The Italian’s Rightful Bride

PROLOGUE

“‘SOLID gold vases, mouth-watering jewels, wealth beyond the dreams of avarice.”’

Joanna, stretched out on the beach, turned her head to where her ten-year-old son was sitting on the sand beside her, his head in a newspaper.

‘What are you on about, darling?’

‘Big find,’ he said, peering at her over the top. ‘Palace, fabulous treasure.’ He saw her regarding him with amused disbelief and said, ‘Well, they found a few old bricks, anyway.’

‘That sounds more like it.’ She laughed. ‘I’m used to the way you embellish things. Where did they find these “old bricks”?’

‘Rome,’ he said, giving her the paper.

Following his pointing finger, she saw a small item with a few basic details.

“‘Fascinating and unique foundations-vast palace-fifteen hundred years old-”’

‘It sounds right up your street, Mum,’ Billy observed. ‘Ruins, crumbling with age-’

‘If that’s meant to be a comment on my appearance, you can save it,’ she told him. ‘I may look merely ancient but I feel prehistoric.’

‘That’s what I thought,’ he said cheekily.

‘I’ll send you to bed without any supper.’

‘You and what army?’ he challenged her.

His face was wicked and gleeful. She adored him.

Because her job took her away from home, and she was sharing Billy with her ex-husband, they saw too little of each other. This summer they were treating themselves to a holiday at Cervia, on the Adriatic coast of Italy.

It had been glorious to have nothing to do but stretch out on the beach and talk to Billy, who was mature for his years. But for both of them inactivity had soon begun to pall, and the newspaper item stirred all her professional instincts.

She had a glittering reputation as an archaeologist, or a ‘rubble and bone merchant’ as Billy irreverently put it, and this was, as he’d said, right up her street. As she read she hummed softly under her breath.

Foundations of huge building found in the grounds of the Palazzo Montegiano, ancestral home of the hereditary princes of Montegiano, and the residence of the present Prince Gustavo.

The humming stopped.

‘Have you ever been to Rome, Mum?’ Billy asked. ‘Mum? Mum?’

Receiving no reply, he leaned closer and waved his hands. ‘Earth to Mum. Come in, please.’

‘Sorry,’ she said hastily. ‘What did you say?’

‘Have you ever been to Rome?’

‘Er-yes-yes-’

‘You sound half-witted,’ he said kindly.

‘Do I, darling? Sorry, it’s just-he always said there was a great lost palace.’

‘He? You know this Prince Thingy?’

‘I met him once, years ago,’ she said vaguely. ‘How about an ice cream?’

Steering him away from the subject was an act of desperation. Because there was no way she could say to her darling son, ‘Gustavo Montegiano is the man I once loved more than I ever loved your father, the man I could have married if I’d been sufficiently selfish.’

And she might have added, ‘He’s the man who broke my heart without even knowing that he possessed it.’