Sins of the Past (14 page)

‘No, it wasn’t. A lot of people are unfortunate enough to have to work solely for the financial remuneration. But one has to feel the drive—work from the heart. Otherwise there is not enough soul to keep you sustained for as long as it takes to achieve your personal goals.’

‘But you didn’t have to start from scratch. Do it all yourself.’

‘As you have?’

She hadn’t actually intended it to sound like sour grapes, and couldn’t find the words to express that before he went on.

‘No, I didn’t, for which I apologise.’ Surprisingly, it sounded as though he meant it. ‘But what I’ve done—what I do,’ he amended, ‘has often involved elements of risk as well as reward.’

And he didn’t just mean financial. She understood enough about him to realise that now.

It was good to be talking with him on a more level footing for once, and, seizing the moment, wanting to hang on to it, she enquired, ‘How did you start?’

She had asked him before, five years ago, but in those days she had been too excited by him to take in everything he said to her. Although other things were lodged in her memory for ever. Like how he preferred his coffee—strong, with the smallest drop of milk. How he had been sent to school in England and educated at one of the top universities. Like their mutual taste for jazz—although, if she were honest with herself, she had to admit that she hadn’t really taken much interest in it until she’d found out that he did. It had all been part of her desperate need to show him that she was mature and sophisticated, when in fact she had been far too young and stupid, doing—saying—anything to impress him.

He was telling her about his childhood and his parents.

His mother had been born here, the descendant of a family of French merchants who had settled here before Napoleon and Waterloo. She had met his father Miguel D’Amico when he had been visiting the island on business, and had been a guest in her parents’ house. When he’d come to the Seychelles again a few months later it had been to make their daughter his bride. She had returned with him to his native Italy where, Damiano said, he had been born the following year.

‘I had a series of nannies,’ he told her, ‘but my parents were always there for me—always there for each other. It’s true to say I had everything—that I was privileged. But if you think that privilege goes hand-in-hand with a total disregard for others who are less fortunate than oneself, Riva, it doesn’t,’ he stated pragmatically, although he didn’t enlarge any further upon that subject. ‘When my mother died I was eleven years old. My father never actually got over her death. He worked like a demon and played hard for the next year or so. Too hard, as it turned out, when he crashed his speedboat into rocks off the Mediterranean coast during the trials for some race he was planning to enter. I think he was so exhausted by grief and from working too hard that he wasn’t as sharp as he might have been.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Riva murmured, aghast, because he had never
told her that. She realised that on this lovely island he was opening up to her as he never had before—hard as she knew he was.

‘It was a long time ago,’ he said, as though he no longer felt the pain of losing both parents so young and so simultaneously, but she knew he did.

‘I went to live with Marcello and his wife. They treated me as though I was their own son. They never had children of their own. Sometimes they would send me here, to spend time with my mother’s parents. Sometimes they would accompany me. My grandparents would have liked me to live with them after my parents died, but it was decided that Italy—the D’Amico business—was where my destiny lay. My aunt died just before I left Oxford, and so when I graduated I shelved any plans I’d been making to go off on my own for a while to go home and support Marcello. I was thrown straight in at the deep end, but I learnt fast and hard.’

‘And the rest is history,’ Riva declared, already aware of how vastly the name of D’Amico Enterprises had grown and expanded under Damiano’s command, to become one of the globally successful forces of its day.

‘And, since there is no time for any further history lessons,’ he stated, getting to his feet in a few economical movements, ‘may I suggest you come inside now and freshen up? And when you have I have a surprise for you,
mia bella.’

‘Oh?’ She looked at him, intrigued, but he wasn’t saying any more, and so, taking the hand he offered her to pull her up, swiftly she gathered her towel and her book and hugged a secret pleasure to herself when those strong fingers remained clasped around hers all the way back to the house.

Having left Ben and his little friend watching television, with the patient and capable Françoise, Riva came down from the pampering luxury of her own private bathroom which adjoined the huge bedroom she’d been given, to find that Damiano’s surprise was the unexpected arrival of someone else.

The whole width of one wall of the imposing drawing room—framed by floor-to-ceiling drapes—was open to the sky, offering a spectacular view through the scented gardens to the milky-white crescent of sand and the azure sea. A very elderly woman in black silk was seated near the window, and looked up as Riva entered, her keen dark eyes and world-worn face unable to disguise the fact that once she had been a great beauty.

Riva’s heart leaped as Damiano, who had been sitting opposite the woman, rose to his feet as she walked in.

In a long-sleeved cream shirt and dark trousers, both of which accentuated his powerful body, he looked profoundly male and utterly, utterly dynamic.

‘Grandmère.’ He was addressing the older woman, whose chair he was standing beside now, speaking French as fluently as he spoke English—as if it were his own language.

A trace of a smile touched his grandmother’s lips, Riva noticed. So the lady
did
exist!

‘Riva, come and meet my grandmother,’ Damiano advised, reverting to English, and from the way his dark gaze rested on her taut features as she greeted the old lady she could tell he was enjoying this immensely. ‘Eloise Duval.’

Head cocked, the woman smiled quizzically up at Riva, while remarkably sparkling eyes assessed her red hair and her pale skin beneath the simple beige and black sundress she was wearing, which was already turning gold from the sun. ‘You seem surprised,
ma chère,
to see me here. I must confess sometimes to being surprised myself at finding I am still here.’

Riva beamed at the old lady’s inverted mockery. She knew she was going to like Eloise Duval.

‘I’ll appreciate your saying nothing of the Old Coach House,’ Damiano warned softly at Riva’s shoulder when they were distracted by a maid coming in with a tea trolley.

‘Why?’ Riva whispered out of the corner of her mouth.

‘Because she’d be appalled to discover you were using her house to lure women there under false pretences?’

‘On the contrary.’ His smile as his grandmother turned his way was timed to perfection. ‘Only one woman—and I think my intentions were very clear from the start.’

Fortunately the maid being waved away by a gnarled hand obviated the need for any reply.

‘And your son … Benito?’ The old lady was looking at Riva now with pointed assessment as the young girl retreated, closing the door behind her. ‘He is my grandson’s child?’

Riva exchanged a swift glance with Damiano. His handsome face was impassive as he stood there, saying nothing. Behind him the fronds of some exotic potted fern stirred in the tropical breeze. ‘Er … yes …’

‘You seem to have some hesitation in admitting it. I did not expect to find you bashful. I believe it is the custom these days to … what is the expression? … put the wagon before the horse. I’m astonished, however, that Damiano has not told me about you both before now.’ She sent him a sidelong glance, before giving her full attention to Riva again. ‘You will marry, of course.’

Eloise Duval might appear old and frail, and apparently sweet, Riva thought of the slight figure reclining in what was obviously her favourite deeply cushioned chair, but behind all that frailty and sweetness, she realised, there lurked a will of iron. Amazingly, though, Damiano had spared her the need to make some excuse to his grandmother as to why she had kept his child’s identity from him. She was infinitely grateful to him for that.

‘I—I …’ The woman’s direct question about their marrying had her blushing and stammering like a schoolgirl.

‘We have no plans, Grandmère,’ Damiano asserted, saving her, and behind the fondness in his voice for his elderly relative was a clear-cut message not to interfere.

After that the woman requested that they join her for tea. Riva was glad when Damiano’s grandmother took up her offer
to pour the beverage and hand round the sandwiches and cakes, but she ate very little herself, owing to the fact that her spirits had suddenly taken a dive.

But why? she asked herself when she was sitting down, toying with a daintily cut sandwich. She didn’t want to marry him, did she? They were from such different worlds they might as well have been occupying different planets! Besides, men like him didn’t marry girls like her. Girls who lied to cover up where they came from. Girls with criminals for fathers. In his world, like married like. And, as he’d pointed out to her five years ago, upholding and protecting the reputation of his family name was everything. He’d made it plain from the way he had treated her then that she was about as beneath him as a piece of rotten shoe leather! She couldn’t even begin to kid herself that he might have changed his opinion now. And from the way he got through his women—women like Magenta Boweringham, who were celebrities and the cream of English society—what chance would
she
have? Of course she didn’t want to marry him! So why had that casual remark to his grandmother left her feeling so deflated? So low?

‘Damiano … I think I will retire to my room.’ She didn’t know where the afternoon had gone before Eloise Duval made that statement.

Already on his feet, Damiano stooped down and pressed his lips lightly to the wrinkled brow. ‘Of course.’

The gesture touched Riva in ways she didn’t want to be touched—as did the gentleness with which he helped his grandmother out of her chair.

‘It isn’t age,
ma chère,’
the woman directed at Riva, who was trying to rearrange her features into more composed lines. ‘It is mere fatigue that makes this old body need to rest so early in the day. I have been visiting friends on neighbouring islands, and I am afraid that island-hopping these days, while still enjoyable, is particularly tiring on these small planes.’

‘Of course.’ Riva smiled, noticing how Damiano lent a strong supporting arm as they walked to the door, although
once there Eloise said something to him in French that made him discreetly withdraw.

‘I like her,’ Riva said quietly, after he had closed the door behind his grandmother. She still felt dispirited for some reason. Unaccountably depressed.

A rather self-satisfied smile softened his angular features. ‘I thought you might.’

‘Thanks,’ she said, very mindful of the awkward situation he had rescued her from earlier.

‘For what? Not telling her how my son’s mother preferred not to tell me she had borne my child?’ His tone was censuring. He was obviously still angry about it, Riva realised. But if he couldn’t understand why she’d kept it from him then that was his problem, she decided. Not hers.

Now, with a jerk of her chin towards the door, she said, ‘I didn’t believe you—and that just told me, didn’t it?’ she added on a self-deprecating note.

‘About my having a grandmother?’ When she didn’t reply, he said, ‘So you added dishonesty to the list of other sins you hold against me?’

She still didn’t say anything. How could she? Riva wondered, when she’d been ready to believe the worst about him because of the past.

‘I’ve never lied to you, Riva,’ he stated quietly. ‘Whatever else you think I might have done.’

She could sense some constrained emotion in him, and it brought her gaze sharply to his, but nothing showed in the dark, hooded depths of his eyes.

She merely swallowed in response, ridiculously affected by what he had just said, and by that indefinable note of something in his voice that she couldn’t quite grasp.

‘I think I need some time to myself too,’ she murmured, her voice sounding decidedly wobbly, and used that excuse to get away from him.

It felt strange, thinking of them all as a family, Riva thought, one morning when Damiano suggested they have a day out
together, when until now it had only ever been her and Ben. But Ben was taking to his father like a swallow took to flying: as if it was a natural and essential part of his life.

She couldn’t help worrying, though, about what would happen when they had to go back to their separate lives. Separate homes. Separate jobs. That was if she still had a job by the time she got back to the UK, she thought uneasily, still concerned that by taking an indeterminate amount of time off, and at such short notice, she might be jeopardising her whole career. And what about Ben? How would he feel when his father suddenly wasn’t around all the time, as he was at the moment? Or was Damiano planning on being a permanent fixture in his son’s life?

Anxiety gnawed at her from the worrying speculation as to whether he might use his immense wealth and power to try and take the little boy away from her. And if he did, how would she fight him? Would the courts automatically grant custody in her favour as she was the child’s mother? Or would they listen to Damiano if he tried to convince them that he could provide more adequately for his son?

‘Look, Mummy! Look at the spiders!’ Ben’s excited voice broke into her troubled thoughts.

Shaking herself out of her disturbing reverie, Riva looked up to where he was pointing at the telegraph lines stretching above them. She gasped at the sight of the occupied webs filling the gaps between the wires.

‘Oh, Damiano!’ She shuddered, and in spite of her worries moved instinctively closer to him. She never had been comfortable around creepy-crawlies. ‘Oh, gosh!’ Unthinkingly she was grasping his arm. ‘They’re huge!’

‘Don’t worry. They’re harmless,’ he assured her, with an amused movement of his strong mouth. ‘And they have as much right to be here as we have. More, probably—since these islands are their indigenous home.’