A Law Unto Himself
PENNY JORDAN
She'd been left waiting at the altar…— And when her English godparents offered Francesca an escape from the suffocating pity of the Italian aristocracy of which she was part, she accepted gratefully. Their tranquil Cotswolds home would let her put her life in order.— Then she met their reclusive neighbour, novelist Oliver Newton, a man with a reputation for breaking female hearts. Her attraction to him was sudden, overwhelming and dangerous.For all the great poise that her upbringing had taught her quickly started to dissolve when she looked into his silvery eyes.
Celebrate the legend that is bestselling author
PENNY JORDAN
Phenomenally successful author of more than two hundred books with sales of over a hundred million copies!
Penny Jordan’s novels are loved by millions of readers all around the word in many different languages. Mills & Boon are proud to have published one hundred and eighty-seven novels and novellas written by Penny Jordan, who was a reader favourite right from her very first novel through to her last.
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PENNY JORDAN is one of Mills & Boon’s most popular authors. Sadly, Penny died from cancer on 31st December 2011, aged sixty-five. She leaves an outstanding legacy, having sold over a hundred million books around the world. She wrote a total of one hundred and eighty-seven novels for Mills & Boon, including the phenomenally successful A Perfect Family, To Love, Honour & Betray, The Perfect Sinner and Power Play, which hit the Sunday Times and New York Times bestseller lists. Loved for her distinctive voice, her success was in part because she continually broke boundaries and evolved her writing to keep up with readers’ changing tastes. Publishers Weekly said about Jordan ‘Women everywhere will find pieces of themselves in Jordan’s characters’ and this perhaps explains her enduring appeal.
Although Penny was born in Preston, Lancashire and spent her childhood there, she moved to Cheshire as a teenager and continued to live there for the rest of her life. Following the death of her husband, she moved to the small traditional Cheshire market town on which she based her much-loved Crighton books.
Penny was a member and supporter of the Romantic Novelists’ Association and the Romance Writers of America—two organisations dedicated to providing support for both published and yet-to-be-published authors. Her significant contribution to women’s fiction was recognised in 2011, when the Romantic Novelists’ Association presented Penny with a Lifetime Achievement Award.
A Law Unto Himself
Penny Jordan
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
Table of Contents
Cover (#ub7676f8d-84d1-50b5-948d-947603354f8c)
Concept Page (#uc67fc374-0189-5a92-9d99-09330a1193a2)
About the Author (#ufbda2ceb-485c-50a0-8de1-e545a6c393e6)
Title Page (#u88ac1021-048c-56cd-b7b2-6a2fdd04a829)
Chapter One (#ulink_b9ed40a9-dd87-55b9-9e1f-a5d0daf5f120)
Chapter Two (#ulink_12b2234b-f3e3-5c42-8d66-c4f7f3d92e5a)
Chapter Three (#ulink_5de9ac87-7b5c-51da-9ce2-0c4bbd8366a9)
Chapter Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
End Page (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_812b6163-f73d-5a8c-b4ae-24d22db9322c)
AS THE ALITALIA plane circled the city of her birth, Francesca looked down on it with a faint frown of mingled bewilderment and pain that touched the heart of the stewardess walking down the aisle, and prompted her to comment to her co-workers that it was disconcerting to see such a look of vulnerable loneliness on such a beautiful woman’s face.
‘Who are you talking about?’ the chief stewardess asked her.
‘The woman four rows from the front, with the beautiful cashmere separates and the long dark hair.’
‘Ah, yes… Francesca di Valeria.’
‘You know her?’ the more junior stewardess enquired.
‘Not personally.’ She gave a wry smile. ‘She’s way out of my social league, but I know of her. She comes from a family of very wealthy industrialists. She was due to marry the son of an equally powerful and wealthy family this summer, but the wedding had to be called off at the last moment because the groom had secretly married someone else. There was quite a lot in the papers about it at the time.’ She gave a cynical shrug. ‘Her family were well compensated for their embarrassment. A large contract from the family of the exbridegroom. And it was an arranged match, anyway. Everyone knows that.’
If Francesca had been able to overhear her comments, they wouldn’t have surprised her. In the close-knit, gossipy world of the Italian aristocracy, it was common knowledge that their two families had decided that she and Paolo would eventually marry while they themselves were in their cradles. The marriage hadn’t even been by her parents’ choice but by her grandfather’s, the powerful, autocratic and extremely domineering Duca di Valeria, and Francesca had grown up knowing that one day she would be Paolo’s wife.
She had not been in love with him, it was true, but she had grown so used to the idea of eventually being his wife that the shock of discovering that he had deserted her, practically at the altar, for someone else had thrown her into complete disruption.
Her whole life… her education… everything had been geared towards her becoming Paolo’s wife, towards the fact that one day she would take over from Paolo’s mother, the present Marchesa, as the matriarch of the family—a family with vast interests in commerce and industry; a family with a history that spanned many generations; a proud, upright, formidable family, much like her own.
Now all that was gone.
Paolo’s sisters and cousins avoided her if they saw her in the street. Their mutual friends made embarrassed murmurs of sympathy; even her own grandfather sometimes looked at her with an irate pity that said more than any words that he blamed her in part for Paolo’s defection.
And it was because of this… this almost total severing of her life with a blow that left her unable to go back to what had once been, and yet with no clear idea in her mind of her way forward, that she was leaving her home.
She had a university education and a good brain. Gone were the days when Italian daughters were kept cosseted and protected from the world.
She had even worked for a while, albeit for her godfather, but there had been a tacit understanding that this leniency—this delay in her marriage to Paolo—was a tactful means of allowing him time to mature and come to realise what an asset she would be as his wife.
Such marriages were not uncommon among the families that formed the social circle in which her family moved. Marriage was, after all, a serious business, involving not only the young couple concerned but also their parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins.
The hardest thing of all to bear had been the silences that seemed to fall whenever she walked into a room… the way people watched her, discussed her, pitied her… for who would marry her now? She who had been destined almost from birth for such a high position.
She had endured it for as long as she could, through a mixture of pride and concern for her parents.
Her grandfather had never approved of his eldest son’s choice of bride, the pretty English girl who had come to Italy to care for the twin nieces of his cousin, but her father had insisted on marrying her and they had been very, very happy.
The birth of three sons, followed by a daughter, had gone a long way to softening the Duca’s attitude, but now, with Paolo’s rejection of Francesca, all the old bitterness had flared up, and her grandfather, whose fiery temper was notorious, had almost gone as far as to suggest that it was because of Francesca’s English blood that Paolo had left her for someone else.
That had been when Francesca had decided she had had enough, and it was through the good offices of her godparents that she was now bound for the country of her mother’s birth, to spend an extended visit with Elliott and Beatrice Chalmers, a couple whom Francesca had often heard her godparents mention but whom she had never met.
The English couple had two children, a little boy of three and a baby of six months. They lived in the country, Francesca had been told, and her godmother had remarked solicitously that she hoped the fresh English air would bring the colour back to her pale face, and the kilos to her slender body.
In her mother’s eyes, Francesca had read her relief in seeing her daughter make the first decision since the catastrophe of the telegram’s arrival on the morning of her wedding, announcing that there would be no bridegroom. Normally positive by nature, Francesca had sunk into a swamp of apathy, retreating inside herself as the only means she had, in a large and very voluble Italian family, of finding a retreat where she could gather up her strength and lick her wounds.
And there were wounds. She had not loved Paolo in the way that romantic novels described the emotion, it was true, but she had cared for him, respected him… and looked forward to being his wife and the mother of his children and to the life they would live together. She had thought he looked forward to them too, so it had been a cruel blow to discover not only that he had deserted her for someone else, but also that he had not had the courage to inform her of his decision himself.
What was almost as hard to endure was the realisation that there had been friends who had known what was going on, but who had said nothing. Her trust had been shattered and left in a million splintered pieces. Not just her trust in others, but her trust in herself as well, and she now looked into the past with revulsion, seeing herself as stupidly self-satisfied, so absorbed in her own contentment that she had been blind to reality; so unaware of the feelings of others that she had never even guessed that something was wrong; so caught up in the pleasant meandering of her own life that it never even occurred to her that someone else might yearn for the swift, heady rush of the youthful torrent.
What was wrong with her, that she had never felt any need to experience what Paolo must have experienced? Falling in love, being in love; to her these had been foolish pastimes, suitable only for teenagers; dangerous waters through which she had happily passed unscathed to reach these maturely reflective years of her mid-twenties. Not even as a teenager had she wanted to fall in love, seeing it as a risky, impractical experience, and at twenty-four to Paolo’s twenty-five, the idea that he might fall in love, had anyone put it to her, would have struck her as too ludicrous to even merit a reply.
Now she knew better. Now she knew herself better as well, since she had used the months since the wedding as a period of intense inner reflection and analysis, and she had come to see, in her quiet determination to concentrate all her skills and intelligence in fulfilling her role as Paolo’s wife, a deeply buried desire to atone to her grandfather for her father’s rebellion, and her mother’s English blood.
That realisation had made her feel deeply ashamed, because her parents loved her dearly, cherished her deeply, and cared far, far more for her than did her arrogant grandfather, to whom a granddaughter could never have the importance of a grandson.
Her parents had seen her off at the airport, her mother whispering fiercely that she was glad she had not married Paolo.
‘He was never good enough for you, my darling,’ she had told her. ‘I want you to know the same kind of love I’ve shared with your father. And you will know it.’
Would she? Francesca grimaced wryly to herself, a soft twist of full lips painted in the autumn’s latest fashion colour.
Somehow she doubted it… For one thing, she didn’t particularly want to. If these last few months had taught her one thing about herself, they had taught her the value of being independent.
Her university degree, her knowledge of the history of her country and its dynasties, her very genuine love of searching out elusive facts had, according to her godfather, given her an invaluable foundation on which to build a new kind of life… a career to fulfil her instead of marriage… the exciting challenge of the real world, instead of the enclosed atmosphere of a protective Italian family.
He had helped her to get started, had encouraged and praised her, had given her work to do, and she had found that she thrived on the challenge.
Even so, there was still a vast emptiness in her life… a feeling of alienation… a desire to escape, which she had finally and reluctantly given in to by accepting Beatrice Chalmers’ kind invitation to stay with them.
‘Do you think she’ll be comfortable here, Elliott? She’s been used to so much more luxurious surroundings,’ Beatrice fretted as she studied her pretty guest suite with an anxious frown.
‘From what Carlo told us about her, I doubt she’ll be very concerned with her surroundings,’ Elliott told her drily. ‘I hope to God she isn’t going to be constantly awash with tears and laments.’
‘Oh, Elliott, that isn’t fair,’ Beatrice reproached him. ‘Lucia said she had dealt with the whole thing very bravely. It can’t have been easy. You won’t forget to pick her up from the airport, will you?’
‘Would I dare?’ Elliott asked drily.
‘Oh, and that reminds me… I’ve asked Oliver over for dinner on Friday,’ Beatrice interrupted him briefly.
‘Bea,’ Elliott warned her. ‘I hope you aren’t thinking of matchmaking…’
He saw his wife’s guilty flush and sighed, reaching out to tousle her glossy dark hair.
‘I suppose there’s no point in my telling you that you’re playing with fire, is there?’
‘Because Oliver’s a misogynist?’ she responded spiritedly.
‘Oliver’s been badly burned, Bea,’ he told her gently. ‘And because of it he’s inclined to let the world know that he’s now fireproof. He won’t take kindly to being manipulated into providing a bit of light relief for our lamenting Lucretia, you know.’
He saw how her face had fallen and kissed her lightly. Four years of marriage, and she still had the power to move him in a way that no one else could ever match.
‘I must go,’ he whispered against her hair. ‘I’ve got a board meeting at ten.’
Watching him drive away, Beatrice wondered if she should perhaps cancel Friday’s dinner party. Guiltily she acknowledged that it was true that she had deliberately invited Oliver hoping that the presence of a single, attractive male might help to raise Francesca’s spirits a little; especially such a fascinating male as Oliver. And he was fascinating, with those distinctive silver, all-seeing eyes and that shock of thick, dark hair so at odds with the curious lightness of his eyes. He could be charming too when he chose, although he invariably directed his light-hearted flirtatious remarks to women he knew full well were perfectly happy with their existing partners, and women who, moreover, had the social skills to return the volleyed flattery with easy sophistication. It was also true that he often chose to exhibit these skills in front of some poor unfortunate who had made it all too plain that she was dangerously on the verge of falling heavily for him. He had a way of nipping such affections in the bud that was brutal and very, very effective. Beatrice gave a faint shiver. Perhaps she had not been so clever after all, but because she had invited several other couples for dinner as well, wanting to introduce Francesca to as many new people as possible, she had decided that Oliver was hardly likely to suspect her of matchmaking.
Not that she was doing, really… although she had to admit there was a definite temptation. How old was he now? Thirtysomething… four or five most likely; and it was eight years since Kristie had left him in such a spectacular blaze of publicity, claiming that their daughter was not his after all and that she was going to America to join her lover and Katie’s father.
Other people endured similar tragedies. But other men were not Oliver, Beatrice admitted to herself.
That steely pride of his would not have taken kindly to the gleeful publicity of the gutter Press at the downfall of his marriage. Not since he had made it plain how little time he had for them when his first book had been such a huge success.
They had even speculated that losing his wife and child might make him lose the ability to write, but that had not proved the case, and Oliver had gone from strength to strength, his powerfully evocative novels with their accurate historical backgrounds and their vivid challenging characters had remained at the top of the best-seller lists throughout the world.
His new book was set in both England and Italy, a complicated family saga spanning several generations and involving a wealth of internecine treachery of the type for which his books were justly famous.
And it was here that Beatrice had a tiny stab of guilt, because she had not told Elliott exactly what it was she had in mind.
All that was needed now was for both parties to be tactfully approached with the idea, and she was hoping that the dinner party on Friday would provide an ideal means of breaking the ice. She intended to say nothing to Francesca about Oliver, but planned to draw the girl out over the dinner-table, hoping to arouse Oliver’s interest. It struck her now that she might have been rather over-ambitious, but she was reluctant to abandon a plan that showed such potential promise, and so she crossed her fingers childishly and promised herself that all would go well, and that she wasn’t matchmaking at all… rather, what she was doing was a form of head-hunting, albeit of an extremely freelance variety.
She would be met at Heathrow, Francesca had been told, but in the busy sea of faces in the Arrivals lounge it was impossible to pick out anyone holding up a card bearing her name, so the sudden shock of someone taking hold of her arm made her tense and spin round.
‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you. I’m Elliott Chalmers, and I think you’re Francesca, aren’t you?’
Francesca focused on him: a tall, blunt-faced man with a commanding air of authority, and a faintly wry smile.
He made her feel rather like a foolish schoolgirl as he escorted her across the concourse, collected her luggage, and marshalled her outside to where his car was waiting, but at least his blunt, no-nonsense attitude was preferable to the kind of heavy gallantry, not unmixed with sexual speculation, she had been subjected to increasingly of late, and which she found both irritating and distasteful, and from the most surprising of sources.
Here was a man one could trust even if one could not always agree with him, she decided shrewdly. He was also a man who would respect one’s rights to one’s own opinions, even if he did attempt to steam-roller them.
At home it had been mild and sunny; here in London it was damp and cold. Francesca shivered in her thin wool suit, wishing she had worn the heavier top coat that was packed away in her cases… New cases, because the only ones she possessed were those which had been ordered for her honeymoon, and stamped by Vuitton with her married initials. She winced a little, and hoped that her gesture would be mistakenly put down to the cold.
Her new suitcases bore no initials, but they had come from Gucci and had been very expensive. Her father had insisted on buying them for her. Like all Italian men, he adored spoiling his womenfolk. The new Valentino wardrobe inside the cases had been another parental gift.
Francesca had worn designer clothes almost from her teens. Her family was wealthy and in Italy good dressing was important, but this was the first time she had worn Valentino. He was considered a little fast by Paolo’s mother, and so Francesca had subdued her own desire to experiment with his innovative styles and strong colours and had instead settled for the designer favoured by her mother-in-law to be.
Now she did not have to weigh such considerations any longer; she was free to do exactly as she wished. It was an extremely novel realisation, and she was only just beginning to learn not to be frightened of it; like a crab without its protective shell, she had to subdue the urge to scuttle away and hide herself because she felt so vulnerable.
‘Mm… I wonder if we’ll get all this lot in the car.’
She looked at Elliott and saw to her relief that he was teasing her. She responded with a smile, her first proper smile in a very long time, she realised, her face muscles feeling slightly stiff.
The dark blue Jaguar was a new model, polished and shiny, but inside, on the back seat where Elliott had suggested she might prefer to sit for comfort, were a couple of books of nursery rhymes and some children’s toys.
‘You have a son and a daughter, I believe,’ she commented quietly once they had cleared the heavy traffic of the airport approaches.
‘Yes, Dominic and Rebecca. That’s why I’m meeting you, and not Bea. Henrietta, the mainstay of our household, is away having a few days holiday at the moment, but she will be back at the weekend. I take it that Lucia has filled you in with details of the Bellaire and Chalmers families?’
‘Yes. Your father married Beatrice’s mother, but she had been previously married to a fellow actor, Charles Bellaire, and after your father’s death and Charles’s subsequent divorce, they remarried…’
‘Yes, and went on to have four more children: the twins, Sebastian and Benedict, Miranda and last, but definitely not least, William. I dare say you will meet them all in due course, although probably not Lucilla, who is both mine and Beatrice’s half-sister. She’s the only child of my father’s marriage to Beatrice’s mother. She’s in the States at the moment with her husband, Nick Barrington. He has extensive interests and connections in Hollywood, and they’ve gone there to recruit a new star for a new film that is presently casting.’
Francesca had heard all about her hostess’s fascinating family background, so very different from her own with its staid ranks of ducas and contes; its many, many Valerian aunts and uncles; its traditions and its shibboleths.
‘Bad flight?’ Elliott asked her, glancing into his driving mirror and observing her too pale face.
She was a beautiful woman, even with the sculptured pared-down thinness of her face. Her hair was like polished silk, hanging thick and heavy on to her shoulders, her make-up immaculate, the golden eyes wary and shuttered, and yet for all her poise and beauty, for all the immaculateness of her appearance, there was none of the plastic dullness that sometimes characterised such perfection.
Her elegance was unmistakably Italian, and yet there was at the same time just a hint of her English heritage, in the mobility of her face and that faint, betraying wariness of her eyes.
He would have to warn Bea again not to expose Francesca to Oliver. He would make mincemeat out of her, and the girl was just vulnerable enough to be hurt by his abrasiveness.
He could see Oliver’s viewpoint, though; a man who had been deceived in the way that he had been deceived was bound to have been hardened by the experience and to want to hold the female sex at a distance.
The prettiness of the English countryside, even in the gloom of the damp October afternoon, was a surprise to Francesca. Her mother had come from the north, a small mining community to which she had no desire to return and with which she had no ties, since she had been orphaned young.
But this… this soft mingling of greens and golds, this pale sunlight that softened cream stone walls ancient with lichen… this very quiet delicacy of colour appealed strongly to her. Even the autumn melancholy of the landscape was in tune with her own sombre thoughts; not of the man she had lost, because she was honest enough to admit to herself that she had not loved him; not even for the honours that would have been hers as his wife. No… it was the loss of self she mourned most… the realisation that she had blindly and willingly allowed herself to be formed into the most suitable image for a granddaughter of the Duca di Valeria. She had even connived at the image-making herself, had willing allowed herself to be moulded and fashioned into an artificial role. It was the betrayal of herself that hurt the most; the realisation that through both laziness and cowardice she had abandoned her rights to be herself… to be independent and to make her own life.
Once while she was at university there had been a boy. He had wanted to be her lover… a wild ragazzo from the streets of Naples, sponsored by a wealthy benefactor because of his intelligence. She had not been able to hide from him her indifference to his feelings.
He had accused her then of not being ‘real’, of not being a person in her own right. She had listened gravely to his insults and then calmly cut him out of her life, relieved, if the truth was known, to end the acquaintanceship with him, because deep down inside her part of her had been disturbed by him, not sexually, but mentally, and she had resented that quiet ripple across the placid surface of her life.
How complacent she had been. How stupidly, wantonly complacent.
She closed her eyes, and Elliott, glancing at her through his mirror, was thankful that they were nearly home. If she was going to burst into tears, he would rather it was when Bea was there to cope and commiserate. As the thought formed, her eyelids lifted, and the golden eyes flashed proud rejection of his thoughts back at him.
So she was not as remote and serene as she appeared. She had pride and spirit. She would need them if she was to succeed in her plans to form a completely new life for herself, more in step with the modern world than the old-fashioned protected one of her grandfather.
‘Nearly there,’ he told her, turning off the main road and driving through the small Cotswold village that was only a handful of miles from his and Beatrice’s home.
The village delighted Francesca, and she swiftly recognised the Tudor architecture of the stone cottages. History was her love, and because her mother was English she had studied British history in almost as much detail as she had Italian.
‘Here we are.’
Elliott turned in through the gates of the mellow Cotswold house. Even before they had left the car, the front door was thrown open and a young woman came hurrying out. Older than Francesca, she nevertheless had an unexpected youthfulness that the Italian girl hadn’t anticipated, having heard many times of how Beatrice had been the mainstay and substitute mother to her family after her parents’ death.
She wasn’t as tall as Francesca herself, and was slightly plumper, a baby clutched in one arm while a blond-haired little boy ran forward to fling himself into Elliott’s arms almost before the car door was open.
‘Welcome to England,’ Beatrice greeted her with a warm smile. ‘Come inside. You must be feeling the cold after Italy. You must tell me if your room isn’t warm enough. The central heating’s on, but all the bedrooms have fires and we can light one for you if necessary. I hope you won’t mind dining en famille tonight. Henrietta, who runs the house and us, is away visiting friends at the moment, and I’m afraid everything is rather disorganised.
‘By the way,’ Beatrice asked her, as she urged her inside the house, ‘what are we to call you? Francesca… or do you have a nickname—Chessie perhaps?’
Beatrice’s warm, friendly smile touched something inside her that reminded her very much of her mother.
No one in il Duca’s household was allowed the informality of having their name abbreviated, and consequently all her life she had been Francesca; a graceful, elegant name, which she suddenly realised had often been a very difficult one to live up to. Chessie, now… Chessie conjured up a very different image indeed. A Chessie might be permitted all kinds of follies and foolishnesses never permitted a Francesca, and so, turning her back on the rigorous training of twenty-four years, Francesca returned Beatrice’s smile and said firmly, ‘Chessie will be fine.’
Chessie…
She savoured the name to herself as she followed Beatrice upstairs. It had an untrammelled, freedom-loving sound to it that she liked; it made her feel young and vibrant… it made her feel she was free of the burden of being the granddaughter of the Duca di Valeria, the rejected promised wife of Paolo di Calveri.
From her room she could see over the surrounding countryside. She felt curiously at home here in a way she had not expected. She liked her hostess, and suspected she would also like her host once she had got to know him.
Initially she had protested when her godparents had arranged this break for her, but she had been too listless to resist their plans. Now that she was here, though, she wondered that she had never thought of coming before. Here no one knew about her and Paolo, apart from her hosts. No one cared that she was the granddaughter of il duca… no one would ever call her ‘Francesca’ in that curt, disapproving tone of her grandfather’s that had so often chilled the warmth of her youth.
Here she was Chessie… a young woman just like any other, with enough qualifications to find herself a job should she so wish… with surely her whole future spread out in front of her, rather like her view of the pretty countryside.
A sense of eagerness and adventure she had not experienced in a long long time flowed through her. She started to unpack her cases, humming as she did so.
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_01a1401b-38fc-5bea-9c73-f83e6b30297a)
‘THIS DINNER PARTY, are you sure you do not need any help?’ Francesca asked gravely, with memories of her mother’s dinner parties and the days of anxiety and tension that preceded them lest she fell short of her father-in-law’s exalted standards in some way and called down his wrath upon her head.
Beatrice laughed.
‘No… everything’s under control. Most of the food was prepared last week before Henry left, and it’s in the freezer… as for the rest… well, our friends are very easygoing and quite happy to take pot luck.’
‘Pot luck?’ Francesca wrinkled her forehead and obligingly Beatrice explained the phrase for her.
‘But the silver—the crystal… You have no maid, and surely these will need to be cleaned?’
‘Henry and I did all that before she left. We live quite simply here, Chessie,’ Beatrice told her gently.
Immediately Francesca flushed, and Beatrice was quick to comfort her.
‘Please don’t be embarrassed. We know that you come from a very different and far grander background than ours.’
‘My mother says that the formality insisted upon by my grandfather is no longer necessary, but nothing anyone can say will make him change his ways. My mother says he takes pride in them. He is very arrogant.’
‘And you both love him and resent him,’ Beatrice guessed. ‘It’s hard, isn’t it, to constantly strive for the approval and affection of someone who only seems to notice you’re there when you do the wrong things?’
‘Very,’ Francesca agreed bleakly. ‘So… if I cannot help with the meal, perhaps I could take charge of the children.’
‘No. What you can do is to make yourself so alluringly beautiful that none of my male guests will be able to take their eyes off you, and with their wives watching them watching you, I shan’t have to worry if my food isn’t up to scratch, shall I?’ Beatrice teased her, calmly accepting the change of subject and its implications. She had no intentions of putting any pressure on Francesca to discuss the past or her family with her; she simply wanted the Italian girl to feel at home with them. Sometimes she had such a look of taut constraint that Beatrice ached to tell her that what she was enduring would eventually pass, but she sensed that Francesca was too proud to welcome any intrusion into her personal pain, however well-meant.
‘Could you help us?’ Lucia had begged her in that unexpected telephone call four weeks ago. ‘We have a god-daughter, a charming, beautiful girl, who is simply fading away before our eyes. She needs a change of scene, a change of life-style…” And she had gone on to explain to Beatrice exactly what had happened.
‘It is not in her heart that she is hurt, but in her pride, in her belief in herself, and these can be even harder wounds to bear. But I think they will heal more easily if she is away from Italy, and more especially if she is away from her grandfather.’
And so Beatrice had readily agreed to invite Francesca to stay. And not just because of the debt she herself owed the Fioris.
It had been Lucia who had counselled her so wisely when she had thought her own love for Elliott to be hopeless—she had believed that it must be impossible for him to love her. But even without that debt she would still have wanted to help.
Elliott arrived home an hour before their dinner guests were due.
‘I take it Oliver’s still included in the guest list?’ he asked her, after mixing them both a drink, bringing them up to the bedroom, and telling her to sit down for five minutes and relax.
‘Yes.’ She looked at him uncertainly. ‘Elliott, I’m not trying to matchmake, but it occurred to me that Chessie might be the ideal solution to Oliver’s research problem. You know he’s desperate to find someone to take over the Italian research on his latest book, and that he can’t get away himself. Chessie has a history degree.’
‘She also has a stunning figure, a beautiful face, and the kind of vulnerability that will make Oliver tear her to shreds if he gets the mood on him, and you and I both know it,’ Elliott warned her grimly, interrupting her, and then adding, ‘I’m not saying it isn’t a good idea… on the face of it. But Oliver’s lethal. He’s also a man and very human…’
‘Meaning?’ Beatrice questioned him uncertainly.
‘Meaning that to you, my dear wife, he may behave like a perfect gentleman, but where women less wrapped up in their husbands are concerned, he can be… well, let’s just say that he has all the usual male appetites and that he’s quite capable of satisfying them and then ejecting the woman concerned from his life with rather brutal efficiency.’
‘You think he’d try to seduce Chessie?’ Beatrice asked uneasily.
‘I don’t know. He’s one of those men who’s a law unto himself, and I wouldn’t like to predict what he might do.’
Beatrice’s eyes rounded in astonishment. Her husband was an astute judge of character and normally very crisp and to the point in giving his opinion of his fellow men.
‘Well, I only thought that tonight we could see how they get on, and then…’
‘Liar,’ Elliott interrupted her ruthlessly. ‘You intended to dangle Chessie in front of him like a very tempting piece of bait, in the hope that her expertise in Italian history will prove so irresistible that it will outweigh his legendary dislike of working with women.’
‘And do you think it will?’ Beatrice asked him slyly.
Elliott looked at her in their bedroom mirror and eventually said grimly, ‘Unfortunately, yes.’
‘Unfortunately for Oliver or for Chessie?’
‘Potentially, for them both!’
In her own bedroom, Chessie too was looking into a mirror, but she was alone with her reflection, unlike Beatrice and Elliott.
‘Nothing too formal,’ Beatrice had advised her when she had asked her what she should wear, and she only hoped that what she had chosen would be suitable.
Her grandfather had set great store by the correct appearance, and Chessie was not sure where on the scale of formality her scarlet Valentino wool crêpe dress would stand.
True, it was very plain, the soft fabric draped subtly to reveal her curves… true it had a high, round neck, and long, all-covering sleeves… but it was also short, just above the knee, and the colour itself was so eye-catching that it scarcely needed any further adornment.
She had left her hair down, catching it back with a gilt bow. She was wearing matching gold bow earrings from which a pearl was suspended, and a collection of fine gold bangles which made a soft musical sound when she moved.
Sheer black tights, high-heeled suede pumps, the Chamade perfume she had switched to only months ago, and which she still wasn’t completely sure about. It was so different from the cool, fresh fragrance she had worn before. A fragrance chosen by her grandfather as being ‘suitable’ for a young woman of his house.
The dining-room of the Cotswold house was barely a fifth of the size of that in her grandfather’s palazzo but it had a welcoming warmth that Francesca infinitely preferred.
The problem was, as one of her aunts had austerely told her, when as a teenager she had dared to complain that the vast, echoing rooms of the seventeenth-century palazzo had no warmth about them, that she and her mother had been ridiculously indulged by her father, who had broken the tradition of centuries in refusing to move his new bride into the family home, but who had instead bought a pretty little villa on the outskirts of the city with its own private garden and an informal courtyard that Francesca remembered with nostalgic longing.
When her grandfather’s health had started to fail, though, her father had given in to family pressure to move himself and his family into the family home.
The palazzo was a vast, echoing place with marble floors, and a quantity of rococo gilt mirrors. It cost a fortune to maintain, and it was only by judicious marriages and deploying their resources into commerce that the family had been able to retain a home that was really more a museum-piece than suitable for modern-day living.
Francesca knew that her mother had never felt wholly comfortable living there. For one thing, she was no longer really in charge of her own household, the palazzo being run by a maiden aunt of the family, who refused to allow anyone to take over from her.
The palazzo possessed a vast warren of higgledy-piggledy rooms on the floors above the grand reception-rooms, more than enough to house all the aunts, uncles, and cousins who lived there.
It must be rather nice to be like Beatrice and to have to share this lovely home with only one’s husband and children. Had she married Paolo, her home would have been in a palazzo even more enormous than her grandfather’s. Francesca frowned thoughtfully. If she had never really looked forward to such a prospect, then why had she not said so? Why had she allowed her grandfather to dominate her life?
‘Do you think everything looks all right?’ Beatrice asked her, anxiously coming into the room and mistaking her frowning introspection for a critical study of her table.
‘It looks lovely,’ Francesca told her truthfully. ‘What time do your guests arrive?’
‘Any minute now. Elliott will serve them drinks in the drawing-room, while I help Henry in the kitchen. I wonder, Chessie, would you be very kind and help Elliott to entertain them? I’ve invited two other couples: the local doctor and her husband, who’s a lecturer at Oxford; a business colleague of Elliott’s who lives a few miles away and his wife; and another neighbour of ours, Oliver Newton. He’s a writer. I don’t know if you’ve heard of him. He writes under the name of Dominic Lacey.’
‘I’ve seen his books. He writes thrillers, doesn’t he?’
‘Sort of. He’s an expert on Elizabethan England, and he sets his books in that period. They’re very popular. He’s having problems with his latest one, though. His main character, a spy working for Francis Walsingham, is sent to Italy to find out as much as he can about a supposed Borgia plot against Elizabeth, and it seems that Oliver is having problems with the research into the Italian part of the book. He was saying only the other day that he can’t spare the time to go to Italy himself and that he may well have to employ a research assistant. I thought…’
She broke off as the doorbell rang.
‘Oh, heavens, they’re arriving already.’
There were no nuances of the fine art of entertaining that were not known to Francesca. She mingled with Beatrice’s guests with the quiet grace she had inherited from her mother, adding to it the sophisticated polish she had learned from her aunts, keeping the conversational ball rolling, parrying questions that threatened to become too curious and deftly making each person she spoke to feel that she was genuinely interested in what they had to say.
‘Who is she?’ Oliver Newton asked Elliott, as they stood together by the fire. He had been watching her for the last five minutes, studying the elegant grace of her body, acknowledging that she was an extremely beautiful and skilled woman.
‘The god-daughter of some friends of ours. Let me introduce you.’
Oliver had arrived while Francesca was talking to Helen and John Carter, the doctor and university lecturer, and although she had seen him arrive, good manners had dictated that she did no more than give him a brief glance.
Now he was coming towards her with Elliott, and the tiny shock she had experienced on seeing him redoubled. He was not a handsome man, his features were too hard for that, but no woman could ever overlook him. His eyes were the colour of the sea-spray on the wildest parts of the Italian coast, his hair dark enough to belong to one of her cousins.
The thought sprang into her mind that here was a man who would defy God himself to achieve what he wanted; a man who owned no master… no higher authority… no barriers.
‘Francesca, allow me to introduce you to a friend of ours, Oliver Newton.’
‘Oliver, meet Francesca, C…’
‘Valera,’ Francesca supplied quickly for him, deliberately omitting her title, and introducing herself as she had done to the other guests by extending her hand and saying firmly, ‘Please call me Chessie.’
His flesh felt hard and dry, its contact with her own sending a shocking pulse of sensation through her skin that made her pull away from the handshake.
The silver-ice eyes registered her reaction and mocked her for it.
‘Chessie?’ he questioned, smiling cruelly at her. ‘I think not. Francesca suits you much more. Besides, I abhor nicknames.’
His arrogance took her breath away; that and his blatantly obvious desire to hurt her, and, thus challenged, she reacted in a way she herself would never have expected, looking him full in the eyes and saying coolly, ‘Since we are hardly likely to meet frequently, I don’t think it can really matter how you choose to address me, Mr Newton.’ And then she turned her back on him and walked calmly over to the Carters, neither of whom had seen the small by-play, and both of whom welcomed her back enthusiastically.
‘Who did you say she was?’ Oliver questioned Elliott again, apparently unaffected by her rebuke.
‘The god-daughter of some Italian friends of ours.’
‘Mm… with no husband or lover in tow, and some very expensive tastes, to judge from her clothes. What’s she doing here, Elliott?’
‘If you really want to know, why don’t you ask her?’
Oliver’s eyebrows rose, but Elliott wasn’t a man to be challenged or disconcerted by the cool stare of those hypnotic eyes.
‘Dinner, everyone,’ Beatrice announced, opening the drawing-room door.
She had deliberately not placed Francesca next to Oliver, thus making her his partner, but opposite him, and next to John Carter, knowing that the dinner-table conversation which she fully intended to monitor would include the revelation that Francesca was an expert on her country’s history, thus giving her a chance to shine as Beatrice fully believed she deserved to do. It would also give Oliver an opportunity to see that she was not only beautiful but intelligent as well.
Oliver had a theory about women, as unfounded as it was unfair, but Beatrice made allowances for him, understanding that much of his bitter cynicism must spring from the cruelty inflicted on him by his ex-wife.
She had learned from friends in the area that Oliver had adored the little girl he had thought was his child, and local opinion was that he could probably have fought a custody case for her and won, but he had refused to adopt such a course of action because, as he had once harshly told Beatrice, not long after her own daughter was born, he had judged it preferable for the child to be with her mother and the man who was truly her natural father than to be with him, no matter how much he might love her.
This was the first time Francesca had attended such an informal dinner party, where the conversation didn’t so much flow politely as eddy and swirl in fascinating and challenging torrents that refused to allow her to remain aloof.
In a very short space of time she was explaining to John Carter her intention of embarking on a new career, and at first she was so carried away by her own enthusiasm that she didn’t hear the brief sound of derision Oliver Newton made.
He interrupted her enthusiastic flow of plans to challenge directly, ‘Forgive me if I seem cynical, Francesca, but surely if your enthusiasm for a career were as great as you are giving us to understand, you would already have forged the beginnings of this career. You are, after all, no newly qualified graduate, on your own admission.’
Francesca sensed the waiting tension of the other dinner guests. The men looked slightly uncomfortable, with the exception of Elliott, whose expression it was difficult to read, but Francesca had the oddest belief that he was silently encouraging her to go on and not give in to what amounted to little more than bad-mannered bullying.
The women on the other hand looked expectant, as though long used to Oliver Newton’s challenging statements and looking to her to defend their sex.
It was a challenge she dared not resist… the kind of challenge she would doubtless often have to face in her new life.
‘You are quite right,’ she agreed in the cool, beautifully modulated voice she had inherited from her father, her English accentless and perfect. ‘Unfortunately, until recently, my life was planned to take a different direction.’
‘Really? You intrigue me. What kind of direction?’
The rudeness of the man was intolerable. Francesca looked at him coldly, the haughty, dismissing look of her grandfather, but on this man it had no effect. The silver-ice eyes defied the dismissal of hers, demanding that she answer his question.
‘I was to have been married,’ she told him briefly, ‘and, to save you the inconvenience of questioning me further, yes, it was my fiancé who drew back from the marriage.’
Francesca could sense the sympathetic interest of everyone apart from Oliver himself.
‘Unfortunate… but hardly grand tragedy,’ he told her harshly. ‘And so, now, instead of embracing a husband, you have decided to embrace a career. Hardly the action one would have expected from the newly broken-hearted.’
How would she have felt had she actually loved Paolo, on receiving such an insult? As it was she had the greatest difficulty in remaining in her seat, and not reacting to that hard-edged stare by getting up and fleeing the room.
Forcing back every instinctive feminine reaction she possessed, she calmly finished another forkful of food and then said quietly ‘It wasn’t a love match, but a marriage arranged between our families. It had been agreed when we were quite small that Paolo and I should marry. I see my decision not as that of a broken-hearted victim, but simply that of a person to whom one career avenue is now closed, and who therefore seeks another.’
Beatrice who had been listening to this exchange with growing tension, was thankful to see Henrietta walk into the room ready to clear away the dinner-plates and serve the pudding.
Someone asked Francesca when she had first become interested in Italian history, and Beatrice, not aware of how she had introduced herself to Oliver, interrupted quickly, ‘Oh, I expect it was the first time you realised the significance of your family’s place in Italy’s history, wasn’t it, Chessie? The first Duca was a captain in the army of Lorenzo the Magnificent, wasn’t he?’
Try as she might, Francesca couldn’t stop herself from looking at Oliver Newton. He was sitting there regarding her with a narrow, derisive smile, as though he knew quite well what had led her into concealing her family title.
‘Now I begin to understand the arranged marriage,’ he told her contemptuously in a low voice that reached only her ears. ‘And the beautiful, if artificial manners…’
Francesca bit back a sharp retort. She was suddenly weary of sparring with him. He exhausted her, draining her mental energy and challenging her so much at every turn that he seemed to suck her very life-force from her.
The guests didn’t linger long after dinner. Francesca excused herself as they were leaving, feeling that Beatrice and Elliott would appreciate some time to themselves. No one could have made her more warmly welcome, but she was conscious at times that she was an intruder in their home, and that Elliott in particular must resent not having his wife completely to himself.
The only person who had not yet left was Oliver Newton, and she gave him a cool nod, refusing to allow herself to be drawn into any further challenging exchanges with him.
From the hallway Oliver watched her climb the stairs.
‘Oliver, have you found a researcher yet?’ Beatrice asked him, once she was sure Francesca was in her room.
‘No, it’s proving far harder than you would believe. No one I’ve interviewed so far has much more knowledge of the period than I have myself. I wish to God I’d not accepted this American deadline, then I’d have time to do the research myself.’
He was frowning heavily, the austere planes of his face thrown into relief by the hall lights.
‘Francesca is an expert on Italian history,’ Beatrice told him quietly, and then darted a quick look at Elliott, asking for his support.
He gave it to her, albeit a trifle drily. ‘Beatrice is right, Oliver. Francesca certainly has the historical expertise you need, but whether or not it would be wise to induce her to give you the benefit of it, I shouldn’t like to say.’
‘You won’t be called on to do so,’ Oliver returned hardily. ‘You know what I think of women in the workplace, especially career women: they’re motivated by two things. Either they’re playing at being men, all aggression and ambition, or they’re using their supposed careers as a means of finding themselves a meal ticket for life.’
Upstairs, Francesca, who had realised that she had left her handbag in the drawing-room, gave a smothered gasp of outrage, but it was left to Beatrice to say quietly, ‘Oliver, you’re letting your prejudices show. I’m sure Francesca doesn’t fall into either of those categories. Elliott’s quite right,’ she added lightly. ‘Even if you were to offer Francesca the job, I don’t think I could advise her to accept it. You were very hard on her this evening. It isn’t her fault she was born into a wealthy aristocratic family… nor that her fiancé jilted her practically at the altar. I admire her for what she’s trying to do. It can’t be easy for her.’
‘Why should it be?’ Francesca heard Oliver Newton reply savagely. ‘Why should life mete out to her advantages it doesn’t mete out to anyone else? So she’s been jilted. So what? Her family will find her another husband and she’ll go home and marry him as readily as she was prepared to marry the other one, and you won’t hear another word about this supposed career. Will they?’ he challenged, stepping back slightly so that he could look up the stairs.
He knew she was there. He had known it all the time… Francesca went rigid with mortification, refusing to move from where she stood in the shadow of the landing. How had he known she was there?
She heard him laugh sourly and then walk towards the front door.
By the time Beatrice and Elliott had returned from seeing him to his car, she was safely inside her bedroom with the door closed.
Never before in all her life had she come up against such a man. He was more powerful, more challenging even than her grandfather, albeit in a very different way. Her grandfather’s autocracy came from generations of ancestors who had believed in their absolute right to do as they wished because of their birth, and to ensure that the family name was upheld as a name to be revered, while Oliver Newton’s arrogance came simply from his own belief in himself. She had never come across anyone like him before, and she shivered as she undressed, remembering the dry heat of his palm against her own; the hardness of the bones beneath the flesh… the lightning sensation of power that his touch had conveyed.
As she showered she had a momentary and vivid mental image of his hands on her body, and she stood tensely where she was, riveted to the spot, snapping her eyes open to dispel the unwanted vision, ignoring the fierce spray of the shower.
How on earth had it happened, that fierce surge of awareness so completely unfamiliar to her and yet so shockingly explicit? And she didn’t even like the man.
Hurriedly she stepped out of the shower and grabbed a towel, rubbing herself dry.
Forget him, she told herself, After all, it was hardly likely that she would see him again. Not if he had anything to do with it, she reflected wryly.
CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_f373dd27-a9b9-5002-8680-2e3d88d0eb20)
‘I’M SO SORRY, Chessie. I feel terrible letting you down like this, but with Dom not feeling well… Do you mind awfully if we postpone our shopping trip for a few days?’
Beatrice’s obvious tension lessened a little as Francesca shook her head and reassured her firmly, ‘Of course you must stay with Dom. Actually, it’s such a lovely day, I wondered if you’d mind if I went for a walk?’
It had occurred to her after Elliott had finished his breakfast and departed for his meeting in London that it might be easier for Beatrice to cope with her fretful and obviously not very well little boy if she didn’t have a guest to entertain at the same time.
The approving glance Henrietta cast her as she cleared away the breakfast things confirmed that her judgement was well founded. Dom, who had woken his parents during the night complaining that he had a sore tummy, was now asleep in his mother’s arms, but Beatrice herself looked rather pale and tired, as well she might do, Francesca thought sympathetically.
Even with the loving support of a husband like Elliott and the caring assistance of Henrietta, it still could not be easy taking care of two children under school age, one of whom was still a baby and the other, as Francesca had discovered, a very lively three-year-old with a penchant for mischief and a huge watermelon grin.
‘A walk… Oh, yes. There are lovely footpaths round here. If you can hang on for a second, I think we’ve got a little booklet showing some of them. You’ll need to wrap up well, though. There’s a very chilly breeze. Oh, and wear some waterproof shoes or boots if you’ve got a pair.’
Waterproof shoes. Francesca mentally reviewed the clothes she had brought with her: apart from one pair of plain black satin evening shoes, the others were all high-heeled leather pumps by Charles Jourdan; elegant and indeed very comfortable shoes, but most definitely not waterproof.
‘I don’t think I have anything suitable with me,’ she said carefully to Beatrice, not wanting to add to her conscientious and very caring hostess’s burden of worry. ‘Is there a shop in the village where I might buy a pair?’
‘Yes,’ Beatrice told her. ‘You’ll find it next to the Post Office. Tell them you want a pair of waterproof walking boots. Get a pair with a fleecy warm lining. I find they’re the best. Would you hold Dom for me, while I go and find that brochure?’
The sleeping child was a heavy weight in her arms. Francesca considered herself reasonably au fait with children and their care—living at the heart of an Italian family, it was hard not to be—but it had struck her, as she watched Beatrice with her son, as she saw Elliott’s quick frown of concern before he left the house, that the children she was used to seeing were always presented antiseptically clean and beautifully dressed by their nannies; immaculate accessories to their pretty mamas; always well-mannered and schooled.
She had seen other children, of course, running about the streets, playing games, street-wise children with dark, knowing eyes.
Holding Dom, it came to her that, if the wedding had not been called off, she would very probably by now have been carrying her first child. She would have had to have had a son, of course… Her grandfather would have permitted nothing else.
She was not sorry she had not married Paolo, she decided, relinquishing Dom to his mother’s arms as Beatrice returned triumphantly handing her a small leaflet entitled ‘Village Walks’. As she was only just beginning to realise, there were other ways to live than that stipulated by her grandfather.
She was beginning to wonder if there wasn’t more of her mother in her than she had always supposed. She was finding that she rather approved of the British family life, where husband and wife and later on their children had their own home separate from parents, aunts, uncles and grandparents. And she was beginning to appreciate how difficult it must have been for her mother adapting to life at the palazzo.
Francesca was just setting out from the village when the doctor’s car arrived. Recognising her from the dinner party, she stopped to exchange a few moments of conversation with her and then set off down the drive.
Drifts of leaves whispered drily round her feet, warmed by the sun, and still crisped with a hint of the frost they had had overnight. The hills in the distance were purple-blue and hazily indistinct, the trees that seemed to stretch right across the countryside to their feet, in irregular masses of gold and bronzes, warm patches of colour against the softer backdrop, their foliage a brilliant contrast to the pale blue of the sky.
It was colder than she had anticipated; her pleated, kilt-like skirt and its complementary soft wool sweater was moulded to her body by the force of the wind.
She had brought with her a bright yellow jacket, which picked out the thin yellow stripe on the tartan skirt, fully believing that she would not need it, but now, as she shrugged elegantly into it, she was glad of its protective warmth.
By the time she reached the village, having stopped once or twice to look curiously inside the shuttered gates of the two large houses she passed, wondering to whom they belonged and admiring the avenues of trees that bordered their drives, her face was glowing pink with the cold, her bare hands tingling.
She found the shop immediately. The village was only small, little more than a straggle of pretty Cotswold houses, either side of the main road. There were no other customers in the shop; the woman who came forward to serve her was small and plump with greying hair and a warm smile.
Explaining what she wanted, Francesca sat down and tried on the selection of footwear she was given. In the end she decided on a pair of sheepskin boots dyed dark blue, which toned in with her skirt. They had warm linings and thick, waterproof soles. The woman serving her showed no surprise when Francesca said that she wanted to keep them on, and parcelled up her court shoes, having first admired the quality of the leather.
Outside again, Francesca realised that she needed gloves. The village had only one dress shop, next to an antique dealer’s, and Francesca hovered outside the window for a few minutes, her eye caught by a pretty Dresden piece. She had noticed that Beatrice had several similar pieces on display in her own small sitting-room, and it occurred to her that this shepherdess might make the right gift for her hostess when she came to leave.
Having bought her gloves, and studied the shepherdess again, she looked for somewhere to sit while she studied the pamphlet Beatrice had given her.
Beatrice had mentioned the previous day that the village boasted a very popular tea shop, and Francesca soon found it tucked down a narrow ginnel, which opened out into a courtyard, overlooking the river and surrounded by well-kept green lawns.
The tea shop was open and quite busy. In addition to serving tea and coffee, it also sold a wide variety of specialist teas and coffee beans and, as a waitress led her to a table, Francesca sat back and amused herself watching the shop’s customers come and go.
She wasn’t in any hurry to rush back. If she did, Beatrice would worry because she wasn’t able to entertain her, and besides, it was fascinating watching people come and go.
Beatrice had already mentioned to her that the Cotswolds were a very popular tourist area, and now she was seeing the truth of this statement, recognising one or two American accents among the softer local ones.
She drank her coffee piping hot and ate the scone she had ordered. It was fresh and light and the jam was obviously home-made. Francesca enjoyed her food. She had never needed to worry about her weight, but she never ate more than enough to make her feel just pleasantly full.
The pamphlet described several local walks, most of which she rejected as being too long, but there was one which seemed to circle the village and which she judged would take her back to Beatrice’s in good time for lunch. After lunch she intended to suggest that Beatrice should have a rest while she looked after the children, but she sensed that it wouldn’t be easy to convince her hostess that she would be quite happy spending her afternoon taking care of her children.
She paid her bill and left. The waitress who had served her was delighted by the tip she had left, and commented in the kitchen that she had been really nice as well as beautiful-looking.
Francesca found the path quite easily. It was well signposted, and led down to the river.
She was glad she had taken Beatrice’s advice and bought some boots, because in places the path was muddy underfoot. But, well wrapped up against the cold, she was free to enjoy the brilliance of the autumn sunshine and the peace of the countryside. She paused to watch some ducks paddling contentedly in a large pool. Willow trees overhung it on the opposite bank, and a solitary fisherman sat on a camp stool casting his line.
When the path eventually turned away from the river to run across a field, Francesca walked a little faster. Water had always fascinated her, and she had lingered rather longer than had been wise in the cold wind.
The path crossed another field, and then skirted a copse of trees. In the distance she could see a farmer ploughing, leaving a rich, dark furrow behind the tractor, the strident cries of the birds following him, clearly audible on the cold air.
A high hedge encircled the field, the ground rising steeply towards it, so that she couldn’t see what lay on the other side, but when she climbed the stile she discovered to her astonishment that the path led not into another field, but what looked like a private garden.
A rash of ancient outbuildings lay ahead of her, and then an inner stone wall with a gate in it.
The part of the garden she was in was laid out in what must once have been vegetable beds. She could see an untidy tangle of fruit canes which looked as though they hadn’t been touched in years and which were thickly overgrown with brambles.
The path cut straight through this garden, and she could see a stile set in the hedge at the opposite side of it.
She looked around, and then, not being able to see where else the path might lead, she climbed down and started to cross the garden, feeling very much the intruder.
She was half-way across when the gate in the inner wall opened and a man walked out. He couldn’t see her, concealed as she was by the mass of brambles and overgrown canes, but she could see him, and her heart almost stopped as she recognised him.
Oliver Newton. What horrible chance had brought her here to his garden, where she must obviously be trespassing, having left the real path somewhere in the field?
She panicked at the thought of being confronted by him, without really knowing why. It was a totally unfamiliar sensation to her, but one she couldn’t ignore.
He was wearing a pair of worn and faded jeans and a thick woollen sweater, and he seemed to be heading for the pile of logs stacked up by one of the outhouses.
She could, she realised now, see a thin curl of smoke from one of the chimneys she could only just discern beyond the inner wall.
She waited until he had turned his back to her, and then darted out of her hiding place, intent on escaping from the garden before he discovered her in it, only she was frustrated in her escape by a trailing bramble which caught her unawares, tearing painfully at the soft skin of her face and making her cry out instinctively as she fought free of it.
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