‘I didn’t mean it to be like it was.’
‘Have you told my family the truth?’
‘No.’
‘Good. Because if you do, you’re dead.’ She glided away, still smiling. Lorenzo gulped.
The folding doors between the two main rooms had been pushed back, creating one large room, connected to the kitchen by a hatch, through which Mamma passed enough food to supply an army. Pride of place was given to a variety of meat courses.
Everyone wanted to talk to Lorenzo, which saved Helen from having to do so. She needed time to compose her thoughts. Memories of the things she’d said tonight flitted through her horrified brain. She’d actually told him that her parents were trying to arrange their marriage. And he not only hadn’t warned her, but he’d joined in her vilification of Lorenzo Martelli.
To cap his iniquity he’d tricked her into accepting his kiss, and actually kissing him back. At this point her thoughts became lost in disorder. Warmth rose in her and she had a horrible feeling that it was showing in her cheeks.
Great! Now he would see her blushing, and that would make him even more full of himself. She looked at him angrily across the table, and found that he was watching her, as she’d feared. But not as though he were pleased with himself. There was a question in his eyes, and his lips wore a half smile that she would have found delightful under other circumstances.
It was all part of the trickery, she warned herself. Having insulted her, he was now bent on winning forgiveness on easy terms. Well, he could think again!
Lorenzo was talking about his family back in Palermo. Helen gathered that his father had died some years earlier, but his mother was still alive, although in frail health.
‘She called me last week,’ Mamma said, ‘to say you were coming. And I told her you would always be welcome in our home.’
‘Well, you’ve certainly made me welcome tonight,’ Lorenzo assured her with his charming smile that took in everyone at the table.
‘Do you have any brothers and sisters?’ Carlotta wanted to know.
‘Two brothers, Renato and Bernardo, both older than me. No sisters, but a sister-in-law. Renato has recently married an English woman called Heather, and their first baby is due later this year.’
Poppa was frowning. ‘I didn’t know your parents had three sons,’ he said. ‘I thought it was only two.’
‘No, there are three of us.’ Lorenzo’s smile was still perfect, but Helen detected a fleeting tension in him, and noticed how adroitly he turned the conversation.
He was wonderful in company, Helen realised. He could be ‘man-to-man’ with her father and brothers, while charming Mamma and making her sisters laugh. In no time at all he had them all on his side, which struck Helen as a really dirty trick.
The most difficult part of the evening was that for once she had her parents’ total, unqualified approval. They had picked out a suitable husband, and instead of arguing she had moved to first base in a couple of hours. In this atmosphere it was impossible to tell them that their choice was a devious, unscrupulous deceiver who ought to be hung up by his thumbs until he promised never to approach a woman again.
Lorenzo, watching her, read her thoughts with tolerable accuracy, but he was too much occupied with getting his bearings to worry about the retribution awaiting him. As a Sicilian he was used to large gatherings, but it was taking all his presence of mind to hold his own in this one. Apart from brothers and sisters and aunts and uncles, there were also a couple of Mamma’s nieces with their husbands. Of these, the one who stuck in Lorenzo’s mind was Giorgio, because he disliked him so much.
Giorgio was a huge man with a spiteful face and a bullying nature. He was also blatantly on the make, and lost no time in telling Lorenzo about his family back in Sicily who’d been trying to sell their produce to Martellis for years, but had been scandalously rejected. He implied that now he expected this injustice to be put right.
Lorenzo fenced with him and escaped as soon as he could, giving a huge sigh of relief. That was one more reason to be glad he wasn’t marrying Helen Angolini. Even if she hadn’t rejected him first.
To be fair, he was beginning to understand her feelings. The men of the Angolini family were of a type that was becoming outdated even in Sicily where tradition still prevailed. In this household male superiority was still taken as the norm. Only the younger women, who spent their working lives outside in a different world, questioned it. The men, enclosed in the haven of Little Italy, thought nothing had changed.
The dinner was superb and Lorenzo was able to praise his hostess’s cooking with real pleasure. She smiled and accepted his tribute with a few words, but when her husband intervened to say that Angolini meats were second to none she retired and let him take the credit.
Lorenzo tried again, but this time it was Giorgio who butted in, interrupting Signora Angolini in a way that nobody would have been allowed to do with his own mother. Mamma’s reaction was to rise with a smile and a nod to her daughters to help her clear away. After that the party broke into two groups, women washing up and making coffee, and men gathering to talk.
The evening culminated in a grand family toast to Lorenzo, and an invitation to supper whenever he wished. At last the family began to drift off to their own homes, in some cases just across the street. The party was over. Poppa yawned. He had to get up early next morning.
‘Time for me to go,’ Lorenzo said heartily.
‘No, no, you stay a while,’ Mamma protested. ‘We’re all going to bed, but Elena can make you some more coffee.’
‘Yes, do stay,’ Helen said affably, but with her hand implacably through Lorenzo’s arm. ‘We have a lot to talk about.’
He gave her a hunted look.
The younger girls drifted off to bed. Mamma and Poppa beamed and departed. Helen surveyed her prey.
‘You are Lorenzo Martelli,’ she said through gritted teeth.
‘Yes,’ he admitted.
‘And you’ve been Lorenzo Martelli all this time?’
‘Well, it’s not something that comes and goes,’ he said defensively. ‘I’m kinda stuck with it.’
‘You were Lorenzo Martelli while we were talking at the hotel?’
‘As far as I know.’
‘And you were Lorenzo Martelli when you kissed me?’
‘Guilty!’
‘Even though you knew I disliked you?’
‘You disliked some guy who doesn’t exist,’ he protested. ‘That wasn’t me.’
‘It sure was. I disliked Lorenzo Martelli then and I dislike him ten times more now that I know he’s a devious scoundrel without a shred of honour. Shall I tell you what I’d like to do to you?’
‘I think I’d rather you didn’t.’
‘Kissing me like that was a dishonourable act, and if I told Poppa the full truth you’d be mincemeat.’
‘Not if he wants you to marry me,’ he was unwise enough to say. ‘All right, all right!’ He backed off fast. ‘Whatever you were going to do, don’t do it. I shouldn’t have stolen that kiss, and I’m sorry, but I got carried away by your beauty and—’
‘I’m warning you, Martelli, don’t insult my intelligence. You should be ashamed of yourself. No gentleman would do what you did.’
‘I’m not a gentleman,’ he protested quickly, evidently seeing this as some sort of defence. ‘I never pretended to