The Italian’s Rightful Bride

CHAPTER ONE

‘RING, damn you, ring!’

Prince Gustavo fixed his gaze on the phone, which stayed obstinately dead.

‘You were supposed to call every week, without fail,’ he growled. ‘And it’s been two weeks.’

Silence.

He got up from his desk and went impatiently over to the tall windows through which he could see the stone terrace. On the last of the broad steps that led down to the lawn sat a nine-year-old girl, her shoulders hunched in childish misery.

The sight increased Gustavo’s anger. He strode back, snatched up the telephone and dialled with sharp, stabbing movements.

He knew nobody had ever forced his ex-wife to do what didn’t suit her. But this time he was going to insist, not for himself, but for the little girl who pined for some sign that her mother remembered her.

‘Crystal?’ he snapped at last. ‘You were supposed to call.’

‘Caro,’ came the soft purr that had once sent shivers up his spine. ‘If you only knew how busy I am-’

‘Too busy for your daughter?’

‘My poor little Renata? How is she?’

‘Pining for her mother,’ he said furiously. ‘And now I’ve got you on the line you’re going to talk to her.’

‘But, sweetie, I’ve no time. You caught me on my way out, and please don’t call again-’

‘Never mind going out,’ he said. ‘Renata’s just outside and she can be here in a moment.’ He could hear the little girl’s footsteps running along the terrace.

‘I have to go,’ came Crystal’s voice. ‘Tell her I love her.’

‘I’m damned if I will. Tell her yourself. Crystal-Crystal?’

But she had gone, hanging up at the exact moment the child came running into the room.

‘Let me talk to Mamma,’ she cried, seizing the phone from him. ‘Mamma, Mamma.’

He saw the joy drain out of her face as she heard the dead tone. And, as he’d feared, the face she then turned on him was full of accusation.

‘Why didn’t you let me talk to her?’ she cried.

‘Darling, she was in a rush-it was a bad time for her-’

‘No, it was your fault. I heard you shouting at her. You don’t want her to talk to me.’

‘That isn’t true-’

He tried to take his daughter into his arms but she resisted him, not by struggling but by standing stiff, her face blank and unrevealing.

Just like me, he thought sadly, remembering the times in his life when he had concealed his innermost self in the same way. There was no doubt that this was truly his child, unlike Crystal’s second offspring, whose birth had precipitated the divorce.

‘Darling…’ he tried again, but gave up in the face of her silent hostility.

She blamed him for her mother’s desertion and the fact that she’d been left behind, because she couldn’t bear to believe anything else. And was it kinder to force the truth on her, or go along with her fantasy of a mother who yearned for her and a cruel father who kept them apart? He only wished he knew.

Reluctantly he released her and she ran out at once. Gustavo sat down heavily at his desk and buried his head in his hands.

‘Have I come at a bad time?’

Gustavo looked up to see an elderly man in shabby, earth-stained clothes who stood in the tall window, mopping his brow.

‘No, come in,’ Gustavo said with relief, opening an ornate eighteenth-century cupboard and revealing a small fridge concealed inside.

‘How is it going?’ he asked, pouring two beers.

‘I’ve gone about as far as I can,’ Professor Carlo Francese said, puffing from his recent exertions. ‘But my expertise is limited.’

‘Not in my experience,’ Gustavo said loyally.

They had been friends for eight years, ever since Gustavo had allowed his palazzo to be used for an archaeological convention. Carlo was an archaeologist with a major reputation, and when ancient foundations had recently been discovered on Gustavo’s estate he had called Carlo first.

‘Gustavo, this is potentially the biggest find for a century, and you need serious professionals. Fentoni is the best. He’ll jump at it.’

He gave Gustavo a shrewd look. ‘You’re not listening.’

‘Of course I am, it was just-hell and damnation!’

‘Crystal?’

‘Who else? It’s not so much that she betrayed me with another man, bore him a son and made a fool of me. I hate that, but I can bear it. What I can’t forgive is the way she left without a backward glance at Renata, and doesn’t bother to keep in touch. My little girl is breaking her heart, and I can’t help her.’

‘I never much liked Crystal,’ Carlo admitted slowly. ‘I remember meeting her a few years after your wedding. You were totally crazy about her but she always struck me as slightly detached.’

‘Totally crazy,’ he murmured with a wry, reminiscent grin. ‘That’s true. I went on believing in her far too long, but I had to. In order to marry her I behaved very badly to someone else that I should have married, and I suppose I needed to believe that the “prize” I’d won was worth it.’

‘Behaved badly?’ The professor’s eyes gleamed with interest. ‘You mean really badly?’

‘Sorry to disappoint you,’ Gustavo said with a reluctant grin, ‘but there was no grand drama. Neither the lady nor I were in love. It was to be a suitable marriage, virtually an arranged one.’

Carlo wasn’t shocked. Whatever the modern world might imagine, such things were still common among the great aristocratic families of Europe. Money gravitated to titles, and where vast estates and ancient houses were concerned it was a matter of family duty to protect them.

And if there was one thing Gustavo understood it was his duty.

‘So what happened about this arranged marriage?’ Carlo asked now.

‘My father was alive then, and he’d had some bad luck. A friend of my mother’s knew of an English girl who had a great fortune. I met her, and we got on well.’

‘What was she like?’

Gustavo considered for a moment.

‘She was a nice person,’ he said at last. ‘Gentle and understanding, someone I could talk to. We would have had a good marriage, in a sedate kind of way. But then Crystal appeared, and suddenly sedate wasn’t enough.

‘She was-’ he struggled for words ‘-like a comet flaming across the sky. She dazzled me. I couldn’t see the truth, which was that she was ruthless and selfish. I saw it later, but by then we were married.’

‘How did you break it off with your fiancée?’

‘I didn’t. She broke it off with me. She was wonderful. She’d seen what was happening and said that, if I preferred Crystal, there was no problem. After all, what woman wanted a reluctant husband? That was how she put it, and it all sounded so reasonable.’

‘Suppose she’d refused to release you? Would you have gone through with the wedding?’

‘Of course.’ Gustavo sounded slightly shocked. ‘I’d given my word of honour.’

‘What about your family’s reaction?’

‘They weren’t pleased but there was nothing they could do. We presented it to the world as a mutual decision, which in many ways it was, since I think my fiancée was secretly glad to be rid of me.’

He grinned.

‘When I say “we” presented it to the world, I really mean that she did. She did all the talking while I stood there like a dummy and probably looking like one. My father was furious at losing her inheritance.’

‘Crystal was poor, then?’

‘No, she had a fortune, but it was more modest.’

‘So you didn’t put family interests first that time?’ Carlo observed. ‘Crystal must have been quite something.’

Gustavo nodded and fell silent, remembering the impact his wife had made on his younger self. She’d been all laughter and sensuality, reckless and passionately emotional, or so he’d thought. It was only later that he’d understood how limited was her capacity for any honest emotion.

He’d fallen into the trap of thinking that because her feelings were freely expressed, they must be deep. With himself it was the opposite. His feelings were too intense to be spoken of, and so the world mistakenly called him chilly.

But the friend watching him sympathetically at this moment knew better. He did not persist with the subject.

‘The sooner you get this place studied by Fentoni and his team the better,’ he observed.

‘I suppose he’s expensive,’ Gustavo said wryly.

‘The best always is. I guess money’s tight again?’

‘Crystal wants every last penny back. She’s entitled to it, but it’s a strain.’

‘Well, perhaps this discovery will turn out to be a gold-mine.’

‘To be sure,’ Gustavo said without conviction. ‘All right, let’s contact him.’

Carlo snatched up the phone. ‘I’ll do it now.’

While he was getting through Gustavo returned to the window to look out over the lawns to where he could see his daughter in the distance. She was sitting on a tree stump, her knees drawn up, her arms clasped around them.

She looked up and, although she was too far off for him to discern her face, he was sure her expression was hostile. He smiled and waved to her, but she looked away.

He wanted to bang his head against the wall, riven with guilt and despair that he couldn’t make things right for her.

Carlo was chattering urgently into the phone, sounding exasperated.

‘Fentoni, old friend, this is a far more important job-Oh, damn your contract. Tell them you’ve changed your mind and want to do this instead- How much? Oh, I see.’

He looked up at Gustavo with a shrug of resignation.

‘So who else, then?’ he said back into the phone. ‘Yes, I’ve heard of her, but if Mrs Manton is English, do we want her pronouncing on Italian artefacts? All right, I’ll take your word for that. Have you got her number?’

He scribbled something down, and came off the phone to find Gustavo scowling.

‘English?’

‘Specialising in Italy,’ Carlo told him. ‘Fentoni says she was his best pupil. Why don’t you let me deal with this? I’ll contact her, fix a visit, you can see what you think of her, and then agree terms.’

‘Thanks, Carlo. I’ll leave everything in your hands.’

When Joanna Manton received the call on her cellphone, and understood what Carlo wanted, she had only one question.

‘Are you saying that Prince Gustavo actually asked for me?’

‘No, no,’ his voice came down the line. ‘You were recommended by Professor Fentoni. I suggest you come down and look the place over.’

She was silent, torn by temptation. Surely it could do no harm to see Gustavo again after twelve years? She was no longer a girl, buffeted by feelings she couldn’t control.

It would even do her good to see him. Like her, he would be older, different, and the image that had persisted in her heart, defying all attempts to remove it, would be supplanted by reality. And at last she would be free.

‘I was planning to spend the summer knocking about with my ten-year-old son,’ she said.

‘Bring him with you. His Excellency has a daughter of the same age. When shall I expect you?’

‘I don’t know…’ she wavered.

Billy, who had been shamelessly eavesdropping her end of the conversation, mouthed, ‘Montegiano?’

She nodded.

‘Tell him you’ll go.’

‘Billy!’

‘Mum, you want this job so much you can taste it. You know you do.’ He grabbed the phone and spoke into it. ‘She’s on her way.’ Catching her indignant look, he said innocently, ‘I’m just trying to stop you wasting a lot of time. Why do women always dither?’

Secretly she was glad he’d taken the decision out of her hands. She told Carlo that she would be there in a few days, and hung up.

‘Billy, I thought you wanted us to enjoy ourselves.’

He gave her a hilarious grin. ‘But, Mum, we hate enjoying ourselves. It’s so boring.’

She shared his laughter. He was a kindred spirit.

The next morning they piled everything into the car and set off to travel the five hundred miles across Italy, to the outskirts of Rome. As she neared their destination she found herself slowing down, making excuses for the delay.

‘We’ll stay here tonight,’ she said when they reached the edge of the little town of Tivoli.

‘But it’s only another fifteen miles to Rome,’ he protested.

‘I’m tired,’ she said quickly, ‘and I’d rather arrive early tomorrow, after a good night’s sleep.’

Later that night, when Billy had gone to bed, she sat by her window, looking in the direction that led to Rome, and called herself a coward.

Whyever had she agreed to do this? Some things were best left in the past. Yet the truth was that part of her was still the eighteen-year-old Lady Joanna who’d agreed to meet Prince Gustavo as a prospective husband, but in a mood of amused indulgence because Aunt Lilian, who’d planned everything, was such a dear.

‘I’m not really interested,’ she’d told her on the night before Gustavo arrived. ‘Fancy linking us up because he needs my money and you want me to be a princess.’

Aunt Lilian had winced. ‘That’s a very vulgar way of putting it. In our world the right people must meet the right people.’

By ‘our world’ she’d meant wealth and titles. Joanna had an earl among her relatives and a huge fortune, so she was included in the charmed circle, which, even in a modern, supposedly democratic age, remained mostly closed to outsiders.

Joanna had thought all this was hilarious. How young she had been, how full of modern ideas! How sure that she knew it all! How stupidly, cruelly, fatally ignorant!

Sometimes fairy tales came true. Sometimes the sun shone, the birds sang and moon rhymed with June.

That summer had been a time of magic, when the Good Fairy had cast her spell, and everything was perfect for a brief moment.

Even twelve years later, just closing her eyes and letting her mind roam free could bring back the warmth and the sense of once-in-a-lifetime sweetness.

There had been a week-long house party, given by her second cousin, the earl, Lord Rannley, at his stately home in England, Rannley Towers.

She’d first seen Gustavo walking across the lawn towards the house. He was some way off so she had had several minutes to notice everything about him.

He was over six feet, with dark hair and a lean body, moving with a controlled grace that had held her entranced attention. It had been a hot day and he’d rolled up the sleeves of his shirt and pulled open the throat.

And that was how he lived in her mind ever after, Prince Charming in the story, handsome and elegant. Everything was perfect, too perfect to be true, if only she’d had the sense to see it.

But she’d lost all her common sense by the time he reached her, one of her cousins introduced them and he had said, in his quiet voice, ‘Buon giorno, signorina. It is a great pleasure to meet you.’

Nobody had warned her that it was possible for the world to turn upside down in a moment because of a young man with dark eyes and a gentle gravity that went straight to her heart.

But it had happened, and after that there was no turning back.

Naturally nobody mentioned the reason for the meeting. Officially Gustavo was travelling to see something of the world, and was calling on old friends of his father. But when the family sat down to dinner he was seated beside Joanna.

She had a hard time dressing for that meal. Now that she’d seen him she examined her own appearance critically.

‘And I’m nothing much,’ she sighed. ‘I’m too tall, too thin-’

‘Not thin,’ Aunt Lilian protested loyally. ‘Slender.’

‘Thin,’ she said stubbornly.

‘Most girls would give their eye-teeth to be your size. If you took a little trouble you’d be beautiful and elegant.’

‘Not beautiful. Not me.’

Aunt Lilian groaned, but there was some justice in Joanna’s complaint. Her hair was fair, not blonde but mousy, her figure coltish rather than elegant. Her face was pleasant despite a slightly irregular mouth and a nose that she wished a fraction shorter. Her eyes were her best feature, being a restful grey, but it wasn’t the deep blue she would have liked. Everything about her just missed being something better, and she had never been so acutely aware of it as now.

The dress she chose was a restrained blue silk which had cost the earth and did little for her. After trying her hair up, then down, then up, she finally let it hang loose about her shoulders. Her make-up was like the dress, restrained, chiefly because she lacked the self-confidence to be bold.

Nobody could have faulted Gustavo’s behaviour over dinner. He talked to everyone and didn’t try to monopolise Joanna. But when he turned to her she felt as though the rest of the room had vanished.

She didn’t know what they talked about either then or over the next few days. They went riding together. There was laughter and idle chatter, and sometimes she would find him looking at her with a serious expression that made her heart turn over.

Halfway through the week he invited her out to a restaurant. He was the perfect host, charming, attentive, but not, to her disappointment, flirtatious. He asked about her life and she told him about how she’d lived since her parents died and her Aunt Lilian had raised her.

He told her about his own life on the Montegiano estate, and the love in his voice told her why he was prepared to put his home before everything else in his life.

‘For six hundred years my family have lived in the same house,’ he told her, ‘always adding to it and making it more beautiful.’

‘It sounds wonderful,’ she told him eagerly. ‘I love old places.’

‘I would like you to see it.’

When they were drinking wine, he said with a touch of ruefulness, ‘You know what our friends plan for us, don’t you?’

Her heart began to beat faster. Was he going to propose right now?

But when she nodded he only said, ‘We must not let them make complicated something that should be very simple. This is our decision, not theirs. There can be nothing without affection and respect.’

The words ‘affection and respect’ chilled her slightly, for they fell far short of what she wanted. But for a while it was enough to be here with him, intoxicated by his presence, falling more deeply in love with every passing second.

Afterwards they went to a nightclub, and danced together. At last, after so much dreaming and hoping, she was in the circle of his arms, feeling his hand firm on her waist, the warmth of his body moving against her. The sensation was so sweet as to be almost unbearable.

She was wildly, passionately in love. She knew now that the songs and the stories were right after all. The world was bathed in a golden light and soon heaven would be hers.

At the end of the week he invited her and Aunt Lilian to visit his estate just outside Rome. She was in seventh heaven. Of course he wanted to show her his home before making any final decisions.

She was so sure she understood him that even his reticence did not trouble her too much. He was naturally quiet and controlled. But that was only on the surface. Behind his barriers she sensed another man, vibrant, thrilling, waiting for the right woman to free his heart.

She knew she could be that woman, because they were alike. She too was quiet and retiring, and they would have a meeting of minds leading on inevitably to a meeting of hearts.

That, at any rate, was what she told herself.

The Montegiano estate only increased Joanna’s sense of magic. Standing about three miles outside Rome, it covered a thousand acres, culminating in the great palace that stood on a rise, dominating the surrounding landscape.

For someone as much in love with the past as Joanna the house was a marvel. Down long corridors she wandered, meeting ancestors who looked down from centuries past. Gustavo described them in a way that brought them to life for her, and was clearly impressed by her knowledgeable interest.

‘You know a great deal about history, and especially of my country,’ he said, smiling.

‘I’ve always been crazy about the past. I went on an archaeological dig once, and loved it. I’d probably go to college and study archaeology if I wasn’t…’

Just in time she stopped herself from saying, If I wasn’t going to get married, and hastily substituted, ‘if I wasn’t the sort of person who dithers about deciding things.’

She knew she was being studied by every employee in the place, all waiting with bated breath for the announcement.

Day after day she and Gustavo rode together, and he told her about the estate he loved in a voice that was gentle, almost emotional. One day as they walked through the woods he said, ‘Do you like my home, Joanna?’

‘I love it,’ she said fervently.

‘Do you think you could be happy living here?’

That was his proposal.

She accepted so quickly that the memory made her blush later. She brushed her fears aside, desperate to seize her heart’s desire.

When, at last, he kissed her it made her forget everything else. There was skill in everything he did, covering her mouth, teasing her with his lips, caressing, holding her close. The effect on her was electric. Yet even then she was cautious enough to hold back a little, waiting until she could sense that his passion was as deep as her own.

The wedding was set to take place two months later, in England. Two weeks before the date Gustavo and his family arrived to stay at Rannley Towers and take part in a series of glittering festivities. In the weeks apart they corresponded, but mostly about practical affairs. They talked about the estate, the life they would live there. He addressed her as ‘My dearest Joanna’ and signed himself ‘Yours affectionately’.

But when she saw him again nothing mattered but that he was here, and they would soon be married.

Her dress was a masterpiece of ivory silk, cut simply to suit her tall figure. The sleeves were long, almost down to the hem, the train stretched behind her and the veil streamed down to the floor and over the train. When she put it on and regarded herself in the mirror she knew that she was beautiful. Now, surely, he would fall in love with her?

And then Crystal arrived.