‘Eden’s exhausted by all the excitement and I’m sure you’ll excuse her,’ Damiano intervened to answer for his wife. ‘Why don’t you take her upstairs, Tina?’
Eden left the room in Tina’s company, grudgingly amused by what Damiano no doubt saw as a smooth move. Knowing that she had once been close to Tina, he probably thought he was doing her a favour in giving them the privacy to talk.
‘Well…you being here with Damiano is quite a surprise, isn’t it?’ Tina remarked.
That almost childlike little voice sent an absolute shiver down Eden’s spine. But then Nuncio’s wife had perfected her non-threatening camouflage long before Eden had entered the family. Nuncio had been a student when he’d met Tina, who was seven years older. Tina had fallen pregnant at supersonic speed and had persuaded Nuncio into a quick marriage behind his big brother’s back.
Ignoring the other woman’s leading comment, Eden said proposally, ‘How is my niece, Allegra, doing?’
Tina frowned at that reference to her six-year-old daughter and could not hide her irritation. ‘Fine. She’s in a boarding-school now.’
It was little comfort that she could now see so clearly through the other woman, Eden conceded. Over five years back, as an insecure new bride, Eden had been eager to believe that she had found a close friend in Tina and shocked to realise too late that she had fallen for the act of a woman who would do whatever it took to protect herself, regardless of how low she had to sink.
Reaching the imposing landing, Eden turned towards the bedroom that had always been hers.
‘I’m sorry but Annabel and little Peter use those rooms when they’re staying now.’ Tina’s apologetic intervention was saccharine-sweet. ‘I’m afraid I just haven’t had time to rearrange things yet.’
Staggered by that explanation, Eden suppressed a surge of pure raging disbelief. Annabel Stavely and her son had been allowed to take over the principal bedrooms in the house when they came visiting? What kind of a nonsensical arrangement was that?
Tina showed Eden into a guest room some distance down a corridor.
‘You haven’t forgiven me yet, have you?’ Tina sighed.
Eden tensed. ‘I don’t think we should talk about the past—’
‘But you can’t ignore what’s going on right now. Nuncio is just dying to tell Damiano about Mark and he won’t keep quiet on your behalf for ever!’
‘On my behalf?’ Eden queried gently. ‘You’re the one who had the affair, Tina.’
‘No comment.’ Open ridicule gleamed in Tina’s bright blue eyes.
‘Five years ago, the tabloid press assumed that the woman in that photograph with Mark was me. I covered for you,’ Eden reminded the other woman, provoked by her mockery. ‘I didn’t want to do it! But you persuaded me that it would be horribly selfish to tell the truth and cause trouble between you and Nuncio—’
‘Well, so it would have been! After all, I was a mother as well as a wife. I had Allegra to consider and I didn’t think that Damiano would ever be coming back!’ Tina cut in defensively. ‘Naturally I was grateful for what you did for me—’
‘So grateful that as soon as you felt safe from exposure you joined Nuncio and Cosetta in calling me a slut and attacking me at every turn!’ Eden interrupted with pained recollection of what she had had to endure. ‘I was forced out of this house and you were just as keen as the others to see me gone!’
‘Can’t you understand that I was afraid that Nuncio might start suspecting me if I didn’t play along?’
‘All I understand is that while I was grieving for my husband, I took a heavy punishment for something I didn’t do,’ Eden framed ruefully. ‘And you have to accept that if talk of that affair should surface again, I’ll be telling Damiano the truth—’
‘And I’ll say you’re lying! Who’s going to believe your version this long after the event? Don’t forget how much you were seen to lean on Mark after Damiano went missing.’ Tina stressed with scorn. ‘That’s all anybody will remember.’
Eden paled. She saw what a fool she had been to allow herself to be bullied into protecting the other woman almost five years earlier. Tina had talked of her shame, her regret and of how much she had still loved Nuncio. Eden had been made to feel so guilty about her desire to defend her own reputation. Tina had been her friend. And all Eden had had to do was allow the assumption that she was the woman in that photograph to stand unchallenged. Unfortunately the consequences of shielding Tina had been far greater than Eden had foolishly foreseen.
‘I honestly don’t believe that Damiano would go tattling to Nuncio…oh, for goodness’ sake, Tina,’ Eden muttered in weary and distressed appeal. ‘I told you that if Damiano ever came home to me, he would have to be told the real story and you agreed—’
‘Of course I did.’ Tina gave her a catlike smile of acknowledgement on that point. ‘I married a useless lump of lard but he’s a very rich lump and there is nothing that I wouldn’t do to fight my own corner!’
Eden studied the older woman with shaken recoil from that description of Nuncio.
Tina dealt her an even more disconcerting look of malicious amusement. ‘Nobody will ever believe that I was the unfaithful wife, so you’re in no position to threaten me—’
‘I’m not threatening you—’
‘You’ve got one huge shock coming your way in any case,’ Tina murmured with venomous softness. ‘But being sworn to secrecy by all parties concerned, I dare not let that particular cat out of the bag. Wait and see whether or not your marriage has a future before you waste your time trying to wreck mine!’
As the door closed on the blonde’s triumphant exit, Eden was genuinely bewildered. ‘One huge shock’? What on earth wa
s Tina trying to suggest? Tired as she was, Eden took a quick shower in the en suite to freshen up. She only wished she could as easily wash away the memory of Tina’s spite. Pure and pointless, spite, that’s all it was, she told herself. At least Mark had no personal axe to grind over his affair with Tina, she reflected with relief. Damiano might not particularly like Mark but, if she needed Mark to clear her own name, he would surely accept the younger man’s word.
Her suitcase still sat just inside the bedroom door. In spite of the fact that no Braganzi expected or indeed usually received anything less than twenty-four-hour domestic service, nobody had come to unpack for her. Eden smiled at the fact that she was feeling slighted and tugged out a nightdress. Clambering into the big comfortable bed, she wondered how long it would take Damiano to come upstairs and join her.
Eden had actually drifted off to sleep when a loud noise interspersed with raw male invective woke her up with a start. She sat up and switched on the light. Damiano, lean strong face grim with anger, had evidently tripped over her case in the dark.
‘Are there no maids in this house? And why have you chosen to sleep so far away from me that I have to go on a major search to find you in my own home?’ Damiano demanded with eloquent outrage, striding over to the bed, trailing back the duvet and scooping her off the divan without a second of hesitation.
‘What on—?’ she gasped.
Heading out into the corridor again with her still gripped in his powerful arms, Damiano breathed flatly, ‘We share the same room, the same bed.’
Settled down on to a bed in a much more impressive room situated off the main landing, Eden flushed. ‘Sleeping elsewhere wasn’t my idea—’
‘Per meraviglia! Do I look dumb enough to believe that?’ Damiano was crushingly unimpressed by her plea of innocence.