Score!

‘She certainly inspired your father,’ began Rannaldinisoftly. ‘What Étienne did not know was that her father, Maxim, your grandfather, was a thug, brutish, utterly unstable, his sole passion his daughter. He was obsessed with her. Delphine only went out with me,’ idly, Rannaldini flicked a speck of dust from a bronze of Wagner, ‘to escape him. For the same reason, she marry your father. Maxim, her father, was so crazed with jealousy he wait till she and Étienne return from honeymoon — which had not been a success, the marriage hardly consummated. Étienne fly to Australia for two months to fulfil commission.’

Rannaldini paused, his face full of compassion.

‘My conscience torture me. Should I tell you this?’

‘Go on, for fuck’s sake.’

‘A week later, Maxim roll up at empty house and rape her.’

Breath swamped Tristan’s chest, his heart had no room to beat.

‘By horrible luck, she became pregnant.’ Rannaldini admired his expression of genuine concern in a big gilt mirror. ‘But she was too terrified to tell Étienne so she passed the baby off as his.’

‘I don’t believe you,’ croaked Tristan, his legs shaking with a violent life of their own. ‘Why didn’t she have an abortion?’

‘She was so young, a strict Catholic, and terrified of it coming out that her father was clinically insane, that people might commit her because she was insane too, that Étienne might kick her out, back to Maxim.’

‘You could have helped her,’ spat Tristan.

‘My poor boy, I was in Berlin. I knew nothing. After you were born, Delphine sink into depression and reject you. Your father was too devastated by Laurent’s death to give her any support. Then he do sums. You are large, healthy boy, not premature. He furiously cross-question your mother. She collapse from guilt and weakness and tell him everything, then take her own life. That was the dreadful irony.’ Rannaldini’s eyes were velvety dark as pansies with sympathy. ‘That Laurent, the flower of the Montignys, was dead… and you…’

‘A little incestuously conceived bastard,’ said Tristan, with a dry laugh horribly reminiscent of Étienne’s death rattle, ‘was alive.’

‘I am so very sorry,’ murmured Rannaldini. ‘Étienne was never able to speak of Laurent again.’

‘What happened to my…’ Tristan couldn’t say father ‘… to Maxim?’

‘He go off his head with grief when Delphine die. He was committed and die shortly of ’eartbreak in the asylum.’

‘It’s not possible.’ Tristan winced as he put his head in his sore hands, but it was nothing to the pain in his heart. ‘My grandfather was my father. Oh, Christ.’

Rannaldini put a caressing hand on the boy’s rigid, shuddering shoulders. ‘My poor child. Knowing all this, I deliberately take interest in you, hoping to give you back some of the love that deserted you.’

The wind had risen, frenziedly shaking the trees. Rose stems scraped at the windows, lacerating each other with their thorns. Rannaldini was trampling over the Aubusson roses again.

‘But, when cheeps are down, Tabitha is my daughter.’ He sighed. ‘I see the longing in your eyes, but she is better off married to Isa, even if he is Rupert’s deadly enemy. She needs babies. Marcus is homosexual. There is little likelihood of you fathering healthy kids. You are three-quarters Maxim, remember.’ Rannaldini watched the boy shove his fists in his ears, trying to shut out the horrors. ‘One day, Tabitha will be reunited with Rupert. He would not be ’appy with some unstable, misshapen offspring.’

‘Like the vrai Carlos,’ whispered Tristan bitterly.

Picasso’s one-eyed girl over the fireplace had the same Greek nose as Tab.

‘Tonight I find her.’ Tristan’s voice broke. ‘I love her, Rannaldini.’

‘There is only a couple of weeks left of filming. Everyone fall in love on location. Chloe and Oscar, Alpheus and Chloe, Baby and Flora, Sexton,’ Rannaldini gave a wry shrug, ‘and ’Ermione, Sylvestre et tout le monde. ’Ave you also not notice the way your niece Simone gaze at my Wolfgang?’

Tristan was too shocked to take in any of these pearls, gleaned from Rannaldini’s monitors.

‘You will soon forget her.’

‘Never.’ Tristan’s mind was reeling.

Not only was he not a Montigny, but his identification with Don Carlos, because the Inquisition had murdered his Montigny ancestor, was a sham.

‘No wonder my father — Christ, I mean Étienne — sneered at my obsession with the family. No wonder his lip curl when kind people say I inherit his talent and paint with light. Not one drop of Montigny blood — oh, Christ.’

Then another devastating hammer-blow struck him. ‘If I am not Montigny, I have no claim to any of Papa/Étienne’s money. I have handed eet over to production. I am a thief.’

His voice rose, his eyes rolled crazily. As he jumped to his feet, he caught sight of Étienne’s painting. For a second Rannaldini was alarmed he was going to tug it from the wall and smash it.

‘Calm down. No-one has discovered secret in twenty-eight years. Why should it come out now?’