Legacy of Secrets (70 page)

She walked away from him, up the stairs, but she did not look back. He knew it was finally over. They had both lost and now they had lost each other forever.

He walked out of her house and went back to the hospital. He gazed at the face of his son. “Get well soon, my dear boy,” he said, kissing his cheek for the one and only time in his life. And then he left.

I
N A WAY,
L
ILY WAS ALMOST PLEASED
when Liam decided he did not want to return to Harvard. Three months in the hospital and a further two recuperating at home had turned him into the perfect invalid, and she was able to dote on him and spoil and pamper him as much as she wished. He had no memory at all of his attacker and he puzzled over the reason. “Why me, Mother?” he asked, and she told him, equally puzzled, that it must have been a robber. And when spring came, and Liam told her he wanted to go to Italy, she agreed. She thought it would be good for him and it would also keep him away from Finn just in case he decided to come back. But Finn had made no further attempt to see him, and Liam didn’t even know it was Finn who had saved his life.

They sailed for Naples a few weeks later, and then traveled in a chauffeured motorcar all the way to the lakes. Liam was living his dream; he devoured the colors and the landscapes with his eyes, storing them in a special compartment in his brain, to summon up later when he was back home in Boston.

They had taken a suite of rooms at the luxurious Villa d’Este and he was up at dawn, wandering along the lakeside with his sketchpad and watercolors. And for once Lily was able to relax and enjoy herself. She was, as always, beautifully turned out in the latest fashions, still beautiful, and still able to draw men’s eyes.

“Your mother is the most gorgeous woman I have ever seen,” a girl said to Liam, peeking over his shoulder at the watercolor sketch of the little boats bobbing by the pier at the lakeside. “And my, you are certainly a fine artist, anyone can see that.”

He turned, embarrassed, to look at her. She was petite, sweet-faced, and American. He liked her shiny gold-blond hair and her amber-brown eyes and peach-colored skin. He thought she was the color of an early autumn landscape and he smiled back at her.

“Thank you for both compliments, though the last one is not true. At least not yet. I’ve a lot to learn.”

“You already know more than most of us,” she replied, laughing and showing small, even white teeth. “But you really should paint your mother’s portrait. Isn’t she just gorgeous?” She sighed exaggeratedly. “Oh, what I wouldn’t give to look like that.”

“You shouldn’t want to change anything about yourself. You look perfectly fine the way you are,” Liam said, amazed by his daring. He thought it must be something in the Italian air that made him so bold.

“Well now, thank you, sir,” she said, dropping a mock curtsy. “But there are those women who are different from the rest of us, and your mother is one.” She held out her hand. “I’m Jennie Desanto from Chicago. And who are you?”

“Liam Porter Adams. From Boston.” He wiped the yellow ochre and burnt sienna from his fingers and took her hand. It was small and soft as a kitten’s paw and he smiled delightedly.

“Oh. Boston,” she said, pulling a face. “City of prudes and snobs. Not like Chicago.” She laughed. “Anything goes in the Windy City.”

She sank onto the warm wooden boards of the jetty next to him and hooked her hands around her knees, staring across the blue lake, sparkling under the early morning heat haze. “We’re here on vacation,” she said. “But my family originally came from Italy. My father and mother
are in Milan now, but I couldn’t stand the heat and the city fumes, so they sent me to the lake to wait for them. They’ll be back next week.” She grinned mischievously at Liam. “To tell you the truth, I’m enjoying my freedom without them. What about you? Aren’t you a bit old to be traveling with your mama?”

Liam felt himself blushing. “I’m nineteen,” he said quickly. “And I would have preferred to be alone, like you, but I had an—an accident, and I’m recuperating. So that’s why my mother is with me.”

“Oh, I’m sorry.” Her amber eyes inspected him curiously. “Is that why you have that interesting scar on your cheek?” She laughed. “I thought maybe it was a dueling scar, fought for the honor of a damsel in distress.”

“No such luck. I was attacked in the street by a madman with a knife.”

Her eyes widened with horror. “Oh, gosh, I am sorry. Does it upset you to talk about it?”

Liam thought about it. The only thing that upset him was that Mr. James had not been to see him. When he had recovered consciousness he had looked for him every day, but he had not even sent a message. He had not heard another word from the man he had called his friend and he was hurt and bitterly disappointed. He just couldn’t imagine any reason why his mentor would drop him so abruptly, and he thought it was his fault, and that he must have offended him. He had agonized for weeks over what it might be but he still had no answer, and he knew he could not contact him at his office. If Mr. James chose not to see him, that was his privilege.

“I don’t mind talking about it,” he said. “But that’s in the past.”

“I guess we should always look to the future,” she said solemnly. “Being so young, we don’t have much past anyway.”

Liam packed up his paints and they strolled companion-ably along the lakeshore, keeping to the shade of the sweeping cedars while Jennie chatted amiably about home
—a large house also on the shores of a lake, just outside Chicago. She told him about her sisters and brothers, “all older and much cleverer than me,” she assured Liam. “I’m the spoiled baby of the family and nobody really expects very much of me.”

She looked wistfully up at him and Liam felt a dizzy sense of pride that she had chosen him to talk to. She was petite and pretty and she was his exact opposite. He was introverted and lonely and artistic, and Jennie was outgoing and joyous and fun to be with.

On an impulse, he invited her to lunch with his mother. “At one o’clock. On the terrace,” he said, as they walked back to the hotel.

“I’ll be there,” she promised.

The girl was so admiring at lunch that Lily responded graciously. After all, she told herself, Liam needed a young friend on his holiday, and Jennie was an innocent enough companion, though certainly not “top drawer.” Besides, she was rather caught up with a Count Crespoli, a handsome, gray-haired older man, who was involved in shipping and the automobile industry, and who flattered her with stylish compliments and was only too happy to escort her on little excursions, or to sweet romantic little restaurants, and even for a pass at the gaming tables. It all made her feel quite young again.

Left alone for once, Liam spent all his free time with Jennie and he was so absorbed in her he quite forgot about the strange defection of his old mentor, Finn James. He bought her a sketch pad and charcoal and they tramped the hills together, sketching the views down to the lake. When she grew tired of it, she would lie back on the grass with her hands pillowing her head, gazing at the sky, while he painted. Sometimes she would sing and he told her admiringly she had a beautiful voice.

“Don’t be silly,” she said, laughing. “It just sounds good out here in the fresh air. In the music room it sounds like a tin whistle.”

“I like everything about you,” he said, catching her hand
and kissing it, Italian style. She leaned forward and kissed him on the lips and he slid his arms around her and they clung together, breathing each other’s breath, not wanting to let go.

“Would you think I’m a fool if I said I loved you?” he asked humbly.

She looked at him solemnly. “No. Oh, no. I wouldn’t think you foolish at all, Liam,” she replied.

Her parents returned the following day and when Liam introduced them to Lily, she shook hands with them, frozen-faced. “They are vulgar and nouveau riche,” she said angrily to Liam, back in their rooms. “Why, the woman was wearing a diamond necklace at lunch!”

“And why shouldn’t she, if that’s what she likes?” Liam demanded, equally angry, because whatever Jennie and her family did was all right with him.

But Jennie’s family looked down on Lily too. “She’s no better than she ought to be,” Mrs. Desanto fumed, still burning from Lily’s dismissive stare. “Going around with the count like that, all alone, ‘on excursions to look at the ruins,’ she says, so loftily. What ruins? I’d like to know. There are none worth looking at around here.”

She was a stout, motherly-looking woman with a liking for bright colors and shiny jewelry. Her husband had made a great deal of money importing Italian olive oil, and supplying Italian sausages to delicatessens across the United States. He was a brusque, angry little man who worried constantly about his business and the activities of his children, but who doted on his wife. Whatever she said was law as far as the family was concerned, but in his business, he was king. If she did not approve of their daughter seeing Liam Porter Adams, then that was fine with him. “You will not see him anymore,” he told Jennie sternly.

“But Papa, he’s only a friend I’ve met on holiday,” she pleaded. “What harm can it do to see him? After all, there’s no one else here for me to talk to.”

“She’s right,” Mrs. Desanto said, relenting a little. “There are no other nice young girls and boys for her to
pass the time with.” Jennie beamed at her, scenting a reprieve. “But only for the holiday,” she said, wagging a warning finger.

Liam and Jennie spent their time kissing and hugging and promising eternal devotion, and when they weren’t doing that he painted her portrait. At first just pencil sketches, then watercolor, and then oils. “I’ll never have time to finish it before you leave,” he said, staring anxiously at the half-finished painting. Jennie peered over his shoulder at it. “I’m not half as pretty as that,” she said.

“Oh yes, you are.” He grabbed her and pulled her close to him. “You are beautiful, wonderful. And I want to spend the rest of my life with you. Will you marry me, Jennie?”

“Oh yes, of course I will,” she said impetuously. “But it will have to be our secret for now.” She frowned, thinking worriedly of her parents. “What will your mother say?” she asked Liam.

“She’ll probably go crazy, but I don’t care. What about yours?”

She made a little face. “The same. But I don’t care either. But when shall we see each other, Liam? I shall be in Chicago and you will be in Boston.”

They contemplated the thousand or so miles that would separate them, and their hearts sank as they realized they would not be together.

“I’ll write to you every day,” she promised.

“Me too,” he said, holding her close again.

The day Jennie departed with her parents was the saddest day of his life. He watched their car chugging off down the white road until it disappeared in a haze of dust. And then he walked back along the lakeshore to the place they used to go together, and he sat down and wrote a letter to her, the first of hundreds he would write over the next two years.

Lily was happy in Italy. She decided to stay for a while longer and allow Liam to attend art school in Rome while she enjoyed the new life she had found, with Count Amadeo Crespoli as her entree into Roman society. She
took a palatial villa on a hill, with fountains and gardens filled with lemon trees and statues and lily ponds, and with a distant view of St. Peter’s.

She bought her clothes in Paris and wore the Adams jewels and entertained her new friends lavishly, happily showing off her handsome young son, the artist, and forgetting all about how she had wanted him to follow in his father’s footsteps, because now his tutors told her that Liam had real talent.

“One day my son will be famous,” she told her new friends proudly, in fluent Italian, because she had always had an aptitude for languages.

Liam studied hard and avoided her parties whenever he could. His companions were his fellow students at the institute and he felt more at home with them in the shabby cafes in the artists’ quarter, drinking cheap red wine and arguing over models and girlfriends. But in his heart was the knowledge that one day he would see Jennie again. He reread her letters until the ink faded into an indescipherable blue blur, but it hardly mattered; he knew every word of them by heart. He knew that when he was twenty-one he would come into a small amount of money, ten thousand dollars left him by his grandfather Adams. With that in his pocket, he intended to go to Chicago and marry Jennie. And if her parents refused to accept him, then he would carry her off into the night. And then they would be together always.

Liam’s twenty-first birthday coincided with Lily’s falling out with the count and her sudden boredom with Europe. She booked passages for both of them on the
Michelangelo,
to New York. They celebrated his coming of age with a bottle of vintage Krug. “As old as yourself,” she told him proudly at a quiet dinner for two in the ship’s palatial dining room.

“This is just the way I like it,” she said, squeezing his hand across the table. “You and I together, Liam. That’s the way it’s always been, hasn’t it? And naturally, that’s the way it always should be.”