“I took her on a trip. I can do that. I’m her stepmother.”
“That’s right. Baroness van Bergen.” And he smiled, his teeth flashing white, but it was such a hard, unforgiving smile that Sam shivered inwardly.
Cold or fear, she wondered? Or maybe it was more dread, because that’s what filled her stomach in hard heavy bricks. “I wish you wouldn’t call me Baroness anymore.”
“What then?”
“Samantha will do.”
Cristiano’s head tipped and in the yellow-gold light of the fire he studied her through narrowed eyes. “You’re such a contradiction, Samantha. On one hand, you’re so very prim and proper, and then on the other you’ve this fierce spirit—”
“Can you tell me more about Gabriela’s mother? Gabby used to ask about her. I never knew what to tell her.”
“She was a film actress.”
“Not that. More like, her personality. What was she like?”
“Mercedes?” He paused, reflected. “Beautiful. Lively. She was a great deal of fun.”
“Is Gabby very like her?”
“I think Gabby’s a mix of her mother and father.”
Sam turned, looked at Gabby where she slept on the couch cocooned in blankets. “I’ve wished for years that Gabriela had a different life. I’ve wished it were more stable, more predictable. I tried to give her everything. It’s one thing for an adult to struggle, but it’s another for a child.”
“Has Gabriela suffered?”
“I’m sure she has. We both have to a greater or lesser extent. There’s never enough money. Johann’s rarely home. He may be Gabby’s father, but he’s shown her little love and even less attention.”
“Was he so different before you married him?”
“No.”
Cristiano watched her. “But you thought you’d marry him anyway, marry into a life of privilege?”
“It’s never been a very privileged life. I worked hard.”
“And I bet you just hated being a baroness.”
“Yes, I did. It was false.”
“False?”
“Johann didn’t love me and I didn’t love him. It was a marriage of convenience, that and nothing more.”
“Nothing more?”
Her own lips curved, in an equally hard cynical smile. She’d changed so much since Charles died, he wouldn’t even recognize her if he was alive now. “Nothing more.” Shivering, she held her hands up to the flames to try to warm herself. “I was convenient to marry.”
She leaned closer, stared into the flickering fire with its red and gold flames feeling the weight of years of secrets and silence on her. “You see, Mr. Bartolo, before I was the baroness, I was the van Bergens’ nanny.”
“The nanny?” He sounded shocked.
Sam looked at him, lips twisting wryly. “I’ve never told anyone before. Johann forbid me from telling people. He didn’t want anyone to know I’d been the hired help, but in private he never let me forget. It was one of the ways he ridiculed me—I was just a working girl, not an aristocrat like him.”
“You should have left him,” Cristiano said flatly.
“And what? Leave Gabby?” Sam drew a breath, her chest tender and glanced down at her hands bare of any rings. Johann had bought her a ring but he’d asked for it back when money got tight. “I couldn’t do that. Not then, not now, not ever.”
“Why are you so devoted?”
“I don’t know. I suppose Gabby needed someone to love her, and I—” She broke off, aware of how close she came to saying the words, and I needed someone to love. She finished the thought differently. “I like to be useful.”
“Johann found you useful?”
“I did what he needed me to do.”
“Including keeping Mercedes’s family away.”
Sam winced. “A mistake. I thought I was keeping a family together. I thought I’d be a good wife.” A good mother.
His eyes, dark in the firelight, met hers and for a long unblinking moment he just looked at her, as if he could see into her. “We all make mistakes,” he said at last.
Something in his voice nearly moved her to tears. He sounded almost sympathetic and that was unbearable. She bunched her hands in her lap, fighting emotions she didn’t know how to manage. Her life, like Gabby’s, hadn’t been easy, and in her life there had been few people looking out for her. Just Charles, and then Charles was gone as suddenly as he’d come into her life.