Unknown (17 page)

Her brother frowned at her.
'Ha mal di testa,
' he said with quelling emphasis.

'So she says she has a headache,' Gianetta translated indifferently. 'I think she's taken flight because you've never put on a party like this for
her!'

Deborah's conscience smote her. 'I hope she's not staying away because of me. I think she knows I don't like her very much and perhaps she thinks it will spoil the evening for me ' She became conscious of the Manzus staring at her in mocking astonishment and tried a new tack. 'It's a splendid party! It was very kind of you both and your mother to hold it while my father and I are here.'

'Kind?' Gianetta queried faintly. 'But '

Her brother stopped her with a look. 'Do you like my friends?' he asked Deborah. 'Have they made you feel welcome?'

Her eyes fell. 'Very,' she admitted. 'Perhaps every European feels at home in Rome because it belongs to all of us—a little bit?'

'Hmm,' he said, and smiled. 'I'm glad you feel at home anyway.' He looked round the room. 'Have you decided where your bust of me should stand?' he asked her.

She shook her head, feeling unaccountably shy of him. 'Wouldn't that be rather impertinent of me?' she countered.

'On the contrary, I hope it will be the first of many such decisions!'

Deborah's hand sought a firmer hold on her father's arm. She felt his muscles stiffen against her touch and she took a quick step away from him, trying to pretend to herself it was no more than she had expected. At the same moment there was one of those silences that sometimes come over a group of people as Alessandra made her entrance, looking for all the world like an Italian version of Queen Victoria.

Gianetta made a face and called across the room to her. '
Hai ancora mal di testa
, Alessandra?'

'It is not well,' Alessandra returned civilly, making her way across the room towards them, 'but I knew it was my duty to come to help Domenico's mother with all these people.' She twitched her shoulders angrily. 'He has no consideration—as if such a party couldn't wait for another few days when she wouldn't have house-guests to contend with as well!'

Gianetta's previous pleasure and beauty fell from her, leaving her white and angry. A storm of Italian left her lips, refusing to be stilled even by her fiance's pleas. Deborah could understand very little of it, but even she could make out the last cutting sentence. 'I am here to stand beside my mother as Domenico's hostess, Sandra. It's not at all necessary for you to make yourself ill minding our business for us!'

'I know how you feel,
cara
Gianetta,' Alessandra said calmly. 'Nevertheless, we all have to remember that you will not be available for such social duties for much longer. You have chosen another way of life, haven't you? But we shall manage very well without you. I have never been one to shrink from doing my duty, I can promise you.'

Domenico, with a sidelong glance at his sister's furious face, put his hand on Alessandra's arm and drew her away. 'Aren't you being rather previous, Sandra?' he murmured. 'I don't recollect ever inviting you to act as my hostess and, besides, I thought you knew, my mother and I are giving this party
for our house-guests to introduce them to our friends in Rome.'

Deborah stood frozen to the ground. Much as she disliked the Italian girl, she couldn't help feeling for her even if she had asked for the humiliating snub Domenico had given her.

'Poor Alessandra!' she said.

'Poor!
' Gianetta exclaimed with contempt. 'How can you say so? I have never disliked anyone more! I don't know what I shall do if Domenico marries her! And she's always the same! Even when she's telling you how welcome you are, you know she's wishing you would drop dead. When I think of the times she's gone behind my back dripping her poison to all our friends, I wish I never had to speak to her again!'

Deborah uttered a low laugh of sympathy. 'I know someone else just like that! She always pretends she can't quite remember my name ' Belatedly, she remembered her father standing beside her and broke off, confused and guilty. She could have been referring to anyone, of course, but it was too late to go on now. He would know that she had been talking about Agnes! She sent him a wordless look of apology, but he refused to accept it. His mouth tightened into an angry line.

'Any trouble between you and Agnes has always been of your own making,' he told her bleakly. 'You would never accept that she and I had any right to be happy together!'

Deborah bit her lip. 'Not now, Father,' she begged him.

'I blame your mother,' he went on regardless.

'Not now!'
Deborah said again.

Her father sighed. 'It's never the right time in your opinion for us to talk together. Just like your mother—burying your head in the sand! Only with her it was always my work she took exception to. Seemed to think money grew on trees and that I could spend all my time with her!'

'Instead of with Agnes?' Deborah said sweetly, and then wished she hadn't. 'Oh, what does it matter? I wasn't talking about Agnes anyway!'

'Agnes is my wife '

It was Gianetta who succeeded in diverting his attention. She smiled at him in a way that could only concentrate his attention on herself and edged him away from Deborah a few inches at a time. 'There is someone over there Domenico particularly wants you to meet,' she challenged him. 'He is a very clever business man also and is full of ideas about how Beaumont's could expand into the Common Market countries.'

Mr Beaumont followed his young hostess like a lamb, his good humour completely restored. Deborah's lips trembled into a laugh. 'Has the poor man ever heard of Beaumont's, do you think?' she wondered aloud.

Cesare followed his fiancée's progress with an amused look. 'I doubt it,' he said, 'but he will do anything for Gianetta. He has only to listen and your father will do the talking, no?'

'Yes,' said Deborah. 'His business is his whole life.'

'But not yours,' Cesare said quickly. 'We must live and let live. His life has not been yours for many years now. We all understand that,
signorina
. Domenico has told us you are a great artist and not in the business world at all!'

But Deborah feared the damage had been done. Her father would not forget her disparaging reference to Agnes easily, and he had never been one to leave a painful subject alone. It augured badly for their planned outing the next day, she thought, and wondered how she could best persuade him that Agnes was better left behind in England for the next few days. They would never get to understand each other better while the ghost of his second wife stalked through their every conversation together.

It was not Agnes, however, but Beaumont's that caused the row between them the next day, Deborah's father disliked sightseeing at the best of times and when he found he was expected to visit a whole lot of ancient churches in his daughter's company, he would only go on the understanding that she would listen carefully to what he had come to Rome to tell her.

'Visiting churches is more in your mother's line. She has more time for that sort of thing,' he muttered as they boarded a bus for the Via Veneto, the most famous street in Rome.

'It won't do you any harm,' Deborah retorted heartlessly. 'We can always go on to the catacombs if you like?'

'If we have to,' her father agreed. 'But you'll listen to me first, Deborah! That's understood, isn't it?'

'Yes, that's understood,' she sighed. 'Shall we have a cup of coffee at one of the cafes?'

'Very well,' he consented. But it was not easy to find a cafe that would allow them to sit out on the pavement when they were expecting rain. Deborah was all for going inside, but her father was afraid of being overheard. He looked completely out of place in the fashionable street, clutching his rolled umbrella to him and with the buttons of his coat straining across his thickening waistline.

'Deborah, I've been thinking,' he said, sinking heavily on to a rain-damp chair. 'I was talking to Signora Manzu last night and you seem to have made a very good impression there—can't think how, considering what you were wearing when she first saw you! She could well have thought you were one of these dreadful hippies, or whatever they're calling themselves these days! But at least your mother always had good manners and she seems to have passed them on to you when you care to make use of them. I think you're on to a good thing here, my dear. If you play your cards well, the Manzus may accept you as a possible partner for Domenico. The Signora was very impressed when I told her the dowry I was thinking of settling on you on the day of your marriage. Daresay it was rather better than anything Alessandra's parents are likely to come up with!'

Deborah clenched her teeth. 'I don't want a dowry,' she said.

'No, well, I can't say I shall like coughing up such a sum for you much,' her father went on. 'But it will be worth it if I can get Domenico Manzu for a son-in-law. The next time I come to Rome it may be to open our branch of Beaumont's International here in Rome! What do you think of that?'

'I don't think Domenico is interested in Beaumont's,' Deborah answered with deliberate restraint.

'He will be!'

Deborah blenched. 'But I don't think of Domenico like that, Father! Everyone knows he plans to marry Alessandra.'

'Perhaps he did, one can't tell with these foreigners, but I think you'll find his mother will soon change his mind for him. An admirable woman! Understood immediately what I was talking about and wasn't afraid to say so. She didn't admit the Manzus were less wealthy than they were once, but it was as plain as daylight that she would welcome having Beaumont's substance behind her. No, you listen to me, Deborah,' he went on as his daughter made to interrupt him. 'You could do a lot worse for yourself than ally yourself with young Domenico Manzu!'

'Father, I'm not a business asset to be bought and sold by you or anyone else! As soon as I can arrange it, I shall move out of the Palazzo Manzu and rejoin my friends in their borrowed apartment '

'And turn your back on the best bit of good fortune ever to come your way? You wouldn't be such a fool! I know you take after your mother, but you have my blood in your veins as well as hers! This rime, my dear, you'll do as you're told or that will be the last you hear from me! If you turn down Domenico Manzu, I'll have nothing more to do with you, no matter what sort of a mess you succeed in making of your life!'

Deborah squinted at him over her coffee cup. She felt cold inside, cold with a despair as sharp as any knife. She felt as though her life was bleeding away inside her and that the cold she felt was a foretaste of a life lived without any emotion at all—a life without Domenico!

'Is that a promise?' she asked in a futile attempt at a joke.

'Deborah '

'Because I hope you weren't serious,' she hurried on, 'as Domenico is the last person in the world I'd marry! I'm afraid Beaumont's will have to do without my cooperation after all, but it's managed without me all these years, so I expect it'll get along without this splendid Italian connection. As for me, I'll see you around some time, Father. Remember me to Agnes when you see her.' She stood up, taking a last sip of coffee in the hopes that it would warm her a little. Perhaps she had caught a chill. 'Don't forget you owe Domenico for my clothes! I'm sorry they won't fit Agnes, but I expect you'll be able to realise something on them if you try hard enough. Goodbye, Father.'

He stood up also. 'Goodbye? But where are you going?'

'Anywhere. I'm going anywhere where I can be by myself and have nothing whatever to do with Beaumont International '

'But what shall I tell the Manzus?'

There was something rather pathetic about the agonised, hurt look with which he regarded her, as if he couldn't understand what he had done to upset her. It made her feel quite maternal towards him.

'Don't worry, Father,' she said. 'They'll understand that you did your best to keep me on the straight and narrow business path! I won't be any loss to any of them.'

Her-father frowned. 'I thought you were in love with Domenico '

Deborah forced a smile. 'I thought so too. Funny, I don't feel anything now. All I want is never to have to see him again!' She was surprised to find that she was crying. 'Oh, Father!' she wept. 'He'll think that's why I came to Rome—just to trap him into marriage on your say-so!'

'Now why should he think that?' Mr Beaumont asked awkwardly.

'Why? How could he think otherwise? He'll think I'm as bad as Alessandra! She thinks of nothing but her wretched family name, and he'll think that I think of nothing but the family firm! That I'd even sacrifice myself for it, as Alessandra would on her particular altar! I've never felt so
cheap
and despicable in my whole life!'

'But there's nothing wrong with you taking an interest in your father's firm. You're making too much of this, my dear. Now, come on, dry your tears and we'll say no more about it. We'll go and look at those churches of yours and you can tell me all about them. How's that?'

Deborah's face crumpled and her shoulders shook. 'I don't want to go! I want to be by myself! We're both fools, Father, only I'm a bigger one than you are! Domenico doesn't want to marry me—he wants me as his mistress! And I wanted to accept, if you want to know! I may have done if you hadn't tried to sell me to him as part of a business deal. All those clothes! And I let him buy them! No wonder he thought I was making unnecessary difficulties when he said he might have to leave me behind sometimes when he went to the Vatican—he probably thought I was already bought and paid for too! Well, you can tell him from me that I want nothing from either of you! I'm going back to my friends!'

She turned on her heel and left him where she stood, not daring to cross the road, blinded as she was by tears, but running up the pavement all the way to the Pincine Gate. Then, when she looked back, she couldn't see her father at all. For the first time since her arrival she was alone in Rome.