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“That’s very generous of you, but I can be generous too,” she assured him shakily. “I’ll pack for you!”
“I have already asked Lucrezia to take care of it,” Alex murmured tightly. “This is what you want, isn’t it?”
“Of course it’s what I want. My God, Alex, you don’t think I’m about to argue, do you?” she gibed, half an octave higher.
A tiny muscle jerked in the corner of his compressed mouth, as if her venom had thrust fully home. In a torment of blind rage and despair, she watched him leave the room. She listened to his steps ringing up the stairs, and it seemed no time until they came down again. Still she had not moved. The slam of the car door echoed through the window. Unexpectedly, the door opened again.
Alex hovered there, shorn of his usual cool poise. But then, the last time he had walked out, he had not had to tolerate an audience or a conscience. She observed him with cold eyes. “Did you forget something?”
Alex, you bastard, how could you put me through this again? But she didn’t speak. As he turned on his heel, she crammed a shaking hand to her wobbling mouth and bowed her head over the chair which was still supporting her. Why was it that no matter what she did he could still walk away? Here she had been, expecting at first guilty discomfiture upon his part but inevitably the same release she had experienced after Vickie’s revelations. But the one salient fact she had overlooked was that Alex did not love her. Alex had reacted according to his principles. He had forced her into this marriage. In apology, he was removing himself from her life again. She was fiercely glad that she had let him go thinking that she was delighted to see the back of him. Once before, loving him had humiliated her. It had not done so this time.
A quiet like the grave settled over Casa del Fiore. The staff seemed to creep about. Lucrezia, full of enormous Florentine compassion, looked upon her with great, tragic eyes and endeavoured to tempt her flagging appetite. At the end of a week, Kerry was emptied of tears. Her misery had stirred Nicky into rampant insecurity, and she had to pull herself together for his benefit. After the strain of smiling all day, she ended up ringing Steven late one evening. It was a long call, and forty-eight hours later Steven arrived on the doorstep.
Nicky greeted him boisterously and, under Lucrezia’s dazed scrutiny, Kerry threw her arms about him too. “That’ll have to be some shoulder,” she sniffed.
His classic features pulled a clownish grimace, and his blue eyes were rueful. “It’s one of the very few things I’m good at.”
* * *
“WHY DIDN’T YOU tell him how you felt?” he asked later, when Nicky was in bed.
“There was no point.” Her tone brooked no argument.
“I’ve never met Alex…”
“Aren’t you the lucky one?” she muttered, blowing her nose. “He was a jealous, suspicious toad the first time around, but you know, this time he was worse…he was so nice all the time, it was like living with a saint over the last few weeks. Not my idea of Alex at all.”
Steven looked understandably a little at sea, and tried to be constructive. “My gut reaction is that in clearing out he thought he was doing the decent thing, like somebody out of one of those ghastly melodramatic plays they enjoy in Greece.”
Kerry was unimpressed. “If he hadn’t wanted to let me go, he wouldn’t have. Let’s talk about something more cheerful. He’s gone and that’s it, and I never, ever want to see him again. Do you hear me?” She snatched at another tissue and wiped at her overflowing eyes.
Steven stayed only for three days, and mentioned that he would be selling up the business. Barbara had convinced him that he would cope much better with a simple workshop in a town where there would be more demand for his services, and she was thinking of looking for a job closer to home. Kerry had to quell the unpleasant feeling that everybody else’s problems were working out, while her own simply increased in complexity.
She let the workmen back into the house. Her life wasn’t going to fall apart again, she assured herself. She had got by without Alex before, she would do so again. She kept herself busy and she fell into bed every night exhausted. Alex had been gone exactly three weeks when Athene arrived without so much as a polite call to advertise her intent.
Kerry, surprised with a scarf round her head, wearing a pair of jogging pants and a stripy rugby shirt Alex had once worn, stiffened as Athene strolled in, her cool, dark appraisal sweeping her in obvious recoil. “Perhaps I should have warned you that I was coming.”
Kerry showed her into the small sitting-room, since the salon was being redecorated. Athene shed her coat and inched off her gloves. “If it is not too impertinent a question, may I ask who the young man was that you had staying?”
Off-balance, Kerry stared back at her.
Athene quirked a silvery brow. “Your housekeeper is related to one of my servants. Such news travels fast,” she remarked drily.
Kerry reddened. Athene in this formidable mood could only be compared to the iceberg which sank the Titanic. She found herself hurriedly making an explanation, and alluding carefully to Barbara’s existence in Steven’s life.
Athene’s Arctic cool melted slightly. “Ah,” she nodded. “This makes greater sense. You don’t look to be thriving upon my son’s absence.”
“That’s a matter of opinion,” Kerry parried proudly.
“I am not quite in my dotage,” Athene fielded, and her thin lips almost smiled. “This outfit you wear can only be an expression of grief.” She paused and then looked up. “I did not come here easily. You and I have only Alex in common, and I have come for Alex’s sake.”
“Alex left me…” Kerry began spiritedly.
Athene waved an imperious hand. “But not, I think, willingly, and I have no need to receive details. I knew from the first moment I met you six years ago that you and Alex would have a stormy relationship. Given your personality, it was only a matter of time until the trouble began…”
“My personality?”
Athene frowned irritably. “You are too defensive. Will you let me speak?” she demanded thinly. “If Alex had married a quieter girl, content to fit with his expectations, the marriage probably would have lasted as yours did not. You were outgoing and lively, and Alex was stifling you because he could not bring himself to trust you. The fault was his. Perhaps I could have stopped it then by speaking to him. I chose to conserve my own dignity. I did not interfere, and when I would have done, it was too late.”
Kerry sighed. “I’m afraid I don’t see what you could have done.”
Athene smiled grimly. “Yes, you have noticed that Alex and I are not close. Did you ever wonder why? Alex was my firstborn and my favourite, but I believe his first loyalty always lay with his father. Nevertheless, when he was a child, we were close until a certain episode occurred.” Her voice was becoming taut and hesitant. “I lost my son’s respect
. Has he told you of this?”
Puzzled by the increasingly personal tenor of Athene’s words, while marvelling that Athene could ever have done anything to fall foul of Alex’s high principles, Kerry murmured gently, “Alex wouldn’t have told me anything of that nature unless there was a need for me to know.”
Athene sighed. “It was not a need he would have acknowledged, and it is an episode he has done his utmost to forget. That I have always been aware of,” she conceded, almost as if she was talking to herself. “When I married Alex’s father, Lorenzo, I admired him very much. I was only a teenager when I understood that it was my parents’ dearest wish that I should marry the son of their oldest friends. It was not arranged, you understand, but it was expected.”
“Were you unhappy with Alex’s father?” Kerry prompted in surprise.
“When I fell in love, for the first and last time in my life,” Athene stressed looking her almost defiantly in the eye, “then I was unhappy.”
As Kerry’s face tightened in astonished realisation that Athene was admitting to having loved another man, her companion’s lips compressed tightly.
“Why not me? None of us are born saints. I had been content with Lorenzo. He was a good man and a faithful husband, and he still loved me on the day he died. He never knew that for a few short weeks of our marriage I carried on an affair with another man, and it would have caused him great pain to discover that secret. He had always awarded me unquestioning faith and trust,” she admitted heavily.
Mottled colour had suffused her powdered cheeks, making Kerry sharply aware that this confession of frailty had cost Athene dearly.
“We met quite by accident,” she continued expressionlessly. “He was a businessman, but not wealthy. For me, it was a kind of madness. I counted no costs when I became involved with him. Every moment I could steal from my family, I was with Tomaso, and inevitably we were found out.” Her voice had sunk very low. “I wanted desperately to be with him somewhere where we could be alone. We used to have a summer place outside Cannes. Alex was at boarding-school then. He was to spend his half-term there with me. There was illness in the school and they let him leave early. He crept into the house to surprise me, and he discovered me in Tomaso’s arms. He was only thirteen, and I was terrified that he would tell his father. I realised too late what I had done. I sent Tomaso away and I never saw him again. I had my children and my husband to consider. Alex remained silent. He understood that nothing could be gained from any other course but his father’s pain and disillusionment.”
