The Baby Gambit Part 12

'Leave them, child,' she advised, her patrician features as severe when she looked at Julia as her grandson's. 'This has been a long time in coming.'

'And what would you know about it?' demanded Julia suddenly, proving that she was not unaware of the other people in the room. She turned to Matteo's grandmother with a venomous expression on her pale face. 'Do you hon estly think you can get rid of me as easily as this?'

'Miss Calloway-'

'Julia!'

The marchesa and her grandson spoke at once, but Julia wouldn't be silenced and Grace could hardly blame her. This was all her fault, she thought guiltily. If she'd never let Julia talk her into coming here, none of this would have happened. Who knew? Given time Julia and Matteo's re lations.h.i.+p might have deepened, whereas now...

The uneasy suspicion occurred to her that perhaps she had been just a p.a.w.n in a rather cruel game. What if Matteo's supposed attraction to her had been manufactured as a way to prove to Julia that she was just wasting her lime with him? The marchesa had been kind, it was true, but Grace had the feeling that the old lady would do any thing to protect her grandson, to protect her whole family...

'You don't understand,' Julia said thickly now. 'Grace does, but she's apparently forgotten what I told her.'

'Julia, please-'

Grace's eyes implored her friend not to do this, not right now, not in such a confrontational way, but once again Julia ignored her.

'I'd have thought you might have had a suspicion yes terday,'

she went on maliciously. 'Morning sickness, and all that. But perhaps it's so long since there's been a baby in the family that you've forgotten the symptoms!'

'A baby!'

It was the marchesa who echoed her words, who groped unsteadily for the chair where she had been sitting before their arrival and sank down weakly onto the cus.h.i.+ons. No one else moved or said anything, and Grace watched the old lady struggling to gather the shreds of her dignity about her before whispering hoa.r.s.ely, 'Matteo, tell me it's not true!'

But Matteo couldn't tell her any such thing. Grace could see that he had been as stunned by Julia's announcement as the marchesa, but he had the knowledge of his own intimate involvement with her to prevent an automatic de nial.

Ms it true?' he asked instead, turning to Grace and not Julia, and although she knew it shouldn't matter to her she shared his raw frustration.

She nodded. 'Yes...'

'You knew?' His eyes tormented her. 'And you didn't tell me?'

'I asked her not to,' said Julia smugly. She savoured the moment. 'I wanted the pleasure of telling you myself, dar ling.

Aren't you thrilled? I am.' She cast a disparaging look at his grandmother. 'I've always wanted to have a family of my own.'

CHAPTER ELEVEN.

It was late in the evening when Grace got back to Brighton, and by then she was utterly exhausted. It had been an exhausting day, not just physically but mentally, and all she wanted to do was fall into bed and find a total escape in oblivion.

Running away had been an escape of sorts, of course, but the physical removal of herself from the nightmare events in Italy just didn't cut it. She was still there in spirit, and she thought she would never forget the look on Matteo's face when she told him she was leaving.

Not that he had had much chance to express his real feelings, whatever they might be. Apart from the fact that he had still seemed to be dazed by Julia's revelation, Julia herself had made sure that they were never left alone to gether.

Soon after Julia's announcement, the marchesa had re tired to her own apartments, and Grace could only imagine the effect this news might have on the old lady. She had never struck Grace as being frail until that morning, but when one of the footmen had a.s.sisted her out of the room she had looked incredibly fragile.

Which made her own role in the proceedings even more unforgivable. Whatever plans Matteo might have had for her, whether indeed he had had any real interest in her or not-, didn't matter now. She had conspired with Julia to deceive the whole di Falco family, and, whatever the out come, she was not wanted there.

That was when she had remembered the name of the taxi firm in Portofalco. She'd seen the cabs buzzing about the town with their distinctive logo flas.h.i.+ng like a beacon on the roofs of the vehicles, and it had been such a relief to be able to do something for herself. She'd known Matteo would have arranged for the chauffeur to take her back to the apartment if she'd asked him, but she'd wanted nothing more to do with the grim-faced master of the villa. Besides, she'd preferred Julia not to know what she was planning until it was too late to do anything about it.

It had been a simple matter to make the call from her room, and then she'd hung about there until a suitable in terval had elapsed and she could be sure the taxi was well on its way.

Her bags were already packed, so it had been a simple matter to transport them to the front of the villa. She'd seen no one but members of the marchesa' s staff as she'd tra versed the now familiar corridors, but when she'd emerged onto the terrace she had not been so lucky. Matteo had been there, and Julia, and he'd stared blankly at the bags in her hands.

'What's going on?'

'I'm leaving.' Grace had thought it was obvious. 'I've-called a cab. It'll be here soon.'

'A cab!'

Matteo had looked stunned, but Julia had had no such reservations. 'It's probably for the best,' she'd declared, with a careless shrug. 'Grace knows that we've got things to talk about, plans to make. Don't embarra.s.s her by mak ing her feel any worse than she already does.'

Grace didn't know what Matteo might have had to say to that because the taxi had arrived at that moment, proving she had estimated its journey time with more accuracy than she'd shown about anything else.

But he had insisted on carrying her bags down the terrace steps and stowing them in the taxi's boot for her. 'This isn't a good idea,' he'd said finally, when she would have brushed past him to get into the back of the cab. 'Grace, I mean it. This isn't the end.'

'It is for me,' Grace had mumbled, not trusting herself to look at him, and, as if sensing a conspiracy, Julia had come down the steps to join them.

'I'll see you back at the apartment,' she'd said, for all the world as if nothing momentous had occurred, and Grace hadn't disillusioned her. But when she'd looked back at them, standing at the foot of the steps as the taxi drove away, she'd wanted to weep at the devastation she'd seen in Matteo's face.

She'd asked the taxi to wait while she collected the rest of her belongings from the apartment in Portofalco, some how managing to make Benito understand that she wouldn't be coming back.

The old caretaker had looked positively disappointed, too, when she'd driven away, and she'd known that whatever happened in the future she would never forget the people she'd met here.

She was lucky enough to get a seat on a flight leaving Pisa in the late afternoon, and she'd arrived at Heathrow in the early evening with an odd feeling of disorientation. It was familiar, yet not familiar somehow, and she'd realised it wasn't the airport that had changed, it was herself.

She'd had to take the tube into London to make a con nection to Brighton, and by the time she'd suffered a di version, due to a problem with the signalling system, Grace was in no mood to be sociable. She was looking forward to getting home and going straight to bed. Her mother, she knew, generally retired early, and she was hoping to avoid any explanations until the morning.

She would have to tell her mother what had happened, of course, but not tonight.

However, when the taxi dropped her outside her mother's modest semi in Islington Crescent, she saw at once that there were lights burning in several windows, upstairs and down, and that her brother-in-law's Mondeo was parked in the driveway.

Her heart skipped a beat. Surely nothing had happened to her mother? she fretted, hauling her bags up the path to the front door and fumbling for her key. No. She struggled to get the key in the lock as she a.s.sured herself that they would have let her know if anything was wrong, and then felt another surge of anxiety at the realisation that she hadn't been available for anyone to get in touch with all today.

Her key turned, but the door didn't open, and she uttered a minor expletive as she took it out and examined it for identification purposes. But no, it was the right key, and she realized that someone must have slipped the bolt, too. She was about to try again, when the door was suddenly opened to her, and her nine-year-old niece gazed delight edly up at her.

'Aunty Grace!' she exclaimed. 'What are you doing here? I thought you were on holiday in Italy.'

Grace forced a smile. 'I was,' she said, looking over Sharon's head to where her sister was standing in the din ing-room doorway. 'What's going on? Mum's not-'

'Nanna's fine,' said Sharon at once, before her mother could reply. 'We've come to live with her.'

'What?'

Grace couldn't prevent the astonished exclamation, and her sister gave her daughter an impatient look. 'Go into the living room and see if Daddy wants any more coffee,' she directed Sharon shortly. 'Hurry up, now. I want to talk to Aunty Grace.'

Grace bet she did. Blinking a little in the hall light, she dragged her suitcase over the threshold, and, closing the front door, leaned back against it. '1 asked, what's going on?'

'I know that.' Pauline folded her arms rather protectively across her midriff. Unlike her sister, she was dark and rather sallow-complexioned, and it had pleased her no end when she'd beaten Grace to the altar. 'I could ask you the same thing.'

'Yes. Well...' Grace didn't want to get into that; not yet. 'We'll come to me in a minute. What did Sharon mean about you moving in?'

Pauline sighed. 'She shouldn't have said anything.

Nothing's been decided yet. But I can't deny that we that is.

Mum and Giles and I-have been discussing it.'

Grace shook her head. She was beginning to feel the way Alice must have felt when she fell down the rabbit hole. Nothing seemed to make sense any more.

'But why?' she asked, feeling dazed. 'I was only plan ning on being away for a couple of weeks.'

'Oh, I know that,' said Pauline airily, 'but you've always said how difficult it was for you holding down two jobs at the same time.'

'I haven't-'

'Well, Mum has, then. She's always saying how busy you always are. Too busy to baby-sit, even, if you remem ber?'

Grace blinked. This couldn't all have come about be cause she'd refused to baby-sit the last time Pauline asked her, could it?

'All the same...'

'Look, Grace-' Pauline gestured towards the living room, where they could hear the television playing at full blast '-go and sit down. I'll bring you a cup of tea. Then we can talk about things in comfort.'

Grace didn't move. 'Where's Mum?'

'Where she always is at this hour of the evening,' replied Pauline, with a sniff. 'She's in bed, of course. But if you go up to see her, don't wake Hannah, will you? I've just got her off.'

Hannah was Pauline's younger child. An afterthought, Mrs Horton called her, and it was true there were seven years between Sharon and her baby sister.

Grace endeavoured not to reveal her own feelings at this news and, picking up her case again, she started up the stairs. Perhaps her mother would be able to explain why, just over a week after she'd left England, her sister and her family had decided to take up residence in the family home.

Mrs Horton looked up from her book in some surprise when her eldest daughter let herself into her bedroom.

'Grace,' she said, and Grace was relieved to see that at least her mother had the decency to look a little guilty. 'What are you doing here?'

'I live here,' said Grace shortly, and then, guessing this hadn't been her mother's idea, she sank down wearily onto the side of the bed. 'So-' she put their other problems aside for the moment '-how are you?'

'Oh-not too bad.' Mrs Horton managed a faint smile. 'I manage. How about you? You're looking a little better, I must say.'

'Thanks.' Grace was amazed that that was true. 'I'm okay.

Change of plans, that's all.'

Mrs Horton shook her head. 'You should have let us know.'

'Yeah, right.' Grace was sardonic. 'Tell me about it.'

'Well-'

'No-' Grace reached out and clasped one of her mother's hands, stroking the swollen knuckles with genuine contrition.

'That's just an expression. I didn't mean it as it sounded.'

'Nevertheless, you deserve to know,' declared Mrs Horton, gazing at her eldest daughter with troubled eyes. 'It's Giles, you see. He's lost his job-again.'

Grace groaned. 'Not again.'

'I'm afraid so.' Her mother sighed. 'There was some money missing from the petty cash, you see, and although he swears it was nothing to do with him someone saw him at the race track last week, and so-'

She broke off but Grace understood only too well. Her brother-in-law was an inveterate gambler, and it wasn't the first time her mother had had to use what little money her husband had left her to bail him out.

'But why did Sharon say they were moving in here?' she asked gently. 'Is that your decision?'

'Well, it does seem a possible solution,' agreed Mrs Horton reluctantly. 'There's no way Pauline can continue to pay the mortgage on their house with no money coming in.'

'But he'll get another job, won't he?'

'1 hope so. He certainly seems to have learnt his lesson this time. I suppose it depends what happens when the case goes to court,' said Mrs Horton, looking down at their clasped hands, and Grace groaned.

'It's not going to court, surely?'

'Well, it might,' admitted her mother unhappily. 'And until then I couldn't let those two children go without, could I?'

'No.' Grace conceded the point. She knew her mother thought the world of her grandchildren, and she could hardly blame her because she was doing what she thought was best for all of them.

'So,' she added softly, 'where does that leave me?'

'That's up to you,' said Mrs Horton at once. 'This is your home, and if you want to stay here, then of course you must.

But-' she hesitated '-it hasn't escaped my notice that one of the reasons you were so susceptible to that illness you had was because you've been trying to do too much. Travelling up and down to London every day, working at the museum, serving part-time behind the bar al the Royal Oak, trying to keep everybody happy-it's too much.'

Grace looked doubtful. 'So what's your solution?'

'Oh, I don't know...' Mrs Horton looked embarra.s.sed now. 'I can't make your decisions for you, Grace. But it seems to me you were a long way happier when you had your own place in town.'

Grace expelled an unsteady breath. She'd known where this was heading, of course, from the minute Sharon had blurted the news that she and her parents had moved in. The ironic thing was, before she'd gone away, she'd have probably welcomed the idea. Now, however, all she wanted to do was bury herself in the bosom of her family. She'd even been considering giving up her job at the museum and dying to find something suitable nearer home, but it ap peared she wasn't going to be given the opportunity. There was no way she could live here with Pauline and her fam ily, and they both knew it. For one thing, she and Giles had never hit it off, and the knowledge that he'd been lying to her sister yet again could only sour the situation even more.

'Oh, Grace-'