The Italian's Token Wife. Julia James
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lands, with wonderful people, a world away from the disturbed, unhappy children that surrounded her, the cast-off jetsam of adults too dysfunctional to be responsible parents themselves, making their unwanted children pay the price for their own emotional shortfalls.
As she stared out over the radiant cloudscape—another mystical land up here, so far above the earth—her memory fled back to Kaz. Her face clouded. Although she might feel the desolation of a child utterly abandoned by its parents, at least Magda knew she had come off lucky compared with Kaz. Kaz had had the bruises, the badly mended bones, the haunted eyes. Taken into care to be safe from an abusive stepfather and alcoholic mother, Kaz had been almost as withdrawn as Magda. Perhaps it was natural the two of them had drawn together, to form, for perhaps the first time in either of their lives, a real friendship, a real emotional bond.
Sorrow pierced her. She gazed out over the fleecy, sunlit surface of the clouds. Are you out there somewhere, Kaz? she wondered.
In her arms, Benji stirred. Gently Magda bent to kiss his fine dark hair, her heart swelling with love. She lifted her eyes again and stared out of the window. She had done the right thing in agreeing to this bizarre marriage; she knew she had. However weird this was, she was doing the right thing for the right reason.
For Benji.
For the first time since Rafaello di Viscenti had turned her world upside down, she felt at peace with herself for what she had done.
The peace lasted until the plane landed. Then, in the confusion of a busy Italian airport, hanging on to a wailing Benji, whose ears had set off again during the descent into Pisa, Magda once more felt like that tin can rattling along a motorway.
A hand pressed, not roughly, but insistently, into the small of her back.
‘This way,’ said Rafaello di Viscenti, the man she had married a handful of hours ago, and guided her forward. They made their way out of the airport to where a large limousine hummed at the kerb. Within moments they were inside, luggage in the boot, and the chauffeur was drawing out into the traffic.
The journey took well over an hour, and the latter part, away from the autostrada, was by far the most fascinating. Magda stared out of the window, drinking in the Tuscan landscape, a world away from the rainy South London streets she had left that morning. As the car purred along she pointed things out to Benji, whose baby seat was closest to the window. She leant over him, glad of the opportunity to put as much distance between herself and the man occupying the far corner of the huge car. Since he seemed to be preoccupied with his work still, tapping away at a laptop on his knees, she assumed he preferred to be left alone.
That suited her completely. Having to make stilted conversation with him would have been much worse. Right now, she just wanted to savour being in Italy.
Talking softly to Benji, she drank it all in. Road signs in Italian, driving on the wrong side of the road, houses, cars and people—all Italian. They were steadily climbing, she realised, heading up into the hills. Summer sunlight drenched the rolling landscape, etching the cypresses like ink. She stared, entranced. Stone farmhouses and picturesque stone-built towns, olive groves and vineyards, goats and sheep grazing, and, as the road grew steeper and narrower, old men with donkeys, old women covered in black from headscarf to heavy shoes.
Finally, as the roads grew narrower and the traffic more and more sparse, the limo slowed and turned in through large ironwork gates that opened at a buzz from the chauffeur. She heard Rafaello click off his laptop and close it up.
‘We are here,’ he announced.
She glanced briefly across at him. His face was expressionless and, it seemed to her, particularly tense. Automatically she tensed as well. It dawned on her that the flight and car journey had been nothing more than an interlude. Now, right now, in front of others, she was about to take on the role of Signora di Viscenti.
As if reading her attack of nerves, Rafaello spoke suddenly.
‘Be calm,’ he instructed. ‘There is nothing for you to be anxious about. For you, this is simply a job. Please remember that.’
Was she imagining it, or had a grimmer note entered his tense voice? His dark gaze flicked over her again, and something in it sent a chill through her. Instinctively, Magda felt the chill was not directed at her. But there was anger deep down in there somewhere, she knew. Anger at having been required to marry at all.
Well, she thought resolutely, that was his business, not hers. She was simply doing what he was—to put it bluntly—paying her to do. She had gone through a wedding ceremony but it was nothing more than a legal formality. She was Signora di Viscenti in nothing more than name—and she would never be anything else.
For a moment so brief it hardly existed a longing struck her, so intense it pierced like pain, that somehow, if fairytales were real, this might be one—she really was sweeping along the driveway to her new home, with a husband beside her to die for…
But fairytales weren’t real. They were just…fairytales.
Nothing to do with her.
The car drew up in front of a castellated villa that made Magda’s eyes widen in wonder. It was ancient—and beautiful. The old stone was weathered, the huge wooden door studded, and the grounds stretched all the way to the woods and hills beyond.
Carefully she extracted Benji, who had been lulled off to sleep some time ago, by the rocking motion of the car, and clambered out with him. She held him on her hip and gazed around. The warmth of the late afternoon after the limo’s air-conditioning struck her like a blessing, warming her through the thin material of the cotton dress she was wearing. It was the best she possessed, though it had cost under five pounds in a charity shop and was a size too large for her. Its low-waisted, button-fronted style, she knew, would probably have suited a matron of fifty better than herself. But what did it matter? If Rafaello di Viscenti had objected to it he would have got one of his minions to arrange an alternative.
‘Come—’ The man she had married that morning slipped a hand under her elbow. There was a tension in his grip that communicated itself to her and to Benji, who gave a little grizzle.
Magda suffered a swift glance at Rafaello’s face. Its expression was closed and shuttered, and looked, she thought, very remote. Instinctively she realised that she and Benji were the last things on his mind.
As they approached the front door it swung open suddenly, and a man came out. He was elderly, dressed in shirtsleeves and a waistcoat, and she realised he must be some sort of butler. He greeted Rafaello, and though she could understand not a word she could tell he had definitely not been expecting his arrival.
And certainly not hers.
More rapid Italian followed, and Magda was sure she was not imagining the strong disapproval in the man’s reaction—nor the shocked expression when he took in not just her, but Benji, too. Rafaello, she could tell, was simply terse and uncommunicative—and definitely not pleased by something the man had said to him.
Then they were indoors and Rafaello was turning to her.
‘You and the child must be tired. I am sure you would like to rest a while. Come.’ His voice was impersonal.
They proceeded up a grand staircase, and Magda could not help staring bug-eyed around her. The inside of the house was as beautiful as the outside, with white plain plaster walls hung with tapestries and oil paintings, and a marble staircase edged with scrolling wrought-iron banisters. Everything looked incredibly antique and expensive, a world away from the modern luxury apartments she cleaned.
Disbelief welled through her again—she was going to live here for the next few weeks? This was definitely a fairytale!
Rafaello took her into a large room leading off the broad upper landing. Again she just gazed around, wide-eyed. A vast carved wooden bed dominated the room, which was filled with huge pieces of furniture but, such was the size of the room, there was no sense of being cramped at all. A fabulous Persian carpet spread out beneath her feet, and heavy drapes cascaded to the floor either side of the pair of shuttered