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‘I like to have young people around me,’ Isabella said comfortably as John began serving the soup from a large silver tureen. ‘Makes me feel young. Too many old fogies in this house, eh, John?’ She smiled wickedly at the elderly butler, whose face remained in its impassive lines.
‘As you say, madam,’ he replied blandly.
Isabella gave a cackle of laughter as she turned again to Fabia. ‘He thinks I’m a dreadful old lady,’ she said with a wave of her hand at John. ‘Quite dreadful. Isn’t that right, John?’
‘As you say, madam,’ he said again, his face dead-pan, but as the old man’s eyes met those of his mistress over the soup tureen Fabia saw a smile in their watery blueness that matched a light in Isabella’s. The two understood each other, she realised suddenly, perfectly.
‘How long have you known my grandson, Fabia?’ Isabella asked after a few minutes of silence.
‘Just a few weeks.’ Fabia had practised this little speech in her head for so long it came out quite naturally. ‘We met at a social function Alex was holding. My friend and I had been given tickets at the last moment and we thought it was a shame to waste them.’
‘Another of your charity dos, Alexander?’ Isabella asked disapprovingly. Alex nodded without speaking and his grandmother turned to Fabia again, her lined face irritable. ‘I keep telling him, he’s too busy to bother with such things, he works all hours of the day and night as it is. Work, work, work...’ She eyed her grandson morosely. ‘But he says just giving a donation himself is not enough, that other people’s consciences need to be awakened, those who can afford it, that is.’ She looked at Fabia sharply. ‘What do you think?’
The abrupt question, coming on top of the surprising revelations that Alex worked too hard and actually cared about the charities he supported, temporarily robbed Fabia of speech and she stared at Isabella for a second, her mouth opening and then closing.
‘I think Fabia would like to eat her dinner in peace,’ Alex said smoothly, meeting her eyes for a split-second over the dining-table. ‘All right, Grandmama?’ His tone was mild but there was a touch of steel in the softness that the old woman clearly recognised.
‘So I’m talking too much, so what’s new?’ Fabia had a sudden urge to giggle but restrained it with difficulty. This irascible old woman was outrageous but she liked her brand of unpretentious honesty and uncompromising veracity. There was an integrity about Isabella that was unmistakable, very much like her grandson—she caught her thoughts sharply. No, she hadn’t thought that, she wouldn’t be fooled again.
As the meal progressed she found that playing the part allotted to her became more and more difficult, due mainly to the close proximity of Alex rather than anything else. He reached across the table a couple of times, taking her hand briefly in a little show of affection that had her wanting to snatch it back at once. She didn’t like the feel of his hard warm flesh on hers; it was...unsettling. Added to which those sharp bird-like eyes of his grandmother seemed to be watching her every move. She forced her mouth to smile, talked lightly of this and that, but had the distinct impression that she wasn’t fooling Isabella for a second. The old woman knew there was something wrong, she just didn’t know what it was—for the moment.
Yet the old lady seemed to like her. As Fabia talked frankly about her humble beginnings, her job, the little flat that she called home, she sensed she had gained Isabella’s friendship. Isabella became quite animated at one point, reminiscing about her equally modest childhood as the youngest daughter of a poor Italian family in a little obscure village deep in the countryside of rural Italy. ‘Then Henry comes along one day,’ she said dreamily, ‘Alexander’s grandfather. His parents had sent him to do a tour of Europe; they still did it in those days.’ She nodded to herself. ‘And he couldn’t speak a word of Italian and I knew no English. But we communicated.’ She raised dark eyes to Fabia’s interested gaze. ‘In a manner as old as time.’ Alexander shifted uneasily but the old lady was not going to be silenced this time. ‘When Henry wanted to marry me his parents were horrified, and mine...’ She laughed softly. ‘They dragged me off to the priest and asked him to keep me locked in a room at the church. It was shameful, you see; I was a Catholic Italian girl and he was English and not of the same religion.’
‘What did you do?’ asked Fabia, fascinated.
‘Alexander will tell you, won’t you, my dear?’ Isabella sank back in her chair. ‘I’m tired.’
‘Oh, it doesn’t matter, please, leave it if—’ The old lady interrupted her forcibly, waving her hands at Fabia irritably, her strong voice belying the excuse of exhaustion.
‘Alexander knows the tale, he’s heard it often enough. Tell Fabia what happened, my boy.’ Fabia looked keenly into the dried-up old face. For some reason known only to herself Isabella wanted Alex to tell her the rest of the story.
‘If you insist,’ Alex said lazily, his flecked eyes with their strange golden light fastening on Fabia’s pale, beautiful face tightly. ‘My grandfather was determined to have her; he would listen to no one. Late one night he got a ladder and rescued her from the church. They eloped. For a time both sets of families would have nothing to do with them but then my father was born and...babies have a way of smoothing family feuds out.’ He paused, his darkly tanned face and long thick burnished hair giving him the aura of a fierce brigand in the dim light from the shaded standard lamps, one at each end of the room. ‘He had to have her, you see. Once he had found her there was no way on earth anyone would have persuaded him to let her go. He would have died first.’ There was an emotion in his voice that had her transfixed now, her eyes locked wit
h his, her head refusing to accept the message her heart was giving her as she looked into his waiting face. ‘There’s an old story about the Cade men; it goes on from generation to generation. We only love once, just once in our lives, but when we do it’s for eternity.’
‘Is it true?’ she whispered breathlessly, mesmerised by the atmosphere that had thickened like a powerful drug.
‘Oh, yes.’ His eyes were burning into her. ‘Quite true.’
Isabella expelled a satisfied sigh, nodding her head like a wise old owl. ‘So now you know, my dear.’ She looked hard at Fabia. ‘Don’t you?’ There seemed to be more in the question than its face value and Fabia stared at her silently, trying to read the razor-sharp mind behind those bright black eyes.
‘Yes, of course, thank you for telling me your story,’ she said carefully, fighting the urge to lift her gaze to Alex’s and see what was written in the hard face, afraid of what she might see. Laughter? Mockery? Scorn? He was sitting as still as a statue and she was vitally conscious of every line of his body as though she were looking at him.
She wondered what he really thought of the old story. He would have had to agree with it in front of his grandmother, knowing it meant so much to her, but what of him, and all those countless women he had known?
The rest of the evening passed pleasantly enough and when Isabella retired for bed, at just after ten, Fabia waited until the old lady had disappeared with the ever faithful John at her side, it being Christine’s half-day off, and then made her escape from Alex’s sombre presence. He nodded slowly at her hesitant ‘goodnight’, his dark face enigmatically distant, but she was conscious of his eyes on her as she climbed the long curving staircase, their heat burning into her back as though their light came from the sun itself. She glanced round just before disappearing from view to find his gaze tightly fixed on her as she had expected, the big body taut and still, the goblet of brandy in his left hand motionless. Everything in his stance suggested an attitude of waiting and it unnerved her without reason; she didn’t understand him and she understood herself still less.
Later, in the soft downy warmth of the huge double bed, she cried for the first time in years, long racking sobs that did nothing to ease the ache inside her, the sense of loss and despair that had grown all day.
I’m just tired, tired and nervous, she told herself firmly when the worst of the weeping had passed. I’m in an unfamiliar environment, an alien in a different, fabulously seductive world where I don’t know the rules and I’m surrounded by strangers who talk in riddles and expect me to understand. She bounced her head in agreement with herself.
She’d be different in the morning. In the cold clear light of day all the forgotten dreams and hopes that a certain six-foot-four, tawny-eyed stranger had resurrected would sink back to their rightful place, buried deep in the hidden recesses of her mind, locked away from prying eyes.
‘I am happy,’ she whispered defiantly into the beautiful empty room. ‘No one has everything they want, after all.’ She was a career girl now, a totally different creature from the childlike romantic whom Robin had picked up and discarded so brutally. And she wanted it that way. She did!
CHAPTER SIX
‘IT’S beautiful, Alex.’ Fabia stood awe-struck in the doorway of the main drawing-room, her eyes wide with wonder as she looked up at the magnificent seven-foot tree towering above her, its sweet-smelling pine branches covered in red ribbon, glittering white stars and small delicately formed candles in red and white twists. ‘I’ve never seen such a gorgeous tree.’
