Sophie's Secret

by Anne Weale

  ‘You talk as if he has children all over the place,’ Sophie said, with a touch of anger. ‘It’s not a crime to father a child, Paolo. For all you know, you may have done it yourself.’

  ‘Not me! I made certain of that,’ he assured her. ‘Girls may say they’re taking precautions, but you can never be sure. Besides, there are other reasons for a fellow to be careful. Anyway, now you know that your boss isn’t whiter than white I hope you’ll watch your step with him.’

  Their conversation left Sophie very dejected. She had never closed her mind to the fact that a man of thirty-six must have what Michael’s generation referred to as ‘a past’. She had one herself, of sorts. They were both grown-up people living in an era when human relationships were more open, honest and, in many cases, more transient than they had ever been before.

  At school she had been surprised to discover that most of the girls in her form had two sets of parents, each pair composed of a divorced natural parent and a stepparent.

  Perhaps, if her father and mother had lived, their youthful marriage would have fallen apart, although somehow she didn’t think so. They had both been in love with the sea as well as with each other. A bond like that was hard to break.

  When Michael had talked about them he had made her believe that she, too, would one day find her true love and be happy ever after. Life on board Venezia, without television or newspapers, had sheltered her from the disillusionments encountered later. The ideals implanted by Michael were still deeply embedded in her psyche, and the knowledge that Marc, having seduced a housemaid, had failed to shoulder his responsibility for the outcome did not equate with her concept of chivalrous behaviour.

  She wished she could hear his side of the story. Perhaps there had been extenuating circumstances. But she couldn’t ask about it, and meanwhile her opinion of him had been tarnished. It made her deeply unhappy.

  When Sophie went to the airport to meet Rowena Wyatt, she already knew a great deal about the English garden designer Marc had chosen to plan the grounds round the house on the island.

  At Sophie’s request, her opposite number in London had supplied a folder of cuttings about her, mainly from glossy magazines which had interviewed the designer and photographed gardens created by her. However, all the photographs in the file had showed the thirty-five-yearold divorcee in working gear: jeans and a blue denim shirt with a man’s panama hat worn at a rakish angle, or dungarees over a heavy sweater and a knitted ski hat in the photographs taken in winter.

  Expecting a country person, Sophie was unprepared for a vision of sophisticated city elegance in an aubergine suit with a short skirt and perfectly matched opaque tights showing off very good legs. The colour was wonderful with the designer’s dark red hair.

  After Sophie had introduced herself, she said, ‘Mr Washington would have come to meet you himself, but he’s in Genoa today. He’ll be back this evening. Did you have a comfortable flight?’

  Mrs Wyatt said that she had, except that her suitcase was missing. She had already reported this to the airline’s agent and seemed confident it would turn up before she needed its contents. She was clearly an experienced traveller, and not a person who fussed if things did not go to plan.

  ‘How long have you been with Mr Washington?’ she asked on the way to the waiting launch.

  ‘Not very long. You haven’t met him yet, I believe?’

  ‘No, this job was fixed up through friends. A few years ago the husband of a girl I was at school with bought a villa on Cap Ferrat in the south of France. I tackled the garden for them. Later Marc Washington stayed there, liked it, and contacted Delia when he needed a landscape designer. That’s the way it tends to work. Where did he find you?’

  ‘In New York, but I’m English by birth.’

  ‘I wouldn’t have guessed it, even though you speak it perfectly. You’re one of those people who might come from almost anywhere.’

  ‘Have you been to Venice before, Mrs Wyatt?’

  ‘Call me Rowena. Yes, a couple of times. Tell me about this island. I like to know other people’s impressions before seeing a place for myself.’

  ‘I think it’s lovely because I like wild, lonely places.’

  ‘Do you? How unexpected.’

  ‘Why unexpected?’ asked Sophie.

  Rowena appraised her thoughtfully. ‘You look so…urbane. Every hair in place, every detail immaculate.’

  ‘The same could be said about you. You look rather different in your working clothes.’

  Rowena laughed. ‘You’ve been researching me, have you? I tried to do some homework on your boss, but apart from a few opinions on the social grapevine I couldn’t find a thing about him. He keeps himself to himself.’

  Sophie nodded. ‘The garden he wants you to make for him will never be featured in any of the glossies. He dislikes publicity.’

  ‘That doesn’t matter,’ said Rowena. ‘The cachet of creating his garden will be enough for me. I’m told his house on Long Island is a dream of beauty. Have you been there?’

  ‘No. I’ve only seen Palazzo Cassiano. By the way, there’s a dinner party there tonight. If your luggage hasn’t turned up, you may need to buy something suitable. Your travel insurance should cover any reasonable expenses.’

  ‘The last time I came,’ said Rowena, ‘there was an irresistible shop in that street named after the uprising. They had lovely things in pleated silk and crushed panne velvet.’

  ‘You must mean Venetia Studium in Via XXII Marzo. Their things are inspired by Fortuny’s designs,’ said Sophie. She knew the shop well, and admired its window displays every time she passed that way. But she doubted if the prices would be considered ‘reasonable’ by the people who ran insurance companies.

  ‘That’s the place,’ said Rowena. ‘Is it a big dinner party? Will it be very formal?’

  ‘No—informal and only eight people. The architect and his wife and a few other people, including myself.’

  She had been surprised at being included, and had assumed it was because one of the guests was an authority on the flora of the lagoon and his partner was away at the moment. If Chiara wasn’t considered suitable, Sophie would have thought that Marc could have found someone other than herself to be a makeweight. But she was looking forward to it and had given a good deal of thought to what she should wear.

  After seeing Rowena installed in the same hotel where Mrs Henderson had stayed, Sophie returned to her office and made a call to the flight agent to ensure that everything possible was being done to retrieve the designer’s baggage.

  * * *

  She had been home to change, and was checking the arrangements in the smaller of the palazzo’s two dining rooms, when Marc appeared.

  He was wearing a pale grey suit with a cream silk shirt and cream and pale blue silk tie. He smelt of bay rum and, as she caught the aroma, she had a crazy impulse to reach out and touch his jaw which sometimes, when he worked late, had darkened by this time of day.

  Tonight, freshly shaved, it had the smooth sheen of bronze. He looked debonair, relaxed and compellingly attractive.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  BEFORE inspecting the table, Marc looked at Sophie. She was wearing a black chiffon skirt over a scoop-necked black body and, over that, a long-sleeved cropped jacket of dark green silk velvet with cascades of tiny emeraldcoloured beads in her ears.

  ‘Pretty,’ he said, touching one of them with a curled forefinger which didn’t quite brush her cheek.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said briskly. ‘Isn’t the table beautiful?’

  The centrepiece was an antique brass wine-cooler filled with lemons still with their dark green leaves. The golden sheen of the cooler was repeated in two large nautilus shells piled with walnuts. The wine glasses, hand-blown on Murano, had gilded rims.

  While Marc was looking at the table he said, ‘What do you make of Mrs Wyatt?’

  ‘I like her. Unfortunately her suitcase went astray. It’s been located but won’t arrive till late
r. She’s had to buy something to wear. She’s been very calm about it.’

  He gave her one of his penetrating looks. ‘Would you tell me if you didn’t like her?’

  ‘Not at this stage. One has to spend more than half an hour with someone to have an opinion about them.’

  ‘I had an opinion about you by the time we fastened our seat belts.’

  ‘Really? What was it?’

  Marc looked amused, but behind the amusement there was something else. ‘That for a girl with such a kissable mouth you had a remarkably prim manner.’

  Sophie leaned forward over the back of a chair to make a minute and unnecessary adjustment to one of the rattail forks already perfectly aligned by Domenico.

  ‘Sometimes you make remarks some people would define as sexual harassment,’ she said, in a low, tense voice.

  ‘It’s outside working hours, Sophie. Tonight you are one of my guests and I’ll say what I please…within reason. I’m sure you’re aware that you have an alluring mouth.’

  ‘I’ve never been called prim before.’

  ‘Perhaps you aren’t…with other men. Perhaps it’s only with me that you back off and put on your nun’s face.’

  Impulsively she said, ‘It wasn’t I who backed off the night you came back to my flat after my birthday dinner. It was you.’

  ‘I can’t deny that,’ he agreed. ‘But I wouldn’t have done if the phone hadn’t interrupted us. It gave me time to consider that perhaps later you might regret following things through to their natural conclusion. You’d had more to drink than usual. You were very relaxed…perhaps not in total control.’

  ‘How fortunate for me that you were,’ she said, in a dulcet tone edged with more than a tinge of sarcasm, before turning to leave the room.

  She was forced to stay by his fingers clamping her wrist. ‘When you woke up the next day, did you still regret my not staying?’

  ‘That’s an arrogant assumption,’ she said angrily. ‘What makes you think I regretted it at all?’

  ‘The fact that you’ve brought it up now.’ As she opened her mouth to protest he continued, ‘I regretted it. Why shouldn’t you? Are you going to deny that you enjoyed kissing me? Come off it, Sophie. You came into my arms like a homing pigeon…and would have stayed there if the phone hadn’t rung.’

  ‘Another arrogant assumption. If you hadn’t forestalled me, I should have asked you to leave.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because to have allowed you to stay would have upset our working relationship. And apart from that I don’t go in for casual sex.’

  ‘I never supposed that you did. For all I know, you may never have made love with anyone. I think it’s unlikely, but it’s possible. If the will is strong and the flesh weak…’ His other hand closed on her waist, drawing her towards him. ‘But your fleshly urges aren’t weak, are they, Sophie? When I had your mouth under mine I could have been kissing Veronica Franco.’

  As he spoke he shifted his grip, his fingers sliding up from her wrist to enfold her hand, his thumb pressing into her palm in a way that sent shivers through her.

  ‘She was our most famous courtesan,’ Marc said in a low voice. ‘A lady who knew a lot about pleasing men…as you do…when you let yourself go.’

  Sophie felt her defences melting like butter in the sun. Surely he couldn’t intend to kiss her again? Not here. Not now, with his guests expected at any moment.

  If it had been his intention it was frustrated by Domenico, whose footsteps on the marble floor gave Marc time to release her and step back. When the butler appeared in the doorway, his employer had masked the expression which had been in his eyes seconds earlier.

  When Domenico said good evening to him, he replied with his usual affability, and Sophie was able to escape and take refuge in another room, not in use this evening, where she wouldn’t be disturbed and could recover her composure.

  * * *

  When Rowena arrived she was wearing a long fluid tunic of deep violet velvet, another colour which set off her fiery hair. She and Marc seemed to take to each other from the moment they shook hands.

  At dinner she sat on his right, with the architect’s wife on his left. The table was round, with the botanist seated directly opposite Marc with Sophie on his right.

  Various delicious hot appetisers had been handed round in the drawing room beforehand and the main meal began with ravioli served in a hallowed-out pumpkin.

  ‘For a new arrival in Venice, you ask most intelligent questions,’ the botanist told Sophie while they were eating the main course, roast pheasant served on a bed of red pomegranate seeds.

  ‘Which is no reason for you to monopolise her, Lorenzo,’ said the man on her other side. ‘It’s my turn to bore this charming young lady who speaks our language with so little trace of accent.’

  Although, in deference to Rowena, who had no Italian, those near her were speaking English, the botanist wasn’t fluent, and had lapsed into his own language while conversing with Sophie.

  ‘How does that come about?’ her other neighbour enquired, as a rider to his smiling compliment.

  Without going into details she didn’t wish to disclose until she had come clean with Marc, it was an awkward question to answer. Glancing across the table, she became aware that he, too, was waiting for her reply.

  She said lightly, ‘I suppose I was born with a good ear for verbal sounds, the way some people have an ear for music.’

  The meal concluded with one of the chef’s specialities, a spectacular tart of figs glazed with blackcurrant liqueur syrup. Sophie had had it before and found it delicious, but tonight her enjoyment was marred by her awareness of what was happening on the opposite side of the table.

  Marc and Rowena were hitting it off like two people made for each other. They were the right age, their heights matched; they harmonised in every way. The snatches of their conversation she was able to catch without losing track of what her neighbours were saying made it clear their rapport was more like that of old friends than new acquaintances.

  Sophie had a sinking feeling that Rowena might be the woman Marc had been waiting for.

  In the days that followed, Sophie suffered agonies of jealousy, an emotion she had always despised but was helpless to control when she saw the two of them together.

  What surprised her was that she didn’t dislike Rowena. She found her as attractive and amusing as Marc obviously did. Whatever the reason for the breakdown of the redhead’s marriage, it was hard to see how Rowena could have been at fault. The more Sophie knew of her, the more she admired her.

  A few days after Rowena’s return to London, she faxed Sophie to say that a favourite bracelet was missing. She thought it might have come off while she was on the island. It was possible the clasp had broken. Could someone be sent to look for it? Although not intrinsically valuable, it had sentimental associations which meant a great deal to her.

  Her message included a description and sketch. Sophie remembered seeing the bracelet on Rowena’s left wrist, together with an unusual watch.

  The fax was still in her hand when Marc walked into her office.

  ‘You’re frowning. What’s the problem?’

  ‘Rowena has mislaid a bracelet. She thinks it might be on the island. I was wondering how soon I could go over to look for it.’

  ‘This afternoon. We’ll both go.’

  The snap decision startled her. ‘Oh…I don’t think you should waste your time. It may not be there. She could have lost it on her way back to England.’

  ‘Possibly, but I don’t remember seeing it the day she left. We were together that morning. Two pairs of eyes are better than one. We’ll leave after lunch. Be at the water-gate at two.’

  He went away, making her wonder why he had come in the first place. He wasn’t a man who forgot what he was doing when some other matter cropped up.

  She spent the rest of the morning in a tiswas about the afternoon. When he hadn’t taken Rowena to the airport, she had real
ised there was nothing between them. She had misinterpreted the signals, as women were apt to do when they were in love with a man.

  Now that Rowena had gone, Marc might intend to resume his pursuit of Sophie. There was no denying the current of tension between them. She felt it electrifying the atmosphere whenever they were together. She didn’t trust herself to resist him if he took advantage of one of the island’s secluded spots to make a determined pass at her.

  The bright morning didn’t last. By lunchtime the sky was cloudy. She had lunch at her desk instead of outside in the usually sheltered suntrap of the roof garden.

  Afterwards she thought it advisable to dash back to the flat and change into trousers, a jersey and the warm but stylish jacket given her by Martha Henderson. It could be cold on the lagoon when the wind was in its present quarter.

  She was at the water-gate ahead of time, surprised to see that, instead of the launch used for the airport run and the trip to Torcello, today a small speedboat was there. Luckily she had thought to bring a scarf. It was covering her hair and tied at the back of her neck by the time Marc joined her.

  ‘Sensible girl!’ he said approvingly, noticing how she was dressed. ‘It could be a chilly trip. The launch is being serviced today, so we’ll have to make do with this.’ He stepped aboard and offered his hand to her.

  There were speed limits on the canals, but out in the lagoon Sophie had often seen motorboats smashing through the water with their bows in the air and their sterns enveloped in spray.

  Perhaps Marc might have driven like that in his salad days, but today he kept the speed moderate. Even so she was glad of her headscarf and sunglasses. The lenses protected her eyes from the chilly airstream slicing past the edges of the windscreen.

  ‘Some women are chronic losers,’ said Marc, breaking their silence. ‘Gloves, sunglasses, umbrellas, earrings… I hope Rowena’s not one of them.’