Emerald Mistress

by Lynne Graham

  ‘At the beginning he was mad about me…he was!’ Alice muttered painfully. ‘He was always sending me cheeky texts. I thought he loved me. I thought you and he had been together so long he was bored, and that he was never going to marry you anyway.’

  ‘You may well have been right.’

  ‘No, I was telling myself what I wanted to believe. I certainly know different now.’ Fresh tears welled up in her sibling’s eyes. ‘Luke never stops comparing me to you. You’ve been with him since you were students. How am I supposed to compete?’

  ‘What’s Eva got to say about all this?’

  Alice loosed a tight, bitter laugh. ‘Mum? What do you think? She doesn’t want to know. She never does want to know when things go wrong. She’s furious that the wedding is being postponed, and she says it’ll never be on again. Last month she threw a big party for us in Paris, and introduced Luke as my fiancé. Now she’s telling me that the wedding cancellation will embarrass her and that I need to learn how to hang on to a man!’

  Her sister wailed the last sentence and then started crying again. Recognising that the tears were more half-hearted than serious this time around, Harriet passed her the box of tissues and went off to make tea. She had been planning to tell Alice about Rafael, but now felt that it really wasn’t the right moment. She knew her sibling well enough to suspect that telling Alice about her own happiness would only make the younger woman feel more wretched than ever.

  Over the tea, Alice gave her elder sister a discomfited appraisal. ‘I’ve really missed having you to talk to. I never meant to hurt you…it just happened. I was mad about him, and so jealous of you for so long—’

  ‘How long?’

  Alice twisted a long strand of blonde hair round her finger and grimaced. ‘I suppose it really started when I was seventeen. Luke used to tease me a lot. He knew I fancied him, and he liked it, so there was always this flirting thing going on between us. But I felt bad about that, so I began to act all snooty and superior when we met, and he hated that. It gave me a kick.’

  Harriet was disturbed to appreciate just how young Alice had been when she’d first formed an interest in Luke. She could vaguely recall Luke teasing her little sister. She had thought nothing of it at the time, and had paid more heed to the seeming hostility that had eventually replaced the banter. Now it occurred to her that Luke had taken advantage of the girl.

  ‘As for when the affair started…About six months before you caught us together I called round one evening to see you, but you were away on business.’ Having begun, Alice could not stop confessing. ‘Luke invited me in for a drink, and I had too much and he kissed me…and it went from there…’

  Harriet didn’t want the tacky details. ‘We don’t need to talk about that. But, whatever happens between you and Luke, you and I will still be sisters and we can stay close.’

  ‘Not if Luke dumps me and goes back to you.’

  ‘Alice…you’re assuming that I want him back, and I don’t, so please get that idea out of your mind.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Alice compressed tremulous lips and dropped her head.

  Harriet thought it was unfortunate that she was not in a position to convince Alice that Luke was bad news for her. But the evidence was clear to see. Luke had stolen her sister’s confidence and turned her into a nervous wreck, racked with self-doubt. All her life until now Alice had been a golden girl, who led a charmed existence. The experience did not appear to have taught Alice the survival skills she needed now.

  ‘I’m at the other end of the phone whenever you need me,’ Harriet told her gently. ‘You’re also welcome to come and stay with me in Ballyflynn.’

  ‘That’s kind of you.’ Alice loosed a plaintive sigh. ‘But it would be all mud and horses, and I’m not a country girl at heart.’

  A couple of hours later, Harriet knocked on the door of her mother’s hotel suite. She was surprised when Gustav let her in. A tall, spare man, with thinning blond hair, her mother’s third husband rarely accompanied his wife to London, and as a result he was almost a stranger to Harriet.

  ‘Eva is lying down…this has been a traumatic time for her,’ the older man remarked stiffly.

  Harriet felt that the postponement and possible cancellation of Luke and Alice’s wedding had been rather more traumatic for Alice than for her mother. But she was also well-acquainted with Eva’s ability to persuade people that she was an immensely fragile and sensitive individual, who had to be protected at all costs from every ill wind.

  ‘I want you to promise that you will say nothing further to upset her,’ Gustav added in an anxious undertone. ‘I appreciate that this is very difficult for you as well…’

  ‘How for me? Oh, sorry—you mean with me having once been engaged to Luke,’ Harriet gathered wryly. ‘I’m well over that. In fact, I’m even reaching the conclusion that Alice may have saved me from making the biggest mistake of my life.’

  ‘Luke?’ He studied her in visible bewilderment. ‘Forgive me, but what do Luke and Alice have to do with this? It is Boyce’s intrusion into what is a very confidential matter that has caused your mother such distress.’

  ‘Boyce?’ Belatedly Harriet understood what her mother’s husband was trying to tell her. She froze. Evidently her half-brother had kept his promise to speak to Eva about Harriet’s need to know who her father was. She was astonished, for their conversation on that issue had been brief, even casual, and she had not really expected Boyce to make good on his pledge to lend her his support.

  ‘Yes, Boyce. It was fortunate that I overheard the discussion between your brother and my wife and realised what was happening. Quite understandably, Eva was distraught.’ Gustav managed to lend more than a hint of reproach and censure to that statement. He gazed his fill at Harriet’s pallor and, apparently satisfied that she was suitably impressed by his words of warning, then opened the door to let her enter the sitting room.

  The blinds had been lowered to screen out the harsh sunlight, and it took a moment or two for Harriet’s eyes to adjust to the comparative dimness. Eva was reclining on the sofa. Dressed in the ultimate little black dress, her mother looked very delicate and vulnerable.

  ‘How are you?’ Dry-mouthed, Harriet hovered, scarcely able to credit that finally she might be about to learn something about her paternal genes. ‘I’m really sorry if Boyce upset you—’

  ‘Do you think I don’t know that you put him up to it?’ her mother shot back at her accusingly.

  ‘We have talked about this, my dear,’ Gustav interposed, in the very mildest of tones. ‘As it is natural for Harriet to be curious, so it is appropriate for you to satisfy that curiosity. After that has taken place, I am certain that Harriet will agree with me that the subject need never be referred to again.’

  Harriet had been wishing the older man would practise tact and leave her alone with her parent. After that speech, however, she wondered if it was only thanks to his involvement that Eva had at last been persuaded to speak.

  ‘Do you have to stand over me?’ Eva enquired petulantly of her daughter.

  ‘Sorry…’ Harriet dropped down hurriedly on to the edge of the nearest armchair.

  ‘Before I tell you anything at all, I want you to promise me that nothing I say will go further than this room,’ Eva decreed.

  Harriet’s brow pleated. ‘But why on earth—?’

  ‘I believe that your mother’s request for discretion is reasonable,’ Gustav commented.

  Harriet was so tense that she would have agreed to virtually anything, but she could not help thinking that that particular demand was unfair and perverse. Surely whatever information she received should be hers to do with as she liked?

  ‘If you won’t give me your word, I will refuse to tell you anything,’ Eva declared.

  Harriet breathed in deep and swore that she would treat any information that she was given with the utmost discretion. She was surprised when her mother became less tense, and wondered what the heck she was about to be
told that could require such a mantle of confidentiality…

  Gustav positioned himself carefully behind the sofa and leant over it to rest a supportive hand on his wife’s narrow shoulder. Eva unfurled a minute lace handkerchief in one hand and whispered, ‘Please remember how young I was when I fell pregnant with you.’

  ‘Only seventeen years old,’ Gustav chimed in, unnecessarily.

  Faster than the speed of light, Harriet’s usually stable nerves had rushed up the scale to overwrought. She repressed a strong urge to point out that she was well aware of that fact, and had never demonstrated the smallest desire to be judgemental about the circumstances of her birth.

  ‘I should first tell you that the man who got me into trouble…’ Eva utilised that outdated phrase with a little moue of distaste ‘…is no longer alive.’

  Harriet swallowed hard on a surge of piercing disappointment. It had never really occurred to her before that her birth father might be dead. Yet her conception had taken place nearly thirty years ago, she reminded herself.

  ‘He was a great deal older than I was…more than twice my age,’ Eva explained flatly. ‘But a very handsome and sophisticated man. He knew exactly how to make an impression on the naive young woman I was in those days.’

  The silence spread and spread.

  ‘What happened?’ Harriet pressed.

  ‘I worked part-time in the village shop. Sometimes he came in to buy cigarettes, and we would laugh and chat. One day when it was raining he stopped to offer me a lift when I was walking home. I was flattered by his interest,’ her mother divulged in a constricted voice, ‘and when he asked me to meet him of course it had to be a secret, because my father was very strict. I should have known better—’

  As Eva broke off her recitation with the hint of a stifled sob, Gustav swiftly abandoned his stance behind the sofa. Sitting down beside Harriet’s slender mother, he grasped her hand in a gesture of encouragement. ‘He was the type of man who preyed on young girls. How were you to recognise that?’

  ‘I’m so glad that you understand.’ Eva rested enormous blue eyes on her husband and spoke as though they were alone together. ‘I’d heard whispers about how he’d treated his wife, but I paid no heed. Although the church didn’t recognise his divorce from her, I did think of him as a single man.’

  ‘Naturally you would.’ Harriet was feeling rather superlative to the proceedings. She could not comprehend why her mother’s husband was taking the leading role in a matter which she felt was really nothing to do with him.

  Eva held on fast to Gustav’s hand and looked across at her daughter, her eyes unexpectedly hard in her beautiful face. ‘There’s nothing new or exciting in my story, I’m afraid. Your father said he loved me. He said he wanted to marry me and I believed him. I was hopelessly infatuated with him. When I realised I was pregnant, I went straight to him. I was so innocent I believed that he would be pleased. Do you know what he said?’

  Encountering her mother’s cold, challenging gaze, Harriet felt most uncomfortable and shook her head. ‘I have no idea.’

  ‘He said that the baby I carried was nothing to do with him and suggested that I must have been intimate with other men.’

  ‘Now perhaps you can understand why your mother wanted to forget what happened to her almost thirty years ago.’ Gustav exuded the grave disapproval of a man with far from liberal views. ‘It may be a cliché, but Eva was seduced with lies and deserted.’

  ‘Horrible…’ Harriet wondered if she was being super-sensitive in feeling that her unknown father’s sins had somehow become hers.

  ‘I never saw him or heard from him again. I ran away from home and caught the ferry to England.’

  ‘When did he die?’

  Eva pursed her lips and then shrugged a delicate shoulder. ‘It was quite recent. In fact it was only a few months ago. But please don’t get the idea that I deprived you of the chance of knowing him. He wouldn’t have admitted you were his. He would have refused to have anything to do with you.’

  ‘If anything, your mother was protecting you from the hurt of that knowledge and rejection,’ Gustav opined. ‘Regrettably, your father was not a pleasant character.’

  Harriet studied the older man with an unease she tried to conceal. ‘You seem to know a lot about my background.’

  ‘I have no secrets from Gustav,’ Eva proclaimed.

  Harriet tried not to think of the secrets that had been kept from her. ‘May I ask what my father’s name was?’

  ‘Cavaliere.’ Eva tilted her chin as she said that name. ‘Now perhaps you’ll understand why I want your parentage to remain a secret.’

  As still as a stone carving, Harriet stared with fixed attention at the older woman. She could not credit that she had heard a name she recognised and, of all names, that particular one which had such deep personal significance. ‘Cavaliere?’ She had to say it twice before sound actually emerged from her lips. ‘Cavaliere?’

  ‘Valente Cavaliere. I dare say you’ve never heard of him,’ Eva contended brightly. ‘But in his day he was a famous international tycoon. He married the daughter of the big house outside Ballyflynn and divorced her when she had an affair. She was always ill. He used to visit with his child.’

  Gustav was frowning with distaste. ‘Cavaliere was a notorious womaniser. In his lifetime he was involved in some very sordid scandals.’

  Harriet was so rigid with tension that she was afraid a sudden movement might break her into a host of little pieces. Her mother had referred to Valente Cavaliere’s fame in a bright, almost boastful tone that was horribly inappropriate. Tension pounded behind her brow. Unable to think straight, she sat as if she was frozen in time. Cavaliere. That name had gone into her mind and there it lodged, like a ship caught in a whirlpool. Round and round the name went inside her buzzing head, and her skin turned clammy, perspiration beading her short upper lip.

  ‘You remind me of your father. You always have,’ Eva said almost sweetly. ‘You have the same problem with your weight.’

  ‘Valente Cavaliere?’ With pronounced care, Harriet vocalised every syllable of that name. ‘You’re saying that he was the man who got you pregnant…. my father?’

  ‘Haven’t I just told you so?’

  ‘There’s a great deal for Harriet to take in, my dear,’ Gustav said quietly.

  Harriet parted numb lips. ‘Yes. Are you absolutely sure that Valente was my father?’

  ‘Now you’re being horribly rude and insulting! How dare you?’ Two spots of feverish pink adorning her taut cheekbones, Eva rose up in a sudden movement that took both her companions by surprise and stalked out of the room.

  ‘You’re very shocked. Eva can’t have understood that,’ Gustav sighed. ‘Perhaps you can now see why your mother asked for discretion. She has a real dread of her secret being exposed. Cavaliere had an unsavoury reputation, and she can’t face being associated with him in that way.’

  Harriet said nothing. She did not trust her voice or her temper. It seemed to her that there was no proper acknowledgement of how she might feel. She got up to leave.

  The older man went through the polite motions of offering her tea and suggesting she wait for her mother to join them again. But Harriet sensed that he was keen to close the chapter and the entire episode. He wasn’t comfortable with emotional scenes. She was walking out of the hotel with no idea where she was going when her mobile phone buzzed. It was Boyce.

  ‘I tried to speak to Mum about your long-lost father,’ her half-brother began. ‘But it went pearshaped on me…’

  ‘Did it?’ she said dully.

  ‘I had no idea that Gustav was working in the room next door and was able to hear every word I said. It was a bloodbath! Mum started crying, and Gustav came wading in, and I had to drop the subject.’

  ‘Of course you did.’

  ‘To be frank, I don’t fancy tackling Mum again. She has Gustav wrapped round her little finger, and I would prefer not to have to tell him to mind his own busine
ss. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Don’t worry about it. It’s really not that important.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Totally.’ She snatched in a deep, trembling breath. ‘Did Mum tell you anything at all?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Did you mention Rafael to Mum?’

  ‘No. You know what’s she like. She didn’t want me to go to Ireland, so she wasn’t interested in hearing a word about what went on there.’

  ‘That’s good. Do me a favour—don’t mention Rafael. It’s…er…him and me…well, it’s over,’ she said jerkily.

  ‘Is it? Was the two-week holiday the kiss of death? I have to admit I’m surprised. By the way, my offer to buy Slieveross has been accepted.’

  ‘Oh, that’s wonderful news…’

  He soon rang off, and she put her phone back in her bag. Until someone passing by stared at her she did not realise that her face was wet with tears, and she worked hard at pulling herself back together. Her thoughts tried to travel straight to the heart of the agony growing at a steady rate inside her. But she was convinced that if she acknowledged that agony it would drive her off the edge of sanity. How could the world be so small? And how could fate be so horribly cruel that what she most valued and needed and loved had become what would ultimately destroy her? Feeling raw emotions starting to pull at her, she shut down that dangerous inner turbulence and made herself think instead in small, simple steps that only stretched a little way ahead.

  She did not even need a plan of action. After all, she knew what had to be done, didn’t she? Rafael would be waiting for her at his city apartment. She had to break off their relationship. Immediately. There was no need to tell him what her mother had told her. No need whatsoever. News like that he could definitely do without. It wouldn’t change anything, or make the facts any more palatable. Valente Cavaliere had blighted his son’s life practically from birth. Rafael could live without another score to add to Valente’s considerable tally. She could protect Rafael from knowing the unbearable truth and of having to live with it as she would have to. Wasn’t that the best she could do for Rafael? Wasn’t that the only way left to show her love?