Claiming My Bride of Convenience

Slowly she turned, her face drawn in lines of sadness. ‘I feel as if there are things you aren’t telling me, Matteo. That you don’t want to tell me.’

‘What did Farraday say to you?’

‘Is that his name? The man who—’

Jaw tight, I nodded. She stared at me for a long moment, her gaze moving over me slowly, as if she were trying to figure me out. To understand me, when I both hated and yet longed to be understood.

‘He told me you were illegitimate,’ she said at last. ‘He said your mother was a prostitute who left you on your grandfather’s doorstep.’

I nodded, accepting. Of course I’d never expected to hide the truth from her for ever. Too many people suspected or outright knew the truth, because when I was young my grandfather had not sought to hide it. It was only later that he regretted his show of bitterness.

‘That doesn’t matter to me,’ Daisy said. ‘I hope you know that, Matteo? The circumstances of your birth...’ She shrugged. ‘I’m illegitimate as well. My parents were never married.’

Surprise flickered through me. ‘I didn’t know that.’

‘It didn’t seem important.’ She eyed me carefully. ‘But this is? To you?’

Now I was the one to shrug. ‘It matters little to me what side of the blanket you or I were born on, but unfortunately it mattered very much to my grandfather.’

Bitterness corroded my insides and felt like acid coating my throat. As much as I steeled myself not to care, I knew I did. I always had, and that was the awful, shaming truth of it. Which was why I was trying so hard not to care about Daisy. Not to let myself be vulnerable. Not to get hurt.

‘Will you tell me?’ Daisy asked softly. ‘Please?’

Her voice was a tempting whisper, the siren song of surrender, and part of me wanted to tell her—fool that I was.

‘You’ve heard most of it already,’ I said.

‘I feel as if I’ve only heard the beginning.’

Slowly she walked from the balustrade to the side of the pool, pulling her dress up to reveal slender calves and trim ankles. She stepped out of her heels before sitting down at the side of the pool, dipping her feet in the moonlit water, and then she held out an arm, gesturing for me to join her there.

After a long, lonely moment, I did.

I took off my shoes and socks, tossing them aside before rolling up my trousers and dipping my feet into the cool water alongside her. We sat in a silence both companionable and strange for a few minutes, the only sound the gentle tinkling of the water cascading down from the pool above.

Daisy didn’t push me—didn’t say anything or even raise her eyebrows in expectation. She just waited, as if she could wait for ever.

‘It’s not quite true,’ I finally said. ‘My mother wasn’t a prostitute, as far as I know. But she was poor, and she slept with my father to better herself. Unfortunately that didn’t work out.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘She left me on my grandfather’s doorstep because she thought he would be able to provide a better life for me, and I suppose he has. My father died before I was born—a speedboat accident. He was drunk. His wife—he was married when he had an affair with my mother—insisted my grandfather take me in. She was living with him, but she was very frail, both emotionally and physically. She was also pregnant with my half-brother, Andreas.’

‘That sounds...complicated.’

‘In the end my grandfather made it very simple.’ I could not keep the decades-old bitterness from spiking the words. ‘My stepmother—if I can even call her that—died when Andreas and I were a year old. I don’t remember her, but I know she tried to be kind. After that my grandfather took the gloves off.’

I swallowed hard, staring down at the water.

‘What do you mean?’ Daisy asked softly.

‘He hated me. Despised and resented me as the bastard grandson—the one who didn’t deserve anything, who reminded him of the son he’d hated for being a playboy and profligate. Because apparently I looked like my father, while Andreas looked like his mother. I think my grandfather would have thrown me out—left me at a convent, whatever—but for the stain it would have been on his reputation. Sometimes I wish he had.’

I shook my head as the dark tide of memories lapped at me, threatening to take over.

‘Instead he made my life a misery.’

I thought of Eleni, the nanny who had showered Andreas with affection and me with scorn and hate. You’ll always be a bastard. The locked cupboard... But I didn’t want to go into those horrible and shaming details, so I just shrugged and explained the minimum.