But what an obstacle, Marnie thought, then glanced narrowly at Roberto. ‘We don’t do it for the sake of an old man, if that’s what you’re thinking,’ she said shrewdly.
He nodded slowly. ‘But maybe you do it for the sake of your brother?’
Her face stiffened, her body along with it. ‘Not for him, either,’ she said.
‘Then maybe,’ Roberto suggested silkily, ‘you do it for that sweet angel of a wife your brother brought here with him yesterday?’
‘You’ve seen Clare?’ Marnie asked eagerly. ‘How did she look? Did she look well? She’s pregnant, you know, and she shouldn’t be.’ Her face clouded, aching concern showing in her blue eyes. ‘She lost a baby a couple of months ago and the doctors warned her then that her body needed time to heal; I…’
‘She is well, Marnie—very well,’ Roberto reassured her gently. ‘She spent the whole afternoon here with me, while your brother and Guy’s team of mechanics moved their things into the lodge. She was happy, excited about the baby. Excited about the move to the country. Excited about the vacation her husband has taken her on for the next few weeks to get them over the—er—critical time.’
Vacation? Marnie’s eyes sharpened. What vacation? Jamie couldn’t afford to take a—
Guy. She sat back, not sure if she was angry or grateful to him for that piece of thoughtfulness. Then she realised this was yet another thing he had done of his own volition: showing thoughtfulness and caring where none had been requested.
She frowned, trying to work out why on the one hand he could cut her brother into little pieces with his tongue, then on the other do something as beautiful as this.
Because of you, a small voice said. He does it for you. Don’t you know he would do anything to ease your troubles? You were worried about Clare’s health, so he packed her off on a holiday so she could relax and be cosseted through the next vital month.
Then why am I sitting here, she challenged that voice, being blackmailed by him to do the last thing on this earth I want to do?
Is it? the silent voice asked.
She wriggled uncomfortably.
Roberto watched the changing expressions passing across her open face for a while, then made to get up. ‘Come,’ he said, using his ever-present stick to help him rise from the chair. ‘I want to show you something. And it is best viewed in good light.’ A hand wafted imperiously at her when she didn’t immediately respond. ‘Come, come!’ he commanded. ‘My son will not thank me for stealing his thunder on this, but I believe the moment is right and not worth wasting. So come.’
Marnie came reluctantly to her feet. ‘Roberto, do you think it worth risking Guy’s wrath a second time in one day?’ she posed dubiously.
‘Why, what are you afraid he will do to me?’ His dark eyes began to twinkle. ‘Beat me with my own walking stick?
‘No.’ She laughed, shaking her head ruefully. ‘But on your own head be it if he tears you off another strip with his tongue!’
He just tucked her hand into the crook of his arm, and with a deft flick of his wrist set his walking stick in front of him and led them out through the French windows which opened on to a winding pathway that led through his many carefully pruned rose-beds.
‘Where are we going?’ she asked curiously.
‘You will see soon enough,’ he murmured secretively. ‘Ah, but this is good,’ he sighed. ‘Walking the garden with a beautiful woman on my arm. I had forgotten just how good it can feel!’
‘You old charmer,’ Marnie teased, and reached over to kiss his leathery cheek.
‘Now that,’ he drawled, ‘was even better!’
She laughed, and so did he, neither aware of how easily the sound of their laughter floated on the still air to where several men stood talking in a huddle.
A head came up, dark and sleek, standing head and shoulders above the rest. He pin-pointed the sound, frowned for a moment, then went back into the huddle, his concentration broken while he puzzled over what was eluding him.
‘Oh—!’ Marnie cried as they emerged through a small clump of trees into the evening sunlight again. ‘How absolutely enchanting!’
In front of them, about a hundred feet away, stood the quaintest, sweetest little cottage she had ever seen. It could have been stolen right out of a child’s picture story-book with its cream-washed walls clamouring with red and yellow roses.
‘What is it?’ she asked excitedly, realising that this must have been the building she’d picked out when she and Guy arrived on the estate. But she was at a complete loss as to why Guy would have constructed such a beautiful thing in this idyllic spot.
Then a sudden thought occurred to her and she turned sharply to her companion. ‘Roberto?’ she gasped. ‘Is this for you? Have you decided to move out of the main house to live here?’
He just shook his head and refused to answer. ‘Let us go inside,’ he said, his smile enigmatic.
Letting him urge her forward again, Marnie found herself half expecting Little Miss Moffat sitting primly inside.
She could not have been more wrong, and stopped dead in her tracks, her breath suddenly imprisoned in her breast.
Not a cottage at all, her stunned mind was telling her, but a studio, a light and airy one-roomed studio made to look like a cottage from the outside so it could blend so perfectly with its surroundings.
They had come upon the place from the south, and really that sweet fairy-tale frontage was only a façde. The rest of the walls were wall-to-wall glass! Glass from the deep window-ledge that ran around the room from thigh-height onwards. And furnished with purely functional Venetian blinds, rolled away at the moment to let in maximum light, but there to use when necessary.
Her easel stood there—not the one from her London studio with Amelia and her cat resting upon it, but her old easel, the one from Guy’s apartment, and her old draughtsman’s board, with a sheet of white sketching paper lying on its top.
On unsteady legs, she walked over to it and looked down. It was the same sketch she had been doing four years ago when her life had fallen apart. She ran her fingertips over the sharp lines of an abstract she had been working on, its image just a blurred memory now, the clean symmetrical lines pulling chords in her creative mind, but not the burning inspiration which had urged her to begin it then.
‘Why?’ she whispered to the old man watching her in silence from the open door.
He didn’t answer straight away, and when eventually she turned to look at him there were tears shining in her blue eyes.
‘Why?’ she repeated.
‘He had everything moved from London to here after this had been completed. It helped him, I think.’ His gaze flicked grimly around the sunny room before settling back on Marnie’s shock-white face. ‘As a kind of therapy, during a time when he was…’ He paused and grimaced. ‘Your continued absence from Oaklands has given it all a maturity. So I suppose this makes it perfect for seeing for the first time.’ There was a hint of bitterness in his voice then, and Marnie averted her face, knowing it was probably meant for her.
So, Guy had created this heavenly place for her. The tears grew hotter, burning her eyes as she let them wander over all the other achingly familiar things placed neatly about the room, her emotions in a state of numbing confusion. Shock, surprise, pleasure, pain. And, raking under all of that, suspicion of his motives.
Was this her ivory tower, then? she wondered. The place Guy had always wanted to hide her right away?
‘My wife—mine!’ He could have been standing right beside her as those fiercely possessive words shot right out of the past to grate fiercely on her senses. He had said them the day they were married, when he took her in his arms for the first time as his wife.
‘My son is not guilty of the terrible crime you believe of him, Marnie,’ Roberto dropped into the throbbing silence.
She tensed up. ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about,’ she dismissed coldly.
Roberto shook his silver head, leaning
with the aid of both hands on his elegant walking stick. ‘I may be old, my dear,’ he murmured drily, ‘but I am not senile. And nor am I so surrendered to my infirmity that I am incapable of finding out for myself those things I wish to know.’
Like father, like son, she recognised bitterly. Of course Roberto would have left no stone unturned in his determination to discover why his son’s marriage fell apart so dramatically. When Roberto had retired from business, he had done so because he was weary of the constant race for power, not because he was no longer capable of winning the race.
‘And,’ he went on grimly, ‘there were plenty of people present at the fated party willing to relay events as they saw them—not good people,’ he conceded to her bitter look. ‘But knowledgeable people, none the less.’
‘Then you know the truth,’ she clipped, and turned away to stare unseeing out of the window, her hair like living flame around her pale face where the sun caught it. ‘I would have spared you that, Roberto,’ she added bleakly.
‘As I said,’ he agreed, ‘they were not good people. They did not consider an old man’s feelings in their eagerness to please his curiosity. But,’ he went on, ‘on knowing the truth you believe, Marnie, my dear, I then have to ask myself why you are allowing yourself to become tied to a man who could so callously use you in that way? Which is why I brought you here,’ he added before she could answer. ‘I see a recipe for disaster broiling up between you and my son for a second time, and I cannot—will not allow it to happen!’
‘Roberto!’ she sighed, turning impatiently. ‘You can’t—’
‘My son, Marnie, is using your brother and the delicate condition of his wife to coerce you into marrying him again.’ He held up a silencing hand when she went to gainsay it. ‘It is no use denying it,’ he stated. ‘I saw the truth written in your eyes when I quizzed you earlier in my study. You only confirmed my initial suspicions. But, on doing so, I knew I had to act. For, just as I cannot allow Guy to do that to you, nor can I allow you to go on believing a lie cleverly staged for your benefit by wicked and bored people who believe fun can only be gained at the expense of someone else’s happiness!’
‘But that’s all crazy!’ she cried, pulling herself together because she suddenly realised that Roberto meant business here. She could see it in the hard flash of his eyes—hints of the ruthless man he used to be before he bestowed all his power on to his son. ‘Guy and I are marrying because we find we still love each other!’ she insisted, and wondered why the lie did not feel like a lie. ‘The past is over! We’ve come to terms with it and decided to put it all aside! That’s all, Roberto!’
‘With a four-year-old lie festering between you?’ he challenged harshly. ‘May I sit down?’
‘Oh, goodness! Of course!’ Instantly she was all concern when she realised just how long he had been standing on that bad leg. She darted across the room and pulled out a chair for him, then went to help him into it.
‘Ah, that’s better,’ he sighed, then gave his weakened leg an impatient slap. ‘You have no idea how much I hate this incapacity!’ he complained. ‘It makes me want to hit something!’
‘You just did,’ she said, grinning teasingly at him. ‘Your poor leg.’
Roberto grimaced, then smiled himself, and thankfully some of the tension between them faded away—but only for a moment. Roberto caught her wrist as Marnie went to move away again, his grip urgent.
‘I brought you here, Marnie, in the hope that seeing this beautiful place my son created for you would soften your heart enough to let you listen to the story I want to tell you. Will you?’ He gave the wrist a pleading shake. ‘Will you at least listen to what I have to say?’
‘Oh, Roberto.’ Sighing, she twisted her wrist free. ‘Why can’t you just leave well alone?’
‘Because it just is not good enough!’ he grunted. ‘Not now. Not when you and Guy are embarking on yet another road to disaster! The truth must come out, Marnie. And the truth is that Guy was so drunk that night you caught him with that woman, he had no idea she was there!’
‘My God, Roberto, will you stop it?’ she cried, the pain that vision resurrected almost making her sway.
‘They saw you enter the party,’ he pushed on regardless. ‘Fowler and Anthea Cole. They set you up for that tasty little bedroom scene. Fowler hated you because you turned him down when he tried to proposition you. And Anthea hated you because you took her lover away from her! They wanted to see you bleed!’
And they did! Marnie thought as she reeled away from Roberto’s fiercely sincere gaze. ‘That’s enough!’ she whispered painfully. ‘You are making Guy out to be a blind and gullible fool by saying all of this. And really I don’t think he would appreciate it!’
‘Too true,’ a coldly sardonic voice drawled.
CHAPTER TEN
MARNIE swung round sharply to find Guy standing in the open doorway, the sheer strength of his anger filling the whole aperture.
Roberto muttered something. Then after that there was complete silence, the tension so thick you could almost taste it as Guy flicked his angry gaze from one to the other of them several times before finally settling on Marnie’s paste-white features.
‘Please leave us, Father,’ he said, stepping away from the door in a pointed way which had Roberto struggling to his feet and limping towards it.
But he halted when he drew level with his son. ‘She has a right to know the truth!’ he insisted harshly. ‘What you are both doing to each other is wrong! And the truth must come out!’
‘I asked you not to interfere in this,’ Guy said tightly. ‘I did think I had your trust!’
‘You have, son, you have,’ Roberto sighed wearily. ‘What I find sad, though, is that I do not have yours.’
Guy relented a little at his father’s crestfallen expression, reaching out a hand to squeeze the old gentleman’s shoulder. ‘Leave us,’ he urged quietly. ‘Please.’
‘The truth, Guy,’ Roberto insisted grimly. ‘The only way forward for both of you is through the truth.’
Guy just nodded. And Roberto limped out of the door, leaving them alone and facing each other across the sun-filled room.
Marnie turned her back to Guy, unable to continue looking at him while her mind was running frantically over everything Roberto had said to her. She didn’t want to believe him. In fact, she could see what a clever little let-out a story like that could be for someone caught in the situation Guy had been caught in. Yet Guy himself had never tried to excuse his behaviour by feeding her the same story. Or had he? she thought suddenly, her mind filtering back to a scene on the same night she had caught him with Anthea. A scene when she was wild with pain and the bitter humiliation of one who had discovered the very worst about her own husband. When she had flown at him with her nails, and Guy, white-faced and trying desperately to hold her still in front of him, had said something very similar to her. And drunk, she remembered. He had still been half drunk when he had turned up at the apartment that night, could hardly hold himself up straight when he’d lurched into the room.
She heard the quiet closing of the door behind her, then Guy’s footsteps sounding on the tiled floor as he crossed the room. Her nerves began to buzz, and she stiffened slightly, not sure what was going to happen next.
She saw, from the corner of her eye, him go to the wide white porcelain sink in one corner and turn on the taps. It was then she realised that he must have come straight from the workshop, because, although he was still wearing the clothes he had travelled down in, he had rid himself of the dark jumper and had rolled back the cuffs of his shirtsleeves to his elbows.
His back was to her, and she turned slightly to watch him take up the bottle of liquid cleaner she used to clean the paint from her fingers, and squeeze some into the palm of his grease-covered hands.
‘Well,’ he said after a moment, ‘what do you think of this place?’ He didn’t turn, his attention fixed firmly on removing the grease from his long blunt-ended fingers.
‘Why?’ she asked. ‘Why did you build it?’
‘As a place you could be happy.’ He shrugged, rubbing his hands under the running tap to wash away the dirt. ‘I thought,’ he went on, reaching for the roll of paper towel and tearing off several squares, ‘I thought that if I could create a place beautiful enough for you—somewhere here at Oaklands where you could paint, away from the rest of what goes on here, somewhere you could call entirely your own and even pretend it was miles from anywhere if you wanted to feel that isolated—then maybe you would lose that restless urge you have always possessed to be taking off somewhere alone.’
‘An artist’s life by necessity is a wandering one, Guy,’ she pointed out. ‘We need time and space to work to our best potential.’
‘Well, here I give you both,’ he murmured simply.
‘No.’ Marnie shook her head. ‘You will give me the time and the space to work. You always gave me those things before. But this time you want to take away my right to find inspiration where it takes me. You want to imprison me here!’
‘Ah!’ He threw away the paper towel, smiling ruefully as he walked over to stand beside her. ‘Your precious commissions,’ he realised. ‘But did you not tell me once, Marnie, that you could paint this valley for a hundred years and never go short of fresh inspiration? Well, now I give you that opportunity.’ He waved an expressive hand. ‘Paint—paint to your heart’s content. The valley awaits your gifted touch.’
‘While you do what exactly?’ she snapped. ‘Go back to London? Coming down here to visit your contented wife only when the whim takes you?’
‘Do you want me to be here more than the odd weekend?’ he challenged.
She didn’t answer—found she hadn’t got one. Not one she would admit to, anyway. ‘Roberto is right,’ she murmured after a while. ‘We have to both be crazy to be considering returning to that kind of sham again.’
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