Sara Craven Tribute Collection

‘You are very quiet.’

Clare, who’d been sitting, staring rigidly through the windscreen, her hands gripped together in her lap for the first fifteen minutes of the journey, started slightly as Guido spoke.

‘I think “stunned” would be a more apposite word,’ she returned constrainedly.

‘Are you a nervous passenger? Am I going too fast for you?’

Now there, thought Clare, was a loaded question.

Aloud she said, coolly, ‘I’m not nervous. As I’m sure you already know, Marchese, you’re a very good driver.’

The road they were taking twisted and twined between tall, heavily forested hills, but she’d been aware from the first that the car’s power was being tightly, even ruthlessly controlled.

As he controls everything else, she thought tautly.

And she was deeply conscious, too, of Guido Bartaldi’s own physical proximity to her in the comparatively confined conditions of the vehicle. Watching his hand change gear only inches from her thigh. The play of muscle in his forearms as he turned the wheel.

Each slight action or reaction made its own individual impact on her senses.

It was an effort to breathe normally, she realised, swallowing. To ignore the heightened pulsing of her bloodstream. Her whole body’s tense response to his nearness.

He shot a glance at her. ‘Then perhaps you’re sulking because I whisked you away with me.’

She gasped indignantly. ‘I don’t sulk. But are you quite so high-handed with all your staff?’

‘I don’t know.’ There was a note of amusement in his voice. ‘And I am also the wrong person to ask. Maybe you should consult them.’

He paused. ‘But I should make one thing clear, Chiara. I do not regard you simply as a member of staff.’

She stiffened. Her swift sideways glance was wary. ‘I don’t understand. You asked me to work for you. That was the deal.’

‘Si,’ he agreed. ‘But I would much prefer you to work with me—as a colleague. Even a friend.’

Pain lanced through her. ‘That—can’t happen.’

‘Why not? After all, while you live under my roof, cara mia, you will be almost a member of the family.’

‘You’re paying me a salary, signore. In my book that makes me an employee—and I wouldn’t have it any other way,’ she added with emphasis, then hesitated. ‘And while we’re discussing preferences, I’d rather you didn’t use—endearments when you speak to me. I feel it’s—inappropriate.’

There was a silence, then, ‘So what do you wish to be called?’

She bit her lip. ‘I—I don’t know. How did you address Paola’s previous companion?’

‘As “signora”,’ he said gravely.

‘Then maybe we should be equally formal.’

‘The two cases are hardly the same. The Signora was a much older woman. And she did not have hair like sunlight and a honey mouth. You see the difficulty?’

‘If you persist with remarks like that, signore,’ Clare said coldly, ‘working for you will not just be difficult—but impossible. Maybe you should stop the car right here and now.’

‘Per Dio,’ he said. ‘So I am forbidden even the mildest flirtation?’

‘By no means,’ Clare returned primly, furiously aware that he was laughing at her. ‘Just as long as it’s directed at Paola.’

‘How dull,’ he murmured.

Clare swallowed. ‘If that’s how you feel, maybe you should think again about being married. It seems to me that you’re heading for disaster.’

‘And it seems to me,’ he said, ‘that you are very candid—for an employee.’ He allowed the point to register, then continued smoothly. ‘But put your mind at rest. I promise I am becoming more reconciled to my fate with every day that passes.’

‘But yours isn’t the only point of view that counts. Can you honestly say the same for Paola?’

He shrugged. ‘That is for you to find out.’

‘And if I can’t do what you want?’ she said slowly. ‘If she won’t accept this marriage—what then?’

He laughed. ‘I have infinite faith in your powers of persuasion, mia bella. Besides,’ he added, his voice hardening slightly, ‘you must see that Paola needs to be married. There are no other options open to her. She is not trained for a career, although she has spoken vaguely of modelling, and she has no qualifications. At school, she was regarded as a charming feather-brain.’

‘Maybe she’d be very good at modeling,’ Clare suggested, without much hope.

‘She has the looks,’ he agreed. ‘But no discipline. A life that required her to get out of bed before midday would have little appeal. I doubt she has the stamina either. It is a physically taxing existence.’

Clare bit her lip. ‘Poor Paola.’

He shook his head. ‘You need not pity her. Because she will be happy—and safe. She needs above all someone who will look after her, and prevent her from doing something reckless and ruinous.’

‘Like marrying the wrong man,’ Clare said bitterly.

He slanted a smile at her. ‘But by the time the wedding takes place, mia bella, she will not think that. I guarantee it.’

A curious emotion stirred inside Clare, compounded of anger and something perilously like envy.

She said, ‘Heaven help her.’

‘Heaven is where the best marriages are made, Chiara.’ The undercurrent of laughter in his voice goaded her. ‘Isn’t that what they say?’

‘I think,’ Clare said coldly, ‘that “they” talk an awful lot of nonsense.’ And relapsed into a fulminating silence.

The Villa Minerva lay at the head of a small valley, a tawny sprawl of a house, crowned in faded terracotta tiles and enclosed protectively by the encircling arms of the craggy dark green slopes which reared behind it.

Like an old, proud lion sleeping in the sun, Clare thought with an involuntary lift of her heart, as she caught her first glimpse of it through the trees that lined its steep, private road.

She’d expected something far more stately and grand, even intimidating. But, apart from its considerable size, the villa looked reassuringly home-like.

She thought, ‘It’s beautiful,’ and only realised she’d spoken aloud when she caught the flicker of her companion’s smile, and a murmured ‘Grazie.’

Minutes later, the car negotiated a gateway guarded by tall stone pillars, and drove into a large paved courtyard fronting the house, where a fountain in the Baroque style sent lazy arcs of water curving into the sparkling air.