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‘Festina Lente?’ Daisy caught at the name of the villa as much for something to say as anything else—she had never felt so overwhelmed in all her life. And gauche. Painfully gauche.
‘It means hurry slowly—that is, take things easily,’ Slade answered after the slightest pause. ‘My wife did not approve of my lifestyle—’ his voice was sardonic ‘—and naming the villa such was her way of reminding me of the fact. It was a gentle reminder—’ the mordant note deepened ‘—because Luisa was not a confrontational woman; in fact she couldn’t cope with conflict.’
Daisy nodded. He hadn’t added, Unlike you, but she felt the words in the air nevertheless and it rankled.
‘You would like to see a photograph of Francesco?’ It was a rhetorical question: he had already placed the picture in front of her on the bedcover, leaving her no choice in the matter.
Daisy looked down at the small, brown-eyed and black-haired little boy who was looking into the camera with a serious face, his wide, heavily lashed eyes guaranteed to melt the hardest heart, and fell immediately in love. He was so sweet, so small and fragile, and not at all as she had expected.
‘This was taken only a couple of months ago,’ Slade said softly as she picked the photograph up to scrutinise it more closely. ‘Of course the mental and physical strain of the accident and the ensuing months have meant he is not as robust or as big as other children his age, although the doctors have assured me this will rectify itself in time.’
He was trying to tug on her heartstrings—manipulate her for his own advantage. Daisy knew it but somehow—with the photo of his motherless son in her hands and the appealing little face looking up at her with an expression deep in the soulful eyes that no child should have—it didn’t matter.
‘Yes, I’m sure it will,’ she said quietly. ‘Children are far more resilient than we give them credit for.’
Anything else he might have said was interrupted by the return of the nurse and a coffee tray groaning with fresh scones and cream and strawberry jam. ‘I thought you might fancy a snack with your coffee.’ She was bustling about pulling the coffee table close to Slade and missed the dark, amused look he gave her, but Daisy noticed it and her soft lips tightened.
He thought he only had to snap his fingers and the rest of the world jumped, she thought irritably—and that was probably because they did! If it had been anyone else—anyone else—she would have been overcome with gratefulness for all they had done for her, and she didn’t doubt for a minute he was quite willing to forget all she owed him as he had suggested. But she would rather die than be beholden to this man. She couldn’t explain why—there was no logic or rhyme or reason to it—but he didn’t even have to open his mouth to catch her on the raw.
In spite of the prevailing atmosphere Slade seemed to thoroughly enjoy his scones and coffee, sitting back comfortably in the easy chair—one leg crossed over the other and the big body perfectly relaxed—as he munched his way through three of the scones and drank two cups of black coffee.
Daisy forced herself to eat one scone—she certainly wasn’t going to let him think she was nervous or in any way affected by his presence—but each mouthful was a huge effort and the food tasted like cotton wool. And behind the calm mask she found her brain was working at express speed.
Ronald was looking for her—she had to face that, along with the knowledge that her ex-husband always accomplished anything he set out to do. He was a determined man and—she had come to realise in the last sixteen months—an extremely ruthless and selfish one. He wouldn’t care a fig about her feelings or the fact that she didn’t want to see him; in fact any opposition would only make him more intent on having his own way.
They had met when she was at college in Cambridge—her family having lived in the area—and Ronald was attending the university there. He had been taking maths and physics and was a brilliant student, and his striking good looks had meant he was never short of female hangers-on, but right from the moment he had seen her at one of the nightclubs in the town the students frequented he hadn’t looked at another woman. Or so she had thought. Yes, so she had thought!
Oh, she had been so gullible. It made her want to squirm if she thought about it. She forced herself to bite into the scone and chew steadily as her stomach muscles clenched at the memory.
When her father had received a marvellous job offer in the States and the family had decided to uproot themselves from everything familiar, she had stayed. For Ronald. And a year later, when he had graduated with a first, they had married. She now knew that he had been seeing other women—one-night stands mostly—all through their courtship and engagement, and marriage hadn’t changed him. Not one iota.
He was a serial adulterer. That was how Stephanie had described him when the full story had come to light, and she was right. But by then Daisy’s heart had been smashed to smithereens.
She took a sip of coffee, that same heart pounding at the unwelcome memories that were crowding in. She wasn’t aware of an ebony-black gaze trained on her pale face, or the intensity in Slade’s eyes as he watched her—she was back in Scotland on a cold, snowy December night some sixteen months ago, and she had just opened an envelope which had been waiting for her on her return home from work.
She had expected to find a Christmas card—it was only a week before Christmas Eve and hordes of cards were arriving daily—but instead her fingers had closed on the photographs the envelope had contained. Explicit photographs—foul in content—of Ronald and another woman. She had stared at them for long minutes, her mind and body stunned and still, and then she had walked through into their shining kitchen and sat and waited for Ronald to come home.
He had blustered and shouted—he had even raised his hand to slap her at one point in the almighty row that had followed his return, but something in her eyes had stopped him. And he had lied, over and over again, saying his association with the woman in the pictures had been over before he had met her. But a hundred little question marks which had been mounting for years were adding up and Daisy hadn’t let the matter go.
Eventually he had admitted to the affair, saying it had finished six months before and that the woman in question was jealous of her. The woman had been jealous, but not of her— Ronald had just started seeing the woman’s best friend, which had sent the female in question into a frenzy of bitter resentment and spite at his rejection.
It had been that revelation which had opened the door to further disclosures—unearthed slowly over a matter of weeks whilst she had been staying with Stephanie and Malcolm. The present woman—Susan Bannister—was wealthy, very wealthy, rich enough to finance the business Ronald had been longing to set up for some time, and it hadn’t seemed to worry Susan that her lover’s wife was five months pregnant.
She had lost the baby.
Daisy took another deep gulp of the coffee as her stomach churned and the blackness came. She had had a miscarriage—brought on by extreme stress and anxiety, according to the doctor at the hospital—and her daughter had lived for three minutes. She had held the tiny body in her arms for much longer than that, and as she had stared into the beautiful little face her love for Ronald had turned to hate.
And now he was looking for her, and there would be confrontation after confrontation—she knew enough about Ronald to know that. And he could get nasty, very nasty—she knew that too.
‘…if that suits you?’
‘I’m sorry?’ Daisy came out of the black abyss to the realisation that Slade had been talking and she hadn’t heard a word.
‘I said should you decide to accept the post of nanny to my son I would like you to fly out to Italy no later than the middle of May if tha
t is convenient?’ Slade repeated patiently. The patience was unusual for him but he had seen something in her face which had appalled him in the last few moments.
She stared at him—the hospital room, Slade, the normality of it all strange after the darkness of her thoughts.
