by Lynne Graham
Angel of Darkness
Lynne Graham
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ONE
‘I KNOW this is a shock for you,’ Daisy Wyatt murmured uncomfortably, absorbing her daughter’s stunned pallor. ‘I would have told you ages ago but I was afraid you might be upset.’
‘Might be?’ Kelda raked her rippling Titian red hair back from her brow, a fiery mix of disbelief and temper leaping through her taut frame. ‘For goodness’ sake, you’ve been divorced from the man for over four years! Why on earth did you start seeing him again?’
Daisy looked uneasy. Small and blonde and barely into her forties, she was a very pretty woman but right now her face was strained. ‘When I heard that Tomaso had had a heart attack, I...I—well...’ She stumbled under fire from an outraged emerald-green stare of enquiry. ‘I thought it was only decent to write with my good wishes for his recovery and Tomaso wrote me such a kind letter back asking me to visit...I didn’t see how I could refuse—’
‘But that was three months ago,’ Kelda condemned in a shaken tone. ‘You’ve been seeing him all this time and you never even dropped a hint!’
Daisy turned a guilty pink. ‘At the start, it didn’t seem worth mentioning. Just a few friendly visits to the hospital. Tomaso seemed so lonely. He didn’t seem to have many visitors, apart...’ She hesitated, assessing her daughter’s vibrating tension and hurriedly averting her gaze before reluctantly continuing, ‘Apart from Angelo, of course.’
That name struck Kelda like a stinging slap on the face. The fact that her sensitive mother wouldn’t meet her eyes when she said it didn’t help. Indeed, Daisy’s visible embarrassment on Kelda’s behalf merely piled on the agony. A moment out of time when she was eighteen. Inexplicable...inexcusable. Kelda blocked out the memories threatening her, refusing to recall that dreadful night and its appalling repercussions.
‘And I suppose Angelo was as chillingly contemptuous as he was when Tomaso married you and polluted the Rossetti family with a lowly hairdresser!’ Kelda snapped with ferocious bite. ‘I wish I could believe you cut him dead but I bet you didn’t!’
Daisy was studying her tightly linked hands. ‘Tomaso and I should never have got married in such a hurry the first time. Angelo hadn’t even met me... naturally, he was shocked.’
‘Look, I’ll make us a cup of tea.’ Kelda was so furious, she had to get out of the room before she burst a blood-vessel and said what she really thought. How could her mother make excuses for Angelo? How could she possibly do that? When Tomaso Rossetti had married Daisy eleven years ago, his son Angelo had scorned her, snubbed her and treated her as though she was a scheming, common little gold-digger with a greedy eye to the main chance. Kelda’s gentle, quiet mother had suffered agonies of discomfiture at Angelo’s merciless hands!
Safe in her pine galley kitchen, Kelda snatched in air in heated gasps. Her memories of Daisy’s short-lived second marriage were extremely painful. The discovery that Tomaso, for all his apparent devotion to her mother, was having an affair with another woman had shattered Kelda. The divorce had come as an incredible relief. It had freed her from the burden of a secret she had not dared to share with her vulnerable mother, and how could she tell Daisy the truth now? It wasn’t even as if she had any concrete proof to offer...nothing more than the dismayed and embarrassed confirmation of a classmate.
There had been a piece about Tomaso in a newspaper. ‘Looks as if butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth, doesn’t he?’ Helena had giggled. ‘He’s had a mistress on the go for years, some blonde he takes to hideaway country pubs for dirty weekends. And even though he only got married recently, he’s still seeing her...my father saw them all cosied up together in a dark corner only last week! Holding hands and kissing. Everybody’s dying to meet his new wife and see what she’s like—’
‘She’s my mother,’ Kelda had said flatly.
Helena had looked aghast. ‘Oh lord, I am sorry. I had no idea.’
Hell, why hadn’t she told Daisy straight after the divorce? Well quite naturally she had believed the divorce was final. Most divorces were. ‘We just weren’t compatible,’ Daisy had said sadly then, seemingly having no suspicion of Tomaso’s infidelity. And now Tomaso had actually had the neck to pop the question a second time! How the heck could Kelda have foreseen that eventuality? And heaven knew, right at this minute, it was a problem she could have done without. She had quite enough problems of her own!
Determinedly, however, Kelda suppressed the bitter awareness that, thanks to all the bad publicity she had received of late, her career as a top model was over. There was no point in crying over spilt milk, she told herself and her poor mother’s predicament was far more important.
Kelda had adored her own father, although her recollection of him was unhappily vague, built up on blurred impressions of a jovial, boisterous man, quick to temper, equally quick to laughter. She had only been five when her father began to spend long periods working abroad. She had only a couple of faded photographs of him when he was young and her mother had invariably resorted to tears whenever she tried to talk about him. But she still had every letter her father had ever written to her. The heart attack which had claimed his life in her twelfth year had seemed to devastate her mother at the time...
Yet four short months later Daisy had upped and married Tomaso Rossetti.
Her mother had been the manageress of a small hair salon, Tomaso, an extremely wealthy director in the Rossetti Industrial Bank. According to Daisy, she had been cutting Tomaso’s hair for years but she had never once mentioned him to Kelda! Indeed, Kelda had not even had a chance to meet Tomaso before the wedding took place.
The first news she had had of the marriage had been in the headmistress’s office at school. Called from class without any prior warning of what was coming, Kelda had been absolutely shattered when she was faced with a strange man with a proprietorial hand at her beaming mother’s waist and told he was her stepfather. And she hadn’t reacted exactly politely either. She had been appalled, resentful and alienated by the startling fact that the mother she loved could have kept so much from her. It had not been a promising start.
At the time, Kelda and her brother, Tim had been living with an elderly great-aunt in a quiet suburb of Liverpool, seeing their mother on only occasional weekends. Daisy had been unable to find a decent job outside London and her salary had not been enough to run to childcare outside school hours. She had refused to listen to Kelda when she argued that she was old enough to look after herself. Living as she then did in a far from salubrious inner city area, Daisy had been convinced that her children were far better off with their great-aunt.
‘We’ll all be together now!’ Daisy had enthused. ‘Tomaso wants us all to be one big happy family. He’s bought us a beautiful house in Surrey.’
She could have coped with Tomaso with her hands tied behind her back. It had been Angelo she hadn’t been able to handle. Angelo Cesare Rossetti. In the City, they called him the Angel of Darkness. It fitted him like a black velvet glove. Like an avenging dark angel, he destroyed anything and anybody foolish enough to get in his way. In comparison, his father was a positive pussycat, a gentleman of the old school, who treated women like creatures of spun-glass fragility in need of cherishing protection.
While Tomaso and Daisy had regularly scarpered abroad on what seemed to be one long impossibly extended honeymoon during the first years of their marriage, no doubt avoiding as best they could the poi
sonous atmosphere in their English home, Kelda had been left to Angelo’s tender mercies. Angelo, the stepbrother from hell, who had loathed her on sight. Mind you, it had been mutual, she conceded grimly. Even now when she saw Angelo’s name in a gossip column she still burned with an unholy, burning hatred that threatened to lick out of control.
As she slammed cups out on a tray, intelligence told her that she should be concentrating on Tomaso’s sins, not those of his son. Tomaso, who had probably ordered all his business acquaintances to stay away from the hospital while he plucked violin strings and talked about the misery of his lonely life at the top. Daisy was an easy mark for a sob-story.
Well, never let it be said that Kelda didn’t see her duty before her, even when it was unpleasant. The Rossettis had given her poor mother a very rough ride the first time around. Kelda intended to make sure that her mother thought twice, thrice and even more before she took the risk of marrying Tomaso again.
‘So when did Tomaso pop the question?’ she prompted with a brittle smile as she poured the tea.
‘Last night over dinner.’
‘He’s out of hospital, then.’ Kelda had had vague hopes that Tomaso had proposed from his sickbed. Her mother’s dreamy expression might then have been excused as compassion.
‘For ages. It wasn’t a bad attack, more of a warning really,’ Daisy shared. ‘And Angelo has persuaded him to retire. He knows just how to talk to his father and he’s been so kind—’
‘Angelo? Kind?’ Kelda echoed incredulously.
Her mother tensed. ‘He sent a car to pick me up and take me home again every time I visited the hospital.’
‘How many near-fatal collisions did it have?’
‘Angelo really has been wonderful, Kelda,’ Daisy murmured tautly. ‘He...he even took me out to lunch. I find him rather overwhelming but he is trying to be friendly and considerate...’
Kelda wanted to laugh like a hyena. Angelo...kind, wonderful, considerate? Only her trusting mother could be so easily taken in. But on another level she was deeply hurt that so much had been happening behind her back. ‘Does he know that his father’s proposed again?’
Daisy nodded and smiled. Kelda ground her teeth together.
‘Angelo even asked about you,’ her mother advanced in a clear effort to impress. ‘He was very sympathetic and understanding about...well, about that awful business in the papers.’
Kelda went white with rage and mortification and turned her head away. Of course, it had clearly been too much to hope that Angelo hadn’t been laughing heartily over her recent sufferings. He never read the tabloids but she just bet that he had made an exception when the gutter Press were tearing her apart. Kelda still felt soiled and besmirched by the lies that had been written about her and the vicious quotes from ex-boyfriends who had jumped on the bandwagon in revenge.
‘It’s such a shame that you didn’t let Danny Philips down more gently.’ Daisy sighed regretfully.
‘He was a married man!’ Kelda reminded her acidly. ‘Naturally, I got rid of him as soon as I found that out.’
‘I expect he didn’t mean to fall in love with you,’ Daisy murmured sadly.
‘He wasn’t in love with me...he just wanted to get me into bed like all the rest!’ Kelda fielded.
‘But he must have been terribly hurt to take an overdose like that, and maybe if you’d gone to see him in hospital—’
‘I’d have finished him off!’ Kelda broke in rawly. ‘He took an overdose because his wife found out he’d been seeing me. He took it to get back in with her and then he spilt his guts in that filthy newspaper to get his own back on me!’
‘It was wicked of him to tell all those lies about you.’ Daisy’s large blue eyes were swimming with tears. ‘I told Angelo that you’d never had an affair with anyone...’
‘P-Pardon?’
Her mother reddened. ‘I wanted Angelo to know that there wasn’t a word of truth in any of it. You’re not that sort of girl.’
Kelda was in agony. She adored her mother but she had never come closer to killing her! ‘Kelda’s saving herself for marriage.’ She could just hear her mother saying it! And she could see Angelo, struggling not to choke on his wine, sardonically amused by her mother’s blind faith in her daughter’s virtue. Hellfire embarrassment scorched Kelda.
‘Well...what do you think?’ Daisy asked hesitantly.
‘About what?’
‘About me marrying Tomaso again?’
Kelda steeled herself. ‘I think you’d be making the biggest mistake of your life. But of course...it’s your decision.’
‘I suppose the idea of us all being a f-family together is a little fanciful.’ Looking stricken, Daisy was visibly swallowing back tears of disappointment.
Kelda felt torn apart by guilt but she reminded herself that it was for her mother’s own good. ‘Have you given him an answer yet?’
‘No,’ Daisy conceded tightly.
‘If you do marry him, I’ll hardly cut you off...I expect we can still meet for lunch occasionally...’
‘Y-yes,’ Daisy gulped, bending her head. ‘But you and I are so close...what about weekends?’
‘I will never cross the threshold of any house that harbours Angelo as a regular visitor,’ Kelda stated without apology.
* * *
‘You mean she just dropped it on you?’ Her brother Tim burst out laughing. ‘Isn’t that just Daisy?’
It was the following day. They were lunching in a wine-bar round the corner from the insurance company where Tim worked.
‘It wasn’t funny! Why didn’t you warn me?’ Kelda snapped, throwing an icy glance of hauteur at the man at the next table, who had sat fixedly trying to catch her eye ever since she sat down.
Tim followed her gaze ruefully. ‘The Iceberg buries another victim...’
‘I loathe that stupid nickname!’ She set her perfect white teeth into a celery stick and crunched. As she chewed, she flung her head back, her mane of entirely natural pre-Raphaelite curls rippling back over her slim shoulders in tongues of fire. ‘Don’t use it!’
‘OK...OK!’ Tim held up both hands in mock surrender.
‘Why didn’t you tell me she was seeing Tomaso again?’
His mobile features tensed. ‘I guessed how you’d react.’
‘I bet you said nothing, you lily-livered swine!’ Kelda hissed across the table at him. ‘You don’t care if Tomaso runs around with other women behind her back!’
Tim had gone red. ‘I don’t think it’s any of my business.’
‘Oh, I’m all right, Jack!’
Tim grimaced. ‘How much of the way you feel has to do with Angelo?’
Kelda froze. ‘It’s got nothing to do with him!’
Tim gave her an unimpressed glance.
‘I can’t stand him...that’s true.’ Her restive hands snapped a carrot stick in two but she held his gaze fiercely. ‘But it’s Mum’s best interests that concern me.’
‘You’re terrified of Angelo.’ Tim looked almost amused.
‘Don’t be ridiculous...I loathe and despise him... I’m certainly not afraid of him!’
Tim sipped his wine. ‘Exactly what did happen the night of your eighteenth birthday bash? You know, I never did find out why Angelo had disappeared, Tomaso looked like thunder and Mum was on the brink of hysterics over breakfast the next morning...’
Every scrap of natural colour had drained from her complexion. ‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ she said tightly.
Her stomach was churning sickly. She broke out in a cold sweat. If she lived to be a hundred, she would still relive that evening in her nightmares. Angelo had humiliated her. Angelo had destroyed her. At a most sensitive age, he had instilled in her an aversion to sexual intimacy that she had still to overcome. The Iceberg was dead from the neck down, she reflected with raw shame and bitterness. She couldn’t bear a man to come too close. Her skin crawled when men got seductive and expectant. It made her feel soiled, cheap. Angelo had done
that to her...with his scorn and revulsion.
‘You’re a promiscuous little tramp. It doesn’t matter how much money my father spends on you...you will never climb out of the gutter!’
Kelda swallowed back nausea with difficulty. She was lost in the past, savaged by an indictment that had merely heightened the intense vulnerability she concealed from the world.
‘Angelo seems to be encouraging Mum and Tomaso,’ Tim remarked. ‘If I were you, I wouldn’t stick a spoke in his wheels.’
‘You’ve seen him, haven’t you?’ Kelda demanded.
Tim didn’t meet her eyes. ‘He called into the office one day last week.’ He cleared his throat awkwardly. ‘Actually, he’s offered to fix me up with a better job...’
‘I can see I’m on my own,’ Kelda breathed flatly.
Tim searched her vibrantly beautiful face anxiously. ‘He’s a vicious bastard when he’s crossed, Kelda. Stay out of it. Mum’s a big girl now. Let her make her own mistakes. And if Angelo’s prepared to bury the hatchet—’
‘I’ll lift it out of the ground and bury it in his back,’ Kelda slotted in with grim emphasis. ‘I have no intention of interfering between Mum and Tomaso but neither have I any intention of being roped in to play happy families. I’m not eighteen any more. I have a life of my own.’
Tim groaned. ‘You’re not half as tough as you like to act. If you annoy him, Angelo won’t just rock your boat, Kelda. He’ll blow you out of the water.’
Her hand shook slightly as she raised her glass. Tim’s imagery sent a chill snaking down her backbone.
‘Any recovery on the career front?’ Tim prompted abruptly.
She pulled a face. ‘I’m trying to sell my apartment.’
‘As bad as that?’ Tim looked shaken.
‘When the Fantasy campaign dropped me, I lost half my income...and other cancellations followed,’ she spelt out tautly.
‘But you’ll make it up again...you’re famous!’
‘Notorious,’ Kelda corrected with unconcealed bitterness. ‘And that’s not the sort of image that sells exclusive cosmetics and perfume. My contract with the agency is up in two months’ time. I don’t think it’ll be renewed.’
