I signed up to that too, went along with it for all these years, even though Nonna—and later Madrina—tried to warn me gently to be careful. Because, even if I was always on your side, there was no guarantee you’d always be on mine. Why couldn’t I see that?
Maybe that was why Nonna bequeathed the house at Porto Vecchio to me—because she knew that, some day, something you’d do would make me need a refuge.
Aloud, she said quietly, ‘Assunta, please make sure that the Signora’s driver is looked after.’
‘Oh, I drove myself, cara,’ Silvia informed her, shrugging. ‘As I often do these days.’ She turned a brilliant smile on the housekeeper. ‘So you are the wonderful Assunta. Count Manzini has sung your praises to me so often.’
Assunta inclined her head in a manner that managed to be polite and sceptical at the same time, then withdrew leaving the maid Rosaria to pour the coffee into the exquisite bone china cups, and hand round the plates of delicacies, giving Silvia the opportunity to fuss with wistful sweetness over the calorific content of each offering.
‘I have to be so careful of my figure for caro Ernesto’s sake,’ she sighed. ‘A woman owes it to her husband to make the best of herself, don’t you think so, Elena mia?’ A comment which accompanied another disparaging look at what Ellie was wearing, and also took in the fact that her hair was drawn back and crammed into an elastic band at the nape of her neck.
I don’t think Angelo would care particularly if I starved myself to death or ate until I burst, she thought, suppressing a silent sigh, and deliberately selecting a choux pastry oozing cream.
Even when Rosaria left and they were alone, there were thankfully no further inroads into the subject of Ellie’s marriage, and Silvia reverted to talking about herself—parties she had attended, film premieres where she had been a guest, a fabulous new boutique, a miraculous new hairdresser.
‘Such a pity you do not spend more time in Rome, cara. I could show you a whole new world.’ Silvia delicately wiped some crumbs of almond cake from her fingertips and put down the linen napkin. ‘But for now you can show me your world,’ she added, a little smile playing around her lips. ‘So—the full guided tour, if you please.’ And paused before adding, ‘Including, of course, the bedrooms.’
Ellie replaced her cup carefully on its saucer, swallowing down the silent scream rising inside her.
She said levelly, ‘I’ll ring for Assunta. She knows far more about the house’s history than I do.’
Silvia pouted. ‘If you wish, but I would rather hear it from you, the mistress of all this magnificence. And of its master, too.’ She shook her head, as she rose, smoothing her dress over her hips with a languid gesture. ‘Ella-Bella, the little mouse. Who would ever believe it?’
Well, I wouldn’t for one, Ellie thought as she crossed the room and tugged at the embroidered bell pull beside the wide hearth. Because I know it couldn’t be further from the truth. And so, I suspect, does she.
And wondered again why Silvia was there.
He still could not believe what he had done. It was ridiculous—impossible—almost making him doubt his own sanity.
Because all the arrangements had been in place. The carefully chosen flowers delivered that morning. The lunch reservation in the eminent restaurant of an exclusive hotel, with coffee served privately and discreetly in a suite on the first floor when the meal was over.
And he had talked to her and smiled, and let his eyes caress her, watching her lips part on a small indrawn breath as the first flush of overt desire warmed her smooth skin.
Beautiful, sexy and much more than willing, he’d thought pleasurably. Exactly the kind of recreation he needed after the long hours he’d been working to finalise the Galantana project, and a glorious end to the past weeks of celibacy.
Even now he couldn’t be sure of the moment when it first occurred to him that it was not going to happen. Wasn’t aware of having made the decision, or why he’d done so. He only knew, without a shadow of doubt, that when lunch concluded, there would be no delicious consummation between silk sheets, accompanied by five star brandy. That, in fact, he would be making an excuse and leaving. Regretfully, naturalmente, but quite definitely.
He’d seen her shock, her disbelief as she realised the promised seduction was not going to happen after all, then pride had come swiftly to her rescue—and to his. Even so, he’d gone out into the heat of the afternoon calling himself every kind of bastard.
He’d told his secretary that he would not be back in his office that day, so a return to his apartment seemed the obvious choice. And possibly a cold shower, he’d thought in self-derision.
Yet, for some reason, here he was, driving towards Vostranto.
Now I know I’m crazy, he thought bitterly. Because what kind of a welcome can I expect there?
He pulled the car over on to the verge, switching off the engine and staring ahead through the windscreen, his dark eyes moody. The image of a girl’s face rose up in front of him, pale and strained, her soft mouth unsmiling, her eyes sliding nervously away from his. It had been the same each time they’d been together since the wedding, and the truth was that he was at a total loss to know how to ease the unhappy situation between them.
She was, he told himself, unreachable. At least by him. Not, of course, that he had wanted to reach her, he reminded himself swiftly. Not at the beginning when he’d dismissed her so contemptuously as a potential bride.
He’d soon realised, however, that his description of her as a nonentity had been unfair and unjustified. That she’d quickly demonstrated that she had a mind—and a will—all her own which she was prepared to pit against his.
Now, for the first time, he found himself wondering if there’d perhaps been someone else in her life. If his unwelcome intrusion had actually robbed her of a lover, for whom she was still grieving, and if that was why she continued to shrink from him—particularly on those few nightmare occasions when they shared a bed, and she lay a few feet away from him in a trembling silence that had nothing to do with sleep.
But no, he decided, his mouth twisting. If Elena had been in love, had given herself to another man, she would not have been considered by Zia Dorotea or his grandmother as a suitable candidate to become the Contessa Manzini. Which, for some unfathomable reason, she undoubtedly had been, long before Silvia Alberoni’s machinations had forced them together so ludicrously.
Leaving him stranded in the unenviable position of being a husband but without a wife.
Although she was hardly to blame for that, he thought ruefully. In the time leading up to the wedding had he made any real attempt to woo her? To alleviate for her the humiliation of knowing that she was being married only to preserve a business deal and persuade her instead that, even if they could not expect marital bliss, they might achieve a working relationship with perhaps some attendant pleasure?
Then proved it by stealing her away from the palazzo and coaxing her somehow into letting him make gentle lingering love to her.
Yet, in reality, furious at being manipulated into such a proposal, he had instead stressed that their union was a strictly temporary arrangement which would be dispensed with swiftly and efficiently at the appropriate time. And that there would be no physical intimacy between them.
That
