mistake. You should have divorced me. Instead you've taken it out on all of us for over twenty years.'
'Sylvie-' Hunt looked grey, strangely shrunken in stature.
'I-I had an affair.' Sylvia stumbled over the admission, didn't meet anyone's eyes. 'And your father found out. When I discovered that I was pregnant, I…I wasn't sure that it was your father's child-'
'Oh, dear God-' Ashley collapsed down into the nearest chair, absolutely devastated by what she believed was coming.
Quietly her mother was crying. 'Your father knew… and wh-when you were born with all that red hair, so different-looking from Susan… you see, we both assumed that you couldn't be his child and I was so ashamed… so grateful that your father was prepared to bring you up as his.'
But he hadn't been able to meet that challenge, Ashley completed strickenly. She was appalled by what her mother had revealed.
'I believe that Ashley misunderstands,' Vito murmured. 'You cannot be telling her that she is not her father's child. Tim and Ashley could pass for twins.'
'The other m-man had sandy hair,' her mother whispered unsteadily. 'We forgot that my grandmother had been auburn-haired. It wasn't until Tim was born six years later that we realised that we'd made a mistake, and by then the damage to Ashley's relationship with her father was already done. He still behaved as though she wasn't his… I think that every time he looked at her he remembered that other man.'
The silence went on forever. Ashley's father was hunched in a chair, his spread hands covering his face. He looked like a man on whom a sentence of death had been pronounced. Ashley was in a complete daze. Unconsciously she focused on Vito for what to do or say next. Her heart had gone out to her mother but a second later she experienced an astonishing pang of pity for her father. Her mother's confession had broken him by depriving him of all dignity. Yet Ashley had learnt much more. Her father must have loved her mother a great deal not to divorce her. But unhappily he had been punishing her ever since.
'Do you still want to leave with us?' Vito asked her mother calmly. Ashley repressed an almost hysterical giggle. Trust Vito to stay in control when the rest of them were all falling apart at the seams in front of him.
There was a long silence.
'I-I think that Hunt and I have a lot to discuss,' Sylvia said hesitantly. She stood up with an air of fledgling confidence and control that shook her daughter. There was a new strength in her mother's stature.
'We'll get lunch at a hotel.' With complete cool, Vito whisked Ashley out to the hall.
Sylvia engulfed her daughter in an emotional embrace. 'I'm so sorry, but I can't leave your father when he's like this.'
'She won't leave him,' Vito asserted as they drove off. 'He's gone to pieces. I think that little scene just cleared the air for them both. The truth needed to come out. It's a shame it didn't happen sooner for your benefit. ' Ashley stole a glance at him. His hard-edged profile was fiercely clenched; the skin pulled tight over his angular cheekbones. She had been wrong to believe that the episode had not affected him, although she could not really understand why he should look so shattered. For he did. Pale and shattered.
'Tell me what it was like growing up with a father like that? With a mother who didn't stand up for you and a brother-in-law who evidently chose to stand on the sidelines as well?'
Her hands were shaking. She couldn't find any of her flippant responses. She was still too disturbed by what had occurred. 'Scary,' she confided jerkily. 'Lonely.' Vito vented a harsh expletive.
'Everybody suffered,' she extended. 'I think Tim got away the lightest because he was a boy and Dad's favourite. Susan married Arnold to escape. There was so much tension…so many arguments. I always fought him. Looking back, it seems so stupid but he picked on me.' And all of a sudden something that she had never ever talked about was finding its own voice and the memories were spilling out of her almost faster than she could frame the words to describe them. The constant criticism and belittling.The sarcasm and the punishments. The fact that her mother had often paid the price for her defiance. The guilt. The shame that her father could find her so unworthy of attention or affection.
'You still haven't told me that he hit you, and he did,' Vito countered darkly. 'I saw it in his face and yours. I wanted to keep on hitting him. It would have given me immense satisfaction.'
'Don't! He didn't really hit me,' she protested. 'Not the way you read about but… but I was always afraid that he would because he got so angry with me.' Uneasily she swallowed, suppressing those memories.
'No wonder you wanted your freedom at university.
You had never had any before.' The flat syllables were curiously clipped.
'No.' She was glad that he understood.
He asked her if she was hungry. Her stomach rebelled at the mere thought of food. Once or twice she tried to initiate conversation but Vito had become disturbingly uncommunicative. But then, he had just met the in-laws from hell, she reflected in strong chagrin. Yet she felt curiously at peace. Questions that had troubled her for much of her childhood had been answered. She was not in herself so repulsive that her father couldn't love her. No, she had become the innocent victim of her mother's affair, the focus of all her father's bitterness.
They separated when they got home. Vito said he had some calls to make.
'I'll order a late lunch,' she said.
'I'm not hungry.' The harsh edge to his response made her tense. She wondered what on earth was wrong. His darkly handsome features were shuttered by a fierce constraint beyond her comprehension, but before she could speak he was taking the stairs two at a time.
An hour later she went in search of him. Their chauffeur passed by her on the stairs, carrying two cases. With a frown, Ashley walked into Vito's bedroom suite. He was standing at the window like someone in a trance, blistering tension emanating from him in waves.
'I didn't know you had another trip,' she murmured tightly. 'You didn't mention it.' Vito swung round. 'I'm returning to Italy. I can't stay here.'
'You're leaving?' White as a sheet from the sheer shock of his sudden change of heart, Ashley simply stared at him. 'But you said-'
'That I wanted to stay until the baby was born,' he completed. 'But we both know that that isn't what you want.'
She locked her hands together before they could betray her by shaking. Her fingers twisted into each other. 'I don't understand.'
Vito released his breath jerkily, his dark eyes locked to her. 'I think it's past time that I stopped knocking my head up against a brick wall and simply took account of your wishes for a change.'
Only hours ago he had been fighting with her to convince her that he should stay. She just couldn't believe that he now wanted out…without warning… without discussion… without anything. 'But I didn't say that I wanted you to leave-'
'You don't need to. I know how you feel about me,' he asserted almost thickly, his strong bone-structure prominent with strain beneath his golden skin. 'To persist in the face of such odds would be utter insanity. I'm not blaming you. Considering what I've done…' He faltered and sucked in air, shifted an expressive hand. 'Well, you've been very tolerant, much more tolerant than I had any right to expect in the circumstances. But I have to face facts. You would be a lot more comfortable if I weren't here-'
'If you're trying to convince me that you're doing this for my benefit rather than your own, you're not getting anywhere!' Ashley threw at him in a shaken undertone, crossing her arms over her breasts as if she needed that support.
'Hennessy will be happier if I'm not around and so will I be,' Vito admitted with sudden stark force. 'What has Josh got to do with this?'
'Madre di Dio!' Vito swore rawly, swinging away from her again. 'You're involved with him and I am the intruder, not he, since I forced you into this marriage. Clearly he was on the scene at the time and I could hardly expect you to admit the fact. Now you will be free to continue your liaison-'
Did his conscience require the sop that she had another man waiting for her? Dear God, she had totally forgotten that Vito had heard Pietro referring to her holding hands and weeping over Josh that day. There had been so much else happening, it had completely slipped her mind. She looked at Vito, rigid, brooding and unbelievably tense, not exactly the last of the liberated husbands in her own opinion. And here he was, giving her carte blanche to… dear heaven, how dared he?
'I haven't the slightest intention of becoming involved with Josh,' she snapped out. 'Unlike you, I don't flit like a
