"I can deal with it." Serena turned to Gideon. "You don't have to stay with me. I can meet you on Santa Isabella."
He slowly shook his head, his eyes narrowed on her face. "A bushwhacker?"
"The biggest bushwhacker of them all," she said softly. "And you can't help me with this one."
"What about your promise? We were going to share everything, remember?"
"I'll let you share and comfort." She smiled with an effort. "Later. I've got to face the bogeyman and convince myself that he never existed, or, if he did, that I created him."
"I'll have him delivered to Consuela's cottage." Julio turned away. "What's his name?"
"The Honorable Edwin Marlbrent." Serena's voice was laden with irony. "Or so Burke's Peerage refers to him. Personally, I don't agree with their opinion of my stepfather as 'honorable' in any way."
"We could arrange to have him brought to Santa Isabella," Gideon suggested.
"No. Santa Isabella is special for me. I don't want him to set foot there. Let it end where it began, here on Castellano." She glanced inquiringly at Julio. "If it won't endanger Gideon or Jeffrey?"
"In a few hours there won't be a guardia or a government," Julio said with a shrug. "And then no one will care less what you're doing here on Castellano."
"Well, that puts everything in perspective," Serena said wryly. "And it certainly deflates any idea I might have of my own importance in the scheme of things." She stepped back and waved. "Go on, don't let me keep you. We all have our own fish to fry." She smiled involuntarily at the accidental play on words. "And where could I choose a better spot to cook mine than your fishing village?"
Dane hesitated, and then climbed into the passenger seat, his expression still worried. "I'll see you tonight."
A few minutes later Gideon and Serena watched the helicopter lift off and then circle above the trees before turning toward Mariba.
The wind was warm and scented with salt as it brushed Serena's cheeks in a soft caress. She kicked off her high-heeled sandals and padded barefoot down to the surf. Her footprints in the wet sand immediately filled with water and then disappeared as if they had never been. Time was like that, she thought, it rushed in, covering, healing, and, if you were very lucky, taking away the scar entirely.
Gideon was watching her, his eyes intent, yet gentle. He sat down on an overturned rowboat drawn up out of reach of the tides. "He should be here soon."
"Yes." She gazed far down the deserted beach toward the tiny palmetto-thatched cottage. "I asked Jeffrey to send him as soon as he could." Her smile was bitter. "He won't like it. He prefers people to come to him."
He looked out over the horizon. "You hate him?"
"I did once. Now… I don't know. He's a terrible man, and I'll never understand how he can do the things he does, but he has some qualities I admire. He's brilliant, you know. He's one of the foremost financial advisers and bankers in England and, as far as I know, his business deals are entirely honest. It's only in personal relationships that he's completely ruthless. What he can't control, he has to destroy. He has to own the people in his world." She turned and came back to stand before him. "I cut the strings, but he made me pay the price. I didn't know until I came back to you how high that price had been. I thought I'd shot my bushwhacker, but I hadn't, I'd only run away from him."
She sat on the beach at his feet, her bare toes digging in the sand. "I'd like to tell you all about it." She smiled crookedly. "I know it's a little late. Do you still want to hear it?"
"I want to hear it," he murmured. "I think it's important I know."
"I think so too." She picked up a handful of sand and let it sift slowly through her fingers. "For one thing, it will illustrate how wrong you were to think you had anything to learn from my friends or family, any polish to acquire from them. You're so far ahead they'd never catch up in a hundred years." She paused. "I guess I should start with my mother. There's no real harm in her. She's just weak and selfish and can only see as far as her checkbook. I think she may even have loved my father; she always spoke of him as if she did. He was a race car driver and after he died…" She trailed off. "She likes money. She needs money to complete herself. Edwin Marlbrent had a great deal of money and he wanted an heir. She married him and Dane was born eighteen months later. He divorced her less than six months after that." Her lips twisted. "Oh, don't make any mistake about it. My mother was perfectly willing to give him the divorce. It was a very amicable arrangement. My stepfather gave her a generous allowance for life, and she gave him custody of Dane. As she wasn't exactly the maternal type, the terms were exactly to her liking. A year later, she married someone else who suited her much better. Her French count had a lovely chateau in the wine country and no money so they dovetailed beautifully. The marriage suited my stepfather too. As long as she needed his money, he maintained full control over her and Dane." She paused. "And me."
"What were you doing while all this was going on?" Gideon asked. "Were you fond of Marlbrent while you were growing up?"
She shook her head. "He could be very charming, but he didn't waste it on me. I was away at school during their short marriage, and only saw them on those few holidays during that brief time." Her face softened. "But I was wild with joy when Dane was born. I'd always been a lonely child and I thought at last I'd have someone of my own to love. Of course, it didn't work out that way." Her face clouded. "No, I don't think my stepfather knew I existed as a human being." She paused. "Until he decided he could make use of me."
Gideon reached down and took her hand, holding it without speaking.
"I was seventeen and attending a convent school in Switzerland. I was very naive, incredibly so." She laughed mirthlessly. "You can't imagine how stupid I was. My stepfather appeared at the convent one day and whisked me away on a holiday to Italy. I was thrilled and happy and-I told you how charming he could be. I thought he actually liked me. I told myself that it was only children he had no use for, and now that I was almost grown up, he wanted to be my friend. He introduced me to Antonio del Montaldo in Florence, and Antonio traveled with us while we toured northern Italy. Antonio was handsome, charming, and a prince, and my stepfather heartily approved of him." She laughed again. "How could I resist? It was a damn fairy tale. We were married in Rome two weeks after my stepfather had taken me away from the convent. He even took his yacht out of dry dock and treated the newlyweds to a honeymoon trip to the Caribbean. " Her lips curved in an ironic smile. "Just the three of us. I didn't think it unusual. I was floating-no, drowning-in charm. They were both being so wonderfully kind and affectionate and I gobbled it up like a hungry orphan. Antonio wasn't exactly passionate, but since I'd never had a lover, I didn't realize… I was living in a dream world." She closed her eyes. "Until that night we docked at Mariba. I woke up and Antonio wasn't in the cabin. I got out of bed and went looking for him," She stopped and was silent a moment. "I found him. He was in my stepfather's bed. My stepfather was making love to him." She could feel Gideon's hand tighten on her own, but she didn't open her eyes. "I was stunned and almost hysterical. I can remember screaming at them, and the two of them looking at me as if I were a mosquito that had caused them a minor annoyance. " She ran her tongue over her lips to moisten them. "Then my stepfather sat up in bed and began to speak to me. His voice was very cold and reasonable. He was in love with Antonio, and in his position any rumor of homosexuality was out of the question. It would have seriously compromised his social and business status in London. There had already been a few suspicions voiced regarding his lack of female companionship since the divorce from my mother. The sensible thing to do was to bring Antonio into the family." Her lips curled bitterly. "That's the very word he used. Sensible. Our marriage tie would throw a cloak of respectability on his association with Antonio. Now all I had to do was to be a good little girl and keep my mouth shut while they used me." Her eyes opened to reveal eyes glittering with remembered pain. "I think that's what threw me into a tail- spin. Neither one of them had ever cared about me. They were only using me. I guess I went a little crazy. I ran out of the cabin, and down the gangplank. I didn't know where I was running, or-"