The Rich Shall Inherit (73 page)

She watched as Angel walked along the familiar grassy path to the little arbor she remembered so well; it was the place they had always gone to tell each other their secrets. She sat, agonized, wanting to go to Angel, but afraid … she knew she shouldn’t, she knew she mustn’t… but she so longed to go “home.” Finally, she untethered her horse, and rode slowly down the hill toward the house.

Sitting on the carved bench in the vine-covered arbor, Angel opened the book she’d been carrying. It was her mother’s journal; she’d discovered it just the other day, up in the attic, amid a pile of her old schoolbooks. She’d hesitated about reading it, even now, twelve years after Rosalia’s death, because somehow it had seemed like prying. Her own journal was such a personal thing; it recorded all her hopes and fears, her loves and sorrows, as well as the early parties and dances and visits to San Francisco. This would be like a private view into her mother’s soul.

The first pages were all about her father, how they’d met, how much Rosalia loved him, about their wedding night … It was a young girl in love writing, not her mother, and Angel shut the book hurriedly. She would never read it now. She closed her eyes, half dozing, enjoying the warm sunlight filtering through the leaves and the special, alive silence of the countryside.

She had two precious weeks to herself. Two weeks before she had to return to Italy and the son who hated her almost as much as he’d hated his father; two weeks before she would have to decide what to do about her troubled daughters; just two weeks of rare solitude that she had never thought she’d want.

Angel’s eyes flew open at the soft rustle of footsteps on the grass. Was it a dream? she wondered as Poppy walked toward her. Or maybe a ghost? Poppy’s red hair was tied loosely with a ribbon the way she always used to wear it, but it was plumed with silver now. She was as slender as she had been at eighteen and still walked with the easy, long-striding grace that had always reminded Angel of a racehorse. She closed her eyes again, shocked. Poppy was real. She was here.

“I’ve come home, Angel,” Poppy whispered. And then, covering her face with her hands, she sank to her knees and wept.

“Why are you here, Poppy?” Angel asked harshly, resisting the
impulse to hold out her hand to comfort her. “This is no longer your home.”

“I had to come,” Poppy cried. “I’ve lost everything that matters to me … everything. Don’t you see, Angel, I had to come back, I had to find you … I must know what happened to my daughter.”

“You’ve broken your promise,” Angel reminded her coldly.
“You
were never to contact any of us again.”

“But it’s so long ago,” Poppy pleaded; “they say time heals old wounds—”

“Wounds!” Angel whispered. “Wounds, Poppy? Those were not
wounds
you inflicted.
They were death blows! You
have no idea what disaster you brought upon me and my family! God, I wish my father had never met Jeb Mallory!”

Poppy’s shocked tearstained eyes met hers.
“You
can’t say that,” she gasped. “Angel, we were like sisters. What happened was not my fault…”

“You didn’t tell me the truth, did you, Poppy?” Angel asked icily. “But Felipe did. It was just
one
of the things he used to torture me with. He told me how you went to him that night, how passionate and insistent you were … he even told me how you felt in his arms—
Felipe
was the secret lover you were seeing all those afternoons when you sneaked away from the hotel!
And Felipe was the father of your child!”

Poppy hung her head in silence. It was almost true. “He didn’t make love to me, Angel; he raped me,” she said quietly.

“You went to the Palazzo Rinardi in the middle of the night,” Angel said scornfully. “He told me you had an assignation.”

“It wasn’t like that,” she cried despairingly, “I swear to you it wasn’t.”

Angel shrugged coldly. “How and why it all happened scarcely matters anymore. But if it hadn’t been for you, I would never have met Felipe.” Her voice was filled with twenty-eight years of bitterness as she stared at Poppy. She wanted her to know everything so she would finally understand. “My whole life changed because of you, Poppy! I had to live for years with a man I despised and who loathed me. All Felipe ever wanted was the Konstants’ money! When I could stand it no longer, I finally left. I took my two girls, but he kept the boy. And now my son hates me, Poppy, almost as much as he hated his father, because
he
had to stay there and live with him!”

Her wonderful clear eyes were full of pain as she remembered. “I had packed all our things,” she said, “we were ready, in the hall; I had told Felipe the night before that we were leaving, that it was the
end. Felipe came out of the gun room, it was autumn and I thought he was going out shooting pheasant. He was wearing a hunter-green jacket and he had a rifle under his arm. ‘Aleksandr,’ he said, ‘come here to your father.’ The boy looked at me, wondering what to do. I shook my head and put my arm around him. He was only nine years old … Felipe cocked the rifle and pointed it at him. ‘I said come here, Aleksandr,’ he repeated. I thrust the boy behind me, terrified. ‘What are you doing?’ I cried as he turned and pointed the rifle at the girls. ‘If Aleksandr doesn’t come here, to me, then I shall shoot one of the girls,’ Felipe said …
‘and you know which one, Angel.’

“‘You
can’t do that!’ I cried. ‘You can’t murder your own child!’ But Felipe always thought himself above the law.

“‘Murder?’ he sneered. ‘It will be a shooting accident, my dear … so terribly sad … everyone knows the Barone Rinardi adores his children.’

“‘Aleksandr pushed his way from my arms and walked toward his father. ‘Please don’t shoot them, Papa,’ he said bravely. I’ll never forget Felipe’s smile of triumph as he put his hand on the boy’s shoulder. ‘
You
may go now,’ he said, dismissing us. ‘Aleksandr stays with me.’

“Aleksandr had always been a disappointment to Felipe; he was a delicate, shy, intellectual child, and he hated his father’s showy display, he hated the way he always played the role of ‘the Barone,’ like a feudal lord. Felipe wanted his son to be an athlete, a sportsman, and he tortured Aleksandr about his frail physique, always pushing him to swim and to ride and to shoot, and taunting him about his spectacles because the boy was so nearsighted. Poor Aleksandr hated horses and he hated killing. Felipe never saw the beauty of Aleksandr’s intelligence, he never read the poetry he wrote, or the stories. The tutors told me my son was a creative genius, that we should choose his schools carefully and make sure his talents were nurtured.

“‘Aleksandr stays with me,’ Felipe said, ‘he will be my hostage for the Konstants’ money. As long as he is with me, the Konstants will pay.’

“My son stood there bravely while his father aimed the gun at us, watching as we left. ‘I’ll come back for you, Aleksandr,’ I promised. But Felipe just laughed. ‘It’s your choice, Angel,’ he called after me.
‘You
can stay here with me and your son.’ Aleksandr’s eyes looked at me so hopefully, though he still said not a word. But you see, now I knew how much Felipe hated his daughter—your daughter, Poppy. It was
she
he had aimed the gun at … I knew that if we
stayed, one day he would surley kill her. Right now Aleksandr would be safe because he needed him. I would have to come back for him later.
You
see, I had no choice. It was to save your daughter, Poppy, that I sacrificed my son.

“I brought the girls here,” she went on wearily. “For years we bargained with Felipe; my father offered him more and more money, but he just laughed and said it wasn’t enough. He never let Aleksandr write to me. I was crazy with fear of what he must be doing to the child, how he must be torturing him. Finally, my father said he and Mama would go to Italy, they would confront him, they would bargain with him—a million dollars, two million—for my son. They were on the liner
Lusitania
when it was sunk by a German submarine.”

Poppy felt as though she were dying inside. She remembered the day Nik and Rosalia had come to save her from the terror of the children’s home in Pittsburgh, how they’d brought her here, and called her their daughter, how they’d loved her. She thought of Nik, so solid and strong, and Rosalia, so gay and charming, always laughing. They were so vivid in her memories that she couldn’t believe they were lost beneath the cold green waves of the Atlantic Ocean.

“Greg took over the ranch,” Angel went on. “If you’d seen how he suffered all those years, searching for you, you wouldn’t have dared come back! I begged him not to go on looking for you, but how could I tell him the truth and hurt him even more? Finally he put it all behind him and married Melissa and now they have three fine sons. But the two eldest are at military school and it looks as though young Hilliard will follow them. So there is no one left who wants to take over the Rancho Santa Vittoria. Everything my father worked for now means nothing. Greg has already sold off hundreds of acres to developers—it seems they’re prepared to pay a fortune for the land—the money is for his sons. In a few years you won’t be able to recognize this place.

“Greg is content with Melissa,” she added, “and he loves his boys. He’s as happy as any man can expect to be. Don’t think you can come back now and destroy that, Poppy.”

Poppy shook her head. “I saw him once, in Paris years ago. He didn’t see me. I could have gone to him, Angel, but I knew then it was too late.” She hesitated. “I rode over to the Mallory House,” she said quietly. “Angel, what happened to my father?”

“He died in the fire there, five years after you disappeared. He is buried in the Methodist chapel in Santa Barbara. Mama and Papa
wouldn’t let him lie in the same grave as your mother, I’ve never understood why.” She glanced down at Rosalia’s little blue leather journal on the seat beside her; it probably contained the answer, but she knew now she would never read it.

Poppy felt the old helpless feeling of rage against her father return once more, the flame of hatred that would burn in her forever.
He
had been the cause of all of this …
he
was the one who should be judged in heaven. If he had looked after his wife, his child, his land, none of this would have happened. Because of him she had lost her son. And so had Angel.

“Angel,” she asked, half afraid of the answer, “what happened to Aleksandr?”

“Felipe refused to give him up, no matter how big the bribe. We even tried cutting off the money supply, but of course then he threatened the boy. We consulted international lawyers, but the law was adamant; when a man’s wife leaves him, he is entitled to keep his children. They told me I was lucky to have my two girls. Felipe died suddenly, two years ago, and I went back to Italy to see Aleksandr at last. He refused to talk to me; he was hostile, alien. I tried to explain how I’d thought of him all the time, how I’d agonized over him, how I knew Felipe wanted to kill his sister and because of that we couldn’t return. He wouldn’t even listen. With Felipe dead, he was now the Barone Rinardi, but he refused to accept the title. For years Felipe had forced him to ride and shoot and do all the physical things he wanted him to be good at, until he got tired of the game. In revenge he got rid of Aleksandr’s tutor; he refused to send the boy to school …
Aleksandr was uneducated!
But at least Felipe hadn’t been able to deprive him of books, and he’d read his way through the vast library, teaching himself about the things he loved best. Aleksandr had escaped into a world of his own and now he would admit no one else into it. Especially the mother who had promised to come back for him … and failed.”

Poppy hid her face in her hands; she knew that feeling, waiting and waiting for someone who never came …

“He wanted nothing more to do with the Rinardis or the Konstants; all he asked was enough money to buy a remote Italian villa on the slopes of the Dolomites. It’s surrounded by acres of old-fashioned neglected gardens and he lives there alone, studying his books and creating order from the chaos in the grounds. He doesn’t want to see me, or any of his family; all he wants is to be left alone. I like to think he is happy, at last.”

Her voice was so wistful that instinctively Poppy took her hand. “I know how it feels, Angel,” she cried. “I’ve lost my son too …”

“Don’t tell me
, Poppy,” Angel cried, pulling her hand away. “I don’t want to know anything about you. I just want you to go back to wherever you came from. My life is not yours, my children are not yours.
You
have nothing. You’ve brought enough grief to this family.”

Poppy shrank from her, shocked by the quiet hatred in her voice. But she had to find out what she had come for. “I’ll go,” she said quietly. “But first I beg you, have pity on me, tell me about my daughter. How is she? Did you name her for me?”

“Like a fool, I named both girls for you—maybe because even though I loved you then and felt sorry for you, I knew one day you would come back and want her. I have
two
daughters, and their names are Maria-Cristina Poppy Rinardi, and Helena Mallory Rinardi. And you, Poppy, have none. Remember?
They are both mine.”

“Angel,” she begged, “please, let me see her, at least tell me which one is mine, and where she is ….”

“No! There is nothing else to say.” A look of such deep sadness crossed Angel’s face that Poppy felt frightened … what had happened to Maria-Cristina, to Helena, to make her look like that? But she knew Angel wouldn’t tell her. “Will you let me come to see you again, Angel?” she asked humbly.

Angel shook her head, and they looked at each other for the last time, seeing each other as they were now, and as they had been when they were carefree girls, racing around the sunlit Rancho Santa Vittoria on their ponies, with never a thought for tomorrow.

Without another word, Poppy turned and walked down the grassy path. It seemed like the longest walk of her life, and she knew that the scent of the lantana bushes and the roses, the sounds of the cicadas, and the gay chirping of the little birds as she left the place and the family she loved, would linger in her memory, forever.