Rinaldo’s Inherited Bride Page 4

  She was teasing and he answered in the same vein. ‘Not all of it.’

  ‘Make sure he knows that I can be a juggernaut too.’

  ‘I’ll bet you made it plain to him yourself.’

  She laughed. ‘Come to think of it, yes I did.’

  ‘You’ve got a lot of power, and he doesn’t like other people having power, especially over him.’

  ‘Well, it’ll all be sorted out soon.’

  ‘But how? You want your money.’

  ‘Hey, there’s no need to make me sound mercenary-even if Rinaldo thinks I am.’

  ‘Sorry. I didn’t mean it that way. But if we can’t raise the money soon there’ll be plenty who can, not just Montelli. Have any of the others approached you?’

  Alex regarded him with her head on one side.

  ‘Gino,’ she teased, ‘why don’t you just tell Rinaldo not to treat me like a fool? Say you’ve had a wasted day.’

  Gino’s eyes gleamed.

  ‘But the day isn’t over yet. And, though you may not believe it, the mortgage seems less important by the minute. There are so many other things about you that matter more.’

  She gave him a smiling glance, but didn’t answer in words.

  They rode quietly back to the stables in the setting sun. Gino said little as he drove her back to Florence, but as he drew up outside the hotel he said, ‘May I take you to dinner tonight?’

  She couldn’t resist saying, ‘To make sure that nobody else does?’

  He smiled and shook his head. ‘No,’ he said simply. ‘Not for that reason.’

  She just stopped herself from saying, ‘And pigs fly!’ He was a nice lad, and she was going to enjoy flirting the evening away with him. It would be different if she were fooled by his caressing ways, but she wasn’t. Her heart was safe, and so, she was sure, was his.

  There would be no disloyalty to David, and she might learn something useful in the coming battle.

  ‘I’ll believe you,’ she teased. ‘Thousands wouldn’t.’

  They settled that he would collect her at eight o’clock, which gave her time to find something to wear. She had thought herself well equipped with clothes, but the hotel’s shopping arcade had a boutique with the latest lines from Milan.

  With leisure to steep herself in Italian fashion she discovered it was unlike anything she had known before. She stepped into the shop, telling herself that she would just take a quick look. When she stepped out again she was the proud owner of a dark blue silk dress, demure in the front and low in the back, clinging on the hips.

  His eyebrows went up when he saw her in the daring dress, complete with diamond earrings.

  ‘Signorina,’ he said softly, ‘to be seen with you is an honour.’

  Alex couldn’t help it. She burst out laughing.

  ‘What?’ he asked in comic dismay.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she choked. ‘But I can’t keep a straight face when you start that “signorina” stuff. I wish you’d just call me Alex, and remember that you’re far more appealing when you’re not trying so hard.’

  ‘Does that mean you do find me appealing sometimes?’ he asked with comical pathos.

  ‘Are you going to feed me, or are we going to stand here talking all night?’ she asked severely.

  ‘I’m going to feed you,’ he said hastily. ‘I’ve booked us a table in a place very near here. Can you walk in those shoes?’

  Her long legs ended in delicate silver sandals, with high heels.

  ‘Of course I can,’ she told him. ‘It’s just a question of balance.’ She added significantly, ‘And I’m very good at doing a balancing act.’

  It was a perfect evening as they strolled down to the banks of the Arno and across the Ponte Vecchio. Alex paused to look into the shops that lined the bridge. There had been goldsmiths here for centuries, and their wares were still displayed in gorgeous profusion.

  As at lunchtime, they ate near the river. Now the daylight was fading, the lamps were coming on, reflected in the water, and there was a new kind of magic.

  Gino was also a perfect host, surrounding her with a cocoon of comfort and consideration, entertaining her with funny stories.

  She made him talk about the farm and his life there, while she ate her way through chicken liver canapés, noodles with hare sauce, and Bistecca al la Fiorentina, a charbroiled steak.

  ‘It’s been cooked this way since the fourteenth century,’ Gino explained. ‘The legend says that the town magistrates used to cook it themselves in the Palazzo Vecchio, if it was a busy day. It saved going home for lunch.’

  ‘You made that up.’

  ‘I swear I didn’t. I don’t say that it’s true, but it’s the legend.’

  ‘And a good legend can be as powerful as the truth,’ Alex mused.

  He nodded. ‘More. Because the legend tells you what people want to believe.’

  She gave a little laugh. ‘Like your brother wants to believe in me as a Wicked Witch.’

  Gino regarded her wryly. ‘Do you know how often you do that?’ he asked.

  ‘Do what?’

  ‘Bring the conversation back to Rinaldo. You’ve convinced yourself that he’s pulling my strings, and I feel as though you don’t really see me at all. You’re looking over my shoulder at him all the time.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said quickly. ‘I didn’t mean to sound like that. It’s just-well, perhaps you should blame him. I’m sure he likes to think of himself as pulling your strings-everyone’s strings. Somehow, one takes him at his own estimation.’

  ‘That’s true,’ he said with a rueful sigh. ‘Let’s have some champagne.’

  He turned to call the waiter, leaving Alex to reflect. She was shaken by the realisation that Gino was right. While she smiled and flirted with him, Rinaldo seemed to be constantly there, an unseen but dominant presence.

  When the champagne had arrived he began to reminisce once more about his childhood.

  ‘I’ll never forget the day my father brought me to Florence for the carnival in the streets. We went through it together, visiting all the stalls. He was as much a kid as I was. At least, that’s what my mother always said.’

  ‘How old were you when she died?’

  ‘Eight.’

  ‘How sad! And your father never remarried?’

  ‘No, he said he never would, and he stuck to that until his own death.’

  ‘Your father sounds like a delightful person,’ she said warmly.

  ‘He was. Of course, Rinaldo thought he was too frivolous, always joking when he should have been serious. Poppa would tease him and say, “Lighten up, the world is a better place than you think”.’

  ‘Now you’re doing it,’ she told him. ‘Bringing the conversation back to Rinaldo.’

  ‘I know. As you say, it’s hard not to.’

  ‘What did he used to say when your father teased him like that?’

  ‘Nothing, he’d just scowl and remember something that had to be done somewhere else. I’ll swear nothing matters to him but work.’

  ‘Well, I suppose that’s good in a way,’ Alex said. ‘The work has to be done.’

  ‘Hey, I do my share. It’s just that, like Poppa, I believe in having fun too.’

  ‘Has Rinaldo always been gloomy?’

  ‘He’s always been serious, but it’s really only since his wife died that he’s actually been morose.’

  ‘His wife?’ Alex echoed, startled.

  ‘Yes, her name was Maria. She came from Fiesole, a tiny little town near here. They were childhood sweethearts. I think they got engaged when they were fifteen. They married when they were twenty.’

  ‘What was she like?’ Alex asked curiously.

  She was trying to imagine the kind of woman who would attract Rinaldo, but she found it hard to picture him in love.

  ‘She was pretty and plump and motherly. You’d probably call her old-fashioned because all she wanted was to look after us. My mother was dead by then, so it was really nice having her
.’

  ‘Is that why he married her?’ Alex asked, scandalised. ‘To have a woman about the place?’

  Gino grinned.

  ‘Oh no! He was crazy about her. It was Poppa and me who needed motherly attention. I was ten years old. Maria was a great cook, and that’s really all a ten-year-old boy cares about. She and Rinaldo seemed very happy. I used to see him come up behind her, put his arms about her and nuzzle her neck. He was a changed man. He laughed.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘They were going to have a baby, but it was born at seven months and both mother and child died.’

  ‘Oh, heavens!’ Alex whispered in horror. ‘How long ago was that?’

  ‘Fifteen years. They’d been married for less than two years.’

  ‘How awful for him. To be so young and watch his wife die-’

  ‘It was worse than that. He wasn’t there. Nobody expected the baby to come so soon, and he was away buying machinery. Poppa called him as soon as things started to happen and he rushed back, but he was too late.

  ‘I was there in the hospital when he arrived, and I’ll never forget the sight of him. He’d driven all night, and he looked like a madman, with wild eyes. When the doctor told him Maria was dead he wouldn’t believe it. He rushed into her room and seized her up in his arms.

  ‘I’d never seen him cry before. I didn’t think it was possible, but he was off his head.

  ‘At that stage the baby was still alive, but not expected to live. They baptised him quickly. He wanted to hold him, but he couldn’t because he had to stay in the incubator. It was no use though. He died half an hour later.

  ‘By that time he’d calmed down but it was almost worse than when he was raving. He was in a trance, just staring and not seeing anything. He got through the funeral like that-just one funeral, with them both in the same coffin. It was almost as though he didn’t know what was happening.

  ‘Since then he never speaks of them. If I try to mention them he just blanks me out. I’m not sure what he feels now. Probably nothing. He seems to have deadened that side of him.’

  ‘Can any man do that?’ Alex mused.

  ‘Rinaldo can. He can do whatever he sets his mind to. Why should he want to go through such pain again?’

  ‘But surely it could never happen again? No man could be so unlucky twice.’

  ‘I think he’s decided not to take a chance on it. Since Maria died the farm has been his whole life. Poppa left the running of it to him.’

  ‘What about you?’

  Gino gave his attractive boyish grin.

  ‘Theoretically I have as much authority as my brother, but Rinaldo’s a great one for letting you know who’s the meat and who’s the potatoes. His being so much older helps, of course.’

  There was something slightly mechanical about Alex’s smile. She no longer felt able to joke about Rinaldo. The image of the overbearing dictator that had dominated her thoughts had suddenly become blurred.

  There was another image now, a young man agonising over the death of his wife and child, then growing older too fast, hardening in his despair.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Gino asked as she rubbed her hand over her eyes.

  ‘Yes, I’m just a little tired. I’m not used to so much heat.’

  ‘Let me take you back to the hotel.’

  The night air was blessedly cool as they strolled back. To her relief he seemed in tune with her mood, and did not talk.

  At the door of the hotel he took her hand and said, ‘I’d ask to see you again, but you’d only think Rinaldo put me up to it. So I won’t.’

  She smiled. ‘That’s very clever.’

  ‘But it’s all right if I call you, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, but not tomorrow.’

  He nodded. Leaning forward he kissed her cheek gently, and walked away.

  Gino slipped into the house quietly, but his caution was wasted, as he had feared that it would be.

  ‘Good evening,’ Rinaldo said, without looking up from the computer screen where he was doing the accounts

  ‘Don’t you ever sleep?’ Gino asked.

  Rinaldo didn’t answer this. Dragging his eyes away from the screen he leaned back, stretching like a man whose limbs had been cramped too long.

  ‘You look like the cat that swallowed the cream,’ he observed. ‘I hope the cream was good.’

  ‘Don’t be coarse.’

  ‘I also hope you didn’t forget that you were there for a purpose. You haven’t just been enjoying yourself, you were supposed to be neutralising a threat.’

  ‘Alex is no threat. She’s trying to be as helpful to us as she can.’

  Rinaldo groaned.

  ‘She really got to you, didn’t she? Well, before you get too starry-eyed, remember that this is the woman who was negotiating with Montelli at our father’s funeral.’

  ‘She wasn’t negotiating. He just walked up to her. In fact he did it again today and she drove him off with threats of violence. I heard her.’

  ‘He was there again?’

  ‘They were in the coffee shop when I arrived, and she sent him packing.’

  ‘Of course-because she saw you.’

  ‘You’re a cynical swine, aren’t you?’

  ‘I know more about women than you do, and a damned sight more about hard cash. And one of us needs to be cynical about this lady. You’re evidently a lost cause. What did she do? Flutter her eyelids and let you look deep into her blue eyes?’

  ‘They’re not exactly blue,’ Gino said, considering. ‘More like a kind of violet.’

  ‘They looked ordinary blue to me.’

  ‘Maybe you weren’t looking at them in the right way.’

  ‘I was looking at them with suspicion, and that’s the right way,’ Rinaldo growled.

  ‘Well, maybe it was the dress,’ Gino agreed. ‘That was dark blue and very elegant, sort of clingy, especially over her waist and hips-’

  Rinaldo got to his feet restively.

  ‘I don’t want to hear any more,’ he growled. ‘You’ve plainly made a fool of yourself-’

  ‘If you mean that I’m enchanted, I plead guilty.’

  ‘Enchanted. Listen to yourself. You were sent on a mission and you return spouting a lot of sentimental drivel. She’s probably laughing at you this minute. In fact, it wouldn’t surprise me if she got straight on the phone to Montelli as soon as you left.’

  ‘You’re determined to think the worst of her, aren’t you?’

  ‘With reason.’

  ‘You know nothing about her,’ Gino said with a flash of anger. ‘You’ve been prejudiced since the first moment.’

  ‘Do you blame me?’

  ‘I blame you for not giving her a chance.’

  Rinaldo sighed.

  ‘But it isn’t up to me. It lies in her hands now, that’s what’s so damned-’ he checked himself.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Gino said. ‘She’s as crazy about me as I am about her. From now on, everything’s going to be fine.’

  CHAPTER FOUR

  A LEX had often heard of the magic of Italy, but, being a practical person, she had dismissed it as romanticising. Now she found that it was real.

  Perhaps it was in the light that intensified every colour. Or perhaps it was Florence, packed with medieval buildings, where there were as many cobblestones as modern roads.

  She tried not to be seduced by the beauty. She was only here to raise money, then return to London, marriage to David, the partnership: in other words, her ‘real’ life.

  It was just that it seemed less real suddenly, and she could feel no hurry to push things along. David had told her to take as much time as she needed, and it might be better to stay here for a while, and broaden her mind.

  So the day after her meeting with Gino, she did something she hadn’t done for years. She played hookey.

  Firmly turning off her mobile phone she hired a car and left Florence, heading south. After a few miles she began to climb until she reached t
he tiny, ancient town of Fiesole.

  After wandering its cobbled streets for an hour, she found a restaurant with tables on a balcony looking far down, and sat there, sipping coffee and gazing at the rows of cypresses, and the elegant villas that were laid out before her.

  ‘You’re in good company,’ said a quiet voice.

  Rinaldo had appeared, seemingly from nowhere. She wondered how long he had been standing there, watching her.

  But today, although his face was grave, there was no antagonism in it as he came to sit at her table.

  ‘Good company?’ she asked.

  ‘Your English writers, Shelley and Dickens, once admired this valley. Down there is the villa where Lorenzo de Medici entertained his literary friends. This little town is known as the mother of Florence. Look around and you’ll see why.’

  Alex saw it at once. The whole panorama of Florence, barely five miles away, was spread out before them, glowing in the noon haze, the great Duomo rising out of a sea of roofs, dwarfing everything else.

  ‘What are you doing up here?’ he asked lightly.

  ‘Do I need your permission?’

  ‘Not at all, but wouldn’t you be better occupied negotiating? You’re a woman of business. There’s work to be done, and here you are, wasting time, staring into the distance.’

  Alex didn’t normally quote poetry, but this time she couldn’t resist it.

  ‘What is this life if, full of care,

  We have no time to stand and stare?’

  Rinaldo frowned. ‘Who said that?’

  ‘An English poet.’

  ‘An Englishman?’ he demanded on an unflattering emphasis.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, nettled. ‘Strange as it may seem, an Englishman wrote it. Shock! Horror! Now you might have to adjust your ideas about the English.

  ‘You think of me holding court, receiving my financial suitors one by one, selling you out to the highest bidder. And let’s face it, that’s how you prefer to see me.’

  Rinaldo hailed a passing waiter and ordered two coffees. Alex had an amused feeling that he was giving himself a breathing space to come to terms with her attack.

  ‘You were probably following me up here,’ she added, ‘to see if I met up with a prospective buyer behind your back.’

  ‘No, I’ve been visiting friends in Fiesole. This is pure chance.’