‘All those years I loved her, she filled my world. I’d have lain down my life in her service. I told you I’m not a demonstrative man, but with her I was. I held nothing back. Whatever I had or was or would ever be was hers, and she knew it. She’d known it for years, and all that time…’
He opened his eyes again and turned in her direction, so that his head lay directly against the words ‘Beloved wife’ carved into the marble.
‘I made the foolish mistake of thinking I had everything,’ he continued after a while. ‘I should have understood that the man who believes that has nothing at all, that when he imagines he’s walking a firm road he’s actually staggering across a tightrope hung over an abyss. The abyss was always there, but I never saw it.’
‘You mean she stopped loving you?’
His smile was terrible, desperate, wolfish, half-mad.
‘I mean that she never did love me. Not for one second. She married me for money. She liked money a lot, and the man she really loved-an Englishman called Alec Martin-didn’t have a penny. I think she decided on me when she saw the house, these grounds.
‘I learned all this in the last few days before she left me. She told me-boasted of it-that she’d gone on sleeping with her lover until the night before our wedding. That’s why Liza was born so quickly.’
‘You mean-?’
‘Yes. My little girl isn’t mine at all. She’d been another man’s child all the time.’
Holly drew a long breath, calling herself all kinds of a fool. This had been staring her in the face if she’d had the wit to see it.
‘He went away after we married,’ Matteo continued, ‘and stayed away for a few years, making some money of his own, I gather. So when he came back she decided to leave me for him. I said I couldn’t stop her leaving, but she wasn’t taking my daughter. That’s when she told me that Liza wasn’t mine, but Martin’s.
‘A few hours after they left I got a call from the hospital. The train had crashed, Carol was dead and Liza was seriously injured. I learned later that Martin had been killed too, but nobody else knew that he had any connection with us. The world only knows that my wife and child were taking a journey and their train crashed. All the rest-’ he paused for a moment before resuming with difficulty ‘-is known only to me.’
‘And Liza,’ she said, horrified, ‘all those years-it’s incredible-but perhaps it isn’t true. Maybe Carol only said that to hurt you-’
She stopped because he’d held up a hand, shaking his head.
‘I thought of that,’ he said. ‘When she was in the hospital I had a test done anonymously. What my wife told me was true. Liza is not my daughter. I have to accept that.’
He was silent for a while, and Holly could think of nothing to say that wouldn’t have sounded inadequate. The silence hung heavy between them.
‘When her condition improved,’ he resumed after a while, ‘I brought her home. I didn’t know what else to do.’
‘Does Liza have any idea?’
‘None. I was afraid that Carol might have told her, but it’s obvious that she still thinks I’m her father.’
‘As you are in every sense that matters,’ Holly said urgently. ‘Hate your wife if you must but that little girl has done nothing wrong.’
‘Do you think I don’t know that?’ he asked tiredly. ‘None of it’s her fault but-’
‘There are no buts,’ Holly insisted. ‘She’s the same person that she always was, a child who loves you, and who’s done nothing to forfeit your love.’
He regarded her with despair.
‘You’re saying all the things I’ve said to myself a thousand times over. My head knows they’re true, but that doesn’t help. Logic doesn’t work. Don’t think I’m proud of myself, because I’m not. I do everything in my power to prevent her suspecting any difference, but I can’t help it if the feeling isn’t there.’
‘Oh, goodness,’ she murmured.
Matteo looked up at the sky, where the oblivious stars wheeled coldly overhead.
‘She was my child,’ he said. ‘And then she wasn’t. When I look into her face I see the face of the woman I hate, and I can’t bear it.’
‘Can’t you try to forgive Carol?’ Holly asked, realising how useless the words were even as she spoke them. It was no surprise when Matteo turned on her with real fury.
‘Forgive her? Are you mad? For years she mocked me, accepting my love, luring me on to love her more, taking and taking-and all the time it was nothing but a cruel deceit while she dreamed of another man. She took and took and took, and gave nothing in return. Even my child isn’t mine.
‘If she’d ever been a true wife to me in her heart I might have forgiven a moment of madness-but years of cynical, cold-blooded, calculated-’
He broke off, shuddering.
‘I’m sorry,’ she murmured, reaching out to him.
But he flinched away from her.
‘Don’t touch me,’ he raged. ‘You, with your stupid English
‘It’s got nothing to do with-’
‘You’re all the same. Let’s tie up the loose ends and be sensible. We don’t want to make a fuss, do we?
‘The only time she dropped it was when we made love. Then she was shrewd enough to abandon reason and drive me so wild that I couldn’t think straight. That way I never became suspicious, by night or by day. Oh, she covered every angle, leaving me not one single pure and honest memory. And now you want me to forgive. Never! I thought you’d learned enough to understand about
‘So you’re going to teach me, are you?’ she demanded, angry in her turn. ‘You’re going to pass on to me all the lessons you’ve learned about cruelty and bitterness, about being self-centred and brooding on nothing but your own wrongs to the exclusion of all else. And when I’ve learned that, who will look after that innocent child?’
He was silent. Her fury had taken him by surprise, shocking him into silence. Before he could recover, she jumped to her feet and walked away to the house. She had never been so enraged in her life.
Most of all she was upset with herself. She should have seen it coming. There had been brief glimpses into the depths of hell where he lived, but none of them had prepared her for the moment when rage and anguish boiled over, pitilessly exposing to her gaze everything he would have wanted to hide.
She even knew a moment of protectiveness, wanting to shield him from disclosing his vulnerability to a woman who would judge him harshly.
Then she remembered that the woman was herself.
CHAPTER NINE
WHEN Holly reached the house some instinct prevented her from going straight upstairs. She knew he would follow her, that tonight wasn’t over. There were still things to be said.
She went into the library, switched on a small lamp and after a moment she heard the door open. He took a few steps into the room, then paused, standing back in the shadows, so that she could see only his outline, not his face. Even so, she could sense the uncertainty that tormented him.
‘Come in,’ she said, reaching for him.
She could see he was on the point of collapse and he needed comfort. He almost fell into a chair by the window.
‘Forgive me,’ he said quietly.
‘No, forgive me. I shouldn’t have gone for you like that.’
‘I had no right to tell you. I promised myself that nobody else would ever find out-I don’t know why I suddenly gave in-’
‘Because you had to tell someone or go mad,’ she said sympathetically.
