Uncovering the Silveri Secret - By Melanie Milburne Page 0,50

have work to do?' he asked.

Mrs Baker pursed her lips. 'That girl loves you,' she said. 'And you love her but you're too darned stubborn to tell her. You're even too stubborn to admit it to yourself.'

'Will that be all?' he asked with an arched brow.

'She's probably crying herself to sleep every night,' she said. 'Her father would be spinning in his grave; I'm sure of it. He thought you would do the right thing by her. But you've abandoned her when she needed you the most.'

He pushed back his chair and got to his feet. 'I don't want to listen to this.' I know I've been a stupid fool. I don't need my housekeeper to tell me. I need time to think how I'm going to dig my way out of this and win Bella back. Is there a way to win her back? Isn't it already too late?

Mrs Baker's eyes watered up. 'This is her home,' she said. 'She belongs here.'

'I know,' he said as he expelled a long, uneven breath. 'That's why I'm sending her the deeds. The lawyers are sorting it out as we speak.'

Mrs Baker's eyes rounded. 'You're not going to live here any more?'

'No.' Giving up Haverton Manor was the easy bit. Losing Bella was the thing that gutted him the most. What had he been thinking? Had he been thinking? What would the rest of his life be like if she went off and married someone else? What if she had their children instead of his? How could he bear it? He wanted her. He loved her. He adored her. She was his world, his future, his heart. But it was too late. He had hurt her terribly. She would never forgive him now. He didn't dare hope she would. He was already preparing himself for the disappointment. It was best if he took himself out of the picture and let her get on with her life. He had never belonged in it in the first place.

'But what about Fergus?' Mrs Baker asked.

'Bella can look after him,' he said. 'He's her father's dog, after all.'

'But that old dog loves you,' she said. 'How can you just walk away?'

He gave her a grim look. 'It's for the best.'

Bella spent the first few days at the orphanage in a state of deep culture-shock. She barely ate or slept. It wasn't that the children weren't being cared for properly, more that she couldn't quite get her head or her heart around the fact that the little babies and children she played with daily had nobody in their lives other than the orphanage workers. She spent most nights sobbing herself to sleep at their heartbreaking plight. Each day from dawn till late at night she gathered them close and tried to give them all the love and joy they had missed out on. She showered them with affection and praise. She played with them and read to them; she even sang to them with the few nursery rhymes she remembered from her own early childhood before her mother had left.

'You will exhaust yourself if you don't take a proper break now and again,' Tasanee, one of the senior workers, said during Bella's second week.

Bella kissed the top of an eight-week-old baby girl's downy head as she cradled her close against her chest. 'I don't want to put Lawan down until she goes to sleep,' she said. 'She cries unless someone is holding her. She must be missing her mother. She must sense she's never coming back.' And I know what it's like to feel so alone and abandoned.

'It is sad that her mother and father died,' Tasanee said as she touched the baby's cheek with her finger. 'But we have a couple lined up to adopt her. The paperwork is being processed. She will have a good life. It is easier for the babies; they don't remember their real parents. It's the older ones who have the most trouble adjusting.'

Bella looked across to where a group of children were playing. There was a little boy of about five who was standing on the outside of the group. He didn't join in the noisy game. He didn't interact with anyone. He just stood there watching everything with a serious look on his face. He reminded her of Edoardo. How frightening it must have been for him to feel so alone, to face daily the horrible abuse from a vindictive stepfather. Bella ached for the little boy he had