The Italians: Angelo, Rocco & Stefano: Wife in the Shadows / A Dangerous Infatuation / The Italian's Blushing Gardener

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 even the bathroom and the dressing room, where her eyes had narrowed at the display of clothes on the hanging rails.

‘At least you will look the part in public, cara, if he ever allows you to be seen there with him,’ had been the first comment to grate across Ellie’s nerve endings.

No detail seemed too small to be spared a remark.

But the focus of her attention had been the bed. She’d stood, unmoving, staring at it in silence, a smile playing about her full lips until Ellie had wanted to scream.

She’d said at last, ‘I am trying to imagine you in the act of surrender on this bed, but strangely I find it quite impossible. You still look so innocent—so sadly untouched, it makes me wonder if he has ever taken the trouble to consummate the marriage. He will have to do so eventually, naturalmente,’ she continued musingly. ‘It is his duty to his family to have a son, as I am sure Contessa Cosima has told him, so you can be of use for that, if nothing else. I wonder what has been holding him back? Maybe he still thinks of what might have been—with me.’

Ellie forced herself to meet Silvia’s mocking gaze. To speak levelly, ‘Why don’t you ask him?’

The smile widened, and became laughter. ‘I shall not have to, Elena mia. He will tell me himself soon enough.’

She’d gone to the door, then suddenly paused and walked back, bending to run a caressing hand across the magnificence of the bedcover.

Her voice had been quiet but very distinct. ‘It isn’t over yet, cara. You have to understand that. Because I still want him. And I shall have him, just as I would have done that night. Except he had to be punished. But now I think he has suffered enough—don’t you?’

And she had smiled again and left, hips swaying in her red dress, her hair a golden coronet in the late afternoon sun, while Ellie followed, numb with disbelief and some other emotions not quite so easily defined.

Now looking at the bed, seeing again Silvia’s possessive fingers stroking its cover as if they were someone’s skin, she felt as if she’d been somehow coated in slime. And, for a moment, terribly afraid—as if the sun had gone out forever, leaving her in darkness.

Oh come on, she adjured herself impatiently. You’ve just had an unpleasant hour or so, and it’s thrown you because your own cousin’s become someone you only thought you knew.

But for the moment at least, she found she did not want to lie down on the bed, and having tried and failed to get comfortable on the chaise longue, she decided to attempt a different ploy.

She walked into the bathroom, shedding her clothes as she went, and turned on the shower, gratefully allowing its powerful cascade to stream over her, washing away the foam from the scented gel she’d applied to her skin and with it some of the tensions and sense of unease left in Silvia’s wake. And, if she was honest, some of the pain too.

Some, but not all, she thought as she stepped dripping out of the cubicle, reaching blindly for a towel.

Only to find herself being firmly enveloped in a bath sheet, then carried, swaddled and helpless, back into the bedroom where she was set on her feet.

‘Buona sera, my sweet wife,’ Angelo said softly. ‘Does a shower cure a headache? I did not know that.’

Her lashes felt gummed together by the water, but she prised them open somehow staring up at him with mingled anger and shock.

‘What are you doing here?’ she demanded breathlessly, stepping back and trying not to trip on the trailing bath sheet. Trying, too, not to blush and failing miserably. ‘How dare you—walk in on me like that?’

The sculpted mouth curled. ‘And how dare you invite your sciattona of a cousin here in my absence?’ he retorted coldly. ‘Did you think I would welcome such a guest—or simply hope I would not find out? I am waiting to hear.’

She’d had a rotten afternoon and now this—this hideous embarrassment of knowing he’d seen her naked for a second time. She longed for the floor to open and swallow her, but it was clearly not going to do so, so she lifted her chin defiantly. ‘I do not have to explain myself to you, signore.’

‘Think again,’ he invited crisply.

‘Most of your family have visited us here.’ She was hardly able to believe she was saying these things. That she was being such an idiot. Almost as stupid, she thought mutinously, as he was arrogant. What right had he to—turn up out of the blue like this and challenge her? ‘Am I not allowed to see my only living relative in return?’

‘I am astonished you should wish to do so.’ The dark gaze narrowed. ‘Or do you have more in common than I thought? Did the pair of you perhaps work together to fool us all that night at Largossa?’

She wanted to slap him hard across the face for that, but her arms were confined inside her wrapping, and she dared not try to free them in case the beastly towel slipped or fell off altogether.

‘Believe whatever you want,’ she snapped. ‘It makes no difference to me. Now will you please go and allow me some privacy.’

‘Privacy?’ Angelo queried derisively. ‘Santa Madonna, what has there ever been in this marriage but privacy?’

She stiffened defensively. ‘I’m sorry if you’re not satisfied with your bargain.’