silk curtains woven, so Maria had told her, in Lyons, to a design that had later been destroyed so that no one else could ever use it.
The rooms led one into the other in the classic enfilade style of the eighteenth century—the library giving way to the Chinese Salon, with its lacquered furniture, and then the Egyptian hallway, rectangular and galleried, with niches housing marble busts. Beyond that was a large square room with late eighteenth-century allegorical frescoes and elegant gilt wood furniture, its chairs and sofas covered in a blue silk that had also been specially woven in Lyons.
The last room overlooked an inner courtyard garden dominated by a large baroque fountain ornamented with mythical creatures spouting water into the stone pool beneath it. And yet for all its magnificence the house still had the definite air of being a home. Fresh flowers in ornate priceless bowls set on equally priceless furniture, filled the air with their scent, and Maria orchestrated her own army of skilled workers to keep the house clean.
Now, Julie made her way downstairs to the kitchen.
Through the open door she could smell the scent of citrus for the first time, wafting into the courtyard on the soft caress of a breeze from the orange and lemon groves that lay beyond the villa.
‘You have taken your medicine?’ Maria demanded.
Julie smiled and nodded her head. She had been taking iron tablets twice a day for the last two days, on the instructions of Dr Vittorio, who had said he wanted her to take them pending the results of her blood tests. She had to admit that already she was feeling more like her old self.
Julie had grown used to the older woman’s sharpness now, and even if Maria disapproved of her, Julie had to admit that when it came to Josh, Maria was as dotingly protective as though he were a part of her own family.
‘It is just as well that Rocco is a strong man as well as a good one. It will be hard for him to watch the little one.’
‘Because he could be Antonio’s son?’ Julie queried.
‘No. It is seeing you with the child that will be hard for him,’ Maria corrected her firmly.
‘Why?’ Julie asked, her attention more on Josh, who she was feeding, than on Maria who, Julie had learned, enjoyed a good gossip.
‘Because he will have to witness the little one enjoying something that he never had. The love and attention of a mother,’ Maria announced, looking up from the dough she was kneading.
Julie frowned—it was easy and tempting, if unrealistic, to imagine that Rocco had sprung fully formed and armed into adult male maturity without ever going through any process that involved him being dependent on anyone, much less a mere female.
‘The Princess—his mother—died with Rocco’s birth,’ Maria told Julie dramatically. ‘Poor woman. Many said that she did not want to live because of the cruelty of her husband. It was always known that the Prince only married her for her family’s land, and the fact that her blood lines went back as far as his. That is the way with the nobility. She was much younger than him—only seventeen when they married—and convent-reared. Poor girl, she fell in love with him at first sight. But he was not the kind of man to be satisfied with a young, innocent wife. Not when there was already another in possession of his heart.’
Maria was certainly relishing the telling of her story, Julie acknowledged ruefully, although it sounded more like a fictitious drama than any kind of reality. She smiled down at Josh, who was sucking strongly on his bottle, feeding so much better than he had been.
‘I dare say she might have borne it better if there had been many mistresses and not just the one,’ Maria continued. ‘And such a one, who refused to know her place,’ she added darkly. ‘The poor little Princess didn’t stand a chance against one such as her, experienced in the ways of keeping a man within her power. She boasted openly to anyone who would listen to her that the Prince loved her and not his wife. There were no tears shed by either of them when the Princess died, I can tell you that, and I dare say if she could Isabella would have seen her children in Princess Lucia’s grave with her.
‘But the Prince, of course, knew what was due to his blood. The Princess had given him three fine sons, but now she was dead and he was free to marry Isabella. Five years later she had her own son, and the Prince doted on him in the same way that he did on her. No other man could have got away with such shameful behaviour but the Prince answers to no higher authority. The Leopardis are born into pride—they wear it like their skin and cannot be separated from it,’ Maria informed her with obvious relish.
Julie frowned. Rocco had not made any mention of Josh having a grandmother, but maybe that was understandable in the circumstances.
‘Where is Isabella now?’ she asked Maria. Josh had finished his bottle and she lifted him against her shoulder to wind him.
‘Ha! She is where she deserves to be—in her grave. She fell on the top steps of the castle tower and broke her neck. Some say that the ghost of the Princess pushed her, and certainly no one apart from the Prince and her son mourned her death. She had no understanding of the way things are, or of what it means to be a Leopardi wife and the mother of Leopardi sons. She was not worthy.’
Maria might gossip about the Leopardi family, but she was at the same time steadfastly loyal to them, and ready to defend them against anyone who might dare to criticise them, Julie knew.
‘It must have been hard for Rocco, growing up without his mother,’ she agreed.
‘It was hard for all three of them,’ Maria told her. ‘Their father had no time for them, and Isabella made sure they knew that she held the whip hand—sometimes literally, I can tell you. I worked up at the castle then, and there was more than one occasion when someone would come down from the nursery asking for some of Cook’s special salve for Falcon’s wounds. Him being the eldest, he always took the punishment for the other two, you see.’
Poor little boys, Julie thought sympathetically. But Rocco wasn’t a boy now. He was a man. In an attempt to ignore the ache tightening her lower body, she paced the length of the kitchen, holding Josh against her shoulder.
‘I’d like to take Josh outside,’ she told Maria. ‘Perhaps go for a walk. There’s a baby buggy in the nursery.’
‘It is too cold,’ Maria told her immediately.
‘The sun’s out,’ Julie protested.
‘We have a wind here that slices into the flesh like a knife,’ she warned Julie. ‘On one side of the island even the vines and lemon trees have to be cut close to the ground to protect them from it. Here we might be on the most favoured part of the coast, where the nobility built their fine summer villas so that they could enjoy the summer breeze away from the heat of their estates, but it is still not warm enough for any walking. Besides, you would have to ask Rocco for his permission, and he is not here.’
Immediately Julie could feel herself stiffening in angry resentment at the thought of having to ask Rocco Leopardi’s permission for anything. It was bad enough that she had to accept his charity by living under his roof, eating his food, and worst of all wearing the clothes that he had paid for. She was not going to let him control her by forcing her to ask him for permission to do something as ordinary as go for a walk, Julie told herself firmly, instantly and rebelliously making up her mind that taking Josh for a walk was exactly what she was going to do.
It might not have been quite as easy as she had imagined to get the buggy—a
