The Count's Blackmail Bargain (10 page)

Because she had nothing to fear from him, and she was flattering herself to think otherwise.

Someone like Alessio Ramontella would live on a diet of film stars and heiresses, she told herself, pushing her damp hair back from her face with despondent fingers. And if he’s kind to me, it’s because he recognises I’m out of my depth, and feels sorry for me.

And as long as I remember that, I’m in no danger. No danger at all.

Her reunion with the dying Paolo was scheduled to take place before dinner. A note signed ‘Ramontella’ informing her of the arrangement had been brought to her by Emilia, along with the promised hair-dryer.

He’d certainly wasted no time over the matter, Laura thought as she followed Guillermo over to the other side of the villa. All she had to do now was pretend to be suitably eager.

She’d dressed for the occasion, putting on her other decent dress, a slim fitting blue shift, sleeveless and scoop-necked. Trying to upgrade it with a handful of silver chains and a matching bracelet.

She’d painted her fingernails and toenails a soft coral, and used a toning lustre on her mouth, emphasising her grey eyes with shadow and kohl.

The kind of effort a girl would make for her lover, she hoped.

She found herself in a long passageway, looking out onto yet another courtyard. The fountain here was larger, she saw, pausing, and a much more elaborate affair, crowned by the statue of a woman crafted in marble. She stood on tiptoe, as if about to take flight, hair and scanty draperies flying behind her, and a bow in her hand, gazing out across the tumbling water that fell from the rock at her feet.

‘The goddess Diana for whom the villa is named, signorina,’

Guillermo, who had halted too, told her in his halting English.

‘Very beautiful, sì?’

‘Very,’ Laura agreed with less than total certainty as she studied the remote, almost inhuman face. The virgin huntress, she thought, who unleashed her hounds on any man unwise enough to look at her, and who had the cold moon as her symbol.

And not the obvious choice of deity for someone as overtly warm-blooded as Alessio Ramontella. Her dogs would have torn him to pieces on sight.

She looked down the passage to the tall double doors at the end. ‘Is that Signor Paolo’s room?’

‘But no, signorina.’ He sounded almost shocked. ‘That is the suite of His Excellency. The signore, his cousin, is here.’ He turned briskly to the left, down another much shorter corridor, and halted, knocking at a door.

It was flung open immediately, and the Signora swept out, her eyes raking Laura with an expression of pure malevolence.

‘You may have ten minutes,’ she snapped. ‘No more. My son needs rest.’

What does she think? Laura asked herself ironically as she entered.

That I’m planning to jump his bones?

The shutters were closed and the drapes were drawn too, so the room, which smelled strongly of something like camphorated oil, was lit only by a lamp at the side of the bed.

Paolo was lying, eyes closed, propped up by pillows. He was wearing maroon pyjamas, which made him look sallow, Laura thought. Or maybe it was the effect of the lamplight.

She pulled up a chair, and sat beside the bed. ‘Hi,’ she said gently.

‘How are you feeling?’

‘Terrible.’ His voice was hoarse and pettish, and the eyes he turned on her were bloodshot and watering. ‘Not well enough to talk, but Alessio insisted. I had to listen to him arguing with my mother, and my headache returned. What is it you want?’

‘I don’t want anything.’ She bit her lip. ‘Paolo, we’re supposed to be crazy about each other, remember? It would seem really weird if I didn’t ask for you.’ She hesitated. ‘I think your cousin feels that I’m stuck here in a kind of vacuum, and feels sorry for me.’

‘He would do better to concentrate his compassion on me,’ Paolo said sullenly. ‘He refuses to call a doctor, although he knows that I have had a weak chest since childhood, and my mother fears this cold may settle there.’ He gave a hollow cough as if to prove his point. ‘He said he would prefer to summon a vet to examine Caio, and he and my mother quarrelled again.’

Laura sighed. ‘I’m sorry if you’re having a difficult time, but you’re not the only one.’ She leaned forward. ‘Paolo, I’m finding it really hard to cope with being the uninvited guest round here. I need you to support me—take off some of the pressure.’ She paused. ‘How long, do you think, before you’re well enough to get up and join the real world again?’

‘When Mamma considers I am out of danger, and not before,’ he said, with something of a snap. ‘She alone knows how ill I am. She has been wonderful to me—a saint in her patience and care.’ He sneezed violently, and lay back, dabbing his nose with a bunch of tissues. ‘And my health is more important than your convenience,’

he added in a muffled voice.

She got to her feet. She said crisply, ‘Actually, it’s your own convenience that’s being served here. You seem to be overlooking that. But if you’d rather I kept my distance, that’s fine with me.’

‘I did not mean that,’ he said, his tone marginally more conciliatory. ‘Of course I wish you to continue to play your part, now more than ever. I shall tell Mamma that you must visit me each day—to aid my recovery. That I cannot live without you,’ he added with sudden inspiration.

Her mouth tightened. ‘No need to go to those lengths, perhaps. But at least it will give me a purpose for staying on.’

‘And you can go sightseeing, even if I am not with you,’ he went on. ‘I shall tell Mamma to put Giacomo and the car at your service at once.’ He coughed again. ‘But now I have talked enough, and my throat is hurting. I need to sleep to become well, you understand.’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Of course.’ She moved to the door. ‘Well—I’ll see you tomorrow.’

Outside, she leaned against the wall and drew a deep breath. The daily visits would be a rod for her back, but, to balance that, being able to use the car was an unexpected lifeline.

It offered her a means of escape from the enclosed world of the villa, she thought, and, more vitally, meant that she would no longer be thrown into the company of Alessio Ramontella.

And that was just what she wanted, she told herself. Wasn’t it?

CHAPTER SIX

EXCEPT, of course, it had all been too good to be true. As she should probably have known, Laura thought wryly.

Several long days had passed since Paolo had airily promised her the use of the car, and yet she was still confined to the villa and its grounds, with no release in sight.

Naturally, it was the Signora who had applied the veto. Paolo was still far from well, she’d pronounced ominously, and, if there was an emergency, then the car would be needed.

‘If you had wished to explore Umbria, signorina, then perhaps you should have accepted my nephew’s generous invitation,’ she’d added, making Laura wonder how she’d come by that particular snippet of information.

But it was an invitation that, signally, had not been repeated, although she often heard the noise of the Jeep driving away.

And far from them being thrown together, after that first day, the Count seemed to have chosen deliberately to remain aloof from her.

He’d finished his breakfast and gone by the time she appeared each morning, but he continued to join her at dinner, although the conversation between them seemed polite and oddly formal compared with their earlier exchanges. And afterwards, he excused himself quickly and courteously, so that she was left strictly to her own devices.

So perhaps he too had sensed the danger of being overfriendly.

And, having brought about her reunion with Paolo in spite of his aunt’s disapproval, considered his duty done.

She should have found the new regime far less disturbing, and easier to cope with, but somehow it wasn’t.

Even in his absence, she was still conscious of him, as if his presence had invaded every stone of the villa’s walls. She found she was waiting for his return—listening for his footsteps, and the sound of his voice.

And worst of all was seeing his face in the darkness as she fought restlessly for sleep each night.

The evening meal, she acknowledged wretchedly, was now the highlight of her day, in spite of its new restrictions.

It was an attitude she’d have condemned as ludicrous in anyone else, and she knew it.

And if someone had warned her that she would feel like this, one day, about a man that she hardly even knew, she would not have believed them.

Yet it was happening to her—twenty-first-century Laura. She was trapped, held helpless by the sheer force of her own untried emotions. By feelings that were as old as eternity.

She’d soon discovered that he was not simply on vacation at the villa when she’d made herself take up his invitation to borrow something to read. His library, she saw, was not merely shelved out with books from floor to ceiling, but its vast antique desk was also home to a state-of-the-art computer system, which explained why he was closeted there for much of the time he spent at the villa.

Though not, of course, when she’d paid her visit. It had been Emilia who had waited benignly while she’d made her selection.

She had just been hesitating over a couple of modern thrillers, when, to her surprise, she had come on a complete set of Jane Austen, and her choice had been made. She’d glanced through them, appreciating the beautiful leather bindings, then decided on Mansfield Park, which she hadn’t read since her school days.

The name Valentina Ramontella was inscribed on the flyleaf in an elegant sloping hand, and Emilia, in answer to her tentative enquiry, had told her, with a sigh, that this had been the name of His Excellency’s beloved mother, and these books her particular property.

‘I see.’ Laura touched the signature gently with her forefinger.

‘Well, please assure the Count I’ll take great care of it.’

However tenuous, it was almost a connection between them, she thought as she took the book away.

But, although the hours seemed strangely empty in Alessio’s absence, she was not entirely without companionship as one day stretched endlessly into the next.

Because, to her infinite surprise, Caio had attached himself to her.

He was no longer kept in the courtyard, but she’d come across a reluctant Guillermo taking him for a walk in the garden, on the express orders of his master, he’d told her glumly. Seeing his face, and listening to the little dog’s excited whimpers as he’d strained on the leash to reach her, Laura had volunteered to take over this daily duty—if the Signora agreed.

Even more surprisingly, permission had been ungraciously granted. And, after a couple of days, Caio trotted beside her so obediently, she dispensed with the leash altogether.

He sometimes accompanied her down to the pool, lying under her sun lounger, and sat beside her in the salotto in the evenings as she flexed her rusty fingering on some of the Beethoven sonatas she’d found in bound volumes inside the piano stool. At mealtimes, apart from dinner, he was stationed unobtrusively under her chair, and he’d even joined her on the bed for siesta on a couple of occasions, she admitted guiltily.

‘I see you have acquired a bodyguard,’ was Alessio’s only comment when he encountered them together once, delivered with a faint curl of the mouth.

Watching him walk away, she scooped Caio defensively into her arms. ‘We’re just a couple of pariahs here,’ she murmured to him, and he licked her chin almost wistfully.

But she never took Caio to Paolo’s room, instinct telling this would be too much for the Signora, who had no idea of the scope of her pet’s defection to the enemy.

And I don’t want her to know, Laura thought grimly. I’m

unpopular enough already. I don’t want to be accused of pinching her dog.

On his own admission, Paolo’s cold symptoms had all but

vanished, but he refused to leave his room on the grounds that he was still suffering with his chest.

Laura realised that her impatience with him and her ambiguous situation was growing rapidly and would soon reach snapping point.

These ten-minute stilted visits each evening wouldn’t convince anyone that they were sharing a grand passion, she thought with exasperated derision. And if the Signora was listening at the door, she’d be justified in wagering her diamonds that she’d soon have Beatrice Manzone as a daughter-in-law.

But: ‘You worry too much,’ was Paolo’s casual response to her concern.

Well, if he was satisfied, then why should she quibble? she thought with an inward shrug. He was the paying customer, after all. And found herself grimacing at the thought.

But as she left his room that evening the Signora was waiting for her, her lips stretched in the vinegary smile first encountered in Rome. Still, any calibre of smile was a welcome surprise, Laura thought, tension rising within her.

She was astonished to be told that, as Giacomo would be driving to the village the next morning to collect some special medicine from the pharmacy, she was free to accompany him there, if she wished.

‘You may have some small errands, signorina.’ The older woman’s shrug emphasised their trifling quality. ‘But the medicine is needed, so you will not be able to remain for long.’

Well, it was better than nothing, Laura thought, offering a polite word of thanks instead of the cartwheel she felt like turning. In fact, it was almost a ‘get out of jail’ card.

Saved, she thought, with relief. Saved from cabin fever, and, hopefully, other obsessions too.

She’d have time to buy some postcards at least—let her family know she was still alive. And Gaynor, too, would be waiting to hear from her.

In the morning, she was ready well before the designated time, anxious that Giacomo would have no excuse to set off without her.

She still couldn’t understand why the Signora should suddenly be so obliging, and couldn’t help wondering if the older woman was playing some strange game of cat and mouse with her.

But that makes no sense, she adjured herself impatiently. Don’t start getting paranoid.

Seated in the front, Laura kept her eyes fixed firmly ahead as the car negotiated the winding road down to the valley, avoiding any chance glimpse of the mind-aching drop on one side, and praying that they would meet no other vehicles coming from the opposite direction.