Visconti's Forgotten Heir(54)

Since her little boy had come home Magenta hadn’t been able to get over how much he looked like Andreas, and it struck her again forcefully now. The resemblance, though, had done nothing to jog her memory of Andreas before she’d met him again in that wine bar, and a little shudder ran through her at recalling the conversation she had had with her great-aunt when she had brought Theo home to Magenta last week.

‘Have you told him?’

It had been one of the first things the woman had asked her as soon as she had stepped through the door, and Magenta hadn’t even needed to ask who she meant.

‘No, I haven’t,’ she’d admitted after she’d released Theo from her heart-swelling hug and he’d scampered off to play the DVD that Aunt Josie’s stepdaughter had given him. With that she had broken down in those plump maternal arms and poured out the whole miserable story.

‘I still think you’d better tell him, young lady,’ the woman had advocated as they’d followed Theo into Magenta’s clean and tidy yet shabby-looking sitting room. ‘From what you’ve said about him he doesn’t sound to me like a man who’d appreciate being deceived.’

Now, hurting and angry at the way he was continuing to judge her, and for allowing herself to be so deeply and hopelessly in love with him, she flung caution to the winds and tossed back a response to his remark about her single-minded determination. ‘Well, that’s where you’re wrong. For a start Marcus Rushford was off the scene long before you’re suggesting. And it wasn’t my brain haemorrhage that put paid to my glorious career as a model. It was over long before that because I wouldn’t give up your son!’

She wasn’t even looking at him. Nevertheless she could feel his shock as tangibly as the cool wind that was penetrating her thin T-shirt.

‘What are you saying?’

His sentence was little more than a rasped whisper. Perplexity clouded the eyes raking over her face, looking for some sign of clarification before they shifted to Theo, to Magenta, than back to the little boy again.

‘Are you telling me he’s mine?’ His features as he turned back to her were contorted with disbelief.

‘Look at him, Andreas, if you don’t believe me.’

His doubting gaze returned to the child, and this time he couldn’t take his eyes off him. His strong face was criss-crossed by a myriad of emotions. Bewilderment. Incredulity. And something else. Something that was beginning to look remarkably like acceptance.

‘I don’t understand. You were using protection.’

She shrugged. ‘It happens.’

‘And you were with Rushford...’

‘Not in that way.’

Deep lines scored his face as he turned interrogating eyes in her direction. ‘What are you saying?’

‘I’m saying that—’

‘Mummy—look!’

She broke off to see the pony being led back towards the stableyard. Theo was sitting proudly in the saddle, his arms outstretched on either side of him, the reins hanging loosely over the pony’s back.

‘Darling, be careful!’ she called out.

At the same time Andreas was punching a number into his cell phone.

Of course. He probably had somewhere important to be, Magenta thought, realising with a stab of despair that he could only be attending to business at a time like this if he didn’t believe her.

‘Yes. Cancel my meeting,’ he instructed abruptly. There was a wealth of determination in the eyes that clashed with hers.

The gentle clip-clop of hooves on tarmac, however, signified that Theo’s lesson was over. Gratefully Magenta tore herself away from Andreas, glad of these few minutes when she could occupy herself with getting her son out of the saddle and so delay the moment when the ultimate interrogation came.

‘Who’s that, Mummy?’ As the instructor handed her the pony’s reins in order to go and attend to something in its stable Theo pointed towards Andreas who, to Magenta’s dismay, had followed her across the yard. From his vantage point in the saddle, Theo was studying him seriously, his head tilted to one side. ‘Are you Mummy’s friend?’

Two pairs of identical blue eyes met and locked. ‘Do you want me to be Mummy’s friend?’ Andreas asked.

The odd inflexion in his voice caused something inside Magenta to twist.

‘Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!’ Theo clapped his hands, so excited that it made the pony start.

Immediately Andreas’s hand came up, at the same time as Magenta’s, to steady the animal’s head. Magenta quickly withdrew hers, feeling the havoc of his accidental touch like a collision of stars.

‘Does that mean we can ride in your great big car?’