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No time to take stock, except to note that her luggage, looking even tattier against a backdrop of unnerving opulence, was in an ungainly heap at the foot of a four-poster which was trigged out with the most fantastic cream-coloured gauzy drapes.
Chattering consolingly to the baby, who was squirming in the crook of her left arm, she eventually located the changing mat, nappies and a fresh Babygro, scattering items not wanted at the moment over the soft blue carpet until she saw two shiny black shoes planted in the middle of the mayhem she’d created.
Lifting her eyes above the level of the black flatties, she encountered thick black stockings, a pristine grey overall and a cheerful round face surmounted by dark, grey-streaked frizzily permed hair.
Portia swallowed noisily. ‘Assunta?’
Friend or foe?
‘I did knock but you did not hear.’
Which wasn’t surprising, considering the racket Sam was making, Portia thought, eyeing the older woman warily.
Her heart surged with relief when Assunta beamed widely. ‘Tanto bello! What is all this noise about, little one? May I hold him?’
At Portia’s tongue-tied nod Assunta swept Sam up into her arms, clucking over him, ‘People say all babies look the same, but that isn’t true. This little one is just like his father and I should know. I looked after him from when he was born until his mother took him back to England when he was five years old. Mind you, he did spend his holidays here with his father; Signor Eduardo insisted on that. Now, shall we make the little one comfortable? This way—I will show you. We have everything ready.’
Snatching
up everything she needed, Portia followed as Assunta marched through one of the two connecting doors and into a light and airy nursery that looked as if it had been designed by experts. Expensive experts.
‘I need to make up his bottle.’ Portia cut into the older woman’s explanation of where everything was, anxiously aware that it was well past Sam’s feed time, that his routine was going to pot, and got a straight look, a beat of silence.
‘Of course.’
Was that condemnation, disappointment in Assunta’s dark eyes? At that moment Portia neither knew nor cared, and practically sprinted across the room when the other woman indicated an alcove fitted with a work surface, stainless steel sink, electric kettle and sterilising equipment. Someone had thought of everything.
‘We did not know whether the child was breast or bottle fed. Now—’ a lighter tone, quite definitely lighter ‘—shall I change him while you do that?’
Suppressing maternal possessiveness, Portia murmured her thanks. While the kettle boiled she confided sadly, ‘I did so want to feed him myself, but I got this infection. It was a really awful time.’ Not just the pain, or the fever, though that had been bad enough, but the feeling she was failing her newborn. That had been the very worst part. ‘Then, when it had cleared up—’
Her huge grey eyes glistened with retrospective tears. Her mother always said she lived too near the waterworks, and her mother, as always, was right. Portia sniffed, wishing she wasn’t so over-emotional, and finished the job of cooling the bottle under the cold water tap.
When she was settled in the nursing chair Assunta plonked down comfortably on the wide windowseat and told her warmly, ‘You mustn’t blame yourself. These things happen. You are a good mother—I have seen poor ones, so I know the difference. You do your best for your son; I can see that.’
Portia beamed ecstatically. It was the first nice thing anyone had said to her in days! The way Assunta had said ‘your son’, instead of Lucenzo’s repressive ‘Vittorio’s son’, as if she herself were some sort of regrettable afterthought, warmed her heart.
And she knew the Italian woman was on her side when she admitted, on a sigh of contentment, ‘It is good to have a baby in the house again after all this time. Vito’s mother took him away when he was barely five years old, and Lucenzo had already been sent away to school by then. Poor little mite. Christine, Vito’s mother, had been originally hired to teach Lucenzo English. Signor Verdi wished his son to grow up bilingual. But she set her cap at him—Signor Verdi, that is—and they were married. When Vito was born Signora Christine insisted that Lucenzo was sent away to school; he was only six years old.’
Which made him thirty-two now, Portia thought, struggling with her mental arithmetic. ‘Vito’s mother wanted him to be the most important child in the house?’ she guessed, her tender heart melting for the poor, banished little boy.
‘But of course.’ Assunta’s round face set into lines of disapproval. ‘She had very little time for her baby, but he was her stake in the Verdi fortune. After the birth she had no time for her husband, either—only for spending his money and flirting with other men. After the divorce she returned to England with what she wanted—a fat settlement. I’m sure she would have left little Vito behind, but his father insisted the child needed his mother.’
She gave a sigh that came up from the soles of her sensible black shoes. ‘Poor Vito might have made a better marriage if he hadn’t used his mercenary, cold-hearted mother as a blueprint. Even if he hadn’t met you and fallen in love his marriage wouldn’t have lasted. But you’ll know all about that. Such a tragedy.’ Her eyes filled with tears and Portia felt her own water in sympathy. ‘For him to be killed before he could make you his wife. You must have loved each other very much. And I want you to know—’ she sniffed loudly, struggling with emotion ‘—whatever the family thinks, I’m here for you.’
Oh, heavens above! Portia scrubbed at her own brimming eyes as she gasped sincerely, ‘Thank you, Assunta. I do appreciate that.’
She lifted Sam against her shoulder to de-burp him. Assunta was one very nice lady and had obviously doted on Vito. How could she tell her that Vito had never loved her, had lied to her more times than most people had had hot dinners? She simply couldn’t do it!
Wanting to change the potentially awkward subject, she said the first thing that came into her head, asking, ‘What happened to Lucenzo’s mother? And was he dreadfully upset when he was sent away to school when he was so young?’
It seemed really right to focus on Lucenzo. Instinctive, but puzzling, too. Hopefully Assunta would put the change of subject down to her unwillingness to be upset by talking about the father of her child, when the truth was that she was, oddly, far more interested in Lucenzo.
Her cheeks warm, Portia rose and laid the sleepy baby in the cot—a wonderful confection of pale blue muslin and ivory-coloured lace and far more sumptuous than anything she could ever have afforded—to cover her discomfiture. Just why did Lucenzo occupy her mind so much? It wasn’t sensible and it probably wasn’t natural. So why did it feel as if it was?
‘That was another tragedy,’ Assunta sighed. Already back on her feet, she was rinsing out Sam’s bottle, and elaborated through billowing clouds of steam. ‘Lucenzo was just three months old when his mother died of some rare viral infection, so he never knew her. By the time Vittorio was born he was completely self-contained. If he was unhappy at being sent away to school he didn’t show it, not even to me,’ she confided sorrowfully. ‘Ever since Christine got Signor Eduardo where she wanted him she’d been doing her best to push little Lucenzo into the background. I saw it happen with my own eyes. But even then Lucenzo was too proud to show his feelings.’
Assunta turned, wiping her capable hands on the towel that hung from a hoop above the stainless steel sink at the business end of the nursery. ‘I’m not telling you all this for the sake of it. You should understand about this family if you are to be a part of it. There have been too many tragedies. So if the family is cold towards you—most especially Lucenzo, because he has not been the same since what happened to his wife—it is because they are still trying to come to terms with Vittorio’s death.’
