile. “I know what it was that impressed them, but that merely makes them shallow and rather foolish in my eyes. Hardly worth the energy you expend on hating them, surely? And the mother, Vivienne, seemed a sweet and gentle soul.”

  “I’d respect her a whole lot more if she stood up to them once in a while. But she’s a willing doormat. Her husband and eldest son treat her abominably, wipe their feet on her every chance they get, and she lets them get away with it every time.”

  “And the other one?”

  “Other one?” He feigned confusion. “You mean the daughter, Stephanie?”

  Corinna regarded him over the rim of her cup and said softly, “Let’s not play games with one another, Matteo! We both know very well that I do.”

  “Oh, she’s got attitude to spare and is never happier than when she’s shooting off her mouth! Comes by it naturally, of course. Takes after her father.”

  “I disagree. I sensed in her much tension, a certain nervous edge, but not the arrogance you suggest. Nor did I detect any of this antipathy toward her that you show now. Rather, I felt the two of you were strongly attracted to one another and trying very hard to deny it.”

  “You’re imagining things. Mrs. Stephanie Leyland-Owen, or whatever she’s calling herself these days, isn’t my type.”

  “It would be comforting to believe that, but I saw—”

  “What you saw, Corinna,” he cut in grimly, “was a group of people related by blood, and two concerned, elderly relatives doing their utmost to unite them all into one big, happy family.”

  “An admirable ambition, I’d say.”

  “But one doomed to failure, because both Bruce and Victor’s interest in family starts and ends with their ancestors’ achievements.”

  “Ancestors?” Obviously puzzled, Corinna wrinkled her nose. “I don’t understand. What do dead people have to do with anything?”

  “Apparently, in the 1800s, both Brandon and Anna’s great-great-grandfathers rose to political acclaim in Canada, with close blood ties to equally prominent statesmen in the U.S. Why else do you think the lofty Professors Bruce and Victor Leyland specialize in nineteenth century North American history at their respective universities, if not because it affords them the chance to drop their family names into their lectures, at every turn?”

  “How silly, and how pathetic! But Andrew and Stephanie are cut from different cloth, yes?”

  “Andrew is,” Matteo admitted. “He’s an independent thinker, an architect whose only interest in the past is the esthetic design of its buildings. But Stephanie…” He lifted his shoulders in a shrug. “Stephanie might like to think she’s her own person, but the reality is, she bends over backward to avoid displeasing her father. Hell, she even married a university professor she didn’t really love, because he was enough like her father that he was bound to meet with approval.”

  “You speak as if you know her well.”

  “Yes. Better than I care to.”

  Corinna sipped her coffee and took pains to place the fragile cup and saucer on the glass table beside her chaise. Then, staring out across the Bay of Naples, she said with studied casualness, “You and I have never discussed this openly, Matteo, but I think you know that my affection for you runs deep.”

  “Ah, Corinna!” he began, uncomfortable at the turn in the conversation. “Don’t—!”

  “I won’t,” she assured him. “I have no wish to embarrass you or myself. I mention it only as a preface to this request: please describe to me, exactly, your relationship with Stephanie, and trust that my interest stems not from unseemly curiosity or resentment, but out of loyalty and true friendship toward you.”

  Corinna was the most discreet and sensitive person he knew, no more given to meddling in his past affairs than he was to broadcasting the details surrounding them. That she should suddenly pose such a personal question, and do it so frankly, compelled him to respond with equal candor. “We were lovers.”

  “I suspected as much.” Her shoulders lifted in a faint sigh, and she lowered her eyes briefly, before raising them again to meet his. “How did her parents react to your associating with her?”

  “They weren’t aware of it. She made sure of that.”

  “But they must have known she was spending time with you.”

  “No. They lived in Toronto. I met her in Bramley Point, some two hundred miles northeast of the city, where her grandparents owned—still do own—lakeside property. She always spent part of each summer with them because she loved riding, and they kept very fine horses.”

  “So you were both there at the same time, living in the same house?”

  “No. Even I had enough decency not to abuse my hosts’ hospitality by deflowering their nineteen year-old granddaughter under their roof.”

  She let out a tiny gasp. “Are you saying, Stephanie was…?”

  “A virgin? Yeah.” He looked away, unable to meet the silent censure in Corinna’s gaze. “I know! I should have been shot. But she was sweet and lovely, and desperate to be loved. Corinna, you have no idea how irresistible a combination that is to a man of twenty-five,
who thinks he knows all the answers just because he has the sexual appetite of a young bull, and a pocketful of condoms handy whenever he needs them.”

  “I am not sitting in judgment, my friend. I know you didn’t coerce Stephanie, that she came to you of her own free will. Go on with your story. How long were you together?”

  “Five, maybe six weeks. I stayed in an apartment above the stables, she came there to ride her horse, we were alone…you can fill in the rest, I’m sure. Not a very pretty story, is it?”

  “But you were in love with each other, yes?”

  “Not I. Falling in love at twenty-five wasn’t part of my grand life plan. But she said she was in love with me, and I was egotistical enough to believe her. Then, one day, her family showed up and stayed for nearly a week. And suddenly, Stephanie didn’t know me anymore. When her father and brothers came with her to go riding one morning, I was already there, at the other end of the stables where Brandon kept his workshop, and she wouldn’t so much as look in my direction.”

  “You think she was embarrassed?”

  “I know damn well she was!”

  “Because you were lovers?”

  “No,” he said harshly. “Because I was up to my eyebrows in grease and grime, and surrounded by bits and pieces of machinery. I didn’t project the right aristocratic image.”

  “But she knew who you really were, what your family stood for in Italy.”

  “Uh-uh! She assumed I was a marble quarrier from Carrara, sent by my employer to investigate an unpatented invention designed to cut granite. And, loosely speaking, I was exactly that, if you consider my father and grandfather owned all shares in our company at that time, and I was still learning the business.”

  “And you saw no reason to enlighten her? To let her know you were heir to a fortune?”

  “Good God, no! You remember how I was, back then, Corinna: proud, stubborn, and hell-bent on making my own way without relying on my family’s name or wealth to get me where I wanted to go. It was the main reason I volunteered to spend the summer in Canada, a new world where all men are equal and the tedium of being rich and powerful carried less clout—or so I thought, until I met Bruce Leyland.”

  Yes,” she said with a quiet laugh. “I remember very well. You were also headstrong, charming, and handsome, and had such a way with the ladies that mothers used to lock up their unmarried daughters when you came to Ischia for the summer. It would seem that Signor Brandon should have done the same with Stephanie.”

  “Maybe he should.” He squinted into the bright afternoon sun because it was less painful than looking back at his murky past. “I showed up at his place, determined to prove I amounted to more than an aristocratic name, that I was a man in my own right. Instead, I showed myself to be ultimately as callous and cruel as my medieval ancestors in the way that I cast Stephanie aside when I’d had my way with her. I was a fool to think I could shed my heritage like a snake shedding its skin.”

  “Don’t be so hard on yourself. Young men make mistakes—it’s the nature of the beast. Continue with your story instead. What happened with Bruce Leyland, that you’re still so full of bitterness?”

  “On the Saturday, Anna invited me to join them for a family barbecue. My first instinct was to refuse, but then I thought, Why the hell not? I’m every bit as good as they are!

  “So I showed up, all shaved and polished until I shone. But I might just as well have been sporting a two-day growth of beard, and been covered in dirt, for all the good it did me. Bruce Leyland treated me as if I was some Third World refugee looking for a hand-out. As for Victor, I half expected him to toss his food scraps at me.”

  “And you still didn’t set them in their place by revealing your true identity?”

  “Are you kidding? I didn’t owe either of them any explanations. In any case, I was having too much fun playing the dumb, swarthy foreigner who didn’t know which fork to use. When Brandon mentioned that I thought his invention had the potential for a computerized application which could revolutionize the marble cutting industry, the good Professors Leyland laughed in my face and sneeringly told me that I was out of my league; that it took education and brains to understand how computers worked.”

  “Per carita, but for supposedly intelligent men, they were fools to underestimate you! Do you suppose they now acknowledge that you were light-years ahead of the times in your thinking?”

  “I neither know nor care. What does intrigue me is that you do—care, that is, about something that no longer matters. Why, Corinna?”

  She swung her legs to the ground and drifted to the edge of the terrace. “Because, whether or not you’re prepared to admit it, you still care about your Stephanie, caro,” she said, standing with her back to him and staring out across the sea. “You care so deeply that I worry for you.”

  “Don’t lose sleep on my account. Stephanie and I are a thing of the past.”

  She shook her head. “I suspect not. Did you continue the affair after her family left?”

  “No.”

  “She never came to your apartment again?”

  “Sure she did,” he said, unable to contain the bitterness in his voice. “The minute her parents hit the road, she was ready to hit the sheets again. Or, more accurately, ready for another roll in the hay.”

  “And…?”

  “And it didn’t happen. I told her it was over.”

  “And she accepted it, just like that?”

  “Not just like that. She cried, and begged me to change my mind. Said she was sorry she’d acted the way she had, but that it was to shield me because she’d been afraid of how her father might react if he’d found out about us. Shield me, Corinna—as if I was some coward willing to hide behind a woman’s skirts! What kind of a man did she take me for?”

  “Don’t you see, she wasn’t belittling your courage! A woman in love will do whatever she feels she has to do, to protect her man.”

  “I didn’t want or need her protection.”

  “No, you wanted and needed her, but your pride wouldn’t let you have her. Which of you, I wonder, has paid the higher price for that?”

  “Not I,” he said. “Stephanie made her choices, and I made mine. And once I’ve made up my mind on something, there’s no changing it. You know that, Corinna.”

  “Yes, I do. But I also know a man driven by uncertainty and regret, when I see one.” Corinna spun back to face him. “And right now, I’m looking at him. Go to her, caro,” she begged, coming toward him and grasping his hands. “Talk to her. Sort things out.”

  “Not a chance,” he said flatly, refusing even to consider the idea. “We’re over! Done!”

  “This reminds me of when you were still a girl, and used to spend the summers with us.” Anna Leyland patted the cushion beside her on the silk-upholstered sofa, inviting Stephanie to sit. “Afternoon tea and cake in the drawing room was a daily ritual I very much enjoyed, back then. It’s not quite the same here, of course.”

  “Not quite.” Forcing herself to sound a lot more cheerful than she felt, Stephanie joined her grandmother. “No Upper Canada antiques, British India rugs, or old family photos scattered around. None of those wonderful little scones Esther used to bake, either.”

  “But very fine furnishings and paintings, nevertheless, and lovely cool marble floors underfoot. The tiramisu’s nothing to sneeze at, either.”

  Stephanie kicked off her sandals and tucked her feet under her. “I think Sunday brunch was my favorite time,” she said dreamily. “Mimosas on the veranda, eggs Benedict and café au lait, and Vivaldi drifting out from the stereo in the parlor.”

  “Memories are wonderful things, aren’t they?” her grandmother replied gently. “They keep us connected to our past.”

  Which wasn’t necessarily a good thing! Stephanie thought, flooded again with other recollections—of innocence, and a time before her life was burdened by guilt and shame and lies. She had been young, carefree, and desperately in love with an unsuitable man. If her
father had known she’d lost her virginity to her grandparents’ stone mason, he’d have killed him and her both. “I suppose they can be, yes.”

  Her grandmother fanned herself with a folded linen napkin and eyed Stephanie lovingly. “But they aren’t always enough, are they, darling child?”

  “Enough?” Echoes of Matteo using the same word rang discordantly through her mind, and she shrank all over again at the absolute contempt with which he’d uttered it. “Enough for what?”

  “To make you happy.”

  “I’m happy.” To prove it, she produced a smile which left her face feeling as if it were being stretched apart by invisible wires. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

  “I was hoping you’d tell me before your mother joins us. I’m fully aware that you don’t feel able to speak freely in front of her.” Anna lifted the elegant silver teapot and poured Earl Grey into translucent porcelain cups.

  “Well, I don’t care for the way my father treats her, if that’s what you mean. And I have absolutely no patience with Victor’s pretentious posturing. But I’m trying not to let it interfere with the reason we’re here. I know how much you want this family reunion to work, Grandmother.”

  “That’s true, but I realized long ago that the only person who can change the way your father treats your mother is Vivienne herself. Until she does, I’m afraid there’s nothing you or I can do but accept the situation. As for Victor, he’s like a gnat. Irritating, but important only if you allow him to be.” Anna added a sliver of lemon to the tea and passed a cup and saucer to Stephanie. “How was your date, last night?’

  Taken aback at the sudden change of subject, Stephanie said cautiously, “Very nice, thank you.”

  “You and Matteo got along well, did you?”

  “Famously.” Most of the time. Except for when she’d lied to him.

  “Then what went wrong between him and you today?”

  She turned away from her grandmother’s probing gaze, hoping to hide the blush warming her cheeks. “What makes you think anything did?”