The Tuscan Tycoon’s Wife

CHAPTER EIGHT

‘TELL me I’m not dreaming. You’re really here!’

‘I’m here, I’m here! Feel me.’ Selena was laughing and crying together.

He did his best, crushing her in a fierce grip and kissing every part of her face.

‘I’ve imagined you walking up that road so often but it was always a trick of the light.’

‘Not this time. Oh, Leo, are you really glad to see me?’

Suddenly the words failed him. Was he glad to see her? All he knew was that the lump in his throat made it hard to speak.

‘You’re crying,’ she said in wonder.

‘Of course I’m not. Only wimps cry,’ he teased her with the reminder of her own words. But his eyes were wet and he didn’t dry them. He was a Latin, raised not to be ashamed of his emotions, and he had no wish to hide them with this woman.

He took her face between his hands, looking at her tenderly before laying his lips on hers in a long kiss. She answered, putting her heart into it, knowing this was why she’d come such a great distance, and nothing could have kept her away.

Something butted her from behind, then from the side, and she looked down to find herself surrounded by goats. They were coming down the hill, milling around the two of them, while a grinning goatherd made a gesture that was half greeting, half salute.

‘’Notte Franco,’ Leo said, grinning back.

It would be all over the valley now, he thought. So let them talk!

He tucked one of Selena’s bags under his arm, took the other in his hand, disentangled himself and her from curious goats, and put his free arm around her. Then, together they went up the hill to home.

‘Are your family visiting you?’ Selena asked, seeing all the faces at the windows.

‘No, they’re-’ he stopped himself from saying ‘-the servants.’ ‘Two of the girls are Gina’s nieces,’ he said. It was true. When he needed to employ somebody new he just told Gina and she produced some of her own vast family.

The faces vanished, and when they reached the door there was only Gina, smiling a welcome and explaining that the signorina’s room was being prepared, and in the meantime refreshments were on their way from the kitchen.

Gina departed, and Leo took Selena back into his arms, not kissing her this time but pulling her against him and resting his head against her hair.

‘How come she’s already preparing a room for me?’ Selena asked.

‘She saw you come up the hill, and when I-when we-well, I guess everyone knows all about us by now.’

It was on the tip of her tongue to ask what he thought ‘all about us’ might be, but she let it go. She didn’t know the answer herself. It was what she was here to find out. For the moment nothing mattered next to the joyous glow that enveloped her at being with him. In this country where everything looked strange and she didn’t know the language she felt that she’d come home. Because he was here.

‘Why didn’t you take a cab all the way to the door?’ Leo asked.

‘I didn’t know how to tell him your address. I found a bus which had ‘Morenza’ written on the front, only I didn’t know you had to buy the tickets in a sweet shop first, and by the time I’d done that the bus had gone. Yes, all right, make fun of me.’

He was chuckling at her droll manner, but he controlled himself. ‘I’m sorry, carissima, I can’t help it. It was the way you said it. We are a little mad in Italy. We buy bus tickets in sweet shops.’

‘What happens if the sweet shops are closed?’

‘We walk.’

She gave a choke of laughter. He dropped his head so that his forehead rested against hers, and grinned with sheer delight at having her here.

‘So I waited for the next bus,’ she said, ‘and then I recognised your house from what you’d told me.’

‘But why didn’t you call me to collect you?’

‘Well-you know-’

All the way over she’d been tormented by the thought that he didn’t really want her at all. She would call and hear the awkwardness in his voice. Perhaps he’d only called her in Texas to tell her not to call him because it had all been a big mistake. Only the fact that she was high above the Atlantic at the time stopped her getting out of the aircraft there and then.

She’d promised herself that when she landed she’d go straight back. Or call him. Or do anything rather than seek him out. Then she would hear again the sound of Barton clucking, and make herself go on, telling herself that no member of the Gates family had ever been a quitter. She had no idea if this were true, but it helped.

The bus had deposited her by the duck pond in Morenza, from where she could see the house at the top of the incline. There was an ancient cab waiting, and she could have simply pointed out the house to the driver, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it-not if she might be coming back that way soon, a reject.

So she’d walked the last mile, dropping with weariness until a familiar and inexpressibly dear figure had come flying down to meet her, weeping with joy as he enfolded her against his heart. Then she’d known all she needed to know.

He showed her up to the room the maids had just finished, and on the way she looked at the house with its heavy stone walls. It was just as he’d told her, except for being much larger.

Her room, too, was large, with a polished wooden floor and the biggest bed she had ever seen, with a carved walnut head. The windows were guarded by heavy wooden shutters to keep out the heat, and when Gina pulled them open Selena could step out onto a tiny balcony to look down over the valley and the most beautiful countryside she had ever seen. The hills rolled away, greens and blues fading into misty distance, the lines broken by pine trees.

It was still warm enough to have supper outside, watching the sun set. Gina served them fish soup, a mixture of squid, prawns and mussels, garlic, onions and tomatoes. Selena felt that she’d died and gone to heaven.

‘I got back to find Barton jumping up and down,’ she said, sipping white wine. ‘He’d left the message with Paulie who’d “forgotten” it.’

‘But my irresistible attraction drew you anyway?’ he ventured.

‘I came to see the Grosseto rodeo,’ she said firmly. ‘That was all.’

‘Nothing to do with me?’

‘Nothing to do with you. Don’t flatter yourself.’

‘No, ma’am.’

‘And you can stop grinning like that.’

‘I wasn’t grinning.’

‘You were, like the cat that swallowed the cream. Just because I came halfway around the world looking for you, it doesn’t mean anything. Do you understand that?’

‘Sure. And just because I’ve spent the last few weeks going crazy looking through websites trying to get one step ahead of you, that doesn’t mean anything either.’

‘Fine!’

‘Fine!’

They sat in silence, contemplating each other with joy.

‘You did it again,’ she said. ‘When I arrived you called me carissima, but you didn’t tell me what it meant.’

‘In Italian cara means dear,’ he said. ‘And when you add issima it’s a kind of emphasis, the most extreme form of something that you can say.’

She was looking at him.

‘And so you see,’ he said, taking her hand, ‘when a man calls a woman carissima-’

Suddenly it was hard. In the past he’d used the word casually, almost without meaning. Now everything was different and he was left only with the old debased currency.

‘It means that she is more than dear to him,’ he said. ‘It means-’

He broke off as Gina returned for the plates.

‘Tagliatelle with pumpkin, signore,’ she said.

Smiling, Leo let it go. There would be time later to say everything he wanted to say.

They finished the meal with Tuscan honey and nut cake. By then Selena’s eyes were closing. At last Leo took her hand and led her upstairs, stopping at her door.

‘Goodnight,’ he said softly. ‘Carissima.’

‘Goodnight.’

He kissed her cheek and left her.

He lay awake most of that night. The knowledge that she was sleeping next door made him feel like a man with hoarded treasure under his roof. The treasure was his and he would keep it, fighting off the world if need be.

He awoke in the early dawn and went to the window, opening the shutters and standing out on the small balcony. He was still filled with a sense of wonder at her coming, and he wanted to look again at the road that led down to the village, a road he’d so often gazed at, longing to see her, until one day she’d been there.

A shadow in the next window made him look. She was standing there, not looking at him but down into the valley, her face quiet and absorbed, as though in another world.

As he watched, she raised her head long enough to give him a brief smile, but then became absorbed once more in watching the valley.

Now he understood.

Throwing on a robe he slipped out of his own room and into hers, coming up behind her at the window and laying his hands gently on her shoulders. When she leaned back on him he slid his arms around her so that they crossed over her chest. She raised her hands to curve over his forearms, and he held her there against him, filled with a deep contentment that was unlike anything he’d ever known in his life before.

Down below them a soft glow was creeping over the valley, faint at first, then growing in intensity. The light was magical, unearthly, for just a few blessed moments.

Then it changed, grew harsher, firmer, more prosaic, ready for the working day. Only the memory was left.

Selena gave a little sigh of satisfaction, so quiet that he sensed it through his flesh rather than heard it.

‘That’s what I wanted,’ she said. ‘Ever since you told me about that light, I’ve longed to see it.’

‘What did you think?’

‘It was just as beautiful as you promised. The most beautiful thing I ever saw.’

‘It’ll be there again tomorrow,’ he said. ‘But now-’

He drew her gently back into the room and took her to bed, where they found another kind of beauty.

In his mind Leo had often imagined the moment when he introduced Selena to Peri, the mare who had been ready for him to sell for months, but whose elegance and spirit had made him keep her back, waiting for the right person.

Selena was that person. He’d always suspected it and he knew for sure when he witnessed their love at first sight. By now he reckoned he knew a bit about love at first sight.

He thought perhaps he would give Peri to her as a wedding present. He no longer shied away from that kind of thought. A man should know how to accept when it was all up with him.

They spent their days riding his fields and vineyards, and their nights in each other’s arms.

‘Stay here,’ he said one night when they had loved each other to exhaustion. ‘Don’t leave me again.’

She made the little restless movement that he always sensed at any mention of permanency, and he quickly added, ‘Take charge of the horses. Take charge of me. Either or both, as you like.’

She raised herself on one elbow and looked down into his face. The shutters were open, flooding the room with moonlight, throwing shadows between her breasts, absorbing all his attention so that he didn’t hear her question.

‘What was that?’ he murmured, tracing the swell with his finger.

‘I said it was about time you finished telling me what carissima means.’

As she spoke she was easing herself over him, moving slowly and with purpose.

‘If you are my carissima,’ he said, ‘you are dearer to me than all the world. You are my love, my beloved, the only one who exists for me.’

A week later they went to Maremma, an area in the south of Tuscany, near the coast. It was often known as ‘the Wild West of Tuscany’, since there cattle were raised in large numbers, and the traditional cowboy skills were still in everyday use.

Each year this was celebrated by a rodeo that consisted of a parade through the nearby town of Grosseto, and a show that lasted one afternoon. Leo took Selena to the town to meet the organisers, describing her achievements in glowing terms.

Then Selena produced a surprise of her own. All the way over she’d been clutching a large, flat object, refusing to let Leo see it. It turned out to be a photograph of him bull riding.

‘I know this guy who takes photographs of everything,’ she said, ‘even the people who don’t win. I looked him up, and he had this one of you. You look real good, don’t you?’

He looked magnificent. One arm was high in the air, his head was up, his face full of a wide grin of delight and triumph.

‘You’d never know that I was off the next second,’ he said.

One of the organisers regarded the picture and coughed respectfully.

‘Perhaps, signore, you could give us a demonstration of bull riding, at our rodeo.’

‘I don’t think so,’ Leo said hastily. ‘They have very special bulls in Texas. Bred for their ferocity.’

‘I don’t think we would disappoint you, signore. We have a bull here that has already gored two men to death-’

It took Leo ten minutes to talk his way out of that one, with Selena doubled up with laughter.

‘I told him that you’d demonstrate barrel racing,’ he told her as they made their escape.

‘That’s fine. But it won’t be the same without you riding that bull.’

‘Get lost!’

Leo’s family had never made the trip before. This year, however, they were coming in force, for by now they knew what everyone knew-that Leo, the all-embracing lover of ladies with voluptuous forms, had fallen ‘victim’ to an angular young woman with a figure like a rail and a head like fire. Temper, ditto.

So the bulk of the Calvani family planned to head for the farm to stay the night before going on to Grosseto. Only Marco was missing. The Count and Countess Calvani, with Guido and Dulcie, would be travelling from Venice.

Knowing these plans were afoot, Leo knew that the day of reckoning couldn’t be postponed much longer. Some time soon he must confess all to Selena-his reprehensible wealth or his shocking connection to a title. It was a moot point which one would horrify her the most.

While he was still trying to broach the subject he was overtaken by events. Selena, seeking him one morning, came to his study.

‘Leo, are you in here?’

She pushed the door further open. There was no sign of Leo but she could hear his voice coming from the passage beyond, and went further into the room to wait for him.

Then something caught her eye.

Several photographs were spread out on the desk, and curiosity drew her over to look at them. What she saw made her first frown, then stare.

They were wedding pictures, reminding her that Leo had recently been to the marriage of his brother, Guido. There were the bride and groom, the bride gorgeous in white satin and lace, the groom with a wicked, appealing face. And there, next to him, was Leo, dressed as she’d never seen him before.

Dressed for best. In costly finery. With a top hat!

So what? Everyone dressed up at weddings.

But there was something in the background that wouldn’t be dismissed. Chandeliers, old pictures, mirrors with gilt frames. The clothes fitted perfectly, which hired clothes never did. And the people had the awesome confidence that came with money and status.

A strange feeling, something like dismay, was starting to take over her stomach, prior to invading the rest of her.

‘They just arrived.’

Leo was standing in the doorway, smiling in the way that could make her forget everything else.

‘Let me introduce you to my family,’ he said, coming forward and sorting the pictures. ‘That’s my brother Guido, and Dulcie. These two cheesy characters here are her father and brother, and if I never see them again it’ll be too soon. This one here is my cousin Marco, and that’s his fiancée Harriet. And this man is my uncle Francesco, and his wife, Liza.’

‘What’s that place behind all of you. Did you hire the town hall or something?’

‘No,’ he said casually, ‘that’s my uncle’s home.’

‘That? He lives there? It’s like a palace.’

Leo’s tone became even more casual. ‘I suppose that’s what it is, really.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘It’s called the Palazzo Calvani. It’s on the Grand Canal in Venice.’

‘Your uncle lives in a palace? What is he, royalty?’

‘No, no, nothing so grand. Just a count.’

‘What was that? You mumbled that last word.’

‘He’s a count,’ Leo said reluctantly.

She stared at him. ‘You’re related to a real count?’

‘Yes, but on the wrong side of the blanket,’ he assured her, like a man arguing mitigating circumstances to a crime.

‘But they know you, don’t they?’ she accused him. ‘You’re part of the family.’

He sighed and admitted it.

‘My father was Uncle Francesco’s brother. If his marriage to my mother had been valid I’d be-well-the heir.’

She turned an appalled gaze on him.

‘But it wasn’t,’ he placated her, ‘so I’m not. That’s Guido’s problem, not mine. And boy is he mad at me about it. Like it was my fault. He doesn’t want it any more than I do. All I ever wanted was this farm and the life I have here. You’ve got to believe me, Selena.’

‘Give me one reason I should ever believe a word you say again.’

‘Now, come on, I never lied to you.’

‘You sure as heck never told me the truth either.’

‘Well, did you give me your life story from day one?’

‘Yes.’

She had him there.

‘And you’re not being logical,’ he changed tack hastily. ‘If I was that poor, how come I knew Barton, and went to visit him?’

‘You sold him some horses, you told me. And you can get cheap air tickets these days. And there’s other things. This place, the people, the land-the way you talked I thought you rented some dirt-poor little place at the back of beyond, but you own it don’t you?’

‘I’ve never pretended about that.’

‘And how much do you own? You’re the padrone, aren’t you? Not just here but the village and halfway to Florence, for all I know.’

‘Rather more than that, actually,’ he confessed miserably.

‘You could buy Barton out, couldn’t you?’

He shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Probably.’

‘I thought you were just a country boy-you let me think that. But you’re really more like a-a tycoon.’

‘I am a country boy.’

‘You’re a country tycoon, that’s what you are.’

She was pale with shock.

‘Leo, be honest with me for the first time since we’ve known each other. Just how rich are you?’

‘Darn it, Selena, are you only going to marry me for my money?’

‘I’m not going to marry you at all, you conceited-’

‘I didn’t mean it like that, you know I didn’t.’

‘All those things I said to you, about millionaires not being real people-’

‘Well, now you know you were wrong.’

‘The hell I do! I reckon you’ve proved me right about all the worst. I wouldn’t have thought you could do a thing like this to me!’

‘What have I done?’ he implored the room. ‘Will someone please tell me what I’ve done?’

‘You’ve pretended to be one thing, while actually being another.’

‘Well, of course I did,’ he roared. ‘I wasn’t going to take the chance on losing you. Think I didn’t know? Sure I knew. We hadn’t met five minutes before I knew you were the most awkward, unreasonable female with no common sense. I didn’t want to scare you off, so we played by your rules. I couldn’t even tell you I’d-’ He stopped with his feet at the edge of the precipice.

‘Tell me you’d done what?’

‘I forget.’ But then, with her eyes on him he reckoned he might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb. ‘All right, the van and the horse trailer-they came from me.’

‘You-bought the replacement van-and horse trailer?’

‘And Jeepers. Selena, the insurers would have laughed at you. You knew that yourself. It was the only way to get you back on the road. I just hoped you wouldn’t find out, or that you wouldn’t be too mad at me if you did.’ He studied her face, hardly daring to believe what he saw there. ‘Why-are you laughing?’

‘You mean-’ she choked ‘-that you were the miracle after all? Not Barton?’

‘Yes, me, not Barton.’

‘No wonder you looked green around the gills when I said that.’

‘I could have killed him,’ Leo confessed. ‘I wanted to tell you the truth but I couldn’t, because I knew you wouldn’t want to be beholden to me. But I’ve thought of a way around that. We get married and then it’s your wedding present, and we’re all straight.’

She stared. ‘You’re serious, aren’t you?’

‘Well, the way I see it, if you marry me, all that disgusting money will be yours too, and then you’ll have to shut up about it.’

She considered this. ‘OK, it’s a deal.’

She didn’t say she loved him then. She said it later that night, when he was breathing deeply beside her, the sleep of peace and satiety, as he always did when they’d released each other from passion by indulging it without limit. He slept heavily, so she could smooth his hair, kiss him without his knowing, and whisper the words she didn’t know how to say when he heard her.

Another night he brought wine and peaches, and they sat feasting and talking.

‘How do your family come to be out here?’ she asked. ‘If you’re Venetian counts, what are you doing in Tuscany?’

‘How can you ask? Everyone knows the evil aristos commandeer property wherever they can. That’s how we keep our feet on the necks of the deserving poor.’

‘Oh, very funny! I’ll thump you in a minute. What are you doing here?’

‘My grandfather, Count Angelo, fell in love with a woman from Tuscany, called Maria Rinucci. This-’ he indicated the valley ‘-was her dowry. Since he had the Venetian property to bequeath to his eldest son and heir-that’s my uncle Francesco-this was used to provide an inheritance for Francesco’s younger brothers, Bertrando and Silvio.

‘Silvio took his share in cash and married a banker’s daughter in Rome. Their son is Marco. You won’t meet him next week because something’s gone wrong between him and Harriet, his English fiancée. She’s gone back to England and he’s followed her, trying to talk her around. Let’s hope he brings her back for our wedding.’

He stroked her face, trying to distract her with the thought of their wedding. She accepted his caress and kissed him enthusiastically, but she wouldn’t be distracted.

‘And?’ she insisted.

‘Bertrando liked living on the land, so he came out here and married a widow, Elissa, who became my mother.

‘She died soon after I was born, and he married again, Donna, Guido’s mother. But then it turned out that Elissa hadn’t been a widow, as everyone had thought, but still married to her first husband. So I was illegitimate, and as she was dead it was too late to validate her marriage to my father, so that was that. Guido and I kind of swapped inheritances.

‘I can’t tell you how glad I am now that we did. Because otherwise, you and I-’

‘Nix,’ she said as he’d known she would say. ‘I couldn’t marry you if you had a title. It’s against my principles, and besides-well anyway, it doesn’t matter. But your family wouldn’t fancy me as the countess.’

‘You don’t know anything about them. Forget those stereotypes you’re carrying in your head. We don’t all eat off gold plate-’

‘Shame, I was looking forward to that.’

‘Will you hush, and let me finish? And don’t look at me like that or I’ll forget what I was going to stay.’

‘Well, there are more interesting things to do-’

‘When I’ve finished,’ he said, seizing her wandering fingers. ‘My family aren’t the way you think. All they’ll care about is that we love each other. Guido and Dulcie have just married for love, so did Uncle Francesco. He waited forty years for her to say yes, and refused to marry anyone else. She had some funny ideas too and he was a patient man, but I’m not. If you think I’m waiting forty years for you to see sense, you’re nuts. Now, you were saying about doing more interesting things…’