The Secret Legacy: The perfect summer read for fans of Santa Montefiore, Victoria Hislop and Dinah Jeffries
the grey cliffs. Onward we climbed, as the path narrowed. To my right, beyond a squat wall, was a jagged drop to the water below. I walked without any particular aim, the smell of citrus and caramelized sugar still clinging to my hair from the previous afternoon, floating into focus every now and then on the breeze.
The path ended by the entrance to the cemetery. The dead had the best view in town. There was a small bench just outside. We sat for a moment to rest before returning home. I longed to lay flowers for my mother. I envied those little tombs, perched upon the uneven hill, goat-like, defying gravity with stubborn marble. At least all these people could find rest. Their loved ones could sit by them, remember them, whilst the wide expanse of the sea and mountains comforted them with awe and tranquillity, the landscape assuring them that their grief was all part of the natural fabric of the world, no more, no less. But I had none of this. There was a gaping hole where my mother should be, and another wherever my brother roamed; love without the freedom to be expressed.
The sound of footsteps drew me round. A figure stood by the gated entrance, fiddling with a heavy chain. I rose to my feet. It must be getting close to lunchtime if the gates were already being shut. I turned to begin my descent but something about the man playing with his lethargic lock spiked a memory. I turned back to take a closer look. I didn’t know this man, but there was something about the shape of his round face, the gentle slant of his almond eyes that stirred me. His hair looked like it hadn’t been washed in a while, it clung to his scalp in sweaty strands. He looked up at me for a brief glance. My heart twisted with sorrow and joy.
It was my little brother.
‘Marco?’ I called out, my mouth so dry the word almost stuck to it.
He turned, nonchalant. ‘Si?’
We looked at one another. I fought seeping doubt. Perhaps my memory was playing a cruel trick on me? But there was no mistaking the pointed arch of his eyebrows, just like Mother’s, or the tiny mole on his left temple.
‘The cemetery opens again at five o’clock,’ he said, as if I was just another visitor muted by grief, which of course I was.
‘It’s me. Santina.’
His face marbled into stillness. I noticed my breath change. I watched his expression shift through a painful spectrum, much like the sea behind me rippling with light and shade beneath the moving clouds. I ran, wrapped my one free arm around him, grasping Elizabeth in the other. After a moment I felt his arm around us. I looked up at him, wiped his cheek and kissed the tear streaks twice each, knowing that a lifetime of kisses could never make up for the way I’d abandoned him.
‘I’m so so sorry, my Marco,’ I stuttered through snatched breaths.
He shook his head and took my hand in his then kissed it. That’s when I noticed how very thin he was. That’s when I took in his uncertain pallor, a grey day that hovers, expectant of a forgotten sun. His nails were chewed and his cuticles an aching pink with nervous strands of skin pulling away from them.
‘Is it really you, Santina?’ he whispered at last, looking at my face like someone determined to put the parts of a puzzle together, rearranging my features into the picture he remembered.
‘It’s really me.’
‘And this? Tua bambina?’
‘No – I look after her. I’m living just down the hill, Marco. I’m home again!’
The words honeyed my mouth. It was the first time I had used the term.
He turned away from me, as if unsure. ‘I have to go now. You’ll come back and see me?’
Through the neglected hair falling down over his face, and the tension scarring his nails, I saw a glimmer of the child walking down the mountainside only weeks after we lost our mother. ‘Of course.’
His face creased into a bleak frown.
‘You must believe me, Marco – I’m here now, working for a family at Villa San Vito.’
His eyes widened. The words felt an accidental betrayal. To this moment I’d been counting the days till my departure.
‘I’d have you come back with me right away, only I have this little one to feed and her mother and father are very particular about when they eat and—’
A yell from another young man further up the steps leading toward Nocelle interrupted my excited blabbering. Marco gave him a perfunctory glance, before looking back at me. His features hardened.
‘I have to go now, Santina. Come back tomorrow?’
I nodded, wondering if I could bear to watch him leave.
He turned and climbed the steps to the man. I watched his shadow lengthen before him, zig-zagging up the stones. The vice around my middle tightened. I wiped away the pictures of my father that bludgeoned my mind. Marco disappeared around the corner. I turned back toward the sea. The wind tussled gentle waves toward the shore. Do people, like water, always reach their natural level?
I made several feeble attempts to stay calm on my return to the villa. I simmered a small pan of water, infusing it with a fistful of chamomile flowers. I tried to allow the earthy steam of porcini mushrooms wilting with garlic and parsley to ground me in the kitchen and the tasks at hand. I stirred the tagliatelle around the tall pot of boiling water but, hard as I tried, my thoughts tumbled across one another like those fierce salty bubbles racing to evaporation. Elizabeth banged her spoon on the counter of her wooden high chair. The sound irritated the Major but usually left me unruffled. Today it percussed my noisy thoughts with increasing irritation. I grabbed the spoon from her and she burst into tears. The Major walked in.
‘Is the child not getting her own way once again? Or is this some personal vendetta that’s escaped me?’
His sarcasm smarted. Off my look he retracted. It wasn’t something I was accustomed to witnessing. The turn toward genuine concern caught me off guard. For a moment I thought I might let myself cry.
‘Sorry, sir. I was impatient. It’s been an unusual morning.’
‘Indeed,’ he said, running a hand over Elizabeth’s head. The small act of tenderness caught both of us by surprise. ‘ . . . the buttercups, the little children’s dower, Far brighter than this gaudy melon-flower.’ He looked between the two of us, left muted by his poetic interruption.
‘What on earth did Robert Browning understand about the great beauty of Italy, Elizabeth?’ he asked, running a finger under her chin. ‘Fancy comparing a melon flower, full of the promise of delicious fruit, to the blasted buttercup!’
My heart raced. Was the Major careening toward the same kind of breakdown as his wife? His behavior was peculiar, even for him. Any doubts about leaving disappeared in an instant. The sooner I left, the better. Elizabeth fell silent.
‘Lunch is almost ready, sir. Am I to call Adeline?’
‘But of course, Santina. You will find her in agreeable spirits this afternoon. Have you not noticed the marked changes in her? Her energy is returning little by little, a sapling of herself. Owed in a huge part to your tender care. Of the both of us.’
The expression in his eyes made me feel uncomfortable. There was an unfamiliar streak of sorrow, different from when he spoke of Adeline. I turned to leave.
‘Santina?’
I looked back at the Major. The sunlight streamed in behind him like a halo.
‘Take this note, please.’
I reached out for the small vanilla envelope, expecting him to bark out instructions for delivery, though in the past ten months I could count on one hand the number of people he’d conversed with in town. If he carried on in this manner the gossips would have a field day concocting elaborate fictions about him and the wife imprisoned on the third floor of this merchant’s