The Count's Blackmail Bargain (12 page)

Laura found herself leaning beside Alessio on the parapet of the broad stone wall, holding a glass of white wine, and looking down onto an endless sea of green, distantly punctuated by the blue ribbon of the river and the dusty thread of the road.

On the edge of her vision, she could see the finger of stone that was Besavoro’s campanile rising from the terracotta roofs around it.

Higher up, the crags looked almost opalescent in the shimmer of the noonday sun, while on the opposite side of the valley, almost hidden by the clustering forest, she could just make out the sprawl of greyish pink stone that formed the Villa Diana.

She said softly, ‘It’s—unbelievable. Thank you for showing it to me.’

‘The pleasure is mine,’ he returned. ‘It is a very small world, this valley, but important to me.’

She played with the stem of her glass. ‘Yet you must have so many worlds, signore.’

‘And some I prefer to others.’ He paused. ‘So, where is your world, Laura? The real one?’

Her tone was stilted. ‘London, I guess—for the time being anyway.

My work is there.’

‘But surely you could work anywhere you wished? Wine bars are not confined to your capital. But I suppose you wish to remain for Paolo’s sake.’

She had a sudden longing to tell him the truth. To turn to him and say, ‘Actually I work for the PR company your bank has just hired.

The wine bar is moonlighting, and Harman Grace would probably have a fit if they knew. Nor am I involved with Paolo. He’s renting me as his pretend girlfriend to convince his mother that he won’t marry Beatrice Manzone.’

But she couldn’t say any such thing, of course, because she’d given Paolo her word.

Instead she said, ‘Also, I’m flat-hunting with some friends. We all want to move on from our current grotty bedsits, especially Gaynor and myself, so we thought we’d pool our resources.’

‘Does Paolo approve of this plan?’ Alessio traced the shape of one of the parapet’s flat stones with his finger. ‘Won’t he wish you to live with him?’

She bit her lip. ‘Perhaps—ultimately. I—I don’t know. It’s too soon for that kind of decision.’

‘But this holiday could have been the first step towards it.’ There was an odd, almost harsh note in his voice. ‘My poor Laura. If so, how cruel to keep you in separate rooms, as I have done.’

She forced a smile. ‘Not really. The Signora would have had a fit and I—I might have caught Paolo’s cold.’

His mouth twisted. ‘A practical thought, carissima.’ He

straightened. ‘Now, shall we decide what to eat?’

A pretty, smiling girl, who turned out to be the owner’s wife, brought a bowl of olive oil to their table, and a platter of bread to dip into it. The cooking, Alessio explained, was being done by her husband. Then came a dish of Parma ham, accompanied by a bewildering array of sausages, which was followed up by wild boar paˆté.

The main course was chicken, simply roasted and bursting with flavour, all of it washed down with a jug of smoky red wine, made, Alessio told her, from the family’s own vineyard in Tuscany.

But Laura demurred at the idea of dessert or cheese, raising laughing hands in protest.

‘They’ll be charging me excess weight on the flight home at this rate.’

Alessio drank some wine, the dark eyes watching her over the top of his glass. ‘Maybe you need to gain a little,’ he said. ‘A man likes to know that he has his woman in his arms. He does not wish her to slip through his fingers like water. Has Paolo never told you so?’

She looked down at the table. ‘Not in so many words. And I don’t think it’s a very fashionable point of view, not in London, anyway.’

The mention of Paolo’s name brought her down to earth with a jolt. It had been such a wonderful meal. She’d felt elated—

euphoric even—here, above the tops of the trees.

I could reach up a hand, she thought, and touch the sky.

And this, she knew, was entirely because of the man seated across the table from her. The man who somehow had the power to make her forget everything—including the sole reason that had brought her to Italy in the first place.

Stupid, she castigated herself. Eternally, ridiculously stupid to hanker after what she could never have in a thousand years.

Because there was far more than just a table dividing them, and she needed to remember that in her remaining days at the Villa Diana.

Apart from anything else, they’d been acquainted with each other for only a week, which was a long time in politics, but in no other sense.

So how was it that she felt she’d known him all her life? she asked herself, and sighed inwardly. That, of course, was the secret of his success—especially with women.

And her best plan was to escape while she could, and before she managed to make an even bigger fool of herself than she had already.

She was like a tiny planet, she thought, circling the sun, when any slight change in orbit could draw her to self-destruction. Burning up for all eternity.

That cannot happen, she told herself. And I won’t let it.

He said, ‘A moment ago, you were here with me. Now you have gone.’ He leaned forward, his expression quizzical. “‘When, Madonna, will you ever drop that veil you wear in shade and sun?’’’

She looked back at him startled. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘I was quoting,’ he said. ‘From Petrarch—one of his sonnets to Laura. My own translation. It seemed—appropriate.’

She tried to speak lightly. ‘You amaze me, signore. I never thought I’d hear you speaking poetry.’

He shrugged. ‘But I’m sure you could recite from Shakespeare, if I asked you. Am I supposed to have less education?’

‘No,’ she said quickly. ‘No, of course not. I’m sorry. After all, we’re strangers. I shouldn’t make any assumptions about you.’

He paused. ‘Besides, the question is a valid one. Because you also disappear behind a veil sometimes, so that I cannot tell what you’re thinking.’

She laughed rather weakly. ‘I’m—relieved to hear it.’

‘So I shall ask a direct question. What are you hiding, Laura?’

Her fingers twined together in her lap. ‘I think as well as a good education, signore, you have a vivid imagination.’

He studied her for a moment, his mouth wry. ‘And you still will not call me Alessio.’

‘Because I don’t think it’s necessary,’ she retorted. ‘Or even very wise, you being who you are. Not just a count, but Chairman of the Arleschi Bank.’

‘You could not put that out of your mind for a while?’

‘No.’ Her fingers tightened round each other. ‘That’s not possible.

Besides, I’ll be gone soon, anyway.’

‘But you forget, signorina,’ he said silkily. ‘You are to become a member of my family. We shall be cousins.’

She paused for a heartbeat. ‘Well, when we are,’ she said, ‘I’ll think again about your name.’ She gave him a bright smile. ‘And now will you take me back to the villa, please? Paolo may need me,’ she added for good measure.

As he rose to his feet he was laughing. ‘Well, run while you may, my little hypocrite,’ he told her mockingly. ‘But remember this: you cannot hide—or not for ever.’ His fingers stroked her face from the high cheekbone to the corner of her mouth, then he turned and walked away across the terrace to the restaurant’s main door, leaving Laura to stare uneasily after him, her heart and mind locked into a combat that offered no prospect of peace. And which, she suddenly knew, could prove mortal.

But only to me, she whispered to herself in swift anguish. Only to me…

CHAPTER SEVEN

THE return journey was conducted mainly in silence. Laura was occupied with her own troubling thoughts, while Alessio was reviewing the events of the morning with a sense of quiet satisfaction.

She had missed him, he thought. Everything—including all the things she had not said—had betrayed it. So his ploy of keeping aloof from her had succeeded. And, now, she was desperately trying to reinforce her own barricades against him.

But it won’t work, carissima, he told her silently.

After he’d got rid of Giacomo that morning, he’d stood for a while, watching her from the other side of the square.

She might not have the flamboyant looks of a woman like Vittoria, but her unselfconscious absorption as she wrote gave an

impression of peace and charm that he had never encountered before.

And her hair had been truly glorious in the sunlight, the colour of English leaves in autumn. He’d found himself suddenly longing to see it spread across his pillow, so that he could run his fingers through its soft masses and breathe their fragrance.

Also, he’d noted, with additional pleasure, she was again wearing the dress that had so fired his imagination at their first meeting.

And soon, he thought, as he turned the Jeep onto the road up to the villa—soon his fantasies would all be realised.

Not that it would be easy, he mentally amended with sudden restiveness. She might have let him take her hand for a while without protest, but, in many ways, she still continued to elude him, and not just in the physical sense either.

Her relationship with his cousin was certainly an enigma. He didn’t particularly share his aunt’s opinion that the pair were in love and planning immediate marriage. But then, he admitted, he’d hardly seen them together. Although, that first evening, he’d observed that the little Laura had not seemed to relish her lover’s advances. But that might have been because she preferred privacy for such exchanges, and not a family dinner.

Well, privacy she should have, he promised himself, smiling inwardly, and his entire undivided attention as well.

However, he still wondered if, given time, the whole Paolo affair might have withered and died of its own accord, and without Zia Lucrezia’s interference.

Not that he’d been able to convince her of that, although he had tried. She’d simply snapped that she could not afford to be patient, and that Paolo’s engagement to the Manzone girl must be

concluded without further delay.

She’d added contemptuously that the English girl was nothing more than a money-grubbing trollop who deserved to be sent packing in disgrace for attempting to connect herself, even distantly, to the Ramontella family.

‘And your part in all this should have been played by now,’ she added angrily. ‘You should have spent more time with the little fool.’

‘I know what I’m doing,’ he returned coldly. ‘Precisely because the girl is far from a fool, or any of the other names you choose to call her.’

How, in the name of God, could he feel so protective, he asked himself ruefully, afterwards, when he might be planning the possible ruin of Laura’s life? If, indeed, it turned out that she cared for Paolo after all.

But on one thing he was totally determined. When he took her, it would be out of their mutual desire alone, and not to placate his aunt. That, he told himself, would be the least of his

considerations.

He could salve his conscience to that extent.

And, if humanly possible, it would happen well away from the Villa Diana, and Zia Lucrezia’s inevitable and frankly indecent gloating.

Because he needed to make very sure that Laura would never know how they’d been manipulated into each other’s arms.

Although that was no longer strictly true—or not for him, anyway, he reminded himself wryly. On his side, at least, the need was genuine, and had been so almost from the first. She was the one who required the persuasion.

Staying away from her over the past few days had been sheer torment, he admitted, to his own reluctant surprise. She had been constantly in the forefront of his mind, waking and sleeping, while his entire body ached intolerably for her too.

He was not accustomed, he acknowledged sardonically, to waiting for a woman. In his world, it was not often that he found it necessary. And it would make her ultimate surrender even more enjoyable.

He cast a lightning sideways glance at her, and saw that her hands were clenched tightly in her lap.

He said lightly, ‘Is it the road or my driving that so alarms you, Laura?’

She turned her head, forcing a smile. ‘It’s the road, although I’m trying to get used to it. We don’t have so many death-defying drops in East Anglia, where I come from.’

‘Try not to worry too much, mia bella.’ His tone was dry. ‘Believe that I have a vested interest in staying alive.’

There was a movement at the side of the road ahead, and Alessio leaned forward, his gaze sharpening as a stocky, white-haired man wearing overalls came into view, carrying a tall cane shaped like a shepherd’s crook. ‘Ah,’ he said, half to himself. ‘Fredo.’ He drew the Jeep into the side of the road, and stopped. ‘Will you forgive me, cara, if I speak to him again about moving down to Besavoro?

He has been avoiding me, I think.’

Laura sat in the Jeep and watched with some amusement. The old man stood like a rock, leaning on his cane, occasionally moving his head in quiet negation as Alessio prowled round in front of him talking rapidly in his own language, his hands gesturing urgently in clear appeal.

When at last he paused for breath, the old man reached up and clapped him on the shoulder, his wrinkled face breaking into a smile. Then they talked together for a few more minutes before Fredo turned away, making his slow way up a track on the hillside, and Alessio came back to the Jeep, frowning.

‘Still no luck?’ she asked.

‘He makes his own goats seem reasonable.’ He started the engine.

‘Also, he says that the weather is going to change. That we shall have storms,’ he added, his frown deepening.

Laura looked up at the cloudless sky. ‘It doesn’t seem like it,’ she objected.

‘Fredo is rarely wrong about these things. But it will not be for a day—perhaps two.’ He slanted a smile at her. ‘So make the most of the sun while you can.’

‘I’ve been doing just that.’ She paused. ‘In fact,’ she went on hesitantly, ‘I was—concerned in case I’d kept you away from the pool. If you preferred to have it to yourself. Because I’ve noticed that you—you haven’t been swimming for a while.’

‘I swim every day,’ he said. ‘But very early. Before breakfast, when there is no one else about, but that is not through any wish to avoid your company, mia bella, but because I like to swim naked.’