Uncovering the Silveri Secret (8 page)

He certainly would
never
admit to needing
her
.

He wanted her, but that was different. He didn’t need her in an emotional sense. He didn’t need anyone. He was like a wolf that had separated himself from the pack. No one would ever see what he felt on the inside. ‘No, not to Edoardo,’ she said. ‘To Julian Bellamy.’

‘Have I met him?’

‘No, we’ve only been dating for three months.’

‘Is he rich?’

‘That has nothing to do with anything,’ Bella said. ‘I love him.’

‘When did you
not
love a boyfriend?’ Claudia asked. ‘You fall in and out of love all the time. You’ve been doing it since you were thirteen. What if he’s only after your money?’

Bella rolled her eyes. ‘You sound just like Edoardo.’

‘Yes, well, he might not be from the right side of the tracks but he’s certainly street smart,’ Claudia said. ‘Your father wouldn’t have a bad word said about him. I think he secretly hoped you would make a match of it with him.’

‘What?’ Bella asked, her stomach doing a little free fall. ‘With Edoardo?’

‘Why else would he have written his will the way he did?’ Claudia asked. ‘I bet he put Edoardo in control so you would have to see him regularly. He was hoping you’d fall in love with each other over time.’

‘I am
not
going to fall in love with Edoardo,’ Bella said.

‘You’d be the icing on the cake for a man like him,’ Claudia continued. ‘It would make his rags-to-riches tale complete, wouldn’t it? The well-born trophy bride to produce some blue-blooded heirs to dilute the bad blood flowing in his veins.’

Bella felt a strange tingle deep in the pit of her belly when she thought of her body swelling with Edoardo’s child. She put a shaky hand over her abdomen, trying to quell the sensation. ‘Mum, I have to go,’ she said. ‘I’ll send you some money as soon as I can. I’m...in the middle of something right now.’

‘I suppose you’ll have to ask Edoardo for permission,’ Claudia said sourly. ‘Don’t let him come between us, Bella. I’m your mother. Don’t ever forget that.’

‘I won’t,’ Bella said, thinking of the day, all those years ago, when her mother had left with her lover without even bothering to wave goodbye.

* * *

Edoardo found Bella almost buried in a ditch fifty metres from the front gate to the manor. She wound down the window as he stepped off the tractor. ‘If you’re going to say I told you so, then please don’t waste your breath,’ she said.

‘You don’t do things by halves, do you?’ he asked.

‘Can you get me out?’

‘Sure,’ he said. ‘Stay in the car and keep the wheels straight while I tow you out.’

She sat and glowered at him from behind the steering wheel as he hitched the towrope to the bumper bar. He towed the car out, and once it was out of the ditch, he got her to join him on the tractor for the journey back to the house. ‘Are you warm enough?’ he asked as he made room for her beside him on the seat. ‘You can have my jacket.’

‘I’m f-fine,’ she said through chattering teeth.

He shrugged himself out of his jacket and wrapped it around her slim shoulders. ‘You don’t have to fight me just for the heck of it, Bella,’ he said.

She bit her lip and looked away. ‘It’s a habit, I guess.’

‘Habits can be broken.’

Edoardo drove the tractor with the car towed behind all the way back to the manor. The snow kept falling but even more heavily now. It cloaked everything as far as the eye could see in a thick white blanket.

The air was tight with cold.

Every breath he or Bella exhaled came out in a foggy mist in front of their faces. He glanced at her and saw her huddled inside his coat, her hands gripping the edges together across her chest. She looked small, defenceless and vulnerable. ‘Hey,’ he said gently, bumping her shoulder with his.

She blinked and looked at him. ‘Sorry, did you say something?’

‘Penny for them.’

‘Pardon?’

‘Your thoughts,’ he said.

‘Oh...’

‘What’s wrong?’ he asked.

‘Nothing.’ She looked away again and huddled further into his jacket.

Edoardo brought the tractor to a stop and helped her down. She hesitated before she placed her hand in his. ‘You’re freezing,’ he said, keeping her hand within the shelter of his.

‘I forgot to bring my gloves,’ she said.

He released her hand. ‘Go inside,’ he said. ‘I’ll sort your car out. Go get warm. I’ll be in in a minute.’

‘Edoardo?’

He straightened from where he was untying the towrope from the bumper bar and looked at her. ‘Yes?’

She chewed at her lower lip for a moment. ‘I need some extra money,’ she said. ‘Would you be able to transfer five thousand into my account?’

He frowned. ‘You don’t have a gambling problem, do you?’

Her eyes widened in affront. ‘Of course not!’

‘What do you want it for?’

Her expression became haughty. ‘I don’t see why I have to tell you what I spend
my
money on,’ she said.

‘You do while I’m still in control of it,’ he said.

‘My mother thinks you’re skimming off the profits to fund your own nest egg,’ she said with a hard little look.

‘And what do you think, Bella?’ he asked. ‘Do you think I’d stoop so low as to betray the trust your father placed in me?’

She turned to go to the house. ‘I need the money as soon as possible.’

‘For your mother, I presume?’

Her back stiffened, and after a tiny pause she turned back around to face him. ‘If it was your mother, what would you do?’ she asked.

‘You’re not helping her by propping her up all the time,’ he said. ‘She’s become dependent on you. You’ll have to wean her off or she’ll eventually drain you dry. It’s one of the reasons your father orchestrated things the way he did. He knew you would be too soft and generous. At least I can say no when it needs to be said.’

‘Did she ask you for money when she came the other day?’

‘Amongst other things.’

Her brows moved together. ‘What other things?’

‘I’m not going to badmouth your mother to you,’ he said. ‘Suffice to say I’m not her favourite person in the world.’

She nibbled at her lower lip. ‘I’m sorry if she offended you.’

‘I’ve got a thick skin,’ he said. ‘Now, go inside before yours is frozen solid.’

She met his gaze again. ‘I didn’t mean what I said earlier, you know. I think you’re one of the most decent men I’ve ever met.’

‘The cold has got to you, hasn’t it?’ Edoardo said with a teasing half-smile.

Her gaze fell away from his and he rolled up the towrope as he watched her walk towards the manor, her slim figure still encased in his jacket. It was so big on her it almost came to her knees. She looked like a child who had been playing in the dress-up box. He felt a funny tug inside his chest, as if a tiny stitch was being pulled against his heart.

Once the door had closed behind her, he let out a breath he hadn’t realised he had been holding. ‘Don’t even go there,’ he muttered under his breath and strode towards the barn.

CHAPTER EIGHT

E
DOARDO
came into the kitchen an hour later to find Bella poring over a cookbook that belonged to Mrs Baker. She had an apron on over her clothes and there was a swipe of flour across her left cheek. She looked up as he came in. ‘I hope you don’t mind, but I’m cooking dinner,’ she said. ‘I thought I should start to pull my weight around here since I can’t leave right now.’

He hitched up one brow. ‘Can you cook?’

She gave him a quelling look. ‘I’ve been taking lessons from one of my flatmates,’ she said. ‘She’s a sous chef in a restaurant in Soho.’

‘The one your ex-boyfriend owned?’

She gave a little sigh as she looked at the ingredients in front of her. ‘I only went out with him a couple of times,’ she said. ‘The press made it out to be much more than it was. They always do that.’

‘I guess everyone wants to know what Britain’s most eligible girl is up to,’ he said.

‘I sometimes wish I didn’t come from such a wealthy background,’ she said with a little frown.

Edoardo leaned against the counter. ‘You don’t mean that, surely?’ he said. ‘You lap it up. You always have. You wouldn’t know what to do with yourself if you didn’t have loads of money.’

‘My friends’ mothers give
them
money or buy them stuff or take them shopping,’ she said, still frowning. ‘I’m tired of feeling responsible for my mother’s bills.’

‘You gave her the money?’

‘Yes, and she hasn’t even sent a text or called me to thank me.’ She let out a dispirited sigh. ‘She’s probably spent it all by now.’

‘I’ve been thinking about what I said earlier,’ he said. ‘It’s really none of my business who you give your money to. She’s your mother. I guess you can’t turn your back on her.’

After a little silence she looked up at him with those big brown eyes of hers. ‘I wish I could be sure people liked me for
me
. How can I know if they like me because of who I am as a person? I don’t even know if my mother loves me or simply sees me as a meal ticket.’

He reached forwards to brush the flour off her cheek with the end of his index finger. ‘Sorting out the friends from the hangers-on is always a challenge, even for a person without wealth. You just have to trust your gut feeling, I suppose.’

Her shoulders went down as she sighed again. ‘I think what you said before was right: I want to be loved so much that it clouds my judgement.’

‘It’s not wrong to want to be loved,’ he said. ‘We wouldn’t be human if we didn’t.’

She looked up at him again, her eyes soft and luminous. ‘Do you want to be loved?’

Edoardo gave an off-hand shrug. Loving was something he didn’t do any more. He suspected he had forgotten how. He certainly wasn’t booking in any time soon for a refresher course either. ‘I can take it or leave it.’

A little frown creased her forehead. ‘You can’t really mean that,’ she said. ‘You just don’t want to be let down again or abandoned.’

He curled his lip, threatened by how close to the truth she was. He refused to let anyone close to him. Godfrey had been an exception, but it had taken years, and even then he hadn’t told him everything about his past. ‘Got me all figured out, have you, Bella?’

‘I think you push people away because you’re frightened of becoming too attached,’ she said. ‘You like to be in total control of your life. If you had feelings for someone else, they could take advantage of you. They could leave you just like your parents did.’

Edoardo felt a ridge of steel ripple through his jaw until his teeth were locked so tightly together he wondered if he’d be left with nothing but powder.

He thought of the first home he had been sent to after the authorities had stepped in when he’d been ten years old. He had already had five years of his stepfather’s capricious and cruel treatment. Five years of living in dread, quaking with fear night and day in case things turned nasty.

The hands that had fed and clothed him, and at times even been kind to him, could turn within a blink of an eye into vicious weapons. It didn’t matter how well-
behaved he was. Sometimes the anticipation of the brutality was so torturous he would deliberately play up just to get it over with. But even then he could never prepare himself. He’d had no way of knowing when his stepfather would strike. His body had run solely on adrenalin. The ‘flight or fight’ mode had been jammed on.

He hadn’t stood a hope of settling in anywhere.

Looking back now, he could see the foster parents he had been sent to had done their best. Some had been better than others; they had tried to offer him shelter and support but he had sabotaged their every attempt to get close to him. Then Godfrey Haverton had taken him in and, in his quiet and unobtrusive way, shown him that it was up to him to make something of his life. Under Godfrey’s steady but sure tutelage, he had learned how to become a man, a man with self-control and self-respect—a man who was the agent of his own destiny, not at the mercy of others.

But he wasn’t going to parade his past to Bella, of all people. He had locked it away and it was staying there.

‘You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,’ he said.

‘I think I do,’ she said in a quiet and assured voice that was far more threatening than if she had shouted the words at him. ‘I think you want what everyone else wants. But deep down you feel you don’t deserve it.’

He gave her a mocking look. ‘Did you read that in a self-help book, or is it something you just made up on the spot?’

She drew in a breath and slowly released it. ‘I didn’t read it anywhere,’ she said. ‘I just sense it—the same way my father sensed it. I think he understood you from the word go. He didn’t push you or force affection on you. He waited for you to come to him when you trusted him enough to do so.’

Edoardo gave a disparaging laugh but the sound grated even on his own ears. ‘You’re making me sound like an ill-treated dog,’ he said.

Her eyes meshed with his, soft and yet all-seeing—
knowing.

The silence stretched and stretched.

He felt every beat of it like a hammer blow inside his head.

‘What happened to you, Edoardo?’ she asked.

The memories tapped him on the shoulder with their long, craggy fingers:
Come here,
they taunted.
Remember the time he hit you with the belt until you were bleeding?
Remember the icy-cold showers? Remember the gnawing hunger? Remember the raging thirst?

He pushed them away but one more crept up behind him and caught him off-guard.

Remember the cigarettes?

‘Stop it, Bella,’ he said tightly. ‘I have no interest in dredging up stuff I’ve forgotten long ago.’

‘You haven’t forgotten it, though, have you?’ she asked.

He clenched and unclenched his fists, his stomach feeling as though a crosscut saw was working its way through it. He felt the pain in his back. It had happened so long ago but he could still remember the searing pain and the helplessness. Oh, dear Lord, how he had hated the helplessness. Sweat broke out on his upper lip. He could feel it beading between his shoulder blades as well. His head throbbed with the memories, all of them jostling for their starring moment centre-stage.

‘Edoardo?’ Bella’s hand touched him on the arm. ‘Are you all right?’

Edoardo looked down at her. She was standing so close he could smell her shampoo as well as her perfume. Her eyes were full of concern, her soft mouth slightly open. He could hear her breath going in and out in soft little gusts.

His mobile phone pinged with the sound of an in-coming text, and the memories scuttled back to the shadows like sly, secretive rats running from the light of an opened door.

He let out a slowly measured breath. ‘I know you mean well, Bella, but there are some things that are just best forgotten,’ he said. ‘My childhood is one of them.’

She stepped back from him, her hand falling back by her side. ‘If ever you want to talk about it...’

‘Thanks, but no,’ he said and, briefly checking his phone, added, ‘Look, I won’t be in for dinner after all.’

Her expression clouded. ‘You’re going out in this weather?’

‘Rebecca Gladstone needs a hand with something,’ he said. ‘I’m not sure how long I’ll be.’

She screwed up her mouth, her eyes losing their softness to become glittery and diamond-hard. ‘What does she need a hand with?’ she asked. ‘Turning back the sheets on her bed?’

‘Green doesn’t suit you, Bella.’

Her brows jammed together. ‘I’m not jealous,’ she said. ‘I just think it’s disgusting to lead someone on when you have no intention of taking their feelings seriously.’

‘You’re a fine one to talk,’ he said.

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘While your intended fiancé is out of sight, you’ve been up to all sorts of mischief, haven’t you?’

She coloured up and glowered at him at the same time. ‘At least I’m not messing with your feelings,’ she said. ‘You don’t have any, or at least certainly not for me.’

‘Does that annoy you, Bella?’ he asked. ‘That I haven’t prostrated myself before you like all your other suitors, declaring my undying love for you at every available opportunity?’

She gave him a flinty look. ‘I wouldn’t believe you if you did.’

Edoardo gave a little rumble of laughter. ‘No, you wouldn’t, would you? You know me too well for that. I might want you like the very devil, but I don’t love you. That stings a bit, doesn’t it?’

‘It doesn’t bother me one little bit,’ she said with a pert hitch of her chin. ‘I have no feelings for you either.’

‘Other than lust.’

Her cheeks pooled with colour. ‘At least that is something I can control,’ she said.

‘Can you?’ he asked, taking her chin between his finger and thumb, holding her gaze steady. ‘Can you really?’

Her throat rose and fell, and her eyes flickered.

‘Why don’t you try me and see?’

He was sorely tempted. He felt the urge rising in him like a flash flood. Blood pumped and poured. His need for her was a hungry beast inside him, rampaging through his body until he was almost shaking with it.

But instead he dropped his hand from her face and stepped away. ‘Maybe some other time,’ he said.

For a nanosecond he thought her expression showed disappointment, but she quickly masked it. ‘There’s not going to be another time,’ she said. ‘As soon as this snow melts, I’m out of here.’

‘What if it doesn’t melt for another week?’ he asked as he shouldered open the door.

She set her mouth grimly. ‘Then I’ll go out there with a hair dryer and melt it myself.’

* * *

Bella slept fitfully until about two in the morning. She got up and looked out of the window. The snow was still falling but not as heavily now. It looked like a winter fairyland outside. It was a scene she was going to miss dreadfully when she left Haverton Manor for the final time. She tried to imagine how it would be once the guardianship period was over. There would be no reason to see Edoardo again. No more twice-yearly meetings. No more monthly phone calls, texts or emails. He would go his way and she would go hers.

They would never have to see or speak to each other ever again.

She turned from the window with a frown. She had to stop thinking about him. She had to stop wondering why he was the enigma he was. What had put that hard cynicism in his eyes? What had made him so self-
sufficient that nothing or no one touched his heart?

She couldn’t stop thinking of him as a little five-year-old orphan. Who had looked after him? Comforted him? Who had nurtured him? Who had loved him? Had anyone?

For all these years she had thought of him as a rebel who didn’t fit in anywhere, who didn’t
want
to fit in anywhere. But what if his childhood had made him that way? What would it take to unlock the guard he had on his heart?

Would he ever come to a point in his life where possessions and financial security were no longer enough? Would he crave the connection he had been pushing away for most of his life?

Bella went downstairs in search of a hot drink and was waiting for the milk to heat in the microwave when Edoardo came in. He was still dressed in the clothes he’d had on earlier and there were snowflakes in his hair.

‘Waiting up for me, Bella?’ he asked as he shrugged off his coat.

She gave him a scornful look. ‘You must be joking.’

‘Rebecca sends her regards,’ he said and dusted the snow out of his hair with one hand.

Bella glared at him. ‘You talked about me while you were...in
bed
together?’

‘We weren’t anywhere near a bed.’

‘Please spare me the lurid details,’ she said with a roll of her eyes.

‘I was helping her with a horse that had injured itself on a neighbouring property,’ he said. ‘Do you remember the Atkinsons’ place? The new owner has thoroughbreds. One of the brood mares cut her foreleg on some wire. Rebecca needed an extra pair of hands.’

‘Oh...’ She chewed at her lip for a moment.

‘Rob Handley is the new owner,’ he said. ‘He’s a bit shy but he’s fine once you get to know him.’

Bella frowned at him. ‘Why are you telling me this?’

He gave a shrug. ‘Just thought you might like to let Rebecca know some time if you’re talking to her. Rob got off to a bad start with her. She thinks he’s arrogant. It’s a shame, because he really likes her. They’d make a great couple.’

Bella cocked her head at him. ‘Don’t tell me you’re a romantic at heart?’

‘Not at all,’ he said. ‘A blind man could see those two belong together. They just need a little nudge in the right direction. You want to make me one of those?’ He indicated the hot chocolate she had on the counter.

Bella made the drink and handed it to him. Her fingers touched his and a shockwave of heat ran up her arm. She quickly put her hand back down by her side. ‘While we’re on the subject of perfect couples, I’d like to firm up some plans for my wedding,’ she said.

His eyes collided with hers. ‘No.’

Her brows snapped together. ‘Will you at least listen to me?’

‘You’re making a big mistake, Bella,’ he said. ‘Can’t you see how foolish this is? Look at what’s been going on between us. How can you think you’ll be happy settling down with a man who you can go for weeks or months without making love to you?’