just at that moment, one of the cabin crew entered with a trolley and she lost her nerve.
‘I think I’m a bit tired,’ she muttered apologetically, and it was not a lie for she had barely slept for several nights.
That plausible explanation made Valente’s brow clear and his tension evaporated. He smiled down at her before reaching down to unclip her seat belt and scoop her up easily into his arms. ‘You should try to get some sleep during the flight.’
He set her down in the sleeping compartment and helped her out of her jacket. Everything he did simply unnerved her and, pausing only to kick off her shoes, she lay down still in her dress, her lashes screening her anxious eyes.
‘Wouldn’t you be more comfortable without your dress?’ Valente asked in surprise.
‘I’m fine like this,’ she told him, only breathing again once the door had closed firmly on his exit. Then she lay sleepless, staring up at the ceiling and wondering what on earth she was going to do…
CHAPTER SEVEN
UNTIL they landed in Tuscany Caroline had assumed their destination was Venice. Now they were driving through rolling woodland with glimpses of hilltop villages and serried ranks of grapevines illuminated by the setting sun. It was a gorgeous landscape. Finally she surrendered to her curiosity.
‘Where are we going?’
‘The Villa Barbieri, left to me by my grandfather, Ettore.’
‘When did he die?’
‘Three years ago.’
‘You must have been close?’ she assumed.
‘No, not in the cosy sense that you mean. But although we had very little in common aside from the blood in our veins, we understood each other very well,’ Valente pronounced coolly.
Caroline was wholly unprepared for the long gravelled drive lined with tall cypresses that led up to the most huge and magnificent house, fronted by a massive portico that would not have shamed a palace. ‘My word,’ she mumbled, wide-eyed. ‘Who was your grandfather?’
‘He was a count, with a dozen other lesser titles and a pedigree that stretched back to the Middle Ages. A man of great pride and intelligence who only chose to acknowledge my existence after the rest of his family had bled him dry.’
‘That sounds like a fascinating story.’
‘But not one I want to share, piccola mia. Content yourself with the knowledge that your mother will be ecstatic when you send her a photo and mention my connection to the aristocracy.’
Caroline reddened as though she had been slapped, but she could not argue with his forecast. Her mother’s great reverence for social status and wealth was as well known as it was embarrassing.
Valente led her into the enormous house, past alcoves adorned with marble statues and a parade of huge oil paintings. They were greeted in a great circular hall by a bowing rotund older man and a long line of staff.
‘The head of the household—the irreplaceable Umberto,’ Valente quipped with a smile as the older man stepped forward.
Caroline was so shocked by what she was discovering about Valente’s life in Italy that even though Umberto addressed her in English she could barely manage to string two words together. Five years earlier Valente had described the tiny Venetian apartment where he lived—the lack of modern facilities, the regular flooding and damp. Yet now it seemed that Valente was living like royalty. Her one-time frog had become a prince, only she doubted that a fairytale ending was in store for him or her.
Her tension broke when a familiar, dainty, furry figure came bounding out of a room nearby. ‘Koko …’ Caroline exclaimed in unconcealed delight, the familiar sight of her pet never more welcome.
Giving the distinctive cries with which she communicated, the Siamese cat wound her slender graceful body affectionately round Caroline’s ankles before condescending to be lifted and stroked, Valente came close to inspect the little animal. Koko’s round blue eyes blazed, the hair on her little head puffing up in an aggressive display as she spat and hissed at him, baring her teeth.
‘No, Koko,’ Caroline scolded, adding without thought, ‘She never took to Matthew either.’
The hardening of Valente’s jawline warned her that that had been a tactless reference.
An evening meal awaited them in a dining room as large and imposing as might have been expected in a building where the hall was big enough to function as a soldiers’ parade ground. While they were served exquisitely cooked and presented food Koko sat at her feet, releasing plaintive cries until Caroline let her pet curl up on her lap.
‘That is a spoilt cat,’ Valente commented.
‘Probably, but I’m very attached to her,’ Caroline admitted, thinking of how often the little animal had mirrored her mood and provided her with company and affection when she was feeling low.
Now, conscious that Valente noticed when she didn’t eat, Caroline made a real effort to rescue her appetite and consume a reasonable amount of what was put in front of her. It troubled her, though, that she was already trying to please Valente, just as she had once tried and failed to please Matthew. Would there ever come a time when she could simply please herself? When dinner was over, Valente addressed Umberto in Italian and swept her up the superb marble cantilevered staircase.
‘This is your room,’ he announced, closing the door in Koko’s face before the cat could cross the threshold, making it clear that there were boundaries to his tolerance. The large bedroom was furnished with polished antiques and ornamented with splendid flower arrangements. He pressed open doors, showing her the en-suite bathroom and then a dressing room before opening a third and final door. ‘This is my room. I like my own space, piccola mia.’
Frozen in the middle of the room, Caroline felt more rejected than comforted by that information. It reminded her that he had not wanted to marry her, that she had forced that issue, and that presumably he carried a certain amount of resentment over that fact. It was a suspicion that could only made her shiver. She did not want to go to bed with a man in a bad mood.
A knock sounded on the door and Valente opened it. Umberto entered with champagne and deftly poured the golden liquid into a pair of flutes, while the funereal silence rubbed Caroline’s nerves even rawer than they already were.
‘Not for me,’ she breathed when Valente extended her glass, for she was afraid that in the over-hyped state she was in the alcohol might make her sick.
Valente took only a sip from his own flute before drawing her to him with slow, steady hands and a dark glow of warmth in his gaze that made her tummy flip. ‘Now, show me how to enjoy being married,’ he urged.
It was an invitation that not unnaturally deprived her of speech—and then the force of her feverish tension blew a hole in her armour. ‘I’m going to disappoint you,’ she told him abruptly.
‘That would be impossible,’ Valente contradicted instantly in his dark accented drawl, sliding her jacket off her shoulders so smoothly that she didn’t know it was gone until he set it aside. He turned her round as though she was indeed that doll he had compared her to earlier, and ran
