A Dance for Him (37 page)

“Ah, so this isn’t your first time in Italy,” he says, looking pleased.

“Oh no, not at all, I always visited my grandparents for the holidays.”

“Oh, they lived in Italy, did they? Where did they live, if I may ask?”

“Milan. Oddly enough, their old apartment’s really close to the conservatory, but of course they don’t live there any more, all that was when grandpa was in the Foreign Service.”

For some reason, a total shift of mood comes over him, and the fact that he’s spent most of the last twenty minutes looking so flushed only makes his current pallor all the more obvious. His foot remains next to mine, but it’s stopped moving in response to mine, and he’s looking at me with the strangest expression ever, with what appears to be a combination of dismay and unbelief.

“Milan … the Foreign Service …” he mutters. “Tell me, what was your grandparents’ last name?”

“S-Smythson,” I stammer, not understanding his sudden agitation.

His foot abruptly pulls away from mine.

“Smythson? With a Y?”

I nod dumbly.

“They had a daughter named Victoria, didn’t they?”

I don’t even know why I’m thinking this, but I have a terrible, sinking feeling that, for some reason, he’s not going to like my answer.

“She’s my mother,” I reply.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Fuck
.

How could this even be? She doesn’t even look like Victoria, who was the blonde bombshell type, like a young Anita Ekberg - the complete opposite of the charming gamine sylph who’s just been running her pretty foot up and down my trouser leg for the last five minutes or so.

They’re so different as well, the mother blithe and outgoing, the daughter quiet and conscientious - well, at least she
must
be, I assume.

One doesn’t get to play that well without working at it, whereas I’m sure Victoria’s never worked at anything for even a day in her life.

I reckon that must be the dad’s side of the family she takes after. Probably not something I want to think about too much. She’s nineteen, which makes sense, clearly she’s the result of Victoria’s liaison with the older man, the one who knocked her up.

Obviously I never met him, or even cared to find out his name, though I suppose I know now at least that his last name’s Courtenay!

Some rich guy, a businessman, that was all I heard. I assumed he was sophisticated, well-heeled, smooth - everything I wasn’t, at least at the time.

Isn’t that ironic, if I were to fuck Evie I’d now be the
rich older man
in the scenario …

Can I even fuck her now, knowing what I know?

And yet I still want her. My cock’s still aching for her, and what’s worse, my heart is too …

She’s looking at me, slightly frightened. Poor girl, I can see why - I’m furious, though I don’t even know with whom. With Victoria, for betraying me all those years ago? With Evie, for stealing my heart, even if only innocently? With myself, for being such a wretched fool and falling for yet another Smythson?

“Did you know them?” she asks, her voice soft, tentative.

I look at her, wondering how much I should tell her, wondering how much I actually want to tell her. “Yes, vaguely,” I end up saying abruptly, hoping that will be the end of the discussion.

She looks both alarmed and curious. To forestall any further questions I pull my phone out of my pocket and pretend that I’ve just gotten an urgent text and need to make a call. “It might take a while,” I say grimly, “please just go ahead and eat, I’ll be back once I’m done.”

CHAPTER TWELVE

What was that about, I wonder. I can’t help but feel that I’ve said something I shouldn’t have. He was so happy before, and then suddenly he got so upset when he realised that I was related to the Smythsons.

I wonder what his connection with them is. Whatever it is, it’s probably the reason gramps always flinched slightly when his name was mentioned.

But what could that connection possibly be? He would have been just a student at the conservatory at the time, how would he have known them?

And he mentioned mom specifically by name. He didn’t mention gramps, didn’t mention grandma. The allusion to the Foreign Service tipped him off, but it was mom he mentioned, not them.

How utterly aghast he looked when I told him I was her daughter! …

He must have known her somehow. Perhaps he was in love with her?

That would be so typical. She was so beautiful, so glamorous. And so utterly unconcerned with consequences. She wouldn’t have run off with Fred Newton otherwise and left poor old dad to fall apart. There wasn’t a touch of malice in her, but she was completely oblivious to her effect on people.

She was a creature of pure caprice - that was probably why the men were all mad for her. If Fred and she had survived the accident, she’d probably have run off with someone else eventually.

Oh, why does she always have to ruin everything for me? … First dad, now this thing with Maestro Moretti. Were they lovers? I feel sick with jealousy at the thought.

And yet, if they had been - how could anyone have dumped Lorenzo Moretti for
dad
?

I mean, yes, dad was a very handsome man, especially before the drinking got to him. Tall, distinguished, always impeccably dressed, a touch of silver in his hair. The sort of guy whom people used to refer to as a matinée idol type.

I’m sure it would have been easy for him to find a replacement for mom in short order, but I guess he must have been terribly in love with her. In any case, he was a perfect gentleman, always
comme il faut
, always kind and courtly.

But he wasn’t Lorenzo Moretti …

Of course, I can’t imagine that she’d have understood
him
either. She lived for pleasure, for the parties and dinners she went to or hosted every night. The perfect society lady, the sort of woman gramps would have liked me to be. Well, maybe apart from her inability to resist scandal.

No, I can’t see them being lovers. She didn’t even particularly like music.

On the other hand, why else would it have upset him so much to hear that she was my mom? …

I pick away at my food, my appetite gone, not sure what to do about the Maestro, not sure what
he’ll
do. He said he would come back, but who knows?

They always disappear on me …

He’s been gone about ten minutes now, and it feels like forever. The waiter asks if he should deliver the second course; mortified, I say to wait until the gentleman returns, not knowing if he will indeed return, and sit there sipping my orange juice.

Thank heavens for my cellphone, at least I can look preoccupied rather than pathetic …

Eventually he does return, his expression still grim. He takes one look at his still half-filled plate. “You haven’t had the second course?”

“I thought I’d wait for you.”

“I said not to wait,” he says sharply, though his expression softens and he sighs when he sees that I’m on the verge of tears. “All right then, let’s just get the second course done with,” he says resignedly, and signals the waiter.

So now all he wants to do is to get this “done with”
, I think, crestfallen.

The second course arrives, and we eat in silence - I barely dare to look at him. At this point I’m not even thinking about how disastrous this was as a date - I’d be relieved just to not be in disgrace with him. When we’re done, he asks me if I want dessert, and I decline - it’s obvious he’s not in a good mood, and I don’t need to annoy him by dragging this out further.

He calls for the bill, and we leave, again in silence.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

This is horrible. It’s obvious I’m hurting the poor girl, and yet what can I do, sit her down and tell her everything?

I feel like I should, that I should give her up altogether. And yet I can’t bring myself to, precisely because it would make her even more off-limits to me than she is already.

And I don’t want that. It’s ridiculous, preposterous, especially since I already see her now as being off-limits, but for some reason the idea that
she
might see me as off-limits is incredibly painful.

Perhaps because the latter would mean that I’d lose her forever for certain, as opposed to just
knowing
that I’d have to lose her forever.

It makes absolutely no sense at all, of course, not that I expect it to. I don’t even know why this upsets me so viscerally - did I actually allow myself to fall in love with her to that extent, in so short a time?

I mean, perhaps it is the pain of losing Victoria from all those years ago coming back to haunt me. And yet that can’t possibly be - I haven’t thought of Victoria in a really long time, and if I had to choose between the Victoria of twenty years ago and Evie now, I know which of them I would pick without hesitation.

Or am I also motivated by a sort of perverse desire for revenge?

As I walked outside in the market square earlier in an attempt to distract myself from this terrible revelation of Evie’s parentage, it did occur to me with a sort of bitter irony that, if I married Evie, I’d be making a Courtenay into a Moretti, reversing what her father did with Victoria back then - even if, yes, Victoria wasn’t a Moretti for all that long a time, ha!

No, it’s not right, it wouldn’t be fair to her. She’s so innocent, so untouched. Maybe if she was a party girl type, maybe it wouldn’t be as big a deal - as much for her as for me.

But she isn’t … at least not for now.

Oh God, when she goes off to conservatory the other guys there will just eat her up. It’d be just like it was with her mother … I’m not going to get to have her, because of my stupid scruples, and then I bet she’s going to run right off with someone else.

An awful thought - the idea of other men getting their hands on her makes me nothing if not livid, and yet I know I have absolutely no right to feel that way, especially since I’m going to have to give her up anyway. Fuck, I should have made a move this morning, so that the boundary would already have been crossed, and then maybe this wouldn’t have to be the dealbreaker it is now.