The Costanzo Baby Secret

by Catherine Spencer

  “It is called Pantelleria,” he said in careful English, as he served her a late lunch of poached chicken breast and asparagus spears so tender and young, they were almost premature.

  “So I understand. But I don’t think I’m familiar with it.”

  “It is an island, known also as the black pearl of the Mediterranean.”

  “And still part of Italy?”

  “Sì, signora. Close to one hundred kilometers south-west of the extreme tip of Sicily and less than eighty from Tunisia, which is in Africa.”

  She hadn’t lost all her marbles. She knew where Africa was, and Tunisia, but Pantelleria? The name still didn’t ring a bell. “Tell me about this black pearl.”

  “It is small, windy and isolated, and the road circling the island is not good, but the grapes are sweet, the sea is a clear, beautiful blue, the snorkeling and the sunsets magnifico.”

  It sounded like a paradise. Or a prison. “Do many people live there?”

  “Except for the tourists, not so many.”

  “Have I lived there very long?”

  She’d veered too far from the geographical to the personal. His face closed, and he straightened his posture as if he were on a parade ground and about to undergo military inspection. “May I offer you something to drink, signora?” he inquired woodenly.

  She smiled, hoping to trick him into another revelation. “What do I usually have?”

  The effort was wasted. His guard was up. “We have wine, juice, milk and acqua minerale frizzante on board or, if you wish, I can serve you espresso.”

  “Sparkling mineral water,” she said testily, and decided that whoever met her when she arrived had better be prepared to give her some straightforward answers, because this whole secrecy conspiracy was getting old very fast.

  But the questions bursting to be asked fled her mind when the aircraft skimmed in for landing and, descending the steps to the tarmac, she saw the man waiting to greet her.

  If Pantelleria was the black pearl of the Mediterranean, he was its imperial topaz prince. Well over six feet tall, broad, sun-bronzed and so handsome she had to avert her gaze lest she inadvertently started drooling, he took her hand and said, “Ciao, Maeve. I’m your husband. It’s good to have you home again and see you looking so well.”

  His thick black hair was expertly barbered, his jaw clean shaven. He had on tan linen trousers and a light blue shirt she recognized was made of Egyptian cotton, and sported a Bulgari watch on his wrist. By comparison, she looked like something the cat dragged in, and ludicrously out of place juxtaposed next to this well-dressed stranger and presumable owner the sleek private jet.

  Privately he must have thought so, too, because, despite his kind words, when she ventured another glance at him, she saw the same pity in his dark gray eyes that had dogged her throughout her teenage years.

  Desperate to give her advantages neither of them had enjoyed, her parents had almost bankrupted themselves to send her to one of the best private high schools in the city, never realizing the misery their sacrifice had caused her. They’d hidden their words behind their hands, those snooty fellow students born to old money and pedigrees, but she’d heard them anyway, and they had left scars worse than anything a car accident could inflict.

  Poor thing, she could eat corn through a picket fence with those teeth….

  No wonder she hides behind all that hair….

  I feel bad not inviting her to my party, but she just doesn’t fit in….

  An orthodontist had eventually given her a perfect smile, and flashing it now to hide the crippling shyness that still struck when she felt at a disadvantage, she said, “You’ll have to forgive me. I’m afraid your name’s slipped my mind.”

  They had to be the most absurd words ever to fall out of her mouth, but if he thought so, too, he managed to hide it and said simply, “It’s Dario.”

  “Dario.” She tried out the word, splitting it into three distinct syllables as he had and copying his intonation, as if doing so would somehow make it taste familiar on her tongue. It didn’t. She paused, hoping he’d enlarge on their relationship with a few pertinent details, and caught something else in his eyes. Disappointment? Reproach?

  Whatever it was, he masked it quickly and gestured at the vehicle parked a few yards away. Not a long black limousine this time, but a metallic-gray Porsche Cayenne Turbo, which, although much smaller, she knew came with a hefty price tag attached. “Let’s get in the car,” he said. “The wind is like a blast furnace this afternoon.”

  Indeed, yes. Her hair, or what remained of it, stood up like wheat stalks, and perspiration trickled between her breasts. She was glad to slide into the front passenger seat and relax in the cooling draft from the air conditioner; glad that she was on the last leg of the journey to wherever. Though the flight had lasted no more than a couple of hours from takeoff to landing, fearful anticipation of what lay ahead had left her weary to the bone.

  Since Dario was so clearly disinclined to talk, she turned her attention to the passing scene as he drove away from the little airport, praying something she saw might trigger a memory, however slight. Soon they were headed south along the coast road the flight attendant had mentioned. It was narrow and winding, but picturesque enough.

  To the left, neat patchwork vineyards protected by stone walls rose up the hillsides. Groves of stunted olive trees hugged the earth as if only by doing so could they prevent the winds from sweeping them out to sea.

  On the right, turquoise waves shot through with emerald surged over slabs of lava rock rising black along the jagged shoreline. Hence the island’s other name, no doubt.

  At one point they passed through a charming fishing village. Odd, cube-shaped houses were clustered next to each other with perforated domes or channels on their flat roofs.

  “To catch the rainwater,” Dario explained, when curiosity got the better of her enough that she dared break his rather forbidding silence and ask what they were for. “Pantelleria is a volcanic island with many underground springs, but the sulphur content makes the water undrinkable.”

  Disappointingly, this meager tidbit of information struck no more of a chord than anything else she saw. Which left quizzing her laconic husband her only other option if she wanted to arrive at her destination with at least some point of reference in a life dismayingly bereft of landmarks.

  “Your flight attendant told me this island’s quite small,” she said, as the minutes ticked by and he made no further effort to engage her in conversation.

  “Sì.”

  “So your house isn’t very far away?”

  “Nothing’s very far away. Pantelleria is only fourteen and a half kilometers long and less than five kilometers wide.”

  “So we’ll arrive soon?”

  “Sì.”

  “I understand that’s where we lived before the accident.”

  A muscle twitched in his jaw. “Sì.”

  Talk about a man of few words! “And we’ve been married how long?”

  “A little more than a year.”

  “Are we happy?”

  He tensed visibly, a scowl marring his forehead. “Apparently not.”

  Distressed, she stared at him. She had exchanged vows with this gorgeous man. Taken his name and presumably once worn his ring, although there was no sign of it now. Had slept in his arms, awakened to his kisses. And somehow let it all slip away.

  “Why not?”

  He shrugged and gripped the steering wheel more tightly. He had beautiful hands. Long-fingered and elegant. And there was no sign of a wedding ring. “Our living arrangement was not ideal.”

  She ached to ask him what he meant by that, but the reserve in his voice was hard to miss even for someone in her impaired mental state, so she once again focused her attention on her surroundings.

  He’d turned the car off the main road and was navigating a private lane leading to an enclave of secluded villas perched on a headland. By some high-tech method she couldn’t begin to fa
thom, a pair of iron gates set in a high rock wall opened as he approached, then swung smoothly closed again immediately afer the car had passed through.

  A drive bordered with dwarf palm trees wound through extensive grounds to a residence which, while remaining true to what appeared to be a traditional island dwelling, was much larger than any they’d passed on the way, and bore an air of unmistakable opulence. Single-storied, it sprawled over the land in a series of terraced cubes, with a domed roof over the larger, central section.

  Dario stopped the car outside a massive front door and switched off the ignition. “This is it?” she breathed.

  “This is it,” he said. “Welcome home, Maeve.”

  She opened her door and stepped out. The wind had dropped and a stand of pine trees dusted with the mauve shadows of dusk filled the air with their scent. The first stars blinked in the sky. Even from this vantage point, the estate—and estate was the only word to describe it—commanded a magnificent view across the Mediterranean.

  Closing her eyes, she breathed in the peace and wondered how she could not remember such a place.

  For a moment he leaned against the car and watched. The sight of her body, silhouetted sharp and brittle against the deepening twilight, brought back the shock he’d experienced when she first stepped out of the aircraft. The very second he saw her, he’d wanted to establish his husbandly right to enfold her in his arms. Peruzzi’s warning not to crowd her had been all that stopped him. That, and his fear that he might inadvertently break her ribs.

  She had always been slender, but never to the point that the siroccos of autumn might blow her away if she ventured too close to the edge of the cliffs. Never to the point of such fragility that she was almost transparent. Small wonder the good doctor had urged him to patience. Restoring her physical stamina had to come first. The rest—their history, the accident and the events leading up to it—could wait. Ambushed by her intuitive questions, he’d already revealed more than he intended, but he wouldn’t make the same mistake again. He hadn’t risen to the top of a world-wide multi-billion-dollar business empire without learning to dissemble if the occasion called for it. And from where he stood, this amounted to one of those occasions.

  “Would you like to stay out here for a while?” he asked her. “Perhaps stretch your legs with a stroll through the gardens?”

  She ran her fingers through her short, silky hair. “No, thank you. Even though it’s still early, I find I’m quite tired.”

  “Come then, and I’ll have my housekeeper show you to your room.”

  “Do I know her?”

  “No. She started working for me just last week. Her predecessor moved to Palermo to be closer to her grandchildren.”

  He took her one small suitcase from the back of the car and pushed open the front door, then stood back to let her precede him inside the house.

  She stepped into the wide foyer and slowly inspected her surroundings, taking in the lazy motion of the fans suspended from the high ceiling, the cool white walls, the black marble floors. “Do you live here all the time?” she asked, her voice hushed.

  “Not as a rule. Usually I’m here on the weekends only. It’s where I come to unwind.”

  A shiver passed over her. “So I’ll be on my own after today?”

  “No, Maeve. Until you feel more at home, I’ll stay with you.”

  “In the same room and the same…bed?”

  Is that what you’d like? he wanted to ask, beset by memories he almost wished he could forget. Once upon a time, they had shared such insatiable passion for each other. “You have your own room for as long as you want it, but I’ll never be far away if you need me,” he said instead, and congratulated himself on providing an answer that neither threatened her, nor shut the door on their resuming a more normal married life at some future point. Peruzzi would be proud of him.

  “Oh,” she said, and he might almost have thought she sounded disappointed. “Well, that’s very nice and considerate of you. Thank you.”

  “Prego.”

  She inched a little closer. “Um…are my clothes and personal effects still here?”

  “Yes,” he assured her. “Everything is exactly as you left it.” Except for the blood-soaked outfit she wore the day of the accident. That was one memory he wished he could erase and hoped she’d never recall. “Here’s Antonia now,” he continued, relieved to be able to change the subject as the housekeeper arrived on the scene. “She’ll take you to your suite and make sure you have everything you need.”

  She exchanged a tentative smile with Antonia, then turned to him one last time. “Thank you again for everything you’ve done today.”

  “It was nothing,” he said. “Sleep well and I’ll see you in the morning.”

  As soon as the two women, one so sturdy, the other so frail, left the entrance hall and disappeared toward the lower left wing of the house where the guest bedrooms were located, he turned in the opposite direction and along the corridor that led to the library and his home office. Closing himself in the latter, he picked up the phone and called Giuliana, his sister, who lived next door.

  “I was hoping I’d hear from you,” she said, picking up on the first ring. “Did Maeve arrive home safely?”

  “She did.”

  “And how is she? Is it as bad as we feared?”

  “Ah, Giuliana!” Horrified, he heard his voice crack and had to take a moment to collect himself. “She’s fragile as spun glass, inside and out. The journey down here exhausted her. We got in just a few minutes ago and she went straight to bed.”

  “Poor thing! I wish I could see her and tell her how much I love her and how glad I am to have her back among us.”

  “I wish it, too. I wish you could bring her son home and have her look at him and recognize at once that she’s his mother. Sadly, the time’s not yet right.”

  “I know, Dario. Small steps, isn’t that what her doctor said?”

  “Yes, but not, I fear, as small as he’d like. Already she’s wormed too much information out of me and knows our marriage was on shaky ground. Not exactly the best way for us to start trying to put our lives back together, is it?”

  “But it can be done if you love each other enough to fight for what you once had. The question is, do you?”

  “I can’t speak for her, Giuliana.”

  “Then speak for yourself. I know that the way you started out together wasn’t ideal, and that you married her because you believed it was the honorable thing to do and you had no other choice, but it seemed to me that you were making it work.”

  “Until it all went horribly wrong.”

  And therein lay the crux of the matter. Could either of them get past what had happened, or had they lost too much ground ever to trust each other again?

  Seeming to read his thoughts, his sister said softly, “Maeve loves you, Dario. I am certain of that.”

  “Are you?” he said wearily. “I wish I was. But I didn’t call to burden you with my doubts, I called to find out how you’re holding up having an extra child to care for. Is Sebastiano wearing you out?”

  “Not in the least. Marietta is an enormous help. You were lucky to find so capable and willing a nanny. As for Cristina, she loves her little cousin and plays with him all the time. And he’s such a contented baby. He only ever cries if he’s hungry or tired, or needs to be changed.”

  “He’s the one bright spot in this whole unfortunate business.”

  “And too young to understand what’s happened.”

  “Let’s hope he never will.” Dario paused. “Has anyone else in the family stopped by to see him?”

  “If by that you mean our mother, then, yes. She came by this morning and again this afternoon. She’s quite adamant that he should be staying with her, and I’m equally adamant that he should not.”

  “I’d hoped she’d go back to Milan with our father. The last thing Maeve needs right now is to run afoul of her.”

  “Unfortunately, she seems set on st
aying here. But don’t worry, Dario. I can hold my own with her, as you very well know, and Lorenzo certainly can. He won’t stand for her interfering in our arrangement.”

  That much he knew to be true. His mother might be a handful at times, but his brother-in-law was no more a man to be pushed around than Dario himself was. “I’m grateful to both of you for your support. Kiss my son good-night for me, will you? I’d come over and do it myself, but—”

  “No,” his sister cut in. “Tonight, at least, it’s more important that you stay home in case Maeve needs you. It wouldn’t do for her to find herself alone before she gets her bearings.”

  And how long before that happened, he wondered moodily, ending the call and pouring himself a stiff drink. It was all very fine for Arturo Peruzzi to counsel patience, but Dario had never been a particularly patient man. Already, after little more than an hour, his tolerance was tested to the limit as far as letting nature take its course in its own sweet time. He’d spent too many days neglecting work because he couldn’t concentrate. Too many evenings like this, with a bottle of single-malt Scotch for company. And a damn sight too many nights alone in a bed designed for two.

  Irritably, he threw open the glass doors and stepped out onto the terrace. Night had fallen and the dozens of solar lights dotted throughout the garden and around the perimeter of the pool gleamed softly in the dark.

  Once upon a time not so very long ago, Maeve had wanted him as much as he wanted her. They’d slipped naked into the warm, limpid depths of the private spa outside their bedroom and made love with an urgency that bordered on desperation. He’d buried his mouth against hers for fear that someone might hear her cries of surrender. He’d withheld his own pleasure in order to prolong hers, and finally come so hard and fast within the confines of her sleek, tight flesh that his heart almost stopped.

  So why was he standing here alone now, hard and aching, and she was sleeping in a guest suite? Dannazione, she was his wife!

  A sound punctured the night, closer than the murmur of the restless sea, fainter than a whisper. A footfall so hesitant he might have dismissed it as a figment of his imagination had it not been accompanied by a fragrance he recognized: bergamot, juniper and Sicilian mandarin softened with a touch of rosemary. Her fragrance, and he ought to know. He’d bought it for her.