The Undoing of de Luca (18 page)

Did he?

Why did this woman make him want to share his tightly held self, reveal the parts of himself he kept hidden from the world?

He felt as if he were teetering on the edge of that chasm between them and he couldn’t bridge it. He could only jump.

‘You do?’ Ellery asked softly, and Larenz jerked his head in the semblance of a nod. He felt far too close to breaking, to falling. And he had no idea if he would tumble into the abyss below, or if trust—and love—would help him to fly. It was a frightening feeling, this uncertainty, this defencelesness. He didn’t like it.

‘Later,’ he said almost roughly. ‘There will be time for it later.’ And Larenz didn’t know whether that was a threat or a promise…or simply a hope.

She nodded slowly, accepting and, reaching for her hand, Larenz led her into the bedroom. He didn’t trust himself to speak; he had no more words.

When Ellery awoke the next morning her body ached as if she’d been climbing a mountain. She felt as if she had and the summit was nowhere in sight. As she lay there, the morning sunlight bathing her face, she wondered just how long she’d been climbing; it surely wasn’t a matter of a single day.

So much of the last few years had been caught up in that ceaseless striving, trying to make sense of her life when her father’s revelations had scattered all the truths she’d built her very self on.

This is my family. This is who I am. I am loved.

She rolled over to look at Larenz; he was still sleeping. She wasn’t sure what had happened last night, if somehow she and Larenz had found a way forward. They hadn’t spoken much after she’d told him about her family. Words were too dangerous, the bond between them too fragile. Ellery had gone to bed alone, only to wake up in the middle of the night to find Larenz sleeping next to her, as he was now.

She gazed at his face, the lines and angles softened in sleep, his lashes touching his cheeks. She wondered what thoughts hid in his head, what hopes in his heart. She wondered if she would ever have the courage to ask, or if he would have the courage to tell her.

She wondered what was going to happen next. Now.

Then, quite suddenly, his eyes opened and Ellery was caught staring.

‘Good morning,’ Larenz said, his voice husky with sleep. ‘You’re looking at me as if I’m a puzzle and you’re trying to work me out.’

She knew she could never do that, or at least not yet. She didn’t have all the pieces. ‘Nothing so dramatic,’ Ellery said, keeping her voice light. ‘I just like watching you sleep.’

Larenz caught her hand and pressed it to his lips, his eyes on hers. Ellery’s heart turned over at the gesture, and what it could possibly mean. She didn’t dare ask. She simply accepted it for what it was rather than what it might be. ‘I want to show you some of my life,’ he said.

His life. His
self.
Hope fluttered inside her. ‘I want to see it,’ she said, her hand still caught in his. ‘Where are you taking me?’

‘De Luca’s and then, perhaps, Umbria. Where I’m from.’

And Ellery knew this was his way of giving her something, perhaps of bridging the chasm that had opened between them—the chasm between a fling and a relationship.

They drove in a chauffered limo to De Luca’s flagship store in the centre of Milan. Housed in an art nouveau building, it was five storeys of sumptuous elegance. The crowds parted like the Red Sea for Larenz and staff flocked to his side, eager to do his bidding. Ellery simply marvelled at it all: the soaring marble pillars, the fabulous jewellery and linens and clothes, the feeling that she’d been catapulted into a film or a dream.

He showed her everything; he knew everything. Every worker’s name, every piece of merchandise. He owned the store, not just in the literal sense but in a spiritual way, as well. It was utterly his.

‘How do you know so much?’ Ellery asked as they rode the old-fashioned lift upstairs, complete with brass grille and uniformed attendant.

Larenz gave a little shrug. ‘It’s my job to know everything.’ He paused. ‘I started as an errand boy for the head of a department store. Marchand’s, it was called. I watched everything there and I saw all the waste and corruption and greed. And I knew—even then—that I wanted to start something better, bigger. Something that celebrated the beautiful without making you feel ugly.’ He gave a little self-conscious laugh, a sound like nothing else Ellery had ever heard from him, and she knew this was another gift. He was showing her himself.

Over the course of the afternoon he took her to every department at De Luca’s, and not once did he offer to buy her anything. Ellery knew it was intentional, knew he was keeping her from feeling like a dreaded mistress. Funny, how this lack of gifts could feel like a gift in and of itself; how much she appreciated the true gift Larenz was giving her: his time, his self.

And it was, she knew, making her fall in love with him. Love. The forbidden word, the word she could only whisper to herself because it made her so afraid. Love was scary. Risky. Love was a big, dangerous unknown.

And she couldn’t think about it for too long.

At the end of the day they returned to the hotel, weary, foot-sore, happy. Larenz ordered food in and they ate in the soft glow of candlelight in the sitting room. They didn’t speak much, as if they both knew that words could break this precious, fragile bond that had emerged between them, tenuous and tender.

When Larenz simply reached for her hand and led her to the bedroom, Ellery went. She didn’t ask questions, not of Larenz, not of herself. She simply did. She simply was.

They made love silently, slowly, and it felt like the purest form of communication. The joining of bodies, of minds, of
hearts.
As Larenz entered her, his eyes fixed on hers, Ellery felt tears start to come. She blinked them back, unnerved, undone because, even now, she hadn’t expected
this.

She hadn’t expected Larenz to reach her, to find her, and yet he had. As she lay in his arms afterwards she didn’t let herself wonder, question, regret. She simply lay there, listening to the sound of their breathing; even their lungs found an innate mutual rhythm. And she let herself be at peace.

The next morning they drove out of Milan in Larenz’s silver Porsche, the sky high and blue above them. After an hour or so of driving, Larenz turned off the motorway and took a narrow road through the rolling hills of Umbria, now russet and ochre with autumn, bathed in sunlight.

‘Just where are we going, exactly?’ Ellery asked. They hadn’t spoken much in the car. Words were still dangerous, fraught with possibility. Silence, Ellery reflected, was truly golden.

‘A palazzo near Spoleto,’ Larenz replied. ‘My home, of sorts.’

After another hour of driving, he finally turned up a long tree-shaded drive; at its end Ellery could see a magnificent palazzo, two dozen windows glittering in the sunlight.

So this was where Larenz grew up, she thought as he parked the car and turned off the ignition. A child of power and privilege. His shoes crunched on the gravel as he came around to open her door.

‘Does anyone live here now?’ Ellery asked as she followed Larenz to the palazzo’s main entrance. There was a strangely empty feel to the place; the windows looked blank and, although everything was excellently maintained, it felt sterile and barren. Lifeless.

‘No.’ Larenz took a key from his pocket and opened the door. Ellery heard the rapid beeping of a security alarm before he shut it off. ‘Come in,’ he said with a wry, rather twisted smile, ‘to my Maddock Manor.’

Ellery stepped into a soaring hall, the floor tiled in gleaming black-and-white chequered marble. Above her a huge crystal chandelier glinted in the sunlight streaming from the diamond-paned window above the front door. She gave a little laugh. ‘This is nothing like Maddock Manor.’

‘I suppose I was speaking figuratively,’ Larenz replied. He tossed the key on a marble-topped table by the door and turned around in a slow circle. ‘Do you know, I’ve never been in here before.’

‘What?’ Ellery turned to face him, her mouth slackening in shock. ‘What do you mean? Isn’t this your home?’ Yet, even as she said the words, she acknowledged that Larenz didn’t have a home. He lived in hotels—temporary, impersonal, luxurious. Now she wondered if there was a reason for that…and if he was going to tell her now.

‘This is my father’s home,’ Larenz corrected. ‘He died three years ago, which was when I bought it.’ His mouth twisted in something like a smile, although the expression still chilled Ellery. It held so much darkness, so much pain. ‘Our fathers, you see, were very similar.’

‘Larenz…how…’ Ellery trailed off uncertainly, for there was something forbidding about his expression, something bitter in his voice. She didn’t know what to say, what questions to ask. He was giving her another gift, another part of himself, and she was afraid to receive it.

‘Come on,’ he said in that same bitter, brittle voice. ‘We might as well see what my money has bought.’ He strode off towards one of the reception rooms and, after a moment, uncertainly, Ellery followed.

Larenz walked up and down the drawing room, inspecting the priceless antiques and artwork with a critical eye. Ellery stood in the doorway and gazed around the room; everything was burnished, polished and in perfect condition. The air smelled faintly of lemon polish and it looked as if a maid had just left the room.

Yet Larenz had never lived here?
No one
lived here?

It was, Ellery decided, strange. Unsettling.

‘Larenz? What’s going on? Why have you never lived here?’

He stood in front of what looked like an original Gaugin and studied it for a moment. ‘Not bad, I suppose.’

‘Larenz—’

‘I never lived here because I was never allowed,’ he said, cutting her off, his voice sounding curiously unemotional. ‘This was my father’s home…and he did not recognize me as his son.’

Ellery’s breath came out in a rush. ‘What do you—’

‘You see, we’re from opposite sides of the blanket, Ellery,’ Larenz said with a strange little smile. ‘Yet the same sordid story.’ Ellery just shook her head, not understanding, yet knowing somehow that what Larenz was telling her was terribly, horribly important. ‘My mother,’ he clarified, ‘was my father’s
mistress.
’ His delicate emphasis on the word made Ellery flinch.

It’s just a word.

Was this the reason he believed that? Was this the reason he never let anyone close? She felt blood rush to her face as she thought of all the bitter, damning things she’d said about her own father’s mistress, and that mistress’s
son.

A man like Larenz. Luckier than Larenz, for at least her father’s son had been acknowledged. Loved. Larenz, Ellery knew then with icy clarity, had not.

‘And what happened?’ she whispered.

Larenz shrugged. ‘My mother worked in the kitchen here. Classic story, you know?’ He gave a little laugh, almost as if it bored him. Yet Ellery heard—and felt—the hurt underneath and knew his father’s rejection had wounded him the same way hers had. He’d felt the same fierce betrayal, felt it now, and the thought filled her with a deep, sudden sorrow. ‘She got pregnant, she was let go, my father gave her a little money.’ His mouth twisted. ‘He didn’t set her up in a nice little house in Colchester, that was for certain.’ His voice caught, tore. ‘He didn’t spend birthdays or Christmases with his other little family. No holiday snaps, I’m afraid.’

Ellery blinked back tears. They gathered at the corners of her eyes, threatening to spill. She’d been so callous, lost in her own sad little story without a single thought for Larenz’s. If only she’d known. If only she’d asked. ‘Did she love him?’ Ellery asked quietly. She wanted to ask—
did you
? Had Larenz—in his own different way—been as disappointed by his father as she had been by hers? Or perhaps even more? He’d received nothing from his father. At least she had memories, tarnished as they were.

Larenz shrugged. ‘Who knows? She doesn’t talk about it very much. She was ashamed—an unmarried pregnant woman in rural Italy a generation ago was a very hard thing to be.’ He walked over to the window, leaning one shoulder against its frame as he stared out at the gardens, manicured to the point of sterility. ‘That was why she moved to Naples—her sister was there and she wanted to get away from the gossip.’

‘And what about you? Did you ever meet your father?’

Larenz tensed; at least Ellery thought he tensed, although he didn’t seem to move. She felt it in the air, suddenly taut with suppressed emotion. ‘Once.’ The single word did not invite more questions, yet Ellery longed to ask. To know.

‘And this house?’ Ellery asked for a moment. ‘How did you come to own it?’

‘Now that’s an interesting question.’ Larenz turned away from the window. ‘Why don’t we go ahead and see the rest of it?’

Wordlessly, Ellery followed Larenz out of the drawing room. He headed up the curving marble stairs and then down a hallway lined with wood-panelled doors. Their steps were silent on the sumptuous carpet. He barely glanced in the bedrooms, each one decorated, as far as Ellery could tell from her hurried glances, with the utmost elegance and luxury.

If this was his Maddock Manor, she thought rather ruefully, it looked a lot better than hers.

Back downstairs, he paused in a library, the walls lined in leather-spined books. He trailed one finger along the titles, a look of dispassionate calm on his face. It made her ache, for she knew how that blank expression could hide so much feeling. She’d felt it on her own face, and the turbulent, boiling emotions underneath, as well. ‘Larenz—’ she began, but he just shook his head. He didn’t want to talk. He was shutting her out with his silence, and she couldn’t bear it. She wouldn’t let him.

‘So?’ she finally asked, her voice sharp. ‘Does it live up to your expectations?’

Larenz dropped his hand from the shelves. ‘No,’ he said after a moment. ‘I don’t know what I expected to feel the first time I walked across that threshold, but…’ He shook his head slowly. ‘I don’t really feel anything.’ He gave a sad little laugh. ‘Stupid, eh? Pathetic. I bought this house when my father died as a way to show I was worthy of it. At least I suppose that’s why, if I’m going to indulge in a little psychoanalysis.’ He let out a long weary sigh. ‘Just like your father, mine was terrible with money. By the time he died, I was able to pick this place up for a song. And his family, of course, was furious.’ Ellery heard the way he scornfully emphasised
family
and felt the sting of tears once more.