Алисон Робертс – Latin Lovers: Italian Husbands: The Italian's Bought Bride / The Italian Playboy's Secret Son / The Italian Doctor's Perfect Family (страница 20)

As for anyone else who might have known of Stefano’s marriage … who? Who were those people? The girls she’d known at convent school? The relatives who’d shunned her?

She’d made choices in life, instinctive choices that had kept her well away from Stefano and his circle. And, really, she hadn’t wanted to know, had never asked anyone about Stefano, had avoided talking or even thinking about him. It was precisely this kind of information that she’d never wanted to hear.

Yet, in the end, none of it had worked, for here they were together, in this very car, the silence freezing and hostile, their knees still touching. And her heart was hurt, crying out once more.

The car pulled up to the town house and Allegra followed Stefano inside. She watched as he stalked into the drawing room and poured two fingers of Scotch into a glass and tossed it back.

He stood in front of the fireplace, one hand braced against the marble mantle. Outside, a car drove past and washed the room in sickly yellow light. Allegra closed the double doors, drew the curtains and turned on a lamp. All tasks to keep her from the reckoning she knew would come. What she knew she had to say.

‘I’m sorry.’

‘For what?’ Stefano asked, a trace of sarcasm sharpening his tone. ‘For seeing me again? For agreeing to help Lucio? Or perhaps for walking out on me in the first place?’

There was such savagery in his voice that Allegra could only push it away, refuse to consider the implications of his words, the turn in his tone.

‘No,’ she said quickly, ‘for my behaviour tonight. I was shocked that you were married and I … I overreacted at the party.’

‘Yes, you did.’

Her fingers nervously pleated the silk of her gown. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘Why should I have?’

‘Because …’ She tried to think of a reason, a safe one. ‘Because I deserve to know,’ she finally said. ‘We’ve acknowledged the past and forgotten about it, but …’

‘But it’s still there.’

‘Yes.’ Allegra bit her lip. ‘I never heard that you’d married.’

‘Did you ever ask?’

‘No, of course not. Why would I …?’ She trailed off, not wanting to follow that line of thought and its inevitable conclusions.

‘You wouldn’t have heard,’ Stefano said after a moment, his voice resigned, ‘because it was kept quiet. By me.’

‘Why?’ she whispered.

He turned around and Allegra was surprised and alarmed by the weariness etched into his features. ‘Because I regretted it almost as soon as the ceremony was over.’

He ran a hand through his hair before sinking into a cream silk armchair. ‘If you want the facts, Allegra, I’ll give them to you. I suppose I should have considered that someone might mention my marriage to you tonight, but I didn’t want to deal with it. Not yet, anyway. So I just pushed it away and didn’t think about it.’ A smile flickered and died, and his eyes were shrewd. ‘A habit I believe we share.’

Allegra looked down. The man in front of her was one she wasn’t used to. Here was Stefano being candid, open. Vulnerable. He sat sprawled in a chair, his tie loosened and the top two buttons of his shirt undone, his whisky tumbler still held loosely in one hand.

‘So what are the facts?’ she asked in a low voice.

‘I was married to Gabriella Capoleti for six years.’

‘Six years!’ It came out in a shattered, shocked gasp. Six years. ‘When did you marry her?’

‘Three months after you left me,’ Stefano said flatly.

Left me. Not Italy, not the wedding, no innocent, innocuous phrases. Left me. Because that was what she’d really done.

Allegra felt dizzy, and she steadied herself by placing one hand on the back of a chair. ‘Why?’ she whispered. ‘Why so soon?’

Stefano shrugged, gave the ghost of a smile. ‘My first marriage didn’t happen, so I planned another.’

‘That simple,’ Allegra whispered.

Stefano smiled, although his eyes were hard. ‘Yes.’

She swallowed. Why did this hurt? This was old ground they were covering. She’d raked it over in her own mind years ago, had laid it to rest. Yet now it felt fresh, raw, achingly painful.

It hurt.

‘I meant to marry you for your name, Allegra, remember? The Avesti name.’ He laughed dryly, without humour. ‘Not that the Avesti name has any standing these days.’

‘Don’t—’

‘No, you don’t like to face that, do you?’ Stefano said, his voice as sharp and cutting as a blade. ‘You don’t like to face the facts. Well, neither do I. I try not to think of my marriage. Ever.’

‘Why not?’ Her throat felt like sandpaper; her eyes were dry and gritty. ‘Did you love her?’

‘Does it matter?’ Stefano asked in a soft hiss. ‘To you?’

Yes. ‘No.’ Allegra drew herself up. ‘No, of course not. I just wondered.’

Stefano was silent; so was she. Waiting. Wondering. Outside she heard the muted blare of a car horn, the trill of a woman’s laughter.

‘I married Gabriella for the Capoleti name, just as I was going to marry you for yours,’ Stefano finally said. His voice was as flat as if he were reciting a list of dry, dusty facts. ‘I needed someone from an old, established family.’

‘Why did you need a name so much?’ Allegra asked, wondering even now why she hadn’t asked this, thought this before. She’d just shut it all out.

His lips curved in a smile and his eyes glittered like topaz. ‘Because I don’t have one myself, of course. I have money. That’s all.’ She heard a bleak note in his voice that she didn’t completely understand.

‘And so Gabriella accepted this arrangement?’ Her voice sharpened as she added, ‘Or did you deceive her as well?’

Stefano gazed at her for a moment, his expression assessing. Knowing. ‘As I deceived you?’ he finished softly. ‘How you cling to that, Allegra. How you need to believe it.’

‘Of course I believe it,’ Allegra snapped. ‘I heard it from my father’s mouth, from your own! Our marriage was nothing more than a business deal, brokered between the two of you.’ Rage and self-righteousness made her stand tall, straight. Proud. ‘How much was I worth in the end, Stefano? How much did you pay for me?’

Stefano laughed softly. ‘Didn’t you realize? Nothing, Allegra. I paid nothing for you.’ She blinked; he smiled. ‘But I would have paid a million euros for you, if you’d shown up that day. A million euros your father had already gambled away. That was why he killed himself, you know. He was in debt—far more than a million euros in debt. And, when you didn’t marry me, he got nothing.’

Allegra closed her eyes, wished she could close her mind against what Stefano was saying.

‘More facts,’ Stefano said softly, ‘that you’ve never wanted to face.’

He was right, she knew. She’d never wanted to face the fallout of her flight, had never wanted to examine too closely why her father had killed himself, why her mother had run.

‘It’s not my fault,’ she whispered, and her voice cracked.

‘Does it really matter?’ Stefano returned.

She shook her head, shut herself off from those memories, those emotions. ‘What of Gabriella, then? Tell me about your marriage.’

‘Gabriella was thirty years old then—two years older than me at the time. Desperate, to be blunt. She agreed to the marriage, to the arrangement, and it all happened rather quickly.’

‘So it would seem.’ Allegra sank into a chair. She felt sick. She’d always known that Stefano had his reasons for marrying her … Hadn’t her mother said, Our social connections, his money? Yet here was the proof, right in front of her that he’d never loved her, had never cared in the least. He was giving it to her.

He was telling her, and he didn’t even sound sorry. Just resigned.

‘Why did you keep it quiet,’ she finally asked, ‘if you wanted her name? Shouldn’t you have … let people know?’ Her voice wobbled with uncertainty and Stefano raised his eyebrows.

‘Cash in on my investment? In theory, yes. But I realized after I married Gabriella that I didn’t want her damned name. I didn’t want her, and she didn’t want me.’ He laughed dryly, but Allegra heard something else in that sound, something sad and broken. ‘And, in the end, I realized I didn’t want to build my business on someone else’s shoulders. I’d got as far as I had by myself, or nearly, and I’d continue the same way.’ He gave the ghost of a smile.

Allegra gave a little jerk of assent, her eyes sliding from Stefano and the bitterness and cynicism radiating from him in icy, intangible waves.

‘So what happened?’ she finally whispered. ‘She … she died?’

‘Yes.’ Stefano raised his eyes to meet her startled gaze. ‘But six weeks after the wedding Gabriella left me. I don’t blame her. I was miserable company and a poor husband.’ He leaned his head back against the chair. ‘She went to live in Florence, in a flat I provided for her. We agreed to live completely separate lives. When she died in a car accident six months ago, I hadn’t seen her for nearly five years.’

‘But … but that’s horrible,’ Allegra whispered.

‘Yes,’ Stefano agreed bleakly, ‘it is.’

‘What … what did you do that made her so miserable? To leave you?’

He raised one eyebrow, his smile darkly sardonic. ‘My fault, is it?’