And that, Catherine acknowledged, is telling me.
‘What about doing it because your son cannot like her?’ she therefore suggested.
‘He dislikes what you dislike.’
‘Ah, so it’s my fault,’ she mused dryly. ‘I should have expected it.’
But what really annoyed her was that he didn’t deny it. ‘I refuse to pander to unfounded prejudice,’ he stated firmly instead.
Staring out across the bay, Catherine’s eyes changed from flashing green to winter-grey, as if they were absorbing the bleakness in the moonlight. So he wanted sound proof of Marietta’s prejudice towards them? she pondered. Well, she had that proof, circumstantial though it was.
The point was, did she tell him? For the last time she had brought up the subject she had demolished him so utterly that she’d vowed never to do that to him again.
Then she remembered their son, and the kind of depths Marietta’s obsession with Vito had forced her to sink to—and with a sigh that told of a heaviness which went too deep for words, she made her decision. ‘On the day I started to lose our baby,’ she began, ‘I rang around everywhere looking for you. I eventually tracked you down at Marietta’s apartment.’
‘I know that.’ He was already stiffening. ‘I have never denied to you where I was.’
Only his excuse for being there had been to get drunk and find oblivion from his nagging wife. Marietta’s version had been very different.
‘Why, then, if Marietta woke you immediately, did it take you six hours after that call to arrive at my hospital bed?’ she asked. ‘The traffic bad, was it?’ she taunted
softly as his face began to drain. ‘Or maybe you ran out of petrol? That is another male euphemism for being busy in bed with someone else, I believe. Or maybe—just maybe,’ she then added grimly, ‘Marietta didn’t bother to pass on my message until she felt like it, hmm? What does that tell you about your precious Marietta?’ she demanded—only to instantly withdraw the question.
‘No, don’t tell me,’ she said. ‘Because in truth I don’t really care what it tells you, when really there is no excuse you can offer as to why you went from me to her that day, or why you weren’t there for me when I needed you to be. But from now on when I tell you that that woman is poison where I am concerned, you believe me,’ she insisted. ‘And you keep her away from both me and my son or we leave here. And if that is prejudice, then that’s fine by me. But it is also a rock-solid promise.’
After that, the silence droned like the heavy pulse of a hammer drill while they both stood there watching Naples twinkle. How much of that Vito had already known and how much he had been stubbornly hiding from himself was impossible to tell. But Catherine knew one thing for sure, and that was if he still persisted in standing in Marietta’s corner after what she’d just said, then it really was over for them.
Okay,’ he said finally, deeply—flatly. ‘I will see what I can do about the situation. There are a couple of new ventures on the planning table at the moment,’ he murmured—thinking on his feet again, Catherine made note. ‘One in New York, one in Paris. Marietta would be the ideal person to oversee either one of them. But it will take time for me to set it up,’ he warned. ‘She is going to need time to clear any outstanding projects from her desk before she can go anywhere. And my mother’s birthday is coming up,’ he then reminded her. ‘It will be her sixty-fifth and she is planning a big party here to celebrate. She will expect Marietta to be here for it, Catherine, you must see that.’
Did she? she asked herself. No, actually, she didn’t. But she could accept that Vito had a right to protect his mother from hurt just as Catherine had a right to protect herself and her son.
‘Two weeks,’ he repeated huskily. ‘And I promise you that she will be gone from this house and gone from Naples...’
Two weeks, Catherine pondered. Can I live through two whole weeks of Marietta?
Do you really have a choice here? she then asked herself bleakly. For she could spout out threats about leaving until she was blue in the face, but she knew—probably as well as Vito knew—that she was trapped here no matter what the circumstances, so long as this was where Santo wanted to be.
‘All right, you have your two weeks,’ she agreed. ‘But in the interim you keep her well away from both me and Santo,’ she warned him. And with that she straightened away from the balcony, then turned to make her way back inside.
‘I did not sleep with Marietta the day you lost our baby.’ His deep voice followed her.
‘‘‘Sleep’’ being the operative word there, I suppose,’ she derided.
The harsh hiss of air leaving his lungs had him spinning angrily round to glare at her. ‘Did I ever call out Marietta’s name in my sleep while you were lying beside me?’ he rasped out bitterly.
About to open the French doors, Catherine went perfectly still, understanding exactly where he was going with this. ‘No,’ she admitted.
She heard him shift his tense stance a little, as if maybe relief had riddled through him.
‘Unlike you and your Marcus. At least you were saved that bloody indignity.’
‘I never slept with Marcus,’ Catherine countered stiffly.
On the next balcony Marietta sat forward, the new name being inserted into the conversation sparking her back to life when only a moment before she had been almost defeated.
‘Funny, that,’ Vito drawled. ‘But I don’t believe you. So now what is left of trust?’
‘We never really had any to begin with,’ Catherine denounced. ‘You married me because you had to. I accepted that because I felt I had to. You don’t build trust on foundations like those.’