Читать книгу The Italian Match - Kay Thorpe - Страница 8

CESARE took his departure shortly afterwards, accompanied by Lucius who wished to discuss some obviously private matter with him. Left alone with Ottavia, Gina made an effort to open a conversation, but soon gave up when her overtures failed to draw more than the briefest of replies.

‘I think I’ll go and find that cooler spot Lucius mentioned,’ she said at length, getting to her feet. ‘It’s too hot to even think straight out here.’

The older woman made no reply at all to that; Gina hadn’t really expected one. She could understand Donata’s attitude regarding her presence in the house, but what axe did Ottavia have to grind?

There had been neither sight nor mention of Cornelia so far this morning. Either she was a late riser, or had gone out, Gina surmised. It still needed half an hour or so to noon. Lunch, she imagined, wouldn’t be served much before one-thirty or even two. Not that she was hungry yet, but there was a lot of day still to get through.

The coolest place at this hour was going to be indoors. She went in via the glass doors to the salotto, welcoming the immediate flow of cooler air from the overhead fans. Reaching the hall, she stood for a moment wondering in which direction to head. Of the rooms that opened off it, she had so far only seen the one she had just come through and the library where she had first run into Lucius.

Feeling a bit of an intruder still, she opened a door under the right wing of the staircase, looking in on a small room that appeared at first glance to be something of a depository for unwanted items of furniture, with little in the way of style about it.

About to close the door again, she paused as her eye caught a reflection in the mirror almost directly opposite. Eyes closed, Donata was seated in a high-backed chair that concealed her from casual observation. From the look of her, she had been crying.

It was likely that her company would be far from welcome, Gina reckoned, but she found herself stepping quietly into the room and easing the door to again regardless. What she was going to say or do she had no clear idea.

The floor in here was laid in parquetry, the design largely obscured by the heavy pieces of furniture. Donata opened her eyes at the sound of footsteps, coming jerkily to her feet as she registered the identity of the intruder.

‘Leave me alone!’ she urged. ‘You have no right to be here!’

Still not at all certain just what it was she hoped to achieve, Gina halted a short distance away. ‘I know I haven’t’ she said, ‘but, as I am, supposing we bury the hatchet?’

Distracted by the unfamiliar phrase, Donata drew her brows together. ‘Bury the hatchet?’

‘It means we forget about the accident and start again. I’d rather be your friend than your enemy.’

A variety of expressions chased across the younger girl’s face as she gazed in silence for a moment or two. When she did finally speak, the belligerence seemed almost forced. ‘Why should you wish to be my friend?’

Why indeed? Gina asked herself, answering the question in the same breath: because in all probability they shared the same genes—or some of them, at any rate.

‘I suppose I just don’t like being disliked by anyone,’ she said on a semi-jocular note. ‘Not that I’m having much success where your sister’s concerned either.’

‘Ottavia has little concern for anyone but herself,’ declared Donata with unconcealed animosity. ‘What she would most like is to be in Lucius’s place.’

Gina could imagine. As padrone, Lucius would have total control of all Carandente affairs. Playing second fiddle wouldn’t come easy to a woman of Ottavia’s temperament. She wondered fleetingly what had prompted her to marry a man who appeared to be little more than an employee of the estate. It could hardly have been for lack of any other choice.

‘You must miss your father,’ she said softly, changing tack. ‘How long is it since you lost him?’