‘Aha …’ She flopped down beside him again with a look of pure triumph and produced a packet of biscuits.
‘Where did those come from?’ He looked at her suspiciously. ‘And how old are they? Anna, have those been there since you had your last sleepover party when you were about fifteen?’
‘I never had sleepover parties. You’re my first one.’
‘Are you having a nice time?’
‘Yep.’ Her face was alight with happiness and it seemed to warm him from the inside, melting the ice that had slowed the passage of blood through his veins for the last eternity.
‘So where did the biscuits come from?’
‘Secret cupboard. Look.’ She kneeled up again and he watched as she slid across one of the carved panels in the headboard. ‘This is a Victorian reproduction, but during the sixteenth century Catholics used to hide their bibles and rosary beads in them.’
He quirked an eyebrow at her. ‘Interesting. Do you bring parties of schoolchildren on educational visits in here too?’
‘Only the very good-looking sixth-formers from the boys’ school.’
‘I’m sure they learn a lot,’ he said dryly. ‘So what do you keep in your secret cupboard, apart from biscuits?’
She shrugged, suddenly shy. ‘Special things.’ Taking down a small box, she shut the little cupboard again and settled herself back on the pillows, the box on her knee. ‘There’s the first merit award I won for ballet, and the programme from The Nutcracker, which my mother took me to see at Covent Garden.’ She laid them out on the bed and, leaning on one elbow, he watched her face as she looked into the little box. ‘That used to be lavender from the garden of the château, but look, it’s shed all its flowers.’ She held out the box, tipping it so that the dead flower-heads fell into her hand, along with a couple of other things.
Glancing into the palm of her hand just before her fingers closed, Angelo felt his heart stop for a second, then begin again, pumping ice through his veins.
Benedetto Gesù, it couldn’t be … Please, God, let his eyes and his mind be playing tricks on him …
‘What have you got there?’ His throat suddenly felt as if it were made of sandpaper.
‘Ah—the most precious thing of all.’ Smiling softly, she uncurled her fingers. There, cupped in her hand beside the shell he had given her on St Honorat, was a ruby and diamond earring. The exact match to the one that had been tucked into the shawl he had been wrapped in when he had been found by the nuns.
‘It’s an incredibly rare, incredibly valuable piece,’ she was saying teasingly, ‘traditionally given by emotionally inarticulate Italian males to their women and meaning I love you …‘
‘I’m not talking about the shell. I mean the earring.’
To his own ears his voice sounded hollow and very far away, but if she noticed she gave nothing away.
‘Oh, that. It’s not an earring, it’s a pendant.’
Relief flooded through him.
‘Although …’ Anna was holding it between her fingers, looking at the back ‘… oddly enough, it was an earring once, but the other one was lost so my mother had it made into a pendant for me. She inherited them from her grandmother and there was big trouble when the other one went missing. It’s worth a lot, I know that much.’
Cartier. 1922.
‘This, however,’ Anna continued, stroking a finger over the pearly pink surface of the shell, ‘this is actually priceless …’
Angelo stood up, waiting for the nausea to subside and the fog to clear from his head, then strode across to the door. He didn’t know where he was going, just that he had to put some distance between himself and Anna. There was a burning feeling in his chest.
‘Angelo?’
Her voice was full of fear and it felt like tiny barbs in his heart. Gritting his teeth, he forced himself to turn back towards her, but, not trusting himself to speak, he simply looked at her, desperately trying to keep his expression blank.
‘What’s wrong?’
He shook his head, then left the room, closing the door very quietly behind him.
The plumbing at Ifford was as Dickensian as the rest of the Godforsaken place, thought Angelo savagely, towelling himself with a scrap of fabric that felt like sandpaper. But the freezing temperature of the pitiful shower had only matched the ice in his blood, and in his heart.
Deep down, this was what he had always dreaded, what every person who didn’t know their parents must secretly dread—that they would inadvertently fall in love with a blood relative. He looked at his reflection in the small square of mirror above the basin and hardly recognised himself.
His skin was ashen, his eyes like dark hollows, but suddenly in every line and plane of his face he could see the woman in the portrait downstairs laughing back at him. His mother.
Anna’s mother.
Dio, it all slotted horribly, sickeningly into place. Snatches of his conversation with Sir William yesterday echoed around his head.
‘… the damage was already done …‘
Gripping the sides of the basin with both hands, Angelo braced his arms and bent his head, waiting for the wave of nausea to pass, wondering what to tell Anna. Gesù, he was blighted. Jinxed.
Cursed.
And now he had brought his poison into her life, infecting her with the blackness that had always shadowed him, like an indelible stain on his soul.
He couldn’t tell her. This was a burden he would bear alone.
Anna stood at the window, looking down at the familiar view without seeing it. Her head throbbed with dull pain as self-reproach and recrimination chased themselves around her brain in sickening circles.
She had said the L-word.
How could she have been so bloody, bloody stupid?
Right from the beginning she had thrown herself at him in one humiliating episode after another, and he had never given her any reason to think the tumult of emotions he aroused in her was in any way reciprocated.
Well, maybe in one way, she thought, remembering the ferocity of his passion when he had caught her pole-dancing. But he had also never made any bones about the fact that sex was one of the many currencies he dealt in. He had many women.
But he didn’t sleep with them! she thought in anguish. That was what had made her reckless. The intimacy they had shared last night in the long dark hours he had lain beside her was what had deluded her!
In her desolation she pressed her palms against the window-panes, the reflection of her own dark, haunted eyes staring back at her from the pale blur of her face. Behind her, she heard the door open and whirled round to see Angelo. He was dressed and there was something about him that told her he was leaving. Something final that said that in every way that mattered he was already gone.
‘You’re going?’
He hardly glanced at her as he spoke and his voice was cool and impersonal.
‘Yes. I’ve got meetings this afternoon. I should have left last night really.’
‘I’m sorry.’ Her voice was very small. ‘That was my fault.’
He gave an impatient sigh. ‘Don’t be silly; you couldn’t help it.’ He was looking around the room restlessly, as if he was just dying to be off. Anna felt her heart wither and die, her pride along with it as everything in her demanded that she throw herself at his feet and beg him not to go.
‘Angelo—’ she began desperately as tears surged into her eyes. ‘I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. I was stupid to say that, but I wasn’t being serious. I know I shouldn’t have—’
He stopped her with a dismissive wave of his hand. ‘Look, Anna, it doesn’t really matter what you said. This was never going to come to anything, was it?’ He gave a short, mirthless laugh, as if trying to emphasise the outrageousness of the idea that they could be together. ‘I guess I just realised that it’s all going a bit too far now. I shouldn’t lead you on like this. I’m not right for you—’
‘That’s not true!’ She was wringing her hands in a classic, clichéd gest
ure of distress but couldn’t stop her cold fingers from twisting around each other, squeezing until the bones ached.
‘Just listen!’ It was almost a roar and she felt the blood drain from her face until she thought she might faint. ‘You’re not right for me. It’s not going to happen, Anna. I have a … a life and other … commitments, and I was wrong to stay here last night …’
His voice almost cracked. Gesù, Gesù, he had to stay strong.
‘Other commitments?’ she whispered, her face a mask of pain. He couldn’t look at her. ‘You mean you have someone else?’
‘I’m sorry,’ he said tonelessly and shrugged, thrusting his hands deep into his pockets as a physical restraint against the need to go to her and hold her. ‘It’s better that I leave now. Please don’t come down.’
He didn’t look back.
Downstairs, he strode along the passageway to the library where he had talked to Anna’s father last night. The room was empty this morning, the fire cold, but the portrait above it was as warm and glowing as he remembered.
So that was the thing that had snagged in his brain. The earrings. In the picture they were little more than a smudge of crimson and blue-white oil, not easily identifiable, but now he knew he could recognize them all too clearly. Just as he could recognize his own eyes smiling back at him from Lisette Delafield’s portrait.
He stood before it for just a few seconds, then turned on his heel and strode back towards the door.
He could hardly think straight to do the necessary pre-flight checks on the helicopter, he was so distracted by the idea of Anna looking out of one of the many blank windows that lined the front of the great barren house. He had a sudden vision of her like a princess abandoned in a tower, left to her fate. Cursed.
Cursed by me, he thought despairingly.
All the peace he had felt in the dark hours of the night had deserted him. There was no hope for him now—she had been his only chance of salvation, and now there was nothing standing between him and an eternity of aloneness.
The fires of hell seemed positively inviting by comparison.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
LEAVING the warmth of Fliss’s plush office at Arundel-Ducasse, Anna pulled her long black coat more tightly around her and put her head down against the wind. London in October was particularly bleak. But then, she thought, walking quickly along the crowded pavement towards the tube, she could have been lying on a beach in the Bahamas and it wouldn’t have made any difference. Everywhere felt bleak when your heart had been hacked to bits with a pickaxe.
People said that time was supposed to be a great healer. Well, in Anna’s opinion, time was doing a pretty rubbish job. It had been five interminably hideous weeks since Angelo had left, and her heart was definitely still on the critical list and showing no sign of recovery. She still cried herself to sleep every night, she still cried herself awake every morning, she still cried over songs on the radio and langoustines in the window of the fishmongers near Fliss’s flat.
Fliss was making a very brave and very noble attempt at trying to remind her that her life wasn’t over but, despite her best efforts, Anna wasn’t convinced. Tired of leaving messages on Anna’s voicemail, Fliss had appeared at Ifford one Saturday, two weeks after Angelo had gone, and found a pale, thin ghost of her former friend. Persuading Anna to take off Angelo’s shirt and get dressed into some proper clothes had been the biggest hurdle: after that, getting her to agree to come and stay in Fliss’s flat in London, helping her find a part-time job in one of the trendy delis nearby and even getting her to eat occasionally had been relatively easy. Anna had simply submitted.
But recently even that numb submission had been shattered by two letters, forwarded from Ifford, from Angelo’s firm of solicitors.
It had been the cold, impersonal tone that had upset her more than anything—until she thought of the implications behind it, and then that made the cold, impersonal tone seem like the least of her worries.
Our client regrets the breakdown of the relationship between himself and Lady Roseanna Delafield, but requires confirmation from a medical professional that Lady Delafield has not conceived a child as a result of the relationship. We regret the personal and sensitive nature of this request, but would appreciate your co-operation.
The excessive courtesy veiled the lethal, steel-tipped message. Really, she would rather he had just sent a scrawled note saying, I’m really desperate never to have anything to do with you again, so please help me out by letting me know you have no further hold on me. She would have respected him more.
Bloody hell, she thought bitterly, stumbling a little as her vision was blurred by another deluge of tears. Even thinking about it was enough to push her back into the swamp of her own misery. One day she’d simply sink without trace beneath the murky waters, like Alice in Wonderland, and—
Head down, she didn’t see the face of the person she bumped into, only his elegant handmade shoes. ‘Sorry, I wasn’t—’ ‘What the—? Gesù, Anna!’
White-faced, she backed off, slightly winded by the force of her collision with the tall blond stranger in the dark suit, and shocked to the core by the realization it was no stranger. The crowd eddied around and between them, forcing them apart for a moment. He reached out to grab her arm, but she was too quick for him.
‘Don’t touch me!’
For a moment she thought she saw a flicker of emotion in the narrow blue eyes she remembered so perfectly, but when she looked again she realised she’d imagined it. They were as hard and cold as icebergs.
‘I need to talk to you,’ he said through gritted teeth, as if he was only hanging on to his temper by a thread, ‘so don’t even think of running away.’
‘What? Like you did at Ifford?’ she retorted, her eyes blazing at him.
He steadied himself, managed to produce a sardonic smile. ‘I apologized for that at the time. And explained. I’m sure we can both be grown-up about it now.’
Anna looked down at the damp, leaf-strewn pavement and shook her head in disbelief. ‘Oh, right,’ she said sadly. ‘That’s what the solicitor’s letters are about, is it? That’s how grown-ups behave. Silly me. I’m just so immature.’
‘You haven’t replied.’
She looked up at him, feeling the wrenching pain in her poor, wounded heart as she did so. A little of the golden beach-boy glow he had had on the yacht had faded and he looked harder. Older. But still lethally handsome.
‘No, Angelo, I haven’t,’ she said slowly. ‘And I suppose it’s only fair to warn you that I have no intention of doing so. You’re a businessman, after all, so you might like to consider whether it’s worth accumulating further legal fees when—ouch!’
He managed to get hold of her arm this time, his fingers burning her flesh through the layers of her clothes.
‘I need an answer, Anna.’
‘Why?’ she spat, wrenching herself free of his grasp and backing away from him. ‘Because you need to be in control? Well, you forfeited your right to control me when you left that morning. End of story. Goodbye, Angelo.’
She swung round and strode blindly down the busy street, grateful for the press of bodies around her, separating her from him and preventing her from rushing back and throwing her arms around him. She reached the tube station and was carried along in the flow of people going down the stairs when she was suddenly aware of a commotion behind her as someone pushed their way through.
She didn’t have to turn round to know who it was. Of course he wouldn’t be able to let her have the last word. The next moment he was standing in front of her, blocking her way, his broad shoulders like a sea wall against the tide of people.
‘Nice try. But when I say I want to talk to you, I mean it.’ He gave her a wintry smile. ‘End of story.’
She looked at him, taking in the faultless tailoring of his dark wool suit, the snowy perfection of his white shirt, all of which emphasised his chilling beauty. In the dingy light of the underground tunnel his magnifi
cence was utterly incongruous. She gave a slightly hysterical laugh.
‘You really get to see how the other half lives when you’re with me, don’t you, Angelo? Hippy beach parties, squalid country houses, and now the sordid reality of the public transport system. Stick around—who knows what might be next on the itinerary?’
His face was like ice. ‘Don’t forget where I came from, Anna. I’ve slept in underground stations before now, so having a conversation here is no problem, I can assure you. Especially as it won’t take long.’
‘No. It won’t. Because I have nothing to say.’
She looked up at him defiantly, her jaw set against the sob that was rising in her throat. He straightened up, half-turning away from her, and for a moment, just for a fraction of a second, caught a look of haunting despair in his face.
‘Please. Anna. Just tell me. There’s a risk, we both know that. Tell me you’re not pregnant!’
She sighed, feeling the fight go out of her, and looked up at him with huge, troubled eyes. ‘Why, Angelo? What would it matter to you? I’d never ask anything of you. I don’t want your money.’
Angelo felt the barbed wire band around his heart twist and tighten and braced himself against the familiar pain. ‘I just need to know. For personal reasons.’
She bent her head. Her voice was so quiet that he had to lean towards her to hear it, which meant he could smell her wonderful dark scent.
‘You said you had … other commitments. Are you getting married? Is that it?’
The crowd were pushing past them to the platform and in the midst of all the people she looked so fragile that he wanted to push everyone else back from her and make a space for her in the circle of his arms. Instead he tipped his head back and breathed in deeply.
Forgive me.
‘Yes,’ he said curtly. ‘Yes, that’s it. I’d like everything … sorted … first. I think it’s only fair that there’s no danger of anything that happened in my past interfering with … our … future.’
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