The Italian Millionaire’s Marriage

CHAPTER TWELVE

‘I DON’T believe this,’ Harriet said, setting down her things to confront him. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘Haven’t you worked it out yet?’

‘Allum & Jonsey-?’

‘A tiny firm who were glad to let me take them over.’

‘And if they hadn’t been glad, you’d have taken over anyway.’

‘No, I’d have found another firm. I needed a front. You wouldn’t have sold if you’d known it was me.’

‘In other words, this is another of your exercises in control. Sorry Marco, it’s not going to work. I’m through.’

He held up the contract she’d signed only the previous day, committing her to run the shop for six months. ‘What about this?’

‘Sue me!’

‘I will if you make me, but you won’t. You’re a woman of your word. This place needs you. Nobody else can run it. Between us we’ll make it as profitable as it ought to be.’

Harriet gave an incredulous laugh. ‘You want me? A woman who can’t tell a fake from an original? Surely not.’

She had the satisfaction of seeing him redden. ‘What do you want me to say? That I was wrong about that? All right, I’ll say it. That necklace was a fake. My father sold the original years ago. My mother says you’re the only person ever to notice.’

Harriet’s face lightened. ‘How is she?’

‘I have strict instructions to send her news of you. I’ll do that later. For the moment we have to do some serious talking.’

‘Well, I won’t try to defend my accounts to you-’

‘No, they’re beyond defence.’

‘Because you already knew the worst in advance. You’re crazy, you know that?’

His eyes gleamed. ‘I never do anything without a good reason.’

‘You can’t have a good reason for being here.’

‘That’s for me to say,’ he said briskly. ‘We had a deal. The loan was to be repaid in easy stages, instead you choose to deprive yourself of everything you love, to do it in one go. That gives me a certain responsibility.’

‘You haven’t-’

‘Will you just be quiet while I’m speaking? When I want to hear what you have to say, I’ll ask. I have a responsibility to you and I’m going to deal with it. I’ll teach you to be a shrewd businesswoman if it turns us both grey-haired. In time you’ll make enough to buy this place back from me, and then I won’t have to reproach myself with having harmed you.’

‘Can I speak now?’ she snapped.

‘If it’s important.’

‘All that is very conscientious of you-’

‘Conscientiousness is the corner of good business. Now, I suggest you make some tea and we’ll discuss your stock buying. Some of the web sites you visit look interesting.’

‘You accessed my account? How?’

‘I hacked in, of course.’

‘Of course,’ she murmured.

‘If you’d been here on time, it would have been easier,’ he said crisply, and something in his tone made her realise that this man was now her employer.

From then on she had no chance to forget it. Marco settled in as though he’d come for a long stay, taking a room at the Ritz Hotel, hiring a car, arriving at the shop early, leaving late. If Harriet suspected that he had come for her he made it hard for her to believe it. He gave her a crash course in financial management, with no concessions to whatever might have been between them. When he’d finished tearing her business practices to shreds he demolished the reputation of her accountant.

‘He’s been so much in awe of your academic knowledge that he’s let you get away with accounting murder.’

‘He’s a dear old boy-’

‘So I would have guessed. You don’t need a dear old boy, you need someone who can keep you on a tight rein. What’s this?’ He was pointing at some squiggles in one of the ledgers.

‘That’s my code.’

‘Translate,’ he snapped.

Seething, she did so.

‘Fine,’ he said. ‘That’s lucid enough, but I’m not clairvoyant. How do I know what it means unless you explain?’

‘I always write up the details later.’

‘Do it now.’

‘Why do you have to be a slave-driver over every detail?’

‘Because, while you may be all kinds of an antiquarian genius, when it comes to the simplest commercial transaction you are a bird-brained idiot.’

‘I know that!’

Silence. He was breathing hard.

‘Fine!’ he snapped. ‘Then at last we’re agreed on something. It makes a good starting point.’

‘Why do we have to agree on anything? We never did before. Why don’t you just install the new accountant to keep an eye on me when you’ve gone home?’

‘I’m not going home until I’ve taught you how not to bankrupt yourself.’

‘You mean, bankrupt you?’

For once he was shaken. ‘Yes-yes, that’s what I meant.’

‘But you can’t stay here. You should be in Rome this minute, fighting for that partnership.’

He shrugged. ‘I clinched that before I left.’

‘So you’ve got it?’

‘Yes, I’ve got it.’ He was writing something.

‘The youngest partner, just as you wanted. Congratulations!’

‘Thank you!’ he said shortly.

Of course he’d got exactly what he wanted. Everything neat and orderly. He’d sorted out his career, now he would deal with the little matter of his conscience, then he would go home and put her behind him.

But that was what she wanted him to do.

So she had no complaints. If there was one thing she was sure of, it was that.

‘How do you buy stock?’ he asked her one day. ‘You can’t always use the internet.’

‘I use it rarely. Travelling the country is better.’

‘When do we go?’

Next day they set off for a country house south of London. The owner had fallen on hard times, had sold the house to the local council, and was raising what he could from the contents.

‘He won’t get much for these, I’m afraid,’ Harriet said regretfully as she examined the rather dull collection of items. ‘And he’s such a sweet little man.’ She looked sympathetically across at the owner, a plump, white-haired man with a sad face.

‘Anything of interest to us?’ Marco asked.

‘Well, this vase looks-’ she stopped, examining an ornate glass vase. Marco saw her flicker of interest, quickly suppressed, like the professional she was.

‘What?’ he said.

‘Genuine Venetian twelfth century,’ she said quietly. ‘Worth about fifty grand.’

‘But the reserve price is only two grand.’

‘I know. The owner can’t have any idea what it’s worth.’

‘So you’ve spotted a real bargain. I’m impressed.’

The auctioneer banged his gavel. ‘Take your places please, ladies and gentlemen.’

Marco bagged two seats in the front and looked around for Harriet. After a moment he saw her talking earnestly to the owner while the auctioneer stood listening, wide-eyed.

I don’t believe this, he thought. I simply don’t believe it, not even of her.

The auctioneer banged his gavel again.

‘Ladies and gentlemen, I have to announce that Lot 43 now has a reserve price of fifty thousand…’

From the groan that went up behind him Marco judged that other dealers had spotted the same thing, and had kept quiet.

But they weren’t Harriet, Marco thought with a private smile.

She was hailing him from the door, indicating that they should leave.

‘We’re not interested in anything else here,’ she said as he joined her outside.

‘Aren’t we?’

‘No, we’re not.’

‘I gather you told him?’

‘I had to. That dear little old man, he was almost crying. He said it’ll make all the difference to his retirement. Hey, what are you doing?’ she protested as he grabbed her arm and began to hustle her.

‘Getting you to safety before one of the other dealers murders you.’

‘Or doing it yourself?’

He didn’t answer this, except with a look.

When they were out in the sun she faced him, half-sheepish, half-defiant.

‘I couldn’t do anything else, don’t you see? He’s such an innocent, I couldn’t just take the money when he needs it so much-’

‘But Harriet, dear crazy Harriet, that’s not how you do business.’

‘It’s how I do business. So you’d better fire me.’

‘No, I’m glad you told him,’ he said with a strange smile. ‘If you’d done anything else, you wouldn’t have been Harriet.’

It was early evening as they drove back to London.

‘Now we need something to eat,’ Marco said. ‘I suppose I can’t suggest that you invite me to your home for beans on toast. Since I’m your employer that might be “sexual harassment”.

‘I’ll risk it. After one taste of my cooking you won’t be up to anything.’

‘Witty lady!’ he said admiringly. ‘Come on, give me directions.’

Her home was a tiny one-bedroomed apartment an hour away, in a cheaper part of town. Harriet wondered how it appeared to Marco who’d grown up in the luxury of the Villa Calvani. She saw him looking about the cramped rooms, but he said nothing.

She spared him beans on toast and made spaghetti, letting him create the sauce. Conversation was spasmodic and about nothing in particular. It had been a good day, and now neither of them knew how to end it.

He’d been very unfair to her, she thought. She’d meant to be strong, but that was when she’d thought he would be far away. How was she supposed to be strong when she was seeing him day after day, close to him, hearing his voice? And when she looked up to find him watching her, only to see him turn away without words, leaving the memory of the look in his eyes and a torturing feeling of delight-there had to be a way to defend herself against that, if only she could find it.

It wasn’t fair that her love for him should flower more strongly than ever before. But love wasn’t fair. If he went away now and left her to struggle with her misery that wouldn’t be fair either. But it could happen.

She was on edge, wondering what he would do and how she would react. Why was he really here?

In the end he did something totally unexpected. As she was putting dishes into the sink he came up behind her and laid his hands on her shoulders. She waited, half hoping, half-unsure. After staying like that a moment, not moving, he slid one arm across her chest, drawing her back against him, and dropping his head to lay it gently against the side of her neck. She could feel his lips, lightly touching her skin, but he didn’t kiss her. It was neither a passionate nor even a very romantic movement. He simply looked weary and disheartened, and she suddenly remembered when she’d found him sleeping rough in the garden, and he’d put his arms around her and rested his head, as though in her he found a refuge.

Slowly she put up her hand to touch his and they stayed like that for a long moment. Then he released her and went away. When she went to find him he was kneeling before her bookcase, reading the titles.

After that she made them both coffee, he exclaimed about the time, and went home.

Marco didn’t come into the shop every day, and she supposed he was using the time to keep up with his work in Rome. One morning when she was alone she went into her cubby-hole to make some tea. Above the clatter of china she didn’t hear the shop door open and someone come in, and emerged to find a young woman standing there. She was expensively dressed, about thirty, dark-haired, dark-eyed, pretty in a lush way, and about six months pregnant. She had the smile of someone who was deeply content with her life.

‘You are la Signorina d’Estino?’ She had a strong Italian accent and spoke carefully, like someone feeling her way in the language.

‘Yes, I’m Harriet d’Estino. Can I show you something?’

‘Oh, no, I do not come to buy, but to talk. About Marco.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘My name is Alessandra,’ the young woman said simply. ‘And I come to tell you how important it is that you marry him.’

Harriet stared, and the only words that came into her head were, ‘Let’s have a cup of tea.’

When they were seated Harriet said, ‘Would you mind repeating that?’

‘I say you must marry Marco. You think I’m pazza, no?’

‘No, I don’t think you’re crazy, but I do wonder why Marco’s marriage matters to you.’

‘Why should I worry about a man in my past? And yet I do. Perhaps I feel a little guilty. Since we parted life has gone well for me, not for him. My friends who know him say that it was as if he shrivelled up inside, and began to keep the world at a distance. For that, I am, perhaps, to blame.’

‘It’s not your fault if you changed your mind,’ Harriet ventured.

‘No, but I should have had the courage to break our engagement honestly. You see, Marco feels too much. He minds too much, everything is too important. He acts otherwise. To the world he is a man who feels nothing, but the world doesn’t know him.’ She looked shrewdly at Harriet. ‘But I think you know.’

‘Yes,’ Harriet said. ‘Quite soon after I went to Italy I began to sense what he was hiding. He even hides it from himself.’

‘Ah, that’s bad. That too is my fault. Once he hid nothing. He overwhelmed me, and gradually I began to feel that it was more than I wanted. He was jealous, my whole life must belong to him. I became bored, and my love died. I fell in love with another man, but I didn’t tell Marco. I worried about what he would do and besides, the man was married. His wife had money, he didn’t want to leave her-’

Alessandra shrugged. Harriet maintained a diplomatic silence. She was on the verge of learning the key to Marco and she wasn’t going to risk losing her chance through showing her opinion of this self-centred woman.

‘Then I discovered that I was pregnant,’ Alessandra continued. ‘Marco saw me have a dizzy spell, and guessed. He assumed the baby was his-’

‘Could it have been?’

‘You mean was I sleeping with them both? Yes. The timing made Harvey more likely, but Marco didn’t know about him so he just took it for granted that the child was his, and immediately began to plan our wedding. I argued for a delay but-you know how he can be.’

Harriet nodded.

‘He was overjoyed-I tried to tell him the truth-but I confess I was scared of him. He can be a very frightening man. There is much love in him, and much hate when his anger is roused. He feels everything too much. That’s why he struggles to hide it. If people knew they would think him weak and use it against him.’

‘So what happened?’ Harriet asked.

‘One day Marco returned early from a business trip and came to my apartment without warning. He let himself in with his own key. Harvey was with me. We were making love.’

Harriet winced and closed her eyes.

‘Of course it came out, about the child,’ Alessandra said.

‘What did he say?’

‘Nothing. Not a word. He just stood there looking a man who was dying. Then he walked out. That was the last time I saw him. He sent me a note saying that he’d told people the wedding was off by mutual consent. Both of us had realised that we’d made a mistake. Of course I agreed to that.

‘By that time Harvey’s wife had found out about us and her brothers were on the warpath. He’s English, so we ran away to England, and our son was born here. He really is Harvey’s child. We did a test to make sure. But nobody in Rome knew the exact date of his birth, so they couldn’t count back and realise that I must have betrayed Marco during our engagement. In Rome they still believe it was “mutual consent” and I’m glad for Marco’s sake. It would have killed him if the truth was known. People would have laughed.

‘There were rumours, you see. People had warned him that I had a roving eye, and he’d refused to listen. He is a loyal and faithful man, and that is how he loves.’

‘Not any more. I think all that died, and now he doesn’t know how to love.’

‘No,’ Alessandra said urgently. ‘No man with his capacity for love really loses it. He hides it, he tries to deny it, but it’s always there. One day he was bound to fall in love again. I’m glad it was with you. I think you’ll be good for him.’

‘You’re wrong. Marco isn’t in love with me.’

‘Nonsense, of course he is. What do you think he’s been doing here for weeks when he should have been in Rome fighting for that partnership?’

‘But he got the partnership before he left-’ Harriet protested. Alessandra’s raised eyebrows gave her a strange feeling. ‘Didn’t he?’

‘Not according to my cousin who works there. It’s gone to somebody else. It’s already been announced.’

Harriet had been pacing but now she sat down abruptly. ‘Why did you come here?’ she asked.

‘To clear my conscience and try to put right the harm I did him. I owe him that. Don’t give up on him Harriet. He couldn’t endure it a second time.’

Two days passed with no sign of him. In that time she ran the whole gamut of emotions from joy, hope, disbelief, despair. After what Alessandra had told her she urgently needed to see Marco, to look into his eyes and discover if it was true that he loved her.

At last she heard a foot on the step that was unmistakably his, and looked up smiling, but the smile faded. This was Marco at his most formal, dressed for departure in an overcoat. He looked as though he hadn’t slept.

‘Are you taking a trip?’ she asked.

‘I’m going back to Rome.’

‘For a few days?’

‘For good. I shan’t be coming back.’

The thud over her heart was like a punch. ‘I see.’

‘But before I leave I must give you this.’ He took an envelope from his briefcase and handed it to her.

Moving mechanically she pulled out a paper and tried to read it, but the words danced before her eyes. Only one thought possessed her. He was going away, and in a few moments her life would be over. Somehow there must be a way to prevent him but her brain had become a terrible blank. The thudding of her heart seemed to fill the world.

‘Read it,’ he said quietly.

She tried to concentrate on the paper, and this time she made out figures, the amount of her debt to him. It was a receipt.

‘This paper says I own the shop-but how can I?’

There was a look of intolerable sadness in his eyes. ‘I could say that you repaid me what you owed, if it didn’t offend me to speak of your gifts to me in terms of money. You’ve given me so much more than you’ll ever know, so much more than I deserve.’

He looked around him. ‘When I think how I came here that first day, so sure of myself, so confident that everything could be arranged to suit me, I want to shudder at the man I was then. He’s gone now, thanks to you. This is so little in return.’ He indicated the paper. ‘I’d hoped to give it to you-well-under happier circumstances. Now I think that’s not going to happen. I want you to have it anyway.’

‘But-’ she stammered, frantically trying to find the words ‘-you can’t just leave the shop with me. I’ll make a mess of it again.’

‘Not after all I’ve taught you,’ he said with a faint smile. He brushed a stray wisp of hair back from her forehead.

‘I wasn’t a very good pupil.’

‘You were the best kind of pupil. One who taught her teacher far more than he taught her. I shall carry your lessons all my life.’

‘I shan’t carry yours,’ she said wildly. ‘I’ll forget them and go bankrupt. Besides, what became of the sharp-eyed businessman? You can’t just give me all this money. Think of the shocking tax.’

‘Tax?’ he echoed, trying to keep up with her.

‘Never forget the tax angle. You taught me that.’

He didn’t answer for a moment. He’d understood now that she was following some new track of her own, and he was trying to keep up.

‘What-are you saying?’ he asked quietly at last.

‘You talked about “happier circumstances”. I don’t know why you’re so sure they’re not going to happen. Maybe you’ve jumped to conclusions about that. But I think-as a wedding present, it would be treated much more favourably.’

He looked at her for a long moment before saying slowly, ‘But the lady I love won’t marry me. She told me so, and I’ve come to see that she might be right. I have no right to even try to persuade her.’

Harriet could hardly breathe. ‘She might change her mind-just to secure a tax break.’

Slowly he shook his head. ‘That’s no good. It’s not the right reason.’

‘I was only joking.’

‘I know, but there are some things you shouldn’t joke about. They matter too much.’

‘Business?’

‘Love. I love you Harriet, and if you can’t say the same just let me go quickly-’

‘I can say it a million times over,’ she said, touching his cheek. He immediately seized her hand and turned his head to kiss it. There was a desperate eagerness in his eyes.

‘Tell me that you love me,’ he pleaded. ‘I need to hear you say it.’

She raised her other hand so that his face was held between them. ‘I love you with all my heart and soul. I always will.’

She was in his arms before the words were quite out, having the breath kissed out of her in an embrace as crushing as he’d ever given her.

‘I thought I’d lost you,’ he said huskily. ‘All the time you were in Rome I knew I was losing you and I didn’t know how to stop it happening. I loved you but I couldn’t tell you. I had the words ready a thousand times but lost my nerve. I didn’t have the courage. I’m a coward, that’s the truth and you may as well know it.’

‘Marco, darling, please-’

‘No, don’t stop me. I want the truth there between us. Once before I-’

‘I know.’ She touched his lips gently. ‘Alessandra. She came to see me.’

‘She was here? In this shop? When?’

‘A few days ago. She told me about the partnership you lost. You said you had it in the bag.’

‘I had to. If I’d told you I was giving up the chance to be with you it would have been like blackmailing you.’

‘But the partnership-it means everything to you-’

‘No, you mean everything to me. There’ll be other partnerships, but I knew this was my last chance with you. If I failed to win your love there’d never be another chance, and I couldn’t face that.’ He hesitated before saying awkwardly, ‘What else did Alessandra tell you?’

‘Everything. Do you mind?’

He shook his head. ‘Now you know. I’m glad. I was a coward there too. I wasn’t going to give anyone the chance to get to me again. I told myself that was a kind of strength, not seeing it for the weakness it really was.

‘But you made everything different. I was so happy whenever I was with you. I tried to rationalise the happiness away, but it possessed me. I wanted to tell you but I couldn’t. Then I tried to let you know without words, but I never seemed to get it right. And that night we were together, was so wonderful-so wonderful-I knew I was lost, as I’d sworn never to be again.

‘I was so arrogant it shames me. I knew I couldn’t let you go, but I thought I could have you on my own terms, without a surrender. And that evening in Venice, when we were walking, every word you said seemed designed to warn me off. You were planning to go away, so I tried to back you into a corner, force you to marry me, and I lost you completely.

‘I didn’t know how to get you back. This was the best I could think of, but you were so wary of me, I thought I had no hope. I was going to leave and set you free of me. That was the only way left to prove a love I thought you didn’t want.’

‘I’ll always want your love. Never leave me, my darling.’

‘You don’t know what you’re doing,’ he said as he rained kisses over her face. ‘You’ll regret it-’

‘Never!’

‘I can’t do things by half,’ he murmured. ‘I’ll always be possessive. I’ll want all of you-’

‘All,’ she whispered joyfully.

‘You’ll have to fight me-promise me that you will. Otherwise you might start to hate me and I couldn’t endure that.’

‘I’ll fight you,’ she promised.

‘And I shall learn from you,’ he said seriously. ‘You’ve taught me so much. Go on teaching me. Be my mentor, keep me safe.’ He dropped his head so that his mouth lay against her palm.

‘Safe in my heart,’ she whispered. ‘Safe in my heart my beloved-for always.’