The Italian Millionaire’s Marriage Read online

  His smiled was strained. ‘You know how busy I am just now, Mamma. This partnership-’

  ‘You made that excuse to her, and much good it did you.’

  He was silent.

  Lucia went into the kitchen and made some coffee. When she returned Marco was sitting with his fingers entwined between his knees, staring at the floor. He gave a faint smile of thanks accepting the cup, and one look at his face was enough to send her back to the kitchen, returning at last with a large plate of pasta.

  ‘When did you last eat?’ she demanded, setting it before him.

  He shrugged. ‘Some time. Thanks Mamma.’ He ate a few mouthfuls. ‘This is good.’

  She regarded him pityingly. ‘You’ve been very foolish.’

  ‘Me?’ He was stung. ‘I was the one who wanted our marriage to go ahead.’

  ‘Yes, and you went about it with all the subtlety of a bludgeon. What’s the result? I’ve lost a daughter-in-law, one I was particularly fond of. It won’t do.’

  ‘What do you expect me to do? I can’t force her to marry me.’

  ‘So you’ve learned that, have you?’

  ‘Mamma it’s easy to talk, but you can’t talk sense to Harriet. She lives in a dream world.’ He gave a grunt of sardonic laughter. ‘She calls herself a businesswoman but the man in the moon has more idea of commerce. She thinks running a business is a matter of loving the pieces and finding them “kind homes”.’

  ‘Oh, how like Harriet that sounds!’ Lucia sighed.

  ‘Yes it does. It also sounds like the way she ran the shop into the ground. Now she talks about repaying me the money I loaned her, in a lump sum. How does she think she can do that? She’s not the expert that she thinks she is.’

  ‘Really Marco, what do you know about the subject?’

  He jumped up and went to a concealed safe. A few clicks on the combination lock and he opened the door, taking out an ornate gold necklace.

  ‘You see this? I took it to London and showed it to Harriet on the first day. Do you remember how proud Poppa was of this, how he used to show it off and tell stories of the dig where it was discovered? Harriet told me that was a fake.’

  ‘But, my dear boy, it is a fake.’

  ‘What do you mean? It’s genuine Etruscan.’

  ‘No, the original was genuine Etruscan. But years ago your father had financial problems, so he sold it. That’s a copy made by a professional forger. He was the best in the business, so good that in all these years nobody has ever spotted it. Until Harriet. She, of course, could spot a phoney at fifty paces.’

  He stared at her.

  For the second time Harriet lifted the pen, then put it down.

  ‘It just seems so final,’ she said sadly.

  Mr. Pendry, her lawyer, nodded. ‘A sale is final,’ he said. ‘But you’d be very unwise to refuse Allum & Jonsey’s offer.’

  ‘But who is this firm?’

  ‘Does it matter? A &J has met your full asking price without any argument, and as you know, I always thought it a little optimistic. Plus they want you to stay and run the place. In a sense you’ll lose nothing.’

  ‘Except that it won’t be mine any more.’

  ‘Well, if you really don’t want to sell you could ask Signor Calvani if you could pay him by instalments. Shall I-?’

  ‘No, thank you,’ Harriet said firmly. He’d hit on the one argument that could sway her. She’d vowed to break all ties between herself and Marco. It was the only way to put him out of her life, if not her heart. Hell would freeze over before she asked him for a favour now. Swiftly she signed her name and pushed the paper over the desk.

  ‘Now this one,’ Mr. Pendry said. ‘It’s your contract, as manageress, for six months.’

  Harriet paused again. ‘I don’t know. Isn’t a clean break the best thing?’

  There’s no such thing as a clean break. Haven’t you discovered that in the lonely days and aching nights?

  ‘Do you have anything else lined up?’ Mr. Pendry asked.

  ‘No, I guess I don’t,’ she said, picking up the pen. ‘So what happens now?’

  ‘You just keep on running the shop. I dare say they’ll send someone to see you sooner or later.’

  She lay awake all night, knowing that she’d signed because she was a coward. She couldn’t face another break so soon after the last one. She would see out her contract and separate herself from her beloved shop inch by inch.

  Yet again, as she’d done so many times since returning to London, she asked herself why she’d taken such a stubborn stand against the man she couldn’t stop loving? Truth to tell, she’d always considered herself a touch on the wimpish side. So how had she found the weapons in her hands?

  Because Marco had shown them to her.

  He’d told her that she was strong and brave and independent, and it was true. The neglect and loneliness that had marked her life had taught her how to be alone, but she hadn’t known it until Marco revealed her strengths to her. He’d proved that she could do without the father she’d yearned for, and the next step was the knowledge that she could do without anyone.

  Now she could do without Marco, because he’d taught her how.

  Next day she overslept. It was Mrs Gilchrist’s day off so she couldn’t have picked a worse moment to be late. As she hastened to the shop, she crossed her fingers and prayed to whichever deity protected disorganised antique dealers not to let A &J send their representative today.

  She knew her prayers weren’t being answered when she arrived to find the front door standing open. She’d been beaten to it. She was late. Just like that other time. She could just imagine what Marco would say to this.

  And that was exactly what he said as he emerged from her cubicle at the back of the shop to stand regarding her sardonically.

  ‘Dammit Harriet, not again! Are you never on time?’

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  ‘I DON’T believe this,’ Harriet said, setting down her things to confront him. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘Haven’t you worked it out yet?’

  ‘Allum & Jonsey-?’

  ‘A tiny firm who were glad to let me take them over.’

  ‘And if they hadn’t been glad, you’d have taken over anyway.’

  ‘No, I’d have found another firm. I needed a front. You wouldn’t have sold if you’d known it was me.’

  ‘In other words, this is another of your exercises in control. Sorry Marco, it’s not going to work. I’m through.’

  He held up the contract she’d signed only the previous day, committing her to run the shop for six months. ‘What about this?’

  ‘Sue me!’

  ‘I will if you make me, but you won’t. You’re a woman of your word. This place needs you. Nobody else can run it. Between us we’ll make it as profitable as it ought to be.’

  Harriet gave an incredulous laugh. ‘You want me? A woman who can’t tell a fake from an original? Surely not.’

  She had the satisfaction of seeing him redden. ‘What do you want me to say? That I was wrong about that? All right, I’ll say it. That necklace was a fake. My father sold the original years ago. My mother says you’re the only person ever to notice.’

  Harriet’s face lightened. ‘How is she?’

  ‘I have strict instructions to send her news of you. I’ll do that later. For the moment we have to do some serious talking.’

  ‘Well, I won’t try to defend my accounts to you-’

  ‘No, they’re beyond defence.’

  ‘Because you already knew the worst in advance. You’re crazy, you know that?’

  His eyes gleamed. ‘I never do anything without a good reason.’

  ‘You can’t have a good reason for being here.’

  ‘That’s for me to say,’ he said briskly. ‘We had a deal. The loan was to be repaid in easy stages, instead you choose to deprive yourself of everything you love, to do it in one go. That gives me a certain responsibility.’

  ‘You haven’t-�
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  ‘Will you just be quiet while I’m speaking? When I want to hear what you have to say, I’ll ask. I have a responsibility to you and I’m going to deal with it. I’ll teach you to be a shrewd businesswoman if it turns us both grey-haired. In time you’ll make enough to buy this place back from me, and then I won’t have to reproach myself with having harmed you.’

  ‘Can I speak now?’ she snapped.

  ‘If it’s important.’

  ‘All that is very conscientious of you-’

  ‘Conscientiousness is the corner of good business. Now, I suggest you make some tea and we’ll discuss your stock buying. Some of the web sites you visit look interesting.’

  ‘You accessed my account? How?’

  ‘I hacked in, of course.’

  ‘Of course,’ she murmured.

  ‘If you’d been here on time, it would have been easier,’ he said crisply, and something in his tone made her realise that this man was now her employer.

  From then on she had no chance to forget it. Marco settled in as though he’d come for a long stay, taking a room at the Ritz Hotel, hiring a car, arriving at the shop early, leaving late. If Harriet suspected that he had come for her he made it hard for her to believe it. He gave her a crash course in financial management, with no concessions to whatever might have been between them. When he’d finished tearing her business practices to shreds he demolished the reputation of her accountant.

  ‘He’s been so much in awe of your academic knowledge that he’s let you get away with accounting murder.’

  ‘He’s a dear old boy-’

  ‘So I would have guessed. You don’t need a dear old boy, you need someone who can keep you on a tight rein. What’s this?’ He was pointing at some squiggles in one of the ledgers.

  ‘That’s my code.’

  ‘Translate,’ he snapped.

  Seething, she did so.

  ‘Fine,’ he said. ‘That’s lucid enough, but I’m not clairvoyant. How do I know what it means unless you explain?’

  ‘I always write up the details later.’

  ‘Do it now.’

  ‘Why do you have to be a slave-driver over every detail?’

  ‘Because, while you may be all kinds of an antiquarian genius, when it comes to the simplest commercial transaction you are a bird-brained idiot.’

  ‘I know that!’

  Silence. He was breathing hard.

  ‘Fine!’ he snapped. ‘Then at last we’re agreed on something. It makes a good starting point.’

  ‘Why do we have to agree on anything? We never did before. Why don’t you just install the new accountant to keep an eye on me when you’ve gone home?’

  ‘I’m not going home until I’ve taught you how not to bankrupt yourself.’

  ‘You mean, bankrupt you?’

  For once he was shaken. ‘Yes-yes, that’s what I meant.’

  ‘But you can’t stay here. You should be in Rome this minute, fighting for that partnership.’

  He shrugged. ‘I clinched that before I left.’

  ‘So you’ve got it?’

  ‘Yes, I’ve got it.’ He was writing something.

  ‘The youngest partner, just as you wanted. Congratulations!’

  ‘Thank you!’ he said shortly.

  Of course he’d got exactly what he wanted. Everything neat and orderly. He’d sorted out his career, now he would deal with the little matter of his conscience, then he would go home and put her behind him.

  But that was what she wanted him to do.

  So she had no complaints. If there was one thing she was sure of, it was that.

  ‘How do you buy stock?’ he asked her one day. ‘You can’t always use the internet.’

  ‘I use it rarely. Travelling the country is better.’

  ‘When do we go?’

  Next day they set off for a country house south of London. The owner had fallen on hard times, had sold the house to the local council, and was raising what he could from the contents.

  ‘He won’t get much for these, I’m afraid,’ Harriet said regretfully as she examined the rather dull collection of items. ‘And he’s such a sweet little man.’ She looked sympathetically across at the owner, a plump, white-haired man with a sad face.

  ‘Anything of interest to us?’ Marco asked.

  ‘Well, this vase looks-’ she stopped, examining an ornate glass vase. Marco saw her flicker of interest, quickly suppressed, like the professional she was.

  ‘What?’ he said.

  ‘Genuine Venetian twelfth century,’ she said quietly. ‘Worth about fifty grand.’

  ‘But the reserve price is only two grand.’

  ‘I know. The owner can’t have any idea what it’s worth.’

  ‘So you’ve spotted a real bargain. I’m impressed.’

  The auctioneer banged his gavel. ‘Take your places please, ladies and gentlemen.’

  Marco bagged two seats in the front and looked around for Harriet. After a moment he saw her talking earnestly to the owner while the auctioneer stood listening, wide-eyed.

  I don’t believe this, he thought. I simply don’t believe it, not even of her.

  The auctioneer banged his gavel again.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen, I have to announce that Lot 43 now has a reserve price of fifty thousand…’

  From the groan that went up behind him Marco judged that other dealers had spotted the same thing, and had kept quiet.

  But they weren’t Harriet, Marco thought with a private smile.

  She was hailing him from the door, indicating that they should leave.

  ‘We’re not interested in anything else here,’ she said as he joined her outside.

  ‘Aren’t we?’

  ‘No, we’re not.’

  ‘I gather you told him?’

  ‘I had to. That dear little old man, he was almost crying. He said it’ll make all the difference to his retirement. Hey, what are you doing?’ she protested as he grabbed her arm and began to hustle her.

  ‘Getting you to safety before one of the other dealers murders you.’

  ‘Or doing it yourself?’

  He didn’t answer this, except with a look.

  When they were out in the sun she faced him, half-sheepish, half-defiant.

  ‘I couldn’t do anything else, don’t you see? He’s such an innocent, I couldn’t just take the money when he needs it so much-’

  ‘But Harriet, dear crazy Harriet, that’s not how you do business.’

  ‘It’s how I do business. So you’d better fire me.’

  ‘No, I’m glad you told him,’ he said with a strange smile. ‘If you’d done anything else, you wouldn’t have been Harriet.’

  It was early evening as they drove back to London.

  ‘Now we need something to eat,’ Marco said. ‘I suppose I can’t suggest that you invite me to your home for beans on toast. Since I’m your employer that might be “sexual harassment”.

  ‘I’ll risk it. After one taste of my cooking you won’t be up to anything.’

  ‘Witty lady!’ he said admiringly. ‘Come on, give me directions.’

  Her home was a tiny one-bedroomed apartment an hour away, in a cheaper part of town. Harriet wondered how it appeared to Marco who’d grown up in the luxury of the Villa Calvani. She saw him looking about the cramped rooms, but he said nothing.

  She spared him beans on toast and made spaghetti, letting him create the sauce. Conversation was spasmodic and about nothing in particular. It had been a good day, and now neither of them knew how to end it.

  He’d been very unfair to her, she thought. She’d meant to be strong, but that was when she’d thought he would be far away. How was she supposed to be strong when she was seeing him day after day, close to him, hearing his voice? And when she looked up to find him watching her, only to see him turn away without words, leaving the memory of the look in his eyes and a torturing feeling of delight-there had to be a way to defend herself against that, if only she could find it
.

  It wasn’t fair that her love for him should flower more strongly than ever before. But love wasn’t fair. If he went away now and left her to struggle with her misery that wouldn’t be fair either. But it could happen.

  She was on edge, wondering what he would do and how she would react. Why was he really here?

  In the end he did something totally unexpected. As she was putting dishes into the sink he came up behind her and laid his hands on her shoulders. She waited, half hoping, half-unsure. After staying like that a moment, not moving, he slid one arm across her chest, drawing her back against him, and dropping his head to lay it gently against the side of her neck. She could feel his lips, lightly touching her skin, but he didn’t kiss her. It was neither a passionate nor even a very romantic movement. He simply looked weary and disheartened, and she suddenly remembered when she’d found him sleeping rough in the garden, and he’d put his arms around her and rested his head, as though in her he found a refuge.

  Slowly she put up her hand to touch his and they stayed like that for a long moment. Then he released her and went away. When she went to find him he was kneeling before her bookcase, reading the titles.

  After that she made them both coffee, he exclaimed about the time, and went home.

  Marco didn’t come into the shop every day, and she supposed he was using the time to keep up with his work in Rome. One morning when she was alone she went into her cubby-hole to make some tea. Above the clatter of china she didn’t hear the shop door open and someone come in, and emerged to find a young woman standing there. She was expensively dressed, about thirty, dark-haired, dark-eyed, pretty in a lush way, and about six months pregnant. She had the smile of someone who was deeply content with her life.

  ‘You are la Signorina d’Estino?’ She had a strong Italian accent and spoke carefully, like someone feeling her way in the language.

  ‘Yes, I’m Harriet d’Estino. Can I show you something?’

  ‘Oh, no, I do not come to buy, but to talk. About Marco.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘My name is Alessandra,’ the young woman said simply. ‘And I come to tell you how important it is that you marry him.’