The Italian’s Rightful Bride Read online

  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 mas
terpiece 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.

  CHAPTER TWO

  AT THE time she seemed like the wicked witch, but Joanna supposed that the bad fairy was more accurate, because Crystal actually looked like a fairy, being petite with blonde hair that fluffed about her face like candy-floss.

  She had deep blue eyes, full of fun, a dainty nose, a mouth that was pure Cupid, and her delicious, gurgling laugh was irresistible. She was lovely, glamorous, enchanting.

  Everything I wasn’t.

  Crystal had been invited to stay in the house by Frank, one of Joanna’s many cousins, who was courting her. At their first meeting Joanna had liked her. Crystal charmed everyone with her beauty and her wicked sense of humour.

  She had a way of talking rapidly, so that Gustavo often asked her to slow down or explain some English word to him. Several times Joanna heard her saying, ‘No, no, you say it like this.’

  Then she would dissolve into laughter at his pronunciation, and he would laugh with her.

  Was it then that Joanna first sensed danger?

  How can I tell? Whatever I sensed, I wouldn’t admit it.

  So many things: the burning look that flashed briefly in his eyes for Crystal, which had never been there for her. The way he watched the door until she entered, and relaxed when she appeared.

  A hundred tiny little details, which she pretended meant nothing, until the day when it was no longer possible to pretend.

  At first she thought he was alone. Coming from the brilliant sunlight into the trees, she saw only him, and her heart leapt before she noticed that he was leaning over and down towards the woman in his arms.

  But then she saw them, and the way he was raining kisses on her upturned face, kissing her to the point of madness, again and again, so that Joanna knew that kisses would never be enough for him.

  Kissing as he had never kissed her.

  She stood and watched, her heart breaking, her world shattering around her.

  She drew back behind a great oak, although it was needless. They were beyond noticing her or anything else. She heard him say,

  ‘I’m sorry, my darling. I had no right to do this when I have nothing to offer you.’

  ‘Why can’t we be happy?’ That was Crystal’s voice. ‘Don’t you love me?’

  ‘You know I love you,’ he said, almost violently. ‘I didn’t know I could feel like this. If I had-’

  He stopped. Joanna listened, her heart beating madly. If he had…

  ‘If you’d met me first, you wouldn’t have proposed to Joanna, would you?’

  ‘Never,’ he said hoarsely.

  ‘Don’t you want to marry me, my darling?’

  ‘Don’t ask me that.’

  ‘But I must ask it,’ she persisted in her soft, enticing voice. ‘If we’re going to lose each other, at least give me honesty.’

  ‘All right, I want to marry you,’ he said in a fierce, passionate voice. ‘I can’t, but neither can I stop loving and wanting you. You’re there with me every moment, night and day, waking or sleeping.’

  ‘Then how can you cast me aside?’

  ‘Because I have made promises to Joanna. My darling, I beg you to understand, I must keep those promises.’

  ‘Why? She doesn’t love you any more than you love her.’

  ‘But we’re a few days from our wedding. How can I humiliate her in front of the world?’

  ‘Gustavo, have you thought of the future? All those years tied to a woman you don’t love. How will you endure them?’

  The silence that followed froze Joanna to the soul. Just a few seconds, but enough to make her feel that she was dying. At last his answer came in a voice that was bleak with despair.

  ‘I’ll survive, somehow.’

  She’d thought her heart couldn’t break any more, but when she heard that she knew she was wrong.

  And strangely, it was the knowledge that there was nothing more to hope for that made it possible for her to step out from behind the tree, smiling and saying brightly, ‘Isn’t there something you want to tell me?’

  Their faces were imprinted on her memory forever, Gustavo’s pale and shocked, Crystal’s with an expression she couldn’t read. Only later did she think of cats and cream. At the time she was concentrating on what she must do.

  Crystal spoke first, sounding suitably uneasy.

  ‘Joanna, we didn’t mean you to find out like this.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter how I found out,’ she answered with a fair assumption of gaiety. ‘The point is that we’re still in time to put matters right.’

  ‘I have no intention of asking you to free me.’ Gustavo’s voice was hollow.

  ‘But perhaps I’d like to chuck you out,’ she replied with a shrug. ‘Oh, come on, this isn’t the nineteenth century. The sky isn’t going to fall if there’s a last-minute change of plan.’

  She never forgot the look on his face then, sheer blinding hope at the thought of not having to marry her.

  ‘You-mean that?’ he asked as though unable to believe his ears.

  ‘Of course I mean it. Honestly, darling,’ she added, using the term of endearment for the first time, ‘if you’re in love with someone else-well, why should I want you?’

  ‘But the formalities-’

  ‘Blow the formalities. We’ve changed our minds. Both of us. Come on, let’s get it over with.’

  She turned away quickly, not sure how long she could keep up the façade. As she began to walk she heard Gustavo call, ‘Joanna…’

  And there it was, the note she had dreamed of hearing in his voice, warm and emotional now that he was grateful for his release. She fled back to the house.

  She had only the dimmest recollection of what followed. There was family uproar, scene after scene in which she did most of the talking, laughing as she insisted that it was a mutual decision and she couldn’t be happier.

  She doubted if anyone was fooled, especially as the engagement to Crystal came immediately after. But in the face of her determination there was nothing anybody could do.

  A special licence was obtained with Crystal’s name on it and the wedding was to go ahead on the same day in the same church, with one bride substituted for another. Joanna sailed through the whole process, apparently with not a care in the world. She dreaded their wedding, but knew she had to be there or the world would know why.

  For a while the need to put on an act kept her mind on the terrible ache inside. At night she sobbed herself to sleep. By day she smiled and smiled and smiled.

  By the night before the wedding the strain of weeping in secret was tearing her apart. She wanted to scream aloud, impossible in that house.

  Outside it had begun to rain, water coming down in noisy torrents with the occasional thunderclap. Too distraught to think clearly, she threw on some clothes and left the house by a side-door, running across the grass towards the trees.

  Deep in the wood she gave vent to her grief, crying like a wounded animal, and even once banging her head against a tree, screaming, ‘Why-why-why?’

  Why? Because he loves her and not you. Because she’s beautiful and dazzling and you’re dull and ordinary. Because all the money in the world isn’t enough to make him want you.

  When it was over she felt no better, just completely exhausted. She sank to the ground, leaning back against a tree trunk, whispering hoarsely, ‘Why did I do it? Why did I give him up so easily? When we were married I could have made him love me.’

  The regret made her start to weep again, but this time weakly, in helpless, devastating misery.

  After an hour she dragged herself to her feet and stumbled out of the wood, desperate to get back to the house before the sun came up, and she c
ould be seen.

  She managed it, thankful that nobody had seen her, and ran up the back stairs until she reached the floor where her room was. She was almost there-the next corridor-

  ‘Joanna!’

  Her worst nightmare came true. Gustavo stood there in his dressing gown, astonished at the sight of her.

  ‘Whatever has happened to you?’ he said, concerned. ‘You’ve been out in that rain?’

  ‘It wasn’t raining when I went out,’ she said, struggling for words.

  ‘But it’s been raining for an hour.’

  ‘I walked a long way. I needed some air. It took time to get back.’ She had no idea what she was saying.

  ‘You’re hurt,’ he said, looking at her forehead.

  ‘I fell,’ she gasped. ‘I hit my head on a log.’

  ‘You need a doctor. Let me-’

  ‘Keep away from me.’

  He was reaching gentle fingers towards her bruise, but she knew if he touched her she’d start screaming again.

  ‘Your teeth are chattering,’ he said, his hand falling. ‘Go and have a hot bath or you’ll catch cold. My dear, you’ve got water dripping from your hair and over your face.’

  The water on her face wasn’t rain. He stood there looking at her tears and didn’t know it.

  ‘Please look after yourself,’ he said. ‘I don’t want you being too unwell for my wedding tomorrow, not when I owe it all to you.’

  The warmth in his voice was her undoing. She fled to her own room and locked the door. Tearing off her clothes, she got under a hot shower and stayed there, not moving, just leaning against the tiled wall.

  After a long time her brain started working again, enough to make her wonder how he’d come to be in that corridor at that hour. Then she remembered that it was near to where Crystal slept.

  She’d thought her tears were all cried out, but she found she was wrong. This time it was the shower that disguised them.

  Next day she sat in the body of the church, looking at Gustavo’s back as he waited for his bride, then saw him turn and watch her approach with an expression of such total adoration that she closed her eyes. For a dreadful moment she actually feared she was going to faint, but she recovered and sat rigid as Crystal became his wife.