The Italian's Passionate Revenge

CHAPTER SEVEN

WHEN the bell rang the following evening the last person Elise expected to find standing there was Mary Connish-Fontain. Since the day she had confronted her at Ben’s funeral Elise had barely given her another thought. When there was no news of a DNA test she’d shrugged and forgotten it.

‘Aren’t you going to ask me in?’ Mary demanded as Elise gazed at her, nonplussed.

She stood back for Mary to saunter past her, moving slowly to give herself time to take in her extravagant surroundings.

‘Nice,’ she said. ‘Very nice. And to think you tried to plead poverty. Oh, you’re here, are you?’

She’d noticed Vincente, stretched out on the sofa. He gave her a relaxed grin, but his eyes were alert.

‘What do you want?’ Elise said.

‘You know what I want. My fair share.’

‘Weren’t you going to have a test done? Where are the results?’

‘Oh, tests, what do they prove?’ Mary said with an attempt at a laugh.

‘Everything if they’re positive,’ Vincente observed. ‘Yours wouldn’t have been, which is why you decided not to have it. Very wise.’

‘Test, test! Who cares about that? Ben always said he’d see me right. I’m only here to get justice.’ Her tone became wheedling. ‘We both suffered from Ben’s little ways. We’re both women, surely we can find a way to help each other?’

Elise was beginning to feel light-headed. This conversation was rapidly becoming surreal.

‘Each other?’ she queried. ‘You see us becoming bosom pals?’

‘We haven’t all been as lucky as you,’ Mary snapped. ‘You’ve followed the money wherever it led, haven’t you? And you’ve ended up here. But what about me? Ben promised to marry me.’

‘That would have been a little difficult,’ Vincente observed mildly.

‘Oh, it’s easy to see whose side you’re on,’ Mary snapped. ‘It didn’t take her long to bring you to heel, did it? That’s how she is with men.’

‘It’s certainly how she was with me,’ Vincente agreed, giving Elise a wicked look that almost made her burst out laughing.

‘I think you should leave now,’ he added. ‘And don’t bother this lady ever again.’

‘I’ve got my rights,’ Mary shouted. ‘She should have divorced him.’

‘So I would have done, with pleasure, if he’d let me,’ Elise told her. ‘But he wouldn’t. Ben let you down the way he let everyone down. Do you think anything you can say will trouble me?’

‘It might, if it was printed in a magazine. I’ve had offers-’

‘Then take them,’ Elise said promptly. ‘Take the money, say what you like. As if I care!’

‘You’ll care when I tell them what he used to say about you-that you were a cold-hearted bitch who didn’t bother who you hurt as long as you got what you wanted.’

‘I dare say he was right,’ Elise said coolly. ‘I’m a cold-hearted bitch, which means you haven’t a hope of moving me. You’d better go now.’

‘Ben told me a lot more than you think, all about that Italian boy you were supposed to love, but you dropped him fast enough when you smelled Ben’s money. He stood under your window and screamed for you not to betray him, and you just laughed at him. He’d been useful, hadn’t he? You used him to make Ben jealous, and you didn’t care what happened to him when-’

She stopped, suddenly scared by what she saw in Elise’s eyes.

‘Get out,’ Elise said softly. ‘Get out, now.’

Mary fled.

Elise folded her arms across her chest as if holding on to something.

Vincente reached for her but she pulled away.

‘You’re shaking,’ he said. ‘Tell me about it.’

She shook her head urgently. Just as before, she wanted to tell him about Angelo, but somehow she couldn’t get the words out. It was a sacred subject, not to be raised with the man who’d stolen her heart away from her young love.

‘Nothing…nothing…’

‘It can’t be nothing if it upsets you like this. What was she talking about? Who was that young man?’

‘I can’t…I can’t…’

‘I wish you trusted me enough to tell me,’ he said sombrely.

She looked into his face, longing to take this final step. Instead of urging her with words he kissed her gently, then again.

‘What’s so terrible that you can’t talk about it?’ he asked.

‘I can never talk about it,’ she said violently.

‘Even with me? Is there nothing between us but what we do in bed?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said wistfully. ‘Sometimes I’ve thought so, but those times are so beautiful I forget everything else.’

He nodded. ‘It’s the same for me, but when I try to reach out to you I’ve often had the feeling that you’re drawing away, as though you want to keep me separate from the things that really matter to you.’

‘Don’t reproach me-there are things I can’t tell even to you.’

He didn’t answer in words, but he gave her a look of such unutterable sadness that her heart ached.

‘I’ve never talked to anyone about it,’ she begged.

‘Did you love him very much?’ he persisted. ‘Should I be jealous?’

‘It was a long time ago. I was another person. At eighteen you love differently, with all of yourself. You haven’t learned about caution.’

‘And you’ll never love like that again. That’s what you’re warning me, isn’t it?’

‘I guess so. I loved Angelo more than my life, and he loved me. We wanted to be together for ever, but I had to leave him for Ben. We only had three months before Ben dragged me away. Ever since then I’ve heard his voice in my head, crying to me not to leave him.’

‘What happened to him?’

‘He died. I don’t know how, but when I tried to call him a woman answered and screamed that he was dead. I can’t find out any more.’

‘Why didn’t you want to come back to Rome? I’d have thought you’d have been glad to.’

‘I couldn’t face him,’ she said simply.

‘Face him? But he’s dead.’

‘Not for me. Sometimes it’s as though he didn’t die at all, but he’s waiting for me somewhere. I know that’s partly because we were at a great distance, and I know nothing of the details. It’s almost as though his death had no reality, and I was afraid to challenge that.’

‘You were trying to keep him alive?’

‘Maybe it’s something of the kind. Although, when I went back to Trastevere and found everything destroyed, a woman said what had been there was gone for ever, and I knew it was true.

‘I tried to learn more about how it happened. I studied the death certificates for that time, but there was nothing in the name of Angelo Caroni, and I don’t understand that. Vincente? Vincente?’

Something strange had come over him. He was still holding her, but it was as though he’d turned to stone and she wondered if he could hear her.

‘Vincente?’

He seemed to come out of a dream and his manner was forced. ‘You may not have been looking in the right place.’

She gave a wan smile. ‘Maybe I’ve never looked for Angelo in the right place. Perhaps there is no right place, and no man could be as I remember him.’

‘Then perhaps you should let him go.’

‘I try, but it’s as though I’m waiting for something to happen. I don’t know what, but I’ll know when it does.’ She kissed him. ‘Thank you for listening. I should have told you before.’

‘It’s late. We should go to bed,’ he said quietly.

Once in bed he held her and gave her a gentle kiss, but didn’t try to make love to her. Elise wondered if perhaps she should have kept the story to herself. Was it possible that he was jealous?

She looked up, but he pressed her head against his shoulder.

‘Go to sleep,’ he said.

He was glad she couldn’t see him clearly at this moment, in case his eyes were too revealing. Elise had told him the secret that tormented her, but his own secret was becoming too burdensome to hide.

Next day Vincente left for good and the apartment felt bleak and empty. Half an hour of wandering around it alone was enough to bring Elise to a decision and send her out to pick up a cab. She was away for several hours and arrived back with her arms full of folders.

A text from Vincente announced that he would pick her up at eight that evening, belatedly adding, ‘if that’s all right.’

He looked surprised when he arrived at the apartment.

‘I thought you’d be dressed up and ready to go out.’

‘Sorry. I meant to be, but I got reading and forgot the time.’

‘It must have been fascinating.’

‘It was. Look.’ She showed him the folders. ‘They’re from the place I was studying fashion when I was here before. I’m going back.’

‘You mean as a pupil?’

‘Yes. The current term will finish next week but they’re going to let me join the lessons, just to see if I can still fit in. Then I’ll enroll properly for next term.’

Vincente browsed through the papers while she hurried to get dressed. When she returned he was frowning, but he said nothing until they were settled in a restaurant in the next street.

‘You don’t need to do this now,’ he said.

‘But I want to. I can’t live a useless life. I need to be busy. I’m going to see the estate agent and insist that he makes a real push to sell the apartment, so that I can find something smaller. Then I can have some sort of life of my own.’

‘Are you going to have any time for me?’ he asked satirically.

‘I’ll make a little time,’ she teased. ‘If you’re good.’

‘Good?’

‘I meant virtuous.’

‘Oh, you meant that, did you?’ he demanded sardonically.

‘Now, what else could I possibly have meant?’

‘Eat up, you little shrew.’

Afterwards they strolled back to the apartment, but at the street door he said thoughtfully, ‘I suppose this is the moment when I kiss you virtuously goodnight and go home.’

‘You do and you’re dead.’

Laughing, they went up together. The love-making was delightful and satisfying, but she thought she detected in him a kind of wariness.

‘Why do you keep looking at me like that?’ she asked.

‘I keep wondering what you’re thinking of. Me, or your new career?’

‘Anyone would think you were jealous.’

‘Let’s say I’m possessive. I want you to myself. Jealousy is for people too weak to do anything about it. Don’t ever expect me to behave like a gentleman and bow out. Because, I warn you, I’m no gentleman. Never try to brush me aside.’

She gave him a considering look. ‘Is that what I’m going to do?’

‘You might be foolish enough to try.’

‘And if I did?’

‘I wouldn’t let it happen.’

An awkward imp made her say, ‘But suppose I really wanted to drop you? That would be my decision.’

‘No, cara. When and where it ends between us is my decision. Never forget that.’

His voice was soft, and in that very softness she thought she detected a hint of menace. The imp grew annoyed.

‘Are you saying that you’d try to force me?’

‘That depends on how you define force. Let’s say that I’d make you change your mind.’

‘And when I’d said the right words-’

‘I’m not talking about words. You would have to really change your mind, really want me, because I’d be satisfied with nothing less.’

‘Good grief, you’re sure of yourself,’ she snapped. ‘Suppose one day things don’t work out to suit you?’

Vincente didn’t answer in words. He simply took her hand, turned it over and laid his lips against her palm. She tried to pull away but his grip, while seeming gentle, was unbreakable. His breath was like a furnace, and his lips tickled her softly so that insistent tremors went through her hand, up her arm.

Yet, even as she responded, she knew that there was something here that was alarming. This wasn’t love or even desire, but a simple demonstration of power. He wanted her to know that he held her prisoner, not with locks and chains, but simply by subverting her own will, making her flesh act in defiance of her mind. And, if he could do that, then he was her master indeed.

She must escape him.

She did so, sliding off the bed and reaching out for her robe, but before she could touch it, it was whisked away, tossed into a corner, and his fingers surrounded her wrist.

‘Let go of me at once,’ she said breathlessly.

‘I only want to talk,’ he said, still holding her. ‘There are things we need to get straight between us.’

‘I said let me go.’

He ignored her and leaned back, drawing her slowly but inexorably towards him. It was unnerving that such a light grip could be as unbreakable as steel, but there was nothing she could do. When she reached the bed he put his other arm about her waist so that she was forced to sit beside him, unable to move.

‘Don’t fight me, Elise,’ he murmured. ‘Don’t ever fight me. You can’t win. I won’t let you.’

‘It won’t be up to you,’ she said through gritted teeth.

He smiled then, and it almost frightened her. There was no amusement behind it, only a kind of sardonic pity.

‘Don’t fool yourself about that,’ he said. ‘What happens is always up to me.’

‘Never,’ she snapped. ‘You don’t own me and you don’t control me.’

‘Really?’

‘You’re deluding yourself. Let me go at once.’

He ignored her, pressing her back on to the bed with his hand on her shoulder. It was the lightest of touches, with barely any pressure behind it, yet when she tried to escape, she couldn’t. This was like everything else he did, she thought wildly. Determined, calculated-whether it was taking over a company, silencing an enemy or subduing a woman. He was watching her with shadowed eyes, dark enough to swallow all feeling. She could sense only his unrelenting purpose.

When he was sure that she knew resistance was useless, he let his hand drift away from her shoulder towards her breasts, already peaked and firm in readiness for him. Deny it as she might, she was aching for his caress, but when it came it was light, brushing carelessly over first one breast, then the other, almost as though he hadn’t noticed their message.

She lay looking up, furious at her own nakedness and his, more furious still at the fact that her chest was rising and falling with renewed desire, and that there was no way to hide it from him.

He’d only just left her body, she thought, enraged. Just a few minutes ago she had felt satiated, yet with a look and a word he had brought her back to the edge, tense with frustration, raging for the feel of him inside her again, filling her with his power. And he knew it, damn him! He knew everything.

He dropped his head and let his lips trail across her flesh so that wherever he went she was aflame. Then she felt the flickering of his tongue and a groan burst from her, despite her best efforts to silence it, and she raised her hands to her head, digging the fingers into her hair, and arching her back.

Then she realised that he was changing her position, turning her over on to her front and running his hands along her spine. His mouth followed them, while his hands slid down to caress her behind. Her back was tingling as never before. It was a good feeling, yet she wanted to turn over and face him. This position made her so helpless.

Then she forgot everything but what he was doing to her, and how good it felt. Suddenly she let out a sound that was almost a cry. He’d discovered a place at the back of her neck that sent fierce, hot sweetness forking through her. No man had ever touched her there before, and she’d never dreamed that it was a special sensitive place until Vincente discovered it.

He kissed her there with lingering skill, while she lay shaking. Then he gently turned her over, watching her, to know whether his moment was here.

Let it happen, Elise thought crazily. It would be his victory but she no longer cared. Let him have the triumph of claiming her, feeling her enclose him avidly, frantic for what only he could give.

Everything in her longed to scream, Now! She just managed to hold it back, but her will was melting into compliance. She wanted him on top of her, inside her, driving her further and faster until she could find the blazing release that was now all she cared about.

Thank goodness he too had reached the edge! She could see his arousal, rising unmistakably from the dark hair between his legs. There was a kind of savage satisfaction in knowing that, like her, he was reacting to the point where control was impossible. She parted her legs, seeking the moment when he had no choice but to enter her and they would become equals in desire and incitement, so that she could conquer him at the moment he conquered her. That would be a kind of sweet revenge.

But instead of settling over her he dropped his head and laid his mouth gently over hers. Incredibly, it was a chaste kiss, almost reverent, lips barely touching.

‘Goodnight,’ he whispered. ‘Sleep well.’

He slid quickly off the bed, picked up his clothes and walked out of the door.

She lay, too stunned to move or to think straight. From behind the door she could hear his movements, and it dawned on her with horrifying force that he’d really gone.

Having inflamed her desire to the pitch of madness, he’d walked away without a backward glance, leaving her unsatisfied and desperate. Determined to show his power over her, he’d done it as coolly and brutally as possible.

‘No,’ she breathed. ‘No!’

She leapt off the bed and hurled herself at the door, but even as she wrenched it open she heard the front door close behind him and his footsteps fading outside.

‘No!’ she screamed.

For a blinding moment she was on the verge of rushing after him and hauling him back by force, but mercifully something stopped her. That would be to hand him the ultimate victory-even more satisfying to him than the one he’d already achieved.

Slowly, breathing hard, she made her way back into the bedroom and across to the window. The light was out and she could stand there, unseen. In a moment he strode from the building, went to his car and drove away without glancing up to see if she were there.

Her body was still thrumming with the passion he’d so cynically evoked, while her heart was possessed by hatred. The tension between them almost destroyed her and it was maddening to be unable to do anything except pace the room, hands clenched, fuming.

But there was one thing she could do and she did it, seizing a vase and hurling it at the wall. It made a satisfying crash, but left her feeling no better. She headed for the bathroom and stood under the shower while freezing water splashed over her. It cooled her body, but not her raging heart.

Vincente didn’t call her the next day, and her anger grew. Another cold shower helped, but only a little.

On the following day there was a knock on the door, and she opened it to find a lad holding a huge bouquet of red roses.

‘Signora Carlton?’

She signed for it, closed the door hurriedly and looked for the note. It was brief:

I have to make a tour of factories and knock some heads together. I’ll call you when I get back. Vincente.

‘To hell with him,’ she muttered. She knew what he was doing-sending her one message in the flowers and another in the curt letter. She knew which was the real one.

She chucked the flowers in the bin.

Now Elise was glad she’d rediscovered the fashion school. She could occupy her brain; she spent several days there, bringing work home and staying up late into the night.

‘It’ll be wonderful having you back,’ the principal said when she officially signed up for the next term. ‘I hope you’ll make a career of it this time.’

‘Don’t worry. Nothing’s going to stop me.’ Under her breath she added, ‘Nothing and nobody.’

Every second day another bouquet would arrive, but there were no more notes. Just the blazing beauty of red roses, with their confusing message.

‘I know what you’re doing,’ she said aloud. ‘This is how you think to keep me on the hook. You think I’ll be confused and worried. You think I’m missing you, dying for you to knock on that door so that I can throw myself into your arms. Think again!’

Always the roses went into the bin, but as the days passed the gesture became less fierce. After a while she began keeping one rose back. Just one could do no harm.

She spent hours going around the best fashion shops in Rome. She’d visited them before, but as a shopper. Now she returned as a student, mentally preparing herself for when term started.

When she wasn’t exploring the shops she practised drawing clothes, refining her skills, experimenting with ideas. She became more and more absorbed until the phone rang one afternoon and at first she didn’t hear it.

She finally answered, expecting it to be Vincente. But the voice was feminine and gracious.

‘I am Signora Farnese, mother of Vincente,’ she said. ‘I have heard so much about you, and I can wait no longer to meet you. Will you give me the pleasure of your company for dinner tonight? Vincente is still away, so we shall be quite private.’

‘Thank you, I should like to.’

‘My car will call for you at seven o’clock.’

Elise dressed with great care, choosing a dress of embroidered ivory silk with a matching jacket, and dressed her hair in a style that was elegant and slightly severe.

The limousine appeared on the dot of seven, and took her on a journey towards the countryside that lay south of the city. It was dusk and the lights were coming on, lighting up St Peter’s, glowing in the River Tiber.

There were more lights on the Palazzo Marini when it finally came into view. She’d checked the place out on the Internet, but the reality of the Renaissance building was still breathtaking.

Vincente’s mother was a small, bright-eyed woman with a gentle manner and a strong likeness to Vincente. She laughed at Elise’s expression.

‘Yes, my son takes after me, doesn’t he?’

‘Signora,’ Elise said hesitantly, ‘how did you know who I was, and where to contact me?’

‘I have friends all over Rome,’ the Signora said with a little smile. ‘Some of them were at the shareholders’ meeting. Others…’ She gave an elegant little shrug.

‘Others were everywhere,’ Elise finished.

‘And they’re all terrible gossips. I’ve never known my son so-shall we say?-absorbed. I knew that I simply had to meet you.’

She spent the least possible time showing Elise around the Palazzo before indicating a short flight of marble steps.

‘Up here is my own apartment,’ she said. ‘Let us go there and be comfortable.’

Her rooms were cosy, with everything on an intimate scale.

‘I feel easier here,’ the Signora said with a smile. ‘I get lost in that huge building. I wasn’t born to grandeur and I can’t really get used to it.’

A small table had been set for supper on a balcony overlooking a view of lavish gardens, with Rome in the distance.

Her hostess treated her royally, serving the very best food and wine. She was in her seventies, and clearly frail, but her gentle manner was enchanting. She seemed to like Elise at once, and was soon confiding in her.

‘I thought I would never have a child,’ she said. ‘My first two babies were stillborn so when Vincente lived it was like reaching heaven.’

‘And you never had any others after him?’ Elise asked.

‘No, but I did have a nephew, my sister’s son, who came to live with me after she died. He was-ah, here is our fruit.’

The maid had entered with the next course and the Signora was diverted. She seemed to have a butterfly mind that flitted from topic to topic. She asked about her guest and Elise gave a carefully edited version of her life, and an even more discreetly edited version of how she’d met Vincente.

‘I’m being very obvious, aren’t I?’ the Signora said at last. ‘But I do so long for grandchildren and I’m getting older very fast.’

To Elise’s own surprise she was suddenly embarrassed.

‘I don’t think we can talk about grandchildren,’ she said hurriedly. ‘Vincente and I are only-’

‘Of course, of course. I didn’t mean to…let’s talk about something else.’

‘Yes, let’s,’ Elise said with relief.

The Signora’s words had presented her with something that had been hovering on the edge of her consciousness for some time, without her having the nerve to face it.

She had told herself that she hated him for his treatment of her, but in the last couple of weeks she had missed him abominably, passing from hatred to need to sadness. If he appeared now she knew she would forgive him anything.

And now his mother had held out the prospect of marriage to Vincente, and children. She could no longer deny to herself how much she wanted this.

But it must stay her secret. The battle between them still raged. He might have the upper hand now, but she would still contend with him for pre-eminence. And so it would probably be all their lives.

Was this love? she wondered. It was violent and dangerous-so different from the sweetness she had known with Angelo. Yet it might be love.

Suddenly she became aware that her hostess was addressing her. Lost in her dream, she’d floated away from reality.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said hastily. ‘What did you say?’

‘It’s getting a little breezy out here. Let’s go in.’

Once inside, she hurried to the kitchen to order more coffee while Elise strolled around the room, studying the books and the delightful antique furniture.

Then she saw something that made her heart stand still.

Slowly she moved closer to the wall to get a better view, barely able to believe her eyes.

Hanging there was a small picture, a water colour depicting the Trevi Fountain with a young man sitting beside it, dipping one hand into the water and smiling at the artist.

It was Angelo.