A few rapid words in Italian to his father, and to Portia, tonelessly, ‘I have to go. Please stay until the nurse returns.’
She watched him stride from the room with a peculiar mixture of relief and loss—glad to see him leave, yet desperately wanting him to stay—and wondered if the awful situation she found herself in was making her lose what little brainpower she did have.
‘Shall I take him, Signor Verdi, if he’s tiring you?’ she asked, determined to do her very best to concentrate on poor Vito’s sick father and put her own troubles firmly to the back of her mind.
‘He’s not tiring me in the least. He is my grandson! And please, Portia, less of the Signor Verdi. I would prefer it if you would use my given name.’ He gave her a level, kindly look. ‘You and I have much to say to each other. But first—’ his dark eyes gleamed mischievously ‘—do you think you could let a little light into this room, while my jailor’s away? I object to living in such gloom.’
‘Of course!’ Portia sprang to her feet, her spirits lifting. Eduardo’s views coincided exactly with her own. The battle-axe nurse must have decreed that the poor old gentleman lived in semi-darkness, and that couldn’t be good for anyone.
As she turned from flooding the room with welcome full daylight she noted that Eduardo didn’t look sick at all. He actually looked quite perky, and younger than she’d imagined him to be when they’d met last evening. In his late fifties, maybe?
Emboldened by his smile of approval, she slid open the glass doors that led directly onto the terrace and breathed in the warm air, the scent of a myriad blossoms.
‘I’m not a trained medic,’ she confided with a broad smile that made her face incandescent, ‘but I’m sure fresh air and sunlight can’t do any harm.’
‘Just what I’ve been telling that wretched woman Lucenzo insisted on hiring!’ he agreed vehemently. ‘Her ideas are as outdated as the dodo. And don’t think I haven’t tried to get rid of her—I have. But, so she informs me, she takes her orders only from Lucenzo!’
‘I expect he thinks he’s doing what’s best for you,’ Portia soothed, sympathising with every word he said but not wanting to see him getting too agitated. ‘I’ll have a word with him. I know I’d get depressed if I were shut away in a darkened room! I’m sure you’d benefit from a little stimulation, too—a few gentle outings. I’ll tell him so.’
And so she would. She might be easy-going, but she could get quite fierce over things she felt strongly about. Though getting Lucenzo to agree with her opinions might be uphill work.
‘And talking of outings—’ she gestured impulsively to the open glass doors ‘—shall we?’
‘Why not?’
His delighted grin, the way he shouted for joy when he managed to release the brake, confirmed Portia’s opinion that she was doing the right thing. She pushed the wheelchair to the far end of the long terrace, parking it beneath the dappled shade of a canopy of vines, perching herself on the stone balustrading right next to him so that she could keep her eyes on her baby, who was expressing his delight in the outing by vigorously waving his arms and legs in the air. Like a fat little beetle on its back, she thought fondly.
‘You have a beautiful home,’ she said appreciatively, ‘and I’ve never seen anything to touch these gardens. You know something? If someone could construct a temporary ramp over those steps for your chair we could take a stroll each morning before it gets too hot, all three of us.’
‘Bless you!’ His voice sounded rough round the edges and his dark eyes were suddenly suspiciously bright. ‘Portia, my dear, I swear you’re better than any tonic! A ramp for the terrace steps sounds like a splendid idea—but I warn you, I’ll be on my feet in no time and taking this little fellow fishing as soon as he can walk! And as for my family home—it’s your home now.’
Which sounded as though he believed their stay here would be permanent, Portia thought sinkingly. How could she tell him that it wasn’t, that she’d be taking his grandson back to England? Tell him she must, of course. But later, when she was sure he was stronger.
Sam was getting restless now, and, glad of the distraction, Portia swallowed the lump in her throat and took him from Eduardo’s arms, holding him over her shoulder, patting his back, rocking him.
He was due for a feed, but Lucenzo had told her to stay with his father until the nurse reappeared and she could hardly leave Eduardo on his own. So it was with some relief when she saw Assunta appear through the sliding doors. She could grandpa-sit!
‘What a happy picture you all make! I’m glad to see you enjoying the air, signor. I will take the little one. It is time.’
With a pang, Portia relinquished her tiny son. But he’d be fine with Assunta, she knew that, and wondered if she’d always feel this possessive, as if she couldn’t bear to be parted from him, even for a second.
‘Assunta will take every care of him,’ Eduardo said gently, as if he knew exactly what she was feeling. ‘She was a young girl when she came to us and has been with us ever since. She looked after Lucenzo almost from the first—Vittorio, too. I think she was both mother and father to them. I, alas, didn’t see as much of either of them as I should have done.
‘Apart from burying myself in my work at the bank, Lucenzo was away at school and, as I expect Vito told you, his mother and I parted ways when he was young. I made the mistake of allowing her to take him back to her homeland—your country. Naturally, he made regular visits throughout his growing years, but it wasn’t the same. I should never have allowed her to have custody. I could easily have stopped it. A son is a son, after all. Important.’
Would he place the same importance on a grandson? Portia thought with a plummeting heart. Would the united power of the Verdi family come into play when she announced her intention to take her son back to England, dragging her endlessly through the courts, as Lucenzo had threatened they would?
‘But enough of that.’ Eduardo regarded her smilingly before his mouth straightened. ‘I want to apologise for the way my family behaved at dinner last night. They are good-hearted people, but once they get an idea in their heads it gets stuck there. When I heard of your existence, that you’d given birth to Vittorio’s child, I had no such preconceptions. I wanted to meet you before I made up my mind as to your motivations and character. Just one look at you, a few minutes’ conversation, and anyone with a grain of sense would know you weren’t a scheming minx with her eye on the main chance! Give them time and they’ll come to their senses—or have me to answer to! I may be confined to this chair at the moment but I am still head of this family!’
‘Oh, please—’ Portia was appalled. ‘I don’t want to be the cause of any bad feelings. It doesn’t matter; it really doesn’t,’ she objected miserably.
‘It matters,’ Eduardo asserted stoutly, and then, more softly, ‘You have nothing to be ashamed of. Vito must have loved you deeply. You and he would have been married as soon as his divorce came through—it is what he would have intended. I know—knew—my son.’
His voice faltered briefly and Portia felt her heart clench with sympathy, admiring the strength of his character when he cleared his throat and continued firmly, ‘I knew he wasn’t remotely in love with his wife, and Lorna certainly wasn’t in love with him. It was fairly common knowledge. That marriage was unsatisfactory right from the start. But what can one do? Or say? You can’t live your children’s lives for them. You have to let them make their own mistakes and hope they learn from them.’
Portia swallowed jerkily. This was awful—almost as bad as the way Lucenzo viewed her: with suspicion and contempt. Like Assunta, Eduardo was seeing her affair with Vito as high romance; they didn’t know he had lied to her, deceived her in the cruellest way possible.
She certainly couldn’t shatter their illusions, which meant that her presence here was shoring up a lie. She vented a silent sigh, and was almost glad to see the hatchet face of Eduardo’s nurse as she stamped towards them and wheeled her resigned charge away with a voll
ey of staccato Italian grumblings.
Portia was very afraid she’d got Eduardo into big trouble. She should have thought things through, she decided guiltily, biting her lip, asked before she took matters into her own hands in her usual reckless fashion.
Unable to face watching Assunta feed and change little Sam while her own state of mind was in such wretched turmoil, she walked down the steps from the terrace between banks of perfumed roses. The sky was a perfect blue, the sun growing hotter and the gardens were silent apart from the sound of her feet on the narrow gravel paths that bordered the formal beds.
She had the place to herself and that helped to calm her, just a little. Lucenzo had disappeared, poor Eduardo would be shut away in that gloomy room, and the others would probably be getting ready for lunch—drinking cocktails or whatever the super-rich did to pass the morning. Whatever happened, she would not be joining them. She had enough to think about without having to squirm beneath more of their cold contempt.
Coming across a stone fountain in the centre of the paved square from which all the narrow paths radiated, she held a hand beneath the cool tumbling water, breathed in deeply and released the pent-up air on a long sigh.
And jumped two feet in the air when a lean, lightly tanned hand clamped down on her shoulder and Lucenzo said drily, ‘Sighing for your sins?’
The pressure of his fingers increased as he swung her round to face him, and a sensation of hot breathlessness swamped her, making any kind of response impossible. In the sunlight his dark eyes glinted with mesmerising silver lights, holding her immobile. She just stared at him, unable to look away, her throat going hot and dry.
She swallowed hard and flicked her tongue over her arid lips, forcing herself to say something, anything, just so he wouldn’t know how strangely he affected her.
‘You made me jump.’
‘So I saw. Guilty conscience?’ he asked impassively, then coolly elaborated in the dry drawl that made every inch of her skin prickle and burn. ‘I’ve come from speaking with my father and receiving a catalogue of complaints from his nurse.’
‘Oh, goodness!’ Portia’s face went pale. ‘You mustn’t blame him; it was all my fault,’ she mumbled guiltily, looking at the ground and wishing it would swallow her up. ‘I suggested we went outside. Is he all right? You haven’t upset him, have you?’
Lucenzo’s mouth curved as he regarded the top of her downbent head. ‘He’s fine. He’s with his physiotherapist at the moment and looking brighter and happier than I’ve seen him since we heard of Vittorio’s accident.’
The shoulders that had been hunched up around Portia’s neck slowly relaxed. At least it didn’t sound as if she’d earned Eduardo a lecture. He wouldn’t be looking bright and happy if she had.
The ‘catalogue of complaints’ must have been directed at her, which was fair enough. She lifted her head and fixed her eyes on his. ‘I’m not going to apologise for taking your father out onto the terrace—’ she stated firmly.
‘No one’s asking you to.’ The firm mouth quirked. ‘Except, perhaps, his nurse. And she’s been gently put in her place. From now on, until he’s back on his feet, he’s to have a good dose of fresh air and sunshine. Every morning. And in your company—yours and Sam’s.’
It was the first time he’d called her baby by his given name. Up until now he’d referred to him as Vittorio’s child, almost in denial of her own existence as the baby’s mother. So did that mean he was growing to accept her?
Her heart swelled with pleasure at the mere thought, but when she felt the colour rush back into her face she told herself not to be so darn stupid. She flicked her eyes away from him and turned round to face the fountain, blocking him out because he was looking at her with such a strange intensity it made all her bones go weak.
Lucenzo fought back the urge to manhandle her, to force her to face him again so that he could see every nuance of expression on her face, find the elusive truth.
His father thought she ought to be wearing a halo, had said she was the best thing to happen to him in longer than he could remember. But that could have a lot to do with holding his first grandchild, the unexpected freedom of an hour in the open air. Which, he admitted heavily, was partly his own fault.
He’d been so intent on following the regime the hired nurse had prescribed to the letter, believing she knew best, he hadn’t looked at things from the invalid’s viewpoint. Vittorio’s woman had. For one reason or another.
He recalled the way she’d been at her first meeting with his father, the completely natural way she’d broken the ice between them, sitting at his feet, fishing those photographs out of her handbag, chattering nineteen to the dozen as if they’d known each other for years.
Why? Because she had a schemer’s natural instinct and ability to wheedle her way into her target’s affections? Or was what you saw what you got? A naive innocent whose only ambition was to be everybody’s best friend?
He said, perhaps more brusquely than he’d intended, ‘You’ve made a good impression on my father. I value him; we all do. So, whatever your reasons, be sure you keep it up. I won’t see him disillusioned or hurt.’
Portia roughly swallowed around the thick lump that had immediately risen in her throat. So much for him growing to accept her—that ‘whatever your reasons’ said it all, didn’t it just? He was light years away from trusting her, let alone accepting her into his exalted family.
And then he added, ‘That phone call was to let me know Nonna is ready to be collected. She’s looking forward to meeting you at lunch and visiting the nursery to see Vittorio’s child.’
Her stomach turned right over, making her feel quite ill. She did not want to have lunch with the Verdi family, or meet this Nonna person, whoever she might be, and endure another dose of hostile scrutiny—and Sam was back to being ‘Vittorio’s child’!
When she could trust herself to speak she turned, and, lower lip trembling, said what had to be said, ‘I can’t stay here.’
‘Repeat that,’ he ordered after a beat of total silence, his voice cold and cutting, his face a grim mask. To Portia he looked horribly threatening, not at all prepared to listen to reason.
Inwardly quailing, she nevertheless set her chin at a challenging angle. ‘You heard! I’ll stay for a couple of weeks—just for your father’s sake. And I’ll make it right with him before I take Sam back to England; I swear I will.’
Lucenzo stiffened. What game was she playing now? She’d already twisted his father round her little finger; she could live here in luxury, with servants to cater to her every whim. What more did she want?
His eyes narrowed as he bit out, ‘I’ve already warned you of what will happen if you threaten to remove the child. You knew that before you arrived here. You are here because my father wanted it, not by my wish.’ Grim eyes bored into her skull, as if he were trying to get into her mind. ‘But now you are here you will stay. If you’ve got demands to make then make them now, but I warn you, I will not give in easily to blackmail.’
Portia’s eyes widened in horror. Did he really think she was going to demand payment before she’d agree to stay on? She gave a mortified groan and whispered wretchedly, ‘I’m not trying to blackmail anyone! You must see this is all a dreadful mistake! My being here at all must put an awful strain on your family. They’re grieving for Vito and I don’t want to add to their distress—and just think what it must be like for Vito’s poor widow, having to see me and his child!’
Tears were falling now and she couldn’t see him properly. His outline was blurry, receding and then looming closer. She scrubbed her eyes angrily, wanting to be calm and sensible but knowing she was losing it as all her mental turmoil surged to the surface, bubbling over.
‘Eduardo thinks—he thinks Vito loved me, and would have married me when—when he and Lorna parted,’ she wailed unsteadily. ‘How could I tell him the truth? It’s—kinder to let him keep his illusions, isn’t it? And as for the rest of you—looking down your super
ior noses at me and thinking I’m out for all I can get—well, I guess even you have hearts that are hurting over Vito’s death, so why should I be here, making it harder? It’s an impossible situation for all concerned.’
Portia put shaky fingers to her eyes to swipe the wretched tears away, deeply irritated with herself, wishing she could control her emotions. Or, better still, not have any!
He had moved closer. It hadn’t just been the effects of her distorted vision. Too close. Her drenched eyes connected with Lucenzo’s shimmering lancet gaze and held. He could make what he liked of what she’d said, argue until he was blue in the face and make his vile threats. She wouldn’t change her mind.
Her outburst had been unexpected. It had shaken him. Either her distress was genuine or she was a truly brilliant actress. A slight frown line appeared between his eyes, deepening as he asked, ‘What is the truth about your relationship with my brother?’
Scorn lifted her chin a fraction higher, narrowed her eyes. So now he was asking? Because she’d called his bluff and stated her intention of leaving? Never once had he expressed an interest in her side of the sorry story. He had just decided in that intimidating, arrogant way of his that she’d got pregnant on purpose, was out for all she could get from his family.
‘You don’t want to know!’ she replied as haughtily as she could. ‘It might put a stain on your precious family escutcheon!’ Then she spoiled the effect by giving a noisy sniff and scrubbing at her face, where the hot sun had dried all those tears to itchy rivulets.
‘Here—’ His long mouth twitched as he reached in a back pocket for a pristine handkerchief, shaking out the folds before handing it to her. ‘Blow your nose properly,’ he ordered mildly—as if he were talking to a small grubby child, she thought on a stab of sharp annoyance as she did as she was told.
He, of course, was as immaculate as ever, she noted on a surge of spiky resentment. Not a dark hair out of place, his cool pale grey collarless silk shirt and toning chinos almost painfully elegant, while she was a hot sweaty mess, her cheap T-shirt sticking to her body and her workaday jeans a complete stranger to anything approaching a designer label.
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