The Count's Blackmail Bargain

The car didn’t really need air conditioning, she thought ruefully. Paolo’s mother could have lowered the temperature to arctic proportions with one look. And the cost of her brother’s school trip was rising by the minute. He’d better enjoy it, that’s all, she muttered under her breath.

But as they drove into Umbria she found herself succumbing to the sheer beauty of the scenery around her, all other considerations taking second place. Everywhere she looked seemed to be composed of endless shades of green, and every hilltop seemed crowned with its own little town, clinging precariously to its rocky crag.

Half an hour later they reached Besavoro, which seemed to be hardly more than a large village on the bank of a river, which Paolo told her was a tributary of the Tiber. The central point was the square, where houses and shops huddled round a tall, ornate church. There was a market taking place, and the cramped space had to be negotiated with care.

Once free of the village, they began to climb quite steeply, taking a narrow road up the side of the valley. They passed the occasional house, but generally it was rugged terrain with a steep rocky incline leading up to heavy woodland on one side, and, on the other, protected only by a low wall, a stomach-churning drop down to the clustering roofs, and the river, now reduced to a silver thread, below them.

She remembered Paolo’s comment about a death trap, and suppressed a shiver, thankful that Giacomo was such a good driver.

‘We are nearly there, signorina.’ To her surprise, Laura found herself being addressed by the Signora. The older woman was even smiling faintly. ‘No doubt you are eager to see where you will be spending your little vacation. I hope it lives up to your expectations.’

Any overture, however slight, was welcome, and Laura responded. ‘Has the house been in the family long?’ she enquired politely.

‘For generations, although it has been altered and extended over the years. At one time, it is said to have been a hermitage, a solitary place where monks who had sinned were sent to do penance.’

‘I know how they feel,’ Paolo commented over his shoulder. ‘I am astonished that Alessio should waste even an hour in such a place. He has certainly never repented of anything in his life.’

His mother shrugged. ‘He spent much of his childhood here. Perhaps it has happy memories for him.’

‘He was never a child,’ said Paolo. ‘And his past is what happened yesterday—no more.’ He leaned forward. ‘Look, Laura mia. You can see the house now, if you look down a little through the trees.’

She caught a glimpse of pale rose stonework, and faded terracotta tiles, and caught her breath in sudden magic.

It was like an enchanted place, sleeping among the trees, she thought, and she was coming to break the spell. And she smiled to herself, knowing she was being utterly absurd.

Impossible to miss the sound of an approaching car in the clear air, Alessio thought. His unwanted guests were arriving.

Sighing irritably, he swung himself off the sun lounger, and reached for the elderly pair of white tennis shorts lying on the marble tiles beside him, reluctantly dragging them on. For the past few days, he’d revelled in freedom and isolation. Basked in his ability to swim in the pool and sunbathe beside it naked, knowing that Guillermo and Emilia who ran the villa for him would never intrude on his privacy.

Now his solitude had ended.

He thrust his feet into battered espadrilles, and began walking up through the terraced gardens to the house.

Up to the last minute, he’d prayed that this nightmare would never happen. That Paolo and his ragazza would quarrel, or that Zia Lucrezia would love her as a daughter on sight, and withdraw her objections. Anything—anything that would let him off this terrible hook.

But her phone call the previous night had destroyed any such hopes. She’d been almost hysterical, he remembered with distaste, railing that the girl was nothing more than a gold-digging tart, coarse and obvious, a woman of the lowest class. But clever in a crude way because she obviously intended to trap into marriage her poor Paolo, who did not realise the danger he was in.

At the same time, she’d made it very clear that her threat to expose his fleeting affair with Vittoria, if he did not keep his word, was all too real.

‘I want the English girl destroyed,’ she had hissed at him. ‘Nothing less will do.’

Alessio had been tempted to reply that he would prefer to destroy Vittoria, who was proving embarrassingly tenacious, bombarding him with phone calls and little notes, apparently unaware that her voluptuously passionate body in no way compensated for her nuisance value.

If she continued to behave with such indiscretion, Fabrizio and his mother might well smell a rat, without any intervention from Zia Lucrezia, he told himself grimly.

He’d been thankful to escape from Rome, and Vittoria’s constant badgering, to this private hideaway where he could remain incomunicabile. He hoped that, during his absence, she would find some other willing target for her libido, or he might ultimately have to be brutal with her. A thought that gave him no pleasure whatsoever.

And now he was faced with another, worse calamity. This unknown, unwanted girl that he had somehow to entice from Paolo’s bed into his own. Probably, he decided, after he’d deliberately made himself very, very drunk…

If I emerge alive from this mess, I shall take a vow of celibacy, he thought moodily.

Guillermo was already opening the heavy wooden entrance door, and Emilia was hovering anxiously. He knew that his instructions would have been minutely carried out, and that the arrangements and the food would be perfect. But visitors at the villa were still a rarity, and the servants were more accustomed to their employer’s own brand of casual relaxation. Zia Lucrezia’s presence would prove taxing for all of them.

He stepped out of the shadowy hall into the sunlight. The car had halted a few feet away, and the chauffeur was helping the Signora to alight, while Caio yapped crossly from her arms.

But Alessio’s attention was immediately on the girl, standing quietly, a little apart, looking up at the house. His first reaction was that she was not his type—or Paolo’s, for that matter, and he found this faintly bewildering. In fact she fitted none of the preconceived images his aunt’s fulminations had engendered, he thought critically as he observed her. Nearly as tall as Paolo himself, with clear, pale skin, a cloud of russet hair reaching to her shoulders, eyes like smoke, and a sweet, blunt-cornered mouth.

Not a conventional beauty—but curiously beguiling all the same.

Probably too slim, he mused, although the cheap dress she was wearing was singularly unrevealing.

And then, as if in answer to some silent wish, a faint breeze from the hills behind them blew the thin material back against her body, moulding it against the small, high breasts, the slight concavity of her stomach, the faintly rounded thighs, and long, slender legs.

Alessio, astonished, felt the breath catch suddenly in his throat, and, in spite of himself, he found his body stirring with frank and unexpected anticipation.

I’ve changed my mind, he thought in instant self-mockery. I shan’t get drunk after all. On the contrary, I think this ragazza deserves nothing less than my complete and sober attention.

He became aware that the Signora was approaching, her eyes studying him with disfavour.

‘Is this how you dress to receive your visitors, Alessio?’

He took her hand, bowing over it. His smile glinted coldly at her. ‘Ten minutes ago, Zia Lucrezia, I was not dressed at all. This is a concession.’ He eyed Caio grimly. ‘And you have brought your dog, I see. I hope he has learned better manners since our last encounter.’ He looked past her to his cousin. ‘Ah, Paolo, come stai?’

Paolo stared at him suspiciously. ‘What are you doing here?’

Alessio gave him a look of mild surprise. ‘It is my house, which makes me your host. Naturally, I wish to be here to attend to your comfort.’

‘You are not usually so concerned,’ Paolo muttered.

Alessio grinned at him. ‘No? Then perhaps I have seen the error of my ways. And the house has enough rooms for us all. You will not be required to share with me, cousin,’ he added blandly, then looked at the girl as if he had just noticed her. ‘And the name of your charming companion?’ Deliberately, he kept his voice polite rather than enthusiastic, noting the nervousness in the grey eyes under their dark fringe of lashes.

Paolo took her hand defensively. ‘This is Signorina Laura Mason, who has come with me from London. Laura, may I present my cousin, the Count Alessio Ramontella.’

He saw that she did not meet his gaze, but looked down instead at the flagstoned courtyard. ‘How do you do, signore?’ Her voice was quiet and clear.

‘Allow me to welcome you to my home, signorina.’ He inclined his head with formal courtesy, then led the way into the house. ‘Emilia, please show the ladies where they are to sleep. And the dog. Guillermo, will you take my cousin to his room?’

As he was turning away Paolo grabbed his arm. ‘What is this?’ he hissed. ‘Where are you putting Laura?’

‘In the room next to your mother’s—at her request.’ Alessio shrugged. ‘I am sorry if you are disappointed, but you also know that she would never permit you to sleep with your girlfriend under any roof that she was sharing. Besides, if you even approach that part of the house, that little hairy rat of your mamma’s will hear and start yapping.’ His grin was laced with faint malice. ‘Like the old monks, you will have to practise chastity.’

‘A lesson you have yet to learn,’ Paolo returned sourly.

‘In general, perhaps, but I have never brought a woman here,’ Alessio told him softly.

‘Talking of which,’ Paolo said, ‘what do you think of my little English inamorata?’

‘Do you need my opinion?’ Alessio gave him a steady look. ‘If she satisfies you, cousin, that should be enough.’ He paused. ‘Although usually you like them with more…’ He demonstrated with his hands.