di Cascata
Sicily
January 6, 2008
Signora Mallory:
I shall be in Vancouver later this month on a matter of some urgency recently brought to my attention and which I wish to discuss with you in confidence.
I have reservations at the Pan Pacific Hotel and would appreciate your joining me there for dinner on Friday, January 28, a date I trust you find convenient. Unless I hear otherwise, I shall send a car for you at seven-thirty.
Kindest regards,
Raffaello Orsini
But just as with the first reading, there was nothing. No hint of what she might expect. And if the racket taking place in the kitchen was anything to go by, Matthew was gearing up to give poor Mrs. Lehman another night of grief.
“This had better be good, Mr. Orsini,” Corinne muttered, tossing the letter aside, and taking a last glance in the mirror before going downstairs to appease a little boy who had no memory of his father, and whose mother seemed to be making a lousy job of doing double duty as a parent.
The view, Raffaello decided, was impressive. To the north, snowcapped mountains glimmered in carved splendor against the clear night sky. The lights of a bridge spanning the entrance to the harbor looped like so many diamonds above the Narrows. And closer at hand, almost directly below his suite, a yacht some twenty-five meters long or more rocked gently at its moorage.
Not Sicily, by any stretch of the imagination, but arresting nonetheless, as much because it had been Lindsay’s home, a setting both wild and sophisticated, beautiful and intriguing, just like her.
Two years ago, one year even, and he could not have come here. The pain had been too raw, his grief too filled with anger. But time had a way of healing even the most savage wounds; of gilding the memories that were his wife’s legacy, and turning them into a source of comfort. “I do this for you, amore mio,” he murmured, raising his eyes to the heavens.
Somewhere in the city below, a church bell rang out, eight solemn chimes. The woman, Corinne Mallory, was late. Impatient to get down to the business of the evening and be done with it, he paced to the telephone and buzzed the front desk to remind whoever was in charge that she should be directed to his suite when—if—she showed up. What he had to propose was not something to be aired in public.
Another ten minutes dragged past before she arrived, her knock so sudden and peremptory that his hackles rose. Curbing his irritation, he shot his cuffs and tugged his lapels into place.
Remember she was Lindsay’s best friend. That does not mean she has to be yours, but it will be better for everyone if you can at least establish a sympathetic cordiality, he cautioned himself, striding to the door.
He had seen photographs, of course, and thought he knew what to expect of the woman waiting on the other side. But she was more delicate than he’d anticipated. Like fine lace that had been handled too carelessly, so that her skin was almost transparent and stretched too tightly over her fine bones, leaving her face much too small for her very blue eyes.
Standing back, he waved her across the threshold. “Signora Mallory, thank you for agreeing to see me. Please come in.”
She hesitated a moment before complying. “I’m not aware you gave me much choice, Mr. Orsini,” she said, her accent so vivid a reminder of Lindsay’s that he was momentarily disconcerted. “Nor did I expect our meeting would take place in your room, and I can’t say I’m particularly comfortable with that.”
What did she think? That he’d traveled halfway around the world to seduce her? “My intentions are entirely honorable,” he replied, tempted to tell her that if a romp in bed was all he wanted, he could have found it much closer to home.
She let him take her coat and shrugged, an elegantly dismissive little gesture that made the pearls nested at her throat slither gently against her skin. “They’d better be,” she said.
Suppressing a smile, he motioned to the array of bottles set out on the bar. “Will you join me in a drink before dinner?”
Again, she paused before inclining her head in assent. “A very weak wine spritzer, please.”
“So,” he said, adding a generous dollop of San Pellegrino to an inch of Pinot Grigio, and pouring a shot of whiskey for himself, “tell me about yourself, signora. I know only that you and my late wife were great friends, and that you are widowed, with a young son.”
“Which is rather more than I know about you, Mr. Orsini,” she replied, with a candor he found rather disarming. “And since I have absolutely no idea what this meeting is all about, I’d just as soon get down to business as waste time regaling you with a life history I’m sure you have no real interest in hearing about.”
Joining her on the other side of the room, he handed her the spritzer and raised his own glass in a wordless toast. “That’s where you’re mistaken. Please understand that I have a most compelling and, indeed, legitimate reason for wanting to learn more about you.”
“Fine. Then until you share that reason with me, please understand that I am not about to gratify your curiosity. I don’t pretend to know how things are done in Sicily, but in this country, no woman with a grain of sense agrees to meet a strange man alone in his hotel room. Had I known that was your plan, I would most definitely not have come.” She set her drink down on the coffee table and glanced very pointedly at her silver wristwatch. “You have exactly five minutes to explain yourself, Mr. Orsini, and then I’m out of here.”
He took a sip of his whiskey and eyed her appraisingly. “I can see why you and my wife were such close friends. She, too, drove straight to the heart of a matter. It was one of the many qualities I admired in her.”
“Four and a half minutes, Mr. Orsini, and I’m fast losing my patience.”
“Very well.” He picked up the leather folder he’d left on the coffee table and withdrew the letter. “This is for you. I think you’ll find its contents self-explanatory.”
She glanced briefly at the handwriting and paled. “It’s from Lindsay.”
“Si.”
“How do you know what it’s about?”
“I read it.”
A flush chased away her pallor. “Who gave you the right?”
“I did.”
“Remind me never to leave private correspondence lying about when you’re around,” she said, her blue eyes flaring with indignation.
“Read your letter, signora, and then I will let you read mine. Perhaps when you’ve done that, you’ll regard me with less hostility, and have a better understanding of why I came all this way to meet you.”
She flung him one last doubtful glance, then bent her attention to the contents of the letter. At first, her hand was steady, but as she continued to read, the paper fluttered as if caught in the faintest of breezes, and by the time she reached the end, she was visibly shaking.
“Well, signora?”
She
