The Italian's Inexperienced Mistress. Lynne Graham

wanted to deny the relationship but he knew he could not. A certain amount of civility was the price he had to pay for the information he had long sought to make sense of his background. Squaring his broad shoulders, he sat down in a lithe, controlled movement. A manservant brought in a silver tray bearing a single glass filled with ruby liquid and a plate of tiny almond pastries. With a glint of something hidden in his sharp old eyes, Carmelo Zanetti watched the younger man lift the glass and slowly sip.

      The old man laughed. ‘Dio grazia…you’re no coward!’

      ‘Why should you want to harm me?’

      ‘How does it feel to have rejected your every living relative?’

      A sardonic smile of acknowledgement curved Angelo’s handsome sculpted mouth. ‘It kept me out of prison…it may even have kept me alive. The family tree is distressingly full of early deaths and unlikely accidents.’

      After having taken a moment to absorb that acid response, Don Carmelo succumbed to a choking bout of appreciative laughter. Alarmed by the aftermath in which the old man struggled for breath, Angelo got up to summon assistance only to be irritably waved back to his seat.

      ‘Please tell me about my mother,’ Angelo urged.

      His companion gave him a mocking look. ‘I want you to know that when she left Sardinia, she had money. My late wife had left her amply provided for. Your mother’s misfortune was that she had very poor taste in men.’

      Angelo tensed.

      Carmelo Zanetti gave him a cynical glance. ‘I warned you that you wouldn’t like it. Of course there was a man involved. An Englishman she met on the beach soon after your father went to prison. Why do you think she headed to London when she spoke not a word of English? Her boyfriend promised to marry her when she was free. She changed her name as soon as she arrived and began to plan her divorce.’

      ‘How do you know all this?’

      ‘I have a couple of letters that the boyfriend wrote her. He had no idea who her connections were. Once she was settled he offered to take care of her money, but he took care of it so well that she never saw it again. He bled her dry and I understand he then told her he’d lost it all on the stock market.’

      Angelo was very still but his brilliant gaze glittered like black diamonds on ice. ‘Is there more?’

      ‘He abandoned her when she was pregnant by him and that was when she discovered that he was already married.’

      In shock at that further revelation, Angelo gritted his teeth and was betrayed into comment. ‘I had no idea.’

      ‘She lost the baby and never recovered her health.’

      ‘You knew all this…yet you chose not to help her?’ Angelo recognised the cold, critical detachment that had ultimately decided his frail mother’s fate.

      ‘She could have asked for assistance at any time but she didn’t. I will be frank. She had become an embarrassment to us and there were complications. Gino got out of prison on appeal. He wanted you, his son, back and he wanted revenge on his unfaithful wife. Your mother’s whereabouts had to remain a secret if you were not to end up in the hands of a violent drunk. Silence kept both of you safe.’

      ‘It didn’t stop us going hungry though,’ Angelo replied without any inflection.

      ‘You survived—’

      ‘But she didn’t,’ Angelo incised.

      Don Carmelo revealed no regret. ‘I’m not a forgiving man. She let the family down and the final insult was her belief that she had to keep her son away from my influence. She got religion before she died and turned against us even more.’

      ‘If you never saw her again, how do you know that?’

      The old man grimaced. ‘She phoned me when her health was failing. She was worried about what would happen to you. But she still begged me to respect her wishes and not to claim you when she was gone.’

      Angelo could see that exhaustion was steadily claiming the older man and pushing their meeting to a close. ‘I appreciate your candour. I would like the name of the man who stole my mother’s money.’

      ‘His name was Donald Hamilton.’ Don Carmelo lifted a large envelope and extended it. ‘The letters. Take them.’

      ‘What happened to him?’

      ‘Nothing.’

      ‘Nothing?’ Angelo queried. ‘My mother died when I was seven years old.’

      ‘And now here you are, proud not to be a Zanetti or a Sorello. If you are so unlike the stock from which you were bred, why do you want Hamilton’s name?’ the old man riposted. ‘What could you intend to do with it?’

      Angelo surveyed him with dark expressionless eyes and shifted a shoulder in an almost infinitesimal shrug.

      ‘Don’t do anything foolish, Angelo.’

      Angelo laughed out loud. ‘I can’t believe you’re saying that to me.’

      ‘Who better? I’ve spent the last decade in exile. I’ve been hunted across this planet by the forces of law and order and by my enemies. But my time is almost up,’ Carmelo Zanetti mused. ‘You are the closest relative I have left and I have watched over you all your life.’

      ‘Only not so that I noticed,’ Angelo countered, unimpressed by the claim.

      ‘Perhaps we are cleverer than you think. You may also find out that, under the skin, you have more in common with us than you want to admit.’

      Angelo lifted his arrogant dark head high, strong denial of that suggestion in every inch of his proud bearing. ‘No. I really don’t think so.’

      A basket of flowers on her arm, Gwenna hurried down the muddy lane in pursuit of the two little boys. Thrilled by the growling noises she was making in her role as a pursuing bear, Freddy and Jake were in fits of giggles. With her dog, Piglet, a tiny barrel-shaped mongrel, hard on their heels and barking like mad, they made a noisy trio. The insistent ring of a mobile phone sliced through the laughter. Gwenna fell still and with a guilty air of reluctance dug the item out of her pocket.

      ‘Bet it’s the Evil Witch again,’ Freddy forecast gloomily.

      ‘Shush…’ Gwenna urged in dismay, wishing the children’s mother were more careful about what she said in front of her sons because the little boys didn’t miss a trick.

      ‘I heard Mummy tell Daddy that you’ll never get a man with the Evil Witch around. Do you need one?’ Jake asked earnestly.

      ‘Course she does…to have babies and change the light bulbs,’ Freddy told his little brother with immense superiority.

      ‘Is that children I hear?’ Eva Hamilton demanded sharply. ‘Have you let Joyce Miller lumber you with those horrid brats again?’

      Giving the twins a pleading glance, Gwenna put a finger to her lips in the universal signal for silence and sidestepped the question. ‘I’ll be with you in less than an hour—’

      ‘Have you any idea how much still has to be done here?’

      ‘I thought the caterers—’

      ‘I’m talking about the cleaning,’ her stepmother cut in acidly.

      Gwenna almost flinched for it seemed to her that the past week had passed by in a relentless blur of labour. Even her back, well toned from regular physical activity at the plant nursery where she worked, had developed an ache. ‘Did I miss something out?’

      ‘The furniture is getting dusty again and the flowers in the drawing room are drooping,’ Eva Hamilton snapped out accusingly. ‘I want everything to be perfect tomorrow for your father, so you’ll have to see to it all this evening.’

      ‘Yes, of course.’