In The Count's Bed: The Count's Blackmail Bargain / The French Count's Pregnant Bride / The Italian Count's Baby. Catherine Spencer
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it a second glance. Because, above it, the painting glowed like a jewel, creating its own light.
The girl in it was very young, her hair uncovered, her blue cloak thrown back. She held the child proudly high in her arms, her gaze steadfast, and almost defiant, as if challenging the world to throw the first stone.
Laura caught her breath. She turned to Alessio, eyes shining, her hand going out to him involuntarily. ‘It’s—wonderful.’
‘Yes,’ he returned quietly, his fingers closing round hers. ‘Each time I see it, I find myself—amazed.’
They stood in silence for a few minutes longer, then, as if by tacit consent, turned and began to walk around the shadowy church, halting briefly at each shrine with its attendant bank of burning candles.
Laura knew she should free her hand, but his warm grasp seemed unthreatening enough. And she certainly didn’t want to make something out of nothing, especially in a church, so she allowed her fingers to remain quietly in his.
But as they emerged into the sunshine he let her go anyway. Presumably, thought Laura, the Count Ramontella didn’t wish ‘his’ citizens to see him walking hand in hand with a girl.
Or not my kind of girl, certainly, she amended silently.
She’d expected to be driven straight back to the villa, but to her uneasy surprise Alessio took another road altogether, climbing the other side of the valley.
‘Where are we going?’ she asked.
‘There’s a view I wish to show you,’ he said. ‘It belongs to a trattoria, so we can enjoy it over lunch.’
‘But aren’t we expected back at the villa?’
‘You are so keen to return?’ He slanted a smile at her. ‘You think, maybe, that Paolo’s medicine has already worked its magic?’
‘No,’ she said stiffly. ‘Just wondering what your aunt will think.’
‘It is only lunch,’ he said. The smile lingered—hardened a little. ‘And I do not think she will have any objection—or none that need trouble either of us.’
The trattoria was a former farmhouse, extensively renovated only a couple of years earlier. Among the improvements had been a long wide terrace, with a thatched roof to provide shade, which overlooked the valley.
Their welcome was warm, but also, Laura noticed, respectful, and they were conducted to a table at the front of the terrace. Menus were produced and they were offered an aperitivo.
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 pâté.
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