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 was what he’d promised, and what, it seemed, he now had to live with.
Because there seemed little chance of any alteration in the status quo, he thought flatly. Indeed, the available evidence suggested that she was not even marginally attracted to him. That she might even dislike him or, which was worse, fear being alone with him.
It should never have come to this, he told himself bleakly. I should not have allowed it to happen. And I cannot let it go on.
With an abrupt sigh, he re-started the car and pulled out on to the road.
As he approached the next long bend, he heard the sound of another vehicle’s horn, blowing in warning, and, with that, a lorry came round the corner in the act of being overtaken by a dark blue Maserati.
Angelo was already braking, his mind filled with a confused impression of the lorry driver’s white face and a fist being shaken, as he swerved, swiftly and urgently, hearing the crunch of metal as his wing made glancing contact with a concrete block lying in the grass at the side of the road.
He stopped a few yards further on, and sat for a moment aware that he was shaking, his heart going like a trip-hammer. He’d had near misses before, but that was the closest he’d ever come to total disaster.
Santa Madonna, he thought. If I’d been doing any real speed …
He saw that the lorry had also come to a halt, and the driver and another man were running back to him.
The Maserati, however, had vanished.
As if on auto-pilot, he assured his anxious questioners that he was not injured, and that the damage to his car was slight. An annoyance only that could have been so much worse.
‘And I did not even get the number of the car, signore.’ The lorry driver shook his head in disbelief as he prepared to depart. ‘Dio mio,’ he added from the heart. ‘Women drivers!’
‘Yes,’ Angelo returned softly and grimly. ‘Women drivers.’
Because he had recognised the car, so he already knew its number, and who had been at the wheel, and cold, burning anger was building inexorably inside him as he resumed his journey towards Vostranto, as well as a sense of grim determination.
Ellie watched Giorgio close the massive door, and listened with a sense of almost overwhelming relief as the car roared away down the drive, taking her unwanted guest away at last.
Feeling as if she’d been wrung out, mentally and emotionally, she turned to the major domo. ‘I have a slight headache, Giorgio. I’m going to rest for a while.’
She refused his concerned offers of tea, painkillers or a cold compress for the forehead, and returned upstairs to the room she’d left only a few minutes before.
It hadn’t changed in any material sense, but it was different all the same. Silvia still seemed to be there, scrutinising everything, insisting on seeing