She shot him a furious look. ‘I am not discussing your father in front of them!’
‘But he wasn’t just my father, was he, Mamma? He was Sebastian’s father, too.’
Laura had suspected this, but it was still as big a shock as a volcano erupting. Sebastian was white-faced, rigid, like Lot’s wife frozen into a block of salt.
Laura put a hand to her mouth to stop herself from crying out and betraying her presence.
‘Gina and my father were lovers, weren’t they? And Sebastian is their child.’ Niccolo turned to look at Sebastian, his face grave. ‘I guessed long ago but I was sure when he came back and I saw him face to face. He and I are so alike. It was like looking into a mirror.’
‘No! You’re nothing like him! Nothing!’
Her son gazed at her with an expression of mixed pity, impatience and regret. ‘I’m sorry, Mamma, but it’s time to stop pretending, stop lying. You aren’t going to convince me. I have a mind of my own, I can do my own thinking. It’s all so long ago. What does it matter, anyway?’
‘The past always matters! The present springs from it,’ Sebastian said, and Niccolo looked at him quickly, his face mirroring his half-brother’s, thoughtful, interested. Watching them, Laura saw again how alike they were, not merely in body but in the creative mind of the artist, inventive, curious, speculative, capable of red-hot passion and cold theory.
‘Yes, of course.’ Looking back at his mother he said, ‘Gina had her baby just before you had me, didn’t she?’
Her face worked violently. ‘Yes, you know she did. I had such a bad time when you were born that I was ill afterwards, I had no milk, but she had milk enough for two. Those great breasts of hers were fountains of it. They took you away from me. I woke up and you were gone, and however much I cried and begged they wouldn’t give you back. They only let me see you once a day! I was your mother, but they kept you from me.’
‘That scene in Canfield’s book, where the wife’s baby is taken from her and given to her husband’s mistress? Is that where he got the idea for that? But how did he know? Who told him about it? He knew my father. Those descriptions of tapestries, rooms, paintings always seemed very familiar to me. Was the palazzo in the book based on Ca’ d’Angeli?’
‘Of course,’ Sebastian said, slowly. ‘And the love affair, the betrayal of the wife, the plot against her. That was you, wasn’t it, Contessa?’
She didn’t answer, her eyes black holes in space, empty and desolate.
‘So that’s why you hated the book so much!’ Niccolo was looking at her as if he had never seen his mother before. ‘Was it all true, the way Canfield wrote it? Did Papa and Gina conspire to get you married to Papa? All he had were the house and the works of art. He didn’t want to sell any of them – but although he loved them passionately he loved Gina, too, and she had no money, either.’
‘How on earth did Canfield know all that?’ asked Sebastian.
‘They were at school together, Gina and my mother and my aunt Olivia,’ said Niccolo. ‘She’s dead now, years ago, but the three of them were close friends when they were children. After the war my mother went to the same finishing school as my aunt, in Switzerland – the family photograph album is full of photos of them skiing together. That’s how my father and Gina knew you were going to inherit the Serrati fortune, Mamma. That’s what happened, isn’t it? They got Aunt Olivia to invite you to Ca’ d’Angeli, and Papa and your brother Carlo made some sort of deal.’
She laughed bitterly. ‘You make it sound so sensible, Niccolo. You left out Canfield. Oh, yes, he was in the conspiracy. He was obsessed with Machiavelli, you know. He wrote a book about him just after the war. Canfield enjoyed plotting, making things happen, playing with people’s lives as if they were puppets. I only saw later what a part he played in my own life. It wasn’t just spite or a love of conspiracy – he adored Gina, he was in love with her too. Maybe they’d been lovers.’
Sebastian shouted, ‘That’s a lie!’
‘How would you know?’ the Contessa threw at him. ‘She was my husband’s whore. She could have slept with half Venice for all you know! Throughout those years Canfield haunted this house. He had dinner here several nights a week.’
‘None of the books about him mention Ca’ d’Angeli.’
She shrugged. ‘How could they? I didn’t talk to any of the reporters and academics who tried to get in touch with me, so they left us out. I think one or two said he had briefly been a tutor to an Italian family but, again, by the time they wrote about that none of my family were alive, except me. There was nobody to tell them anything.’
‘Why didn’t you ever tell me?’ Niccolo demanded. ‘You knew how much I admired his work. I’d have been fascinated to discover he used to come here.’
‘I didn’t want to talk about him. I loathed the man. All my life I hated him, from when I was very small. And later, after I married your father, I hated him even more. They would all sit talking and drinking in the salon, after dinner …’
‘Talking about what?’ asked Niccolo. ‘Can you remember?’
‘Art, books, God knows, I never listened. I was usually told to go to bed, as if I was a child. Domenico would tell me I looked tired, didn’t Canfield agree? And Canfield would say I needed my beauty sleep – one of his little jokes, a double meaning he seemed to think I wouldn’t pick up, as if I couldn’t read the mockery in his face, the way he looked me up and down. He thought I was ugly, even as a child. I didn’t argue, my pride wouldn’t let me – but Antonio used to wait on them, and afterwards he would tell me everything they said.’
Niccolo’s face turned ashen as he listened, watching his mother with pity. ‘They all betrayed you, even your own brother.’
‘Carlo didn’t know about Gina. He thought it was an old-fashioned arranged marriage and he didn’t see what was wrong with that. He was an old-fashioned man and, anyway, he knew I loved your father, and if he suspected that Domenico didn’t love me, well, Carlo didn’t think that mattered, so long as I became a lady, one of the aristocracy, the mistress of a house like this. Don’t forget, our family was in trade – the upper class in Milan looked down on us even when they invited us to their parties because we were so rich. But once I was the Contessa d’Angeli I was in another bracket. It was our father’s dream come true.’
‘You brought money to the marriage and Papa brought class,’ Niccolo muttered. ‘A typical tradesman’s bargain.’
‘But your father wasn’t prepared to marry me until he was sure I had the factory and
the money. Only when Carlo was dead did he set a date for our wedding, and all that time he was living with Gina in America.’