by Anne Mather
Madeline shook her head. ‘Darling, I’m sure you’re talking far too much for a girl who only last night was hanging on a tree in a rain-drenched quarry.’ She rose to her feet.
Don’t go,’ said Diana, at once. ‘Please. I’m all right.’
Madeline looked uncertain. ‘Darling, I don’t know what to say….’
Diana shrugged. ‘I believe that there are very few men who would have hauled me out of there when every time I’ve seen them I’ve been downright objectionable. I think I might come to like your Mr. Vitale, Mother. The point is, do you think he’s likely to come to like me? And what about Maria? I was a pig to her!’
Madeline was so flummoxed with her own thoughts running riot that she could only shake her head in amazement. Then she gathered her senses.
‘I’m sure both Nick and Maria will do their utmost to be friendly with you. They’re that kind of people.’
‘Yes, they are, aren’t they?’ Diana sighed. ‘I shall have to do my best to live up to their expectations.’
‘Just be yourself,’ advised Madeline, smiling. ‘Diana, you don’t know how happy this makes me.’
‘Take a look at your face!’ remarked Diana mildly. ‘I have a pretty good idea, believe me.’
The Sister appeared at the door at that moment. ‘Mrs. Scott, I think you had better go now. I’m going to give Diana a sedative and you can come and see her later in the day.’
‘All right. Good-bye for now, darling.’ Madeline bent and kissed Diana’s cheek.
‘G’bye, Mother,’ Diana smiled. ‘And do put something more respectable on when next you come to visit me,’ she said teasingly.
Madeline walked back down the corridor with wings on her feet. She still could not believe it! But she wanted to, and that made up for a lot.
What would Nicholas say? How would he react? She knew the answer. He would be just as pleased as she was, and doubly so, now that there were no obstacles in their way.
* * *
Two months later, the yacht Maria Cristina lay anchored in the bay of Monte Carlo. Its gleaming hull sparkled in the Mediterranean sunlight and the water all around sparkled with hidden lights. On its deck all was peace and tranquillity, much different from the teeming metropolis of the Cote d’Azur which could be seen across the dazzling water.
Madeline stretched lazily on the air-bed on which she was lying and rolled over on to her stomach. She was wearing the briefest of white bikinis and her body was tanned a golden brown. As she had often sunbathed without even the bikini she had an even tan all over and even her hair seemed several shades lighter than it had been.
A few moments later, the icy bottom of a glass was placed in the bare centre of her back and she flinched and sat up, looking up indignantly at Nicholas. He looked tall and muscular in a pair of cotton trousers, his broad chest tanned darkly, accentuated by the whiteness of the slacks.
He grinned down at her and handed her a tall glass of chilled lime. Then he sank down beside her, a similar glass in his own hand.
‘Thank you,’ she said, smiling to him, ‘but that was uncalled for. It was freezing!’
Nicholas chuckled. ‘I thought it would be the quickest way of rousing you. You looked so contented lying there.’
Madeline sighed luxuriously. ‘I am contented, darling. I’ve never been so happy in my whole life!’
Nicholas’s eyes were tender. ‘Nor have I,’ he murmured, dropping a light caress on her creamy shoulder.
Madeline stared across the water at the principality, the light breeze lifting the hair on her neck. ‘Just think,’ she murmured regretfully, ‘tomorrow we leave this paradise.’
Nicholas finished his drink and lay back on the air bed. ‘Honey, with you, I think anywhere will be paradise.’
She looked down at him, smiling. ‘That was a nice compliment.’
‘A bit flowery, perhaps,’ he murmured softly, ‘but it conveys how I feel. Put that drink down and come here.’
Madeline did as she was asked and lay against him, running caressing fingers over his chest.
‘I wonder how the girls have got along together,’ she mused. Diana and Maria, after the wedding six weeks ago, had flown with Nicholas’s mother back to her house in Vilentia. Madeline and Nicholas had flown directly to Naples after spending a weekend in Paris, and had joined the yacht there for a honeymoon cruise among the Greek islands.
‘I think perhaps we will find an even greater change in Diana,’ he remarked lazily. ‘Maria is a great one for reform. She is like her grandmother. Between them, I should think that Diana will have lost all her remaining doubts. Besides, there are a lot of handsome young men in Vilentia, and English girls are always a novelty to them.’ He grinned at Madeline’s slightly anxious face. ‘Don’t worry, my mama is very strict. That accounts for Maria’s somewhat patronizing air with boys. Italian matrons can be quite something, you know.’
Maria smiled. ‘I must admit she’s quite intimidating.’
Nicholas drew her closer. ‘Don’t worry, you’ll make it. You have what it takes.’ He sighed. ‘Tomorrow we fly to Rome and drive on to Vilentia. At the weekend we’ll drive back to Rome and I will show you my house. Are you looking forward to that?’
Madeline propped herself up on one elbow and looked down at him. ‘You know I am. Our home! It sounds wonderful!’
‘It will be,’ he promised softly. ‘And for a while there’ll be just the two of us. My mother has agreed to keep the girls with her in Vilentia. She understands that we need to be alone, just the family of us together.’
‘It will be wonderful!’ said Madeline dreamily.
She lay on her back, looking up at the clear blue sky. There was not a cloud in sight, and that was the horizon of her future.
ISBN-13: 9781460347904
LEGACY OF THE PAST
© 1966 Anne Mather
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