The Costanzo Baby Secret (3 page)

“I know, Dario. Small steps, isn’t that what her doctor said?”

“Yes, but not, I fear, as small as he’d like. Already she’s wormed too much information out of me and knows our marriage was on shaky ground. Not exactly the best way for us to start trying to put our lives back together, is it?”

“But it can be done if you love each other enough to fight for what you once had. The question is, do you?”

“I can’t speak for her, Giuliana.”

“Then speak for yourself. I know that the way you started out together wasn’t ideal, and that you married her because you believed it was the honorable thing to do and you had no other choice, but it seemed to me that you were making it work.”

“Until it all went horribly wrong.”

And therein lay the crux of the matter. Could either of them get past what had happened, or had they lost too much ground ever to trust each other again?

Seeming to read his thoughts, his sister said softly, “Maeve loves you, Dario. I am certain of that.”

“Are you?” he said wearily. “I wish I was. But I didn’t call to burden you with my doubts, I called to find out how you’re holding up having an extra child to care for. Is Sebastiano wearing you out?”

“Not in the least. Marietta is an enormous help. You were
lucky to find so capable and willing a nanny. As for Cristina, she loves her little cousin and plays with him all the time. And he’s such a contented baby. He only ever cries if he’s hungry or tired, or needs to be changed.”

“He’s the one bright spot in this whole unfortunate business.”

“And too young to understand what’s happened.”

“Let’s hope he never will.” Dario paused. “Has anyone else in the family stopped by to see him?”

“If by that you mean our mother, then, yes. She came by this morning and again this afternoon. She’s quite adamant that he should be staying with her, and I’m equally adamant that he should not.”

“I’d hoped she’d go back to Milan with our father. The last thing Maeve needs right now is to run afoul of her.”

“Unfortunately, she seems set on staying here. But don’t worry, Dario. I can hold my own with her, as you very well know, and Lorenzo certainly can. He won’t stand for her interfering in our arrangement.”

That much he knew to be true. His mother might be a handful at times, but his brother-in-law was no more a man to be pushed around than Dario himself was. “I’m grateful to both of you for your support. Kiss my son good-night for me, will you? I’d come over and do it myself, but—”

“No,” his sister cut in. “Tonight, at least, it’s more important that you stay home in case Maeve needs you. It wouldn’t do for her to find herself alone before she gets her bearings.”

And how long before that happened, he wondered moodily, ending the call and pouring himself a stiff drink. It was all very fine for Arturo Peruzzi to counsel patience, but Dario had never been a particularly patient man. Already, after little
more than an hour, his tolerance was tested to the limit as far as letting nature take its course in its own sweet time. He’d spent too many days neglecting work because he couldn’t concentrate. Too many evenings like this, with a bottle of single-malt Scotch for company. And a damn sight too many nights alone in a bed designed for two.

Irritably, he threw open the glass doors and stepped out onto the terrace. Night had fallen and the dozens of solar lights dotted throughout the garden and around the perimeter of the pool gleamed softly in the dark.

Once upon a time not so very long ago, Maeve had wanted him as much as he wanted her. They’d slipped naked into the warm, limpid depths of the private spa outside their bedroom and made love with an urgency that bordered on desperation. He’d buried his mouth against hers for fear that someone might hear her cries of surrender. He’d withheld his own pleasure in order to prolong hers, and finally come so hard and fast within the confines of her sleek, tight flesh that his heart almost stopped.

So why was he standing here alone now, hard and aching, and she was sleeping in a guest suite?
Dannazione,
she was his wife!

A sound punctured the night, closer than the murmur of the restless sea, fainter than a whisper. A footfall so hesitant he might have dismissed it as a figment of his imagination had it not been accompanied by a fragrance he recognized: bergamot, juniper and Sicilian mandarin softened with a touch of rosemary.
Her
fragrance, and he ought to know. He’d bought it for her.

Turning his head, he found her framed in the open doorway behind him, her silhouette softened this time by the long,
loose garment she’d put on. She had never looked more ethereal or desirable.

“I thought you’d turned in for the night,” he said when he was able to speak.

“I couldn’t sleep.”

“Too much excitement?”

“Perhaps.” She took a step toward him and then another. “Or perhaps I’ve done enough sleeping and it’s time for me to wake up.”

H
E REMAINED
so still and watched her so warily that she almost lost her nerve and scuttled back to the safety of her suite. Decorated in shades of celadon and cream, nice soothing colors designed not to agitate the amnesiac mistress of the house, it was more luxurious than anything she could have imagined. The gorgeous bathroom had a steam shower and a tub deep enough to drown in. Adjacent to the bedroom was a sitting room, and outside in the private garden overlooking the sea, a swimming pool.

An oasis of tranquility, she’d have thought, yet she’d found neither answers nor rest there. From the minute she stepped over the threshold into the house, an air of utter desolation had engulfed her. She felt hollow inside. Bereft beyond anything words could describe.

Something bad had happened here. Something that went beyond a less than perfect marriage, and try though she might to dismiss it, the weight of unspeakable tragedy, of an event or events too horrific to contemplate, continued to haunt her. This spectacular seaside villa held a dark and dreadful secret, one she was determined to unearth. And whether or not he
wanted to, her tight-lipped husband was the man who’d reveal it to her.

“Are you going to offer me a drink?” she asked boldly, even though her pulse ran so fast that she could hardly breathe. Nothing new there, though. She’d lived with subdued panic most of her life, and had long ago learned to disguise it behind a facade of manufactured poise.

“If you’re asking for alcohol, I’m not sure that I should,” Dario said.

“Why not? Am I a raging dipsomaniac?”

He actually laughed at that, a lovely rich ripple of sound that played over her nerve endings like the bass keys of a finely tuned piano. “Hardly.”

“That’s a relief. For a moment, I was afraid I might be a good-time girl who danced on the table after one beer.”

“I’ve never known you to drink beer. You prefer good champagne, and never more than a glass or two at that. Nor have I ever seen you dance on a table.”

“Then why the reluctance to humor me now?”

“Medication and alcohol aren’t a good mix.”

“I’m not taking any medication. Haven’t for more than two weeks.”

“I see,” he said and ran a hand over his jaw. “In that case, I’ll make you a deal. Join me for dinner and I’ll crack open a bottle of your favorite vintage. It was always your favorite.”

Not wanting to appear too eager, she pretended to give the matter some thought. “All right. Now that you mention it, I am rather hungry.”

“
Eccellente
. If you’ll excuse me for a moment, I’ll let the cook know there’ll be two of us dining tonight.”

“Of course.” She waited until he’d disappeared then, weak at the knees from his departing smile, she tottered to a pair of sun lounges upholstered in blue-and-white-striped cotton, and practically fell onto the one nearest.

The view spread out in front of her was breathtaking. A big oval infinity pool, strategically placed for maximum dramatic effect, appeared to cling to the very rim of the cliff. An illusion, of course, brought about by the sort of complicated engineering feat only the very rich and famous could afford. But the profusion of bougainvillea framing the picture was nature’s handiwork alone.

Dario returned in a matter of minutes with two slender tulip-shaped flutes and a silver ice bucket containing a bottle of champagne. He poured the wine, sat down beside her and touched the rim of his glass to hers.
“Salute!”

“
Salute!
And thank you.”

“For what?”

“For everything you’ve done since I’ve been ill. They told me at the hospital that you’re the one who sent me flowers every day and who took care of all my expenses.”

“What else would you have had me do, Maeve? I’m your husband.”

“Yes, well…about that…”

“Relax,
cara,
” he advised her gently. “I didn’t mention our relationship as a prelude to demanding my conjugal rights.”

“Oh,” she said, swallowing a wave of disappointment along with a sip of champagne. Not that she was raring to make love to a man she didn’t know, but that he presumably knew her very well indeed, yet was so willing to keep his distance, wasn’t exactly flattering. On the other hand, what else did she
expect? “Under the circumstances, it never occurred to me that you were.”

He turned his head sharply and fixed her in a probing stare. “What do you mean by that?”

“I might not remember marrying you, Dario, but I’ve still got twenty-twenty vision. I know I look more like a scarecrow than a woman.”

“You’re still recovering from an accident that almost cost you your life. You can’t expect to look the same as you did before.”

“Even so, my hair…” She tugged self-consciously at the pathetic remains of what had once been her crowning glory, as if doing so might persuade it to sprout another few inches.

Reaching across the space separating them, he stilled her hand and brought it down to rest beneath his. It was the kind of thing a parent might do to stop a child picking at a scab, but however he might have intended it, his touch electrified her in places not referred to in polite society. Involuntarily she clamped her knees together as primly as a virgin defending her innocence.

Fortunately, he couldn’t read her mind. Or if he could, he didn’t like the direction it had taken, because he let go of her hand as quickly as he’d grasped it. “You have beautiful hair,” he said. “It reminds me of sunshine on satin.”

“It’s too short.”

“I like it short. It shows more of your face, which, like the rest of you, is also quite beautiful, regardless of how you might view it.”

Even though he delivered it as matter-of-factly as a Kennel Club judge might appraise a freshly trimmed poodle, his compliment was more than she’d hoped for or deserved. After her
bath, she’d done her best to find something flattering to wear among the clothes she’d discovered in the small dressing room connecting her bedroom to the bathroom, and heaven knew there was quite a bit to choose from.

Layers of lingerie in glass-fronted drawers filled one side, with a shelf of shoes below, and another holding several big floppy sun hats above. Opposite was a row of loose-fitting day dresses, skirts and tops, with two or three more elegant dinner outfits on padded hangers arranged at one end. Nothing too formal, though. Judging by the plethora of beach and patio wear, and the pairs of straw sandals and flip-flops encrusted with crystals, Pantelleria was not the social center of the world.

The quality of the clothes, however, was unmistakable. She’d fingered the expensive fabrics, admiring the cut and color of the various garments. Fashion was in her blood and whatever else might have slipped her mind, her eye for style had not. That most items appeared at least two sizes too large might have proved something of a challenge to a person of lesser experience, but she was on familiar territory when it came to making a woman look her best. Bypassing silky lace-trimmed bras and panties, she’d chosen cotton knit underwear that forgave her diminished curves, and topped it with a loose-flowing caftan in vibrant purple that whispered over her body like a breeze and softened the sharp jut of her hip bones.

Regarding her efforts in the full-length mirror, she’d felt a woman a little more in charge of herself again. But although it had given her the courage to seek out Dario and try to worm more information out of him, now that he was inspecting her so thoroughly, she almost cowered.

“You’re embarrassing me,” she protested.

“Why?” he countered mildly. “You’re lovely, and I can’t possibly be the first man to tell you so.”

“No. My father used to say the same thing, but he was prejudiced. In truth, I was an ugly duckling, especially as a teenager.”

“I quite believe it.”

Her jaw dropped. “You do?”

“Certainly. How else could you have turned into such an elegant swan?”

He was laughing at her, and suddenly she was laughing, too.

It had been so long since she’d done that, and the result was startling, as if she’d opened an inner door and set free a hard, dark knot of misery. For the first time in weeks, she felt light and could breathe again. “Thank you for saying that. You’re very kind.”

“And you’re your own worst critic.” He touched her again, stroking the back of her hand, his fingers warm and strong. “What happened to make you that way, Maeve?”

“I’d have thought I told you that already, seeing that we’re married.”

“Perhaps you did,” he said, “but since we’re starting out all over again, tell me a second time.”

“Well, I was always shy, but never more than when I entered my teens. I’d become paralyzed with self-consciousness in a crowd, and had a miserable adolescence as a result.”

“Didn’t most of us at that age, at one time or another?”

“I suppose, but mine was made worse because, when I turned thirteen, my parents sent me to a very prestigious girls-only private academy, light-years removed from the kind of
school I was used to and the few friends I had. Not that I came from the wrong side of the tracks or anything, but the day I walked into that elite establishment sitting across town on its high-priced five acres of prime real estate, I entered a different world, one in which I was a definite outsider.”

“You made no new friends?”

“Not really. Teenage girls can be very cruel, even if they don’t always mean to be. At best I was tolerated. At worst, ignored. I wasn’t entirely blameless, either. I compensated by withdrawing and trying to make myself invisible, which isn’t easy when you’re taller than everyone else, and painfully awkward to boot. I suppose that’s when I became fixated on long hair. I used to hide behind it all the time.”

She took another sip of champagne and stared at the empty sea, for the second time in one day harking back to that awful, unhappy era. “I wanted to be different. Be braver, more outgoing, more interesting and lively. More like those other girls who were so sure of themselves and so at ease in their environment. But I was me. Ordinary, dull. Academically acceptable, but socially and athletically inept.”

“When did all that change?”

“How do you know it did?”

“Because the person you describe isn’t the woman I know.”

Not on the outside, perhaps, and usually not on the inside either. Until someone poked too cruelly at those hidden insecurities and made them bleed. Then she was exactly that girl all over again. Not good enough. A nobody masquerading as somebody.

“Maeve,” he said, watching her closely, “what happened to make you see yourself in a different light?’

She remembered as if it had occurred just last week. “The day in my senior year that the headmistress called me up on stage during morning assembly and ordered the entire student body to look at Maeve Montgomery and take notice. Believing I was about to be castigated for having broken some unwritten rule of decorum, and to hide the fact that I was shaking inside, I stood very erect and stared out at that sea of faces without blinking.”

“And?”

“And what she said was, ‘When members of the general public meet girls from this academy walking down the street or waiting at the bus stop, this is what I expect them to see. Someone who doesn’t feel the need to raise her voice to draw attention to herself, but who behaves with quiet dignity. Someone proud to wear our uniform, with her blouse tucked in at the waist, her shoes polished and her hair neatly arranged.’”

Maeve paused and shot Dario a wry glance. “In case you’re wondering, by then I’d progressed to the point that I wore my hair in a French braid, instead of letting it hang in my face.”

“I see. So the girl who thought she was an outsider turned out to fit in very well, after all.”

“I suppose I did, in a way. I’m not sure if I was really the paragon of virtue the headmistress made me out to be, or if she understood that I needed a morale boost and that was her way of giving it to me, but after that morning the other seniors regarded me with a sort of surprised respect, and those in the lower grades with something approaching awe.”

“What matters,
cara,
is how did you see yourself?”

“Differently,” she admitted. That night she’d looked in the
mirror, something she normally avoided, and discovered not a flat-chested, gangly teenager forever tripping over her own feet, but a long-legged stranger with soft curves, straight teeth and clear blue eyes.

Not that she said as much to Dario, of course. She’d have sounded too conceited. Instead she explained, “I realized it was time to get over myself. I vowed I’d never again be ashamed of who I was, but would face the world with courage, and honor the ideals my parents had instilled in me. In other words, to value honesty and loyalty and decency.”

“People don’t necessarily abide by their promises though, do they?”

Taken aback by the sudden and inexplicably bitter note underlying his remark, she said, “I can’t speak for other people, Dario, but I can tell you that I’ve always tried hard to stick to mine.”

He stared her at her for a second or two, his beautiful face so immobile it might have been carved from granite. When he spoke, his voice was as distant as the cold stars littering the sky. “If you say so, my dear. It’s such a fine night that I ordered dinner served out here. I hope you don’t mind.”

“Not at all,” she answered, “but I do mind your changing the subject so abruptly.”

He turned away with a shrug, as if to say,
And I should care because?
But she was having none of that. She’d been stone-walled long enough by doctors and nurses and therapists. She’d be damned if she’d put up with the same treatment from a man claiming to be her husband.

Grasping his arm, she stopped him before he could put more distance between them. “Don’t ignore me, Dario. You
implied that I’m lying, and I want to know why. What have I done to make you not believe me?”

Before he could answer, the housekeeper came to announce that dinner was ready. Obviously relieved at the interruption, he took Maeve by the elbow and steered her the length of the terrace, to a table and chairs set under a section of roof that extended from the house. Long white curtains hung to the floor on the open three sides, no doubt to provide protection from the sun and wind during the day, but they were tied back now and gave an unobstructed view of the moon casting a glittering path across the sea.