Secret Heirs Collection. Коллектив авторов
when?’
She kept her voice airy. ‘Oh, nothing to interest you.’
‘I’m interested,’ he persisted.
She wondered if the shaky way she put the mug down gave away her sudden nerves. ‘You’ve never been interested before.’
‘True,’ he agreed drily. ‘But you’re carrying my baby now and maybe I need to understand the mother of my child.’
And Darcy knew she couldn’t keep avoiding the issue—just as she knew that to do so would probably intrigue him. Even worse—it might make him start to do his own investigative work and then what might he discover? Her heart sank. She knew exactly what he would discover. He would discover the reason for the deep dark shame which still festered inside her. She stared at the cooling chocolate, wishing she could turn back time and that this time he wouldn’t ask. But you couldn’t turn back time. Just as you couldn’t hide everything from a man who was determined to find out.
‘It sounds so stupid—’
‘Darcy,’ he said, and his voice sounded almost gentle.
She shrugged. ‘The chocolate reminded me of going out to a café when I was a little girl. Going to meet some prospective new foster parents.’
The image came back to her, unbearably sharp and achingly clear. She remembered strawberry-covered cakes gleaming behind glass frontage and the waitresses with their starched aprons. It had been one of those awkward but hopeful meetings, with Darcy’s social worker the referee—observing the interaction between a little girl who badly needed a home and two adults who wanted to give her one. They’d bought her hot chocolate in a glass mug, topped with a hillock of whipped cream and a shiny cherry on top. She’d stared at it for a long time before she could bear to disturb its perfection and when she’d drunk from it at last, the cream had coated her upper lip with a white moustache and made everyone laugh. The laughter was what she remembered most.
‘Foster parents?’ prompted Renzo, his deep voice dissolving the image.
‘I didn’t have the most…stable of childhoods. My mother was seventeen when she was orphaned. The roads were icy and her father took the bend too fast. They said he’d been…drinking. The police knocked at her door on Christmas Eve and said she’d better sit down. She once told me that after they’d gone she looked at the Christmas tree and all the presents underneath it. Presents which would never be opened…’ Her voice trailed off. It had been a rare moment of insight and clarity from a woman whose life had been lived in pursuit of a constant chemical high. ‘And it… Well, it freaked her out.’
‘I’m not surprised. Did she have any relatives?’
Darcy shook her head. ‘No. Well, there were some on the west coast of Ireland but it was too late for her to get there in time for the holiday. And she couldn’t face intruding on someone else’s Christmas. Being the spectre at the feast. Being pitied. So she spent the holiday on her own and soon after she went to Manchester with the money she’d inherited from her parents but no real idea about a career. In fact, she had nothing to commend her but her looks and her new-found ability to party.’
‘Did she look like you?’ he questioned suddenly.
‘Yes. At least, at the beginning she did.’ Darcy closed her eyes. She’d seen pictures of a feisty-looking redhead with green eyes so like her own. Seen her tentative smile as that young woman cradled the infant Darcy in her arms. She didn’t want to tell Renzo what had happened to those looks—not when she couldn’t bear to think about it herself. ‘Before the drugs took hold. I was first taken into care at the age of two and I stayed there until I was eight, when my mother went to the courts to try to “win” me back, as she put it.’
‘And did she succeed?’
‘She did. She could put on a good performance when the need arose.’
‘And what was that like—being back with her?’
Darcy swallowed. How much could she tell him? How much before a look of disgust crossed his face and he started to worry whether she might have inherited some of her poor mother’s addictive traits—or the other, even more unpalatable ones? ‘I’ll leave that to your imagination,’ she said, her voice faltering a little. ‘She used me to interact with her dealer, or to answer the door when people she owed money to came knocking. There’s nothing quite like a child in an adult’s world for throwing things off balance.’
‘And were you safe?’ he demanded.
‘I was lucky,’ she said simply. ‘Lucky that some kind social worker went over and above the call of duty and got me out of there. After that I went to the children’s home—and, to be honest, I felt glad to be there.’
Not safe. Never really safe. But safer.
‘And what did you do when you left there?’
‘I came to London. Went to night school and caught up with some of the education I’d missed. It’s why I ended up waitressing—nobody really cares if you’ve got a GCSE in Maths if you can carry a tray of drinks without spilling any.’
There was no sound in the room, other than the ticking of some beautiful freestanding clock which Darcy suspected might have been in place when Napoleon himself was living there.
‘So…’ His voice was thoughtful now; his black eyes hooded. ‘Seeing as so much of your childhood was spent with people making decisions for you, where would you like to live when our baby is born, Darcy?’
Not only was it not the reaction she’d been expecting, it was also the most considerate question anyone had ever asked her and Darcy was terrified she was going to start blubbing—an over-the-top response from someone who’d experienced little real kindness in her life. But she needed to keep it together. She’d been given enough false hope in life to build Renzo’s offer up into something it wasn’t.
‘I would prefer to be in England,’ she said slowly. ‘Italy is very beautiful and I love it here but I feel like a foreigner.’ She forced a laugh. ‘Probably because I am.’
‘My apartment in Belgravia, then?’
She shook her head. ‘No. That won’t do. I don’t really want to go back there.’
He looked faintly surprised, as she supposed anyone might be if their new wife had just rejected a luxury apartment worth millions of pounds. ‘Because?’
Should she tell him that she felt as if she’d lived another life there? She’d behaved like someone she no longer recognised—with her balcony bras and her tiny panties. She’d been nothing but his plaything, his always-up-for-it lover who was supposed to have been expendable before all this happened. How could she possibly reconcile that Darcy with the woman she was now and the mother she was preparing to be? How could she bear to keep reminding herself that he’d never planned for her to become a permanent fixture in his life? ‘It’s not a place for a baby.’
He raised his dark eyebrows. ‘You’re not suggesting we decamp to that tiny cottage you were renting in Norfolk?’
‘Of course not,’ she said stiffly. ‘I think we both know that wouldn’t work. But I would like to bring up the baby away from the city.’ She licked her lips and her tongue came away with the salty flavour of capers. ‘Somewhere with grass and flowers and a park nearby. Somewhere you can work from, so it doesn’t necessarily have to be a long way out of London, just so long as it’s green.’
He nodded and gave a small smile. ‘I think we can manage that.’
‘Thank you.’
Hearing her voice tremble, Renzo frowned. ‘And you need to get to bed. Now. You look washed out.’
‘Yes.’ Awkwardly, she rose to her feet and walked across the room, feeling the soft silk of a Persian rug beneath her bare feet. But despite her initial reservations at having told him more than she’d ever told anyone, Darcy was