gone,’ she blurted, before she could stop herself.
‘Alas, no,’ came his reply. It was smooth, but terse. And very unfriendly. ‘Much though I would have preferred to return to Rome, I would not dream of abandoning a hospitalised Tomaso to nothing more than your loving presence.’
Laura felt colour mottle her cheeks.
‘How is he?’ she asked, as she went and took the only other place laid at the vast table—directly opposite Allesandro. It made him seem closer than she wanted him to be. But then she didn’t want him anywhere near her at all anyway.
The feeling was doubtless mutual, she realised, intercepting a black look from him as she pulled in her chair.
‘His condition is stable,’ he said. ‘As if you care.’
Her colour mounted. ‘I don’t want him to die—I told you that.’
‘And as I told you—that’s big of you,’ Allesandro returned. He frowned. ‘Do you have nothing better to wear for dinner?’ he demanded, his eyes flicking dismissively over her clothes.
‘No,’ said Laura. If she’d known he was going to be here she’d have insisted on a meal in her room. He was the last person she wanted to spend time with. She opened her book and started to read. To her relief, her unwelcome dining partner returned his attention to his papers.
The meal that followed was ludicrously formal, to Laura’s mind. There were too many courses, and it went on for ages. The only compensation—for the company was even worse than the formality and the length of the meal—was the food, which was incredibly delicious. As she scraped up the last of the delicious sauce accompanying the beautifully cooked lamb, Laura realised she was under surveillance.
‘Do you always eat so much?’
Laura stared blankly. She liked food. She always had. Comfort eating, the magazine articles called it, but she didn’t care. Her lifestyle was not sedentary, and with all the sheer physical slog of looking after Wharton, plus the long, solitary walks she loved to take through the countryside, she had a good appetite. ‘Sturdy’ her grandmother had always called her. Probably she would run to fat when she was middle aged—as her grandmother had.
Now, she swallowed the last mouthful, put her cutlery back on the plate, and said baldly, ‘Yes.’
Then she went on reading.
Allesandro glowered from his seat across the table. None of the women he knew could put food away like that. Even though it was impossible to see her figure in those shapeless clothes, if she were eating like that she could hardly be anything but overweight. He went back to his report on market conditions in South America. Laura Stowe could be the size of an elephant for all he cared.
The following day the hospital phoned to say that Tomaso was up to receiving visitors. Relieved, Allesandro marshalled Laura into the waiting car. As she sat, her hands twisting uneasily in her lap, he suddenly asked, ‘What is wrong with your hands?’
She glanced down. ‘Nothing. Why?’
He hadn’t noticed them before. But then, it was hard to when there was the rest of her unappealing appearance to attempt to ignore.
‘They are covered in scratches,’ he said.
She shrugged. ‘They’re healing. I was clearing some brambles in the garden the day before I came out here.’ She turned her hands over. The palms were just as scratched, plus rough and callused.
‘What do you do to yourself?’ he demanded.
She looked at him expressionlessly. ‘I work. Wharton doesn’t look after itself.’
His face tightened. ‘You have staff, surely?’
She rolled her eyes. ‘Oh, yes—four housemaids and just as many gardeners!’
He took a breath. ‘Well, perhaps now, with the money I paid you, you can afford to hire some help.’
‘I doubt the Inland Revenue will see it that way,’ she said dryly.
‘Como?’ Allesandro’s eyebrows drew together.
‘Your cheque paid off the first tranche of death duties I owe. That’s why I accepted it. I’d have torn it to shreds otherwise. But…’ she shrugged, looking at him defiantly ‘…I’m going to fight tooth and nail to keep Wharton. And you’ll get your money back, Signor di Vincenzo. I assure you. When I’m finally earning money from holiday lets at Wharton—’
‘You think someone will pay to stay there?’ Allesandro interjected incredulously. ‘It’s a rain-sodden, decaying wreck!’
Her chin lifted. ‘I’ll renovate it,’ she said. ‘I won’t sell up unless I’m absolutely forced to!’
Allesandro was looking at her strangely.
‘You are attached to the place?’ He made it sound as though she enjoyed eating rotten meat.
‘It’s my home,’ she said tightly.
He gestured with his hand around him. ‘But you have a new home here, for the asking,’ he said.
Her expression tightened even more.
‘And also,’ he went on, with the same strange look in his face, ‘you now need have no more money worries. Your grandfather will lavish on you whatever you want.’
A hard light entered her eyes. ‘What a pity the man he fathered didn’t think to lavish the one thing on his daughter that she actually would have valued—his acknowledgement of her existence!’
Allesandro’s expression changed. ‘Stefano was a—a law unto himself. He did what he wanted. He was—’
‘A bastard,’ said Laura. ‘Like me.’
Her jaw was set. She looked belligerent.
Cussed. Sullen. Ill-tempered.
The familiar adjectives scrolled in Allesandro’s mind. Then another one entered. Where it had come from, he had no idea. But suddenly it was there all the same.
Bleak, with an empty look in her eyes.
He thrust it aside. Laura Stowe wasn’t someone he wanted to feel sorry for.
At the hospital his instructions were terse.
‘Say anything to upset Tomaso and you will be sorry, I promise you.’
Laura only looked away. The last time she’d been in a hospital ward it had been to see her grandfather, the day he had finally died of heart failure, mere months after her grandmother’s death. As she followed Allesandro into the intensive care room, and saw the solitary figure surrounded by instruments and electronics, his body wired up to them and a drip in his arm, she swallowed hard.
The figure in the bed was so frail. As frail as her grandfather had been.
But this is my grandfather.
