Alessandro senior’s brown eyes were brilliant with tears when he heard the young man’s account. “You make an old man very, very glad,” he said. “Tonia, I think this calls for the best wine. We must drink to our boy becoming a man. Here, take the cellar keys and bring a Valpolicella.”
After this, the youth was a local hero and an adoring group of other teenagers, boys and girls, vied for the privilege of basking in his company when he was home for holidays. At school, too, he was a champion. His popularity grew even more when he went to university in Florence to learn about the history of the art of which he had always been passionate. He seemed to draw people to him and he was never without a beautiful girl at his side.
Now, however, the tables were turning. Here was Umberto Esposito speeding towards the villa to see his breathtakingly lovely relation. Alessandro remembered how she’d leant close to the doctor during the Palio and how happy she’d seemed that the two of them were to enjoy a private picnic rather than take up Signora Ferri’s invitation to lunch in the palazzo.
There was no chance of going back to sleep now, he realized furiously, having tossed and turned on his rumpled bed for several more minutes. He might as well get up and try to fill in his time somehow, although now that the estate belonged to the stupid creature who’d cost him victory on Fulmine, he didn’t know how he’d spend the rest of his life, let alone the next few hours. He could go into Siena, he supposed, and find Claudia, or stay with Mario and his family. But, somehow, he knew he couldn’t tear himself away from the estate … and his surprisingly beautiful, if despised, second cousin.
Tossing on yesterday’s crumpled shirt and jeans, he went into the dirty little kitchen to find something to eat for breakfast. But all he could find were the soggy, overcooked remains of the mostly uneaten pasta he cooked the previous evening. He’d forgotten the bread and cheese Annabella had put in the basket the previous night. Not even seeing the basket on the floor and feeling weak with hunger, he swallowed his pride and resolved to go cap-in-hand up to Casa dei Fiori where he knew his second-cousin would enjoy meting out more food to him, rubbing in the fact that he was now the poor relation.
He stumbled up the narrow road to the house, still groggy from lack of sleep, and saw, under the fig tree, Annabella and Umberto sharing a cosy breakfast, deep in animated conversation.
She saw him, smiled and waved. “Come and join us, Al,” she called.
He gritted his teeth and forced a smile he didn’t feel, aware he was behaving churlishly but unable to control himself. He approached them, aware that their happy talking stopped as he neared.
“Hello, Alessandro,” Umberto said, standing and shaking his hand.
“Come and sit with us, Al. I made pancakes and there’s plenty for us all. Here, I’ll pour you some orange juice.”
Alessandro couldn’t help comparing his own appearance to that of the doctor, who was, as always, impeccable, in a well-cut, light summer suit, perfectly-pressed white shirt and expensive Italian silk tie. He knew he looked unkempt and dishevelled and remembered he hadn’t brushed his hair, or even cleaned his teeth. Annabella, too, looked radiant, in her clean shorts and T-shirt, her newly-washed hair gleaming like burnished copper in the morning sunlight. He had to force himself to look elsewhere, she was so naturally lovely. No other woman he knew could look like she did in the most basic work-clothes and without a trace of make-up.
Gratefully, Alessandro accepted the delicious food she piled on his plate, and began to eat, although his appetite was half what it usually was at this hour. At least the pretence of being hungry gave him a reason to focus on his plate and not have to make clever conversation or look at his cousin, whose beauty would have tempted an octogenarian monk.
Then, just when he was becoming more used to the presence of Umberto, who was sitting so close to his second-cousin he would have been able to feel the warmth of her skin, another male voice sounded from the road below. All three turned to see Carlo striding up the hill, a knapsack on his back, his jeans rolled up to the knees, his chest bare.
Alessandro’s heart sank. Was Casa dei Fiori to be overrun with young men now? Not that he minded other men – he enjoyed playing sport and cards with his friends – but seven o’clock on a weekday morning was a little early to be entertaining guests, wasn’t it?
He watched Annabella as she poured coffee for Carlo and urged him to try a pancake, although he protested that he’d already eaten a big breakfast. She was such a flirt!, he thought, sure she wasn’t wearing a bra. He shifted uncomfortably on the bench seat, his desire for her urgent. He’d definitely have to have a cold shower.
“Before you go out into the sunshine and work all day, I want to make sure your head is quite better,” Umberto was saying to her. “Will you come inside with me and let me check you over?”
Why didn’t I study medicine, Alessandro asked himself furiously as his second cousin stood up and companionably linked her arm through the doctor’s, leaving him with Carlo, who was, he noticed, probably thinking exactly the same thing. The newcomer was also staring longingly at the retreating form of Annabella. What Alessandro would have given, at that moment, for just a few minutes alone with her!
CHAPTER SEVEN
“She’s in perfect health!” Umberto declared as they emerged from the house.
I could have told him that, just by looking at her, Alessandro thought.
“Let’s get started, then,” Annabella suggested, smiling at Carlo. “There’s so much to do!”
“I’ll see you tonight, cara,” Umberto said, embracing her in the Italian way, with a kiss on each cheek. “Don’t overdo it, though, will you?”
“I won’t, I promise,” she laughed, walking him to the Fiat which he had parked near the table. “Don’t you work too hard either. And please, check on Tonia’s sister.”
“I will. Don’t worry about her. Ciao, Bella. Ciao, goodbye, Alessandro, Carlo.”
Cara, Bella, sweet endearments that only a lover would use, Alessandro thought, impatiently wiping with his handkerchief the sweat that had inexplicably formed across his forehead. The morning was far from hot, yet. And what were they planning on getting up to tonight? Seeing how affectionate they were towards each other, he didn’t even have to ask himself that question. He could imagine it all only too clearly and it made him feel … But why did he care, he asked himself impatiently as he watched the doctor’s car disappear down the hill. The woman had taken his birthright from him, as well as sure victory in the Palio. He had no interest in her at all, he told himself firmly. Let her and Umberto do what they wanted tonight or any other night! It was all the same to him!
Carlo stretched his lean, muscular torso and said to his new employer, “We should start before it gets too hot, Signorina. What do you want me to do first?”
“I think the most pressing thing is to clear the vines of weeds, Carlo,” she reasoned. “They are so choked that the few grapes there are, are not getting any nutrients from the soil. It would be wonderful if we could have at least a little harvest of fruit this year. And then next – well – that will be magnifico! What do you think, Al?”
Alessandro, who’d been lost in thoughts, spluttered, “Pardon?” and looked in confusion from his second cousin’s face to that of Carlo.
“Don’t worry,” Annabella sighed, disappointed at his obvious lack of interest in the estate not that it was hers. To Carlo, she said, “You start and I’ll come and join you as soon as I’ve washed the breakfast things.”
The half-naked man from the village smiled at the second cousins and made for the old stone shed nearby where all sorts of tools and farm machinery were stored.
Alessandro and Annabella were now alone and each felt suddenly even more awkward with the other as if a massive gulf had opened between them, a gulf wider than the valley over which Casa dei Fiori presided. Alessandro was sure she was flirting with the doctor deliberately, just to provoke him, Alessandro de Rocco, while Annabella could barely hide the hurt sh
e felt at her relation’s coldness. She knew he blamed her for inheriting the estate and even, ridiculously, for the Palio fiasco, though how he could have credited her with being crazy enough to rush in front of a galloping horse she didn’t know.
Both opened their mouths to speak and both shut them again, feeling stupid and self-conscious. So they merely stood looking down at their feet, each wishing the ground would open and swallow them up. Annabella recovered first, remembering the hard work she’d promised herself she would do this morning. Alessandro, on the other hand, had nothing planned for the day. Before his second cousin’s arrival, he would have busied himself with paperwork related to the estate and the selling of major pieces of art. But now even that futile, heart-breaking past-time was denied him.
“Al, I’d better wash up then go and help Carlo,” she said.
“Ah yes. The great project to turn the estate into a wheat farm,” he answered, not bothering to conceal the bitterness in his voice.
“You know that’s not my idea at all,” she spat. “I want to do my best for our great-grandfather’s property, that’s all. And, because all I’ve ever known is how to care for the land, that’s what I intend to do here. Even a wild colonial girl like me can see that this place has been neglected for years. And I know, thanks to Tonia and Carlo, how hard it was for you and the old man. They told me about the locusts and the lack of rains. But the bad seasons seem to be over, for now anyway, and I intend to make hay while the sun shines.”
“Good luck, then,” he replied, grudgingly admiring her spirit, not for the first time. When she was passionate about something, as she seemed to be about the estate, she became even more extraordinarily beautiful, he saw. His hungry body certainly responded to her flashing emerald eyes and to the warm pink glow suffusing the ivory skin of her slender, long neck. How he would love to feel that soft, tender paleness under his lips! He sighed, glad he had not worn the too-revealing jodhpurs he usually favoured.
“Are you feeling all right, Al?” she asked, concerned for him. She knew he was missing Alessandro senior. The day before the Palio, she climbed up to the big cypress tree on the top terrace to watch the sunset over the hills. And she’d seen him trudging up the hill behind her vantage point.
Wanting desperately to thread her hand into his and to share the journey to wherever he was walking as she would have done thirteen years before, she followed him soundlessly, even her sheep dog escorts staying silent. But, before she could catch him up, he stopped and bent towards the long, summer-bleached grass under an ancient oak tree. Watching from behind another oak, she saw him kneel and lay a single golden rose on a newly-dug mound of earth. The rose, she knew, was from their great-grandfather’s neglected bush and she marvelled he’d been able to find one because the shrub barely flowered now. One part of her longing to share his grief, the other terrified of his rejection, she stayed rooted to her hiding-place as she heard the two harsh sobs that racked Alessandro’s body.
The young man knelt there for several minutes, one hand on the mound as if he could draw comfort from his great-grandfather’s warmth in the still-warm dirt. Then he got to his feet and Annabella saw him stride to twin graves a few metres away, still in the shade of the big tree. She hadn’t noticed these older graves at first and knew, from his careful weeding and removal of dead flowers, that these must belong to his parents.
When he did not answer her question, she repeated it. “Al, are you all right?”
“What’s it to you?” he asked. “You have everything you’ve ever wanted. So stop pretending to pity me. Now, if you’ll excuse me, Signorina Smith,” he added, emphasizing the ordinary surname scornfully, “I’ll leave you to play peasants with Carlo.”
He turned abruptly and stalked away, ignoring her desperate calling of his name.
“Why did you do this to me, great-grandfather?” Annabella silently asked the old man as she watched her second cousin stride towards the cottage. “I wish you’d let me stay in Australia. It would have been better for everybody.”
No sooner had she had this thought than a single golden rose petal blew down from the sky, wafting in front of her face long enough for her to hold out her palm and catch it. It smelt of that girlhood summer when she, great-grandfather and Alessandro had been so blissfully happy. Was it a sign that, somehow, everything would be all right? She hoped so with all her heart.
Feeling encouraged, she rinsed the breakfast dishes in the sink and left them on the draining board to dry then lathered her face, arms and legs with sun cream before filling a big flask of drinking water, making a pile of tomato sandwiches and heading outside to find Carlo.
The day passed quickly for her. She was used to hard work and actually enjoyed pulling the weeds from around the bases of the old vines, imagining how relieved they would be to be able to breathe again. She and Carlo stopped to eat lunch in the shade of some ilex trees that bordered the vineyard, stretching out in the soft grass. Carlo told her about some of the other villagers, including Tonia’s sister, who happened to be his family’s neighbour. “She was the only one in Tonia’s family who didn’t marry and have children,” he explained. “When her fiancé was killed, she took it upon herself to stay at home and look after their parents, who were elderly and frail. Life passed her by, in a way, although she has always seemed happy. She and Tonia are very close and so it was good of you to let Tonia stay with her for a while. Tomasina will be better soon, I’m sure.”
They were sharing the water-bottle when they heard horse’s hooves and looked up to see Alessandro cantering past on the road that ran along the vineyard on its way to the village, then Siena. They both waved to him and he gave them a cursory nod, never allowing the horse to break its stride. With nothing else to do, Alessandro had decided to practise his horsemanship before the next Palio, even if it was on one of the estate’s old animals rather than on the Ferris’ magnificent Fulmine.
The small pleasure he gained from admiring the scenery and the mild summer weather was wrecked when he saw Annabella smiling up at Carlo, who was passing her the water having drunk from the same flask. Her long, bare legs were stretched out in front of her and the T-shirt couldn’t hide the shape of her full breasts. Within a few months, she’d have made a conquest of every man in Tuscany – except one – he fumed. There was no way he’d become just another notch in her belt!
Yet how badly his body craved her! Even a fast gallop did little to take his mind off her pale, generous curves and smiling face. It suddenly occurred to him that he’d never seen a woman to match her – except one. And now, at last, he remembered who she was. She was in a painting. In his favourite painting. It hung in the Uffizi in Florence and was a picture he visited every time he went to the city, which was fairly often as Eduardo lived there in his institution.
Yes! His second cousin was the embodiment of Titian’s gorgeous Venus of Urbino. He must have stood in front of her for hours, his eyes meeting the challenge in hers, his senses reeling at her rosy perfection. Perhaps, he thought, his Venus, who had been alive in 1538 when she lay naked with her little dog on a tousled bed for the great artist to paint her, was in fact an ancestor of his second cousin. After all, Annabella’s blood was half Italian.
This idea only made him more frustrated. How on Earth would he sleep, or eat, or think straight when she was there, in his bed in Casa dei Fiori. How could he bear to watch her link her arm casually through Umberto’s or share a bottle which Carlo’s lips had touched? Was this how Titian had felt, nearly 500 years before, when he first clapped eyes on the breathtaking Venus? Did he assuage his burning lust by painting her?
Of course he did! Alesssandro’s frustration was beginning to give way to something else – a different kind of excitement. He’d always loved art. He knew a lot about it. He knew about colour and form and beauty. He’d never let himself give in to his desire for Annabella Smith. That would be stooping too low. But he could paint her. Yes. That is exactly what he could do. And he’d paint her as he’d
glimpsed her the previous evening, sitting naked on the scrubbed pine table, staring out at the garden.
Feeling better than he had since his great grandfather’s death, he rode down to the village. Tonia’s sister, Tomasina, had a little paint shop in the front room of her house. It was her livelihood, and she catered to the tourists whose artistic sensibilities were awakened by Tuscany for as long as he could remember. He’d been there with Tonia often as a boy, when she walked or was driven down to the village to buy supplies for Casa dei Fiori. He knew Tomasina kept easels, canvases and frames, paints and brushes of all kinds, charcoal, turpentine, all the wherewithal to capture the essence of Italy.
Alessandro leapt off his horse and tied the reins to the iron banister of the steps that led to Tomasina’s front door. He banged on the door, too excited by his project to remember that she was ill. He also didn’t notice that Umberto’s car was parked in the narrow street. Not waiting for her to open the door, he barged inside the doorway and heard voices…
“She adores him,” he heard Tonia’s familiar voice saying.
“Lucky man,” came that of Tomasina.
Then someone was wracked with coughs, probably Tomasina, and he didn’t hear the next few sentences. It wasn’t until several minutes later, when the coughing stopped, that he heard some more of the conversation. This time it was the doctor, who said, “Yes, perhaps we’ll be married soon, with a bit of luck.”
Alessandro froze. So Umberto Esposito planned to marry Annabella. Not only would he get the most beautiful woman in Italy, he’d also score Casa dei Fiori. He felt sick. He stood rooted to the spot for a few seconds, reeling, his heart pounding in his chest. His Annabella! His estate! Everything the de Roccos had toiled for, for centuries. Gone.
“Signor!” It was Tonia. She’d come out of the kitchen where they’d been talking and was making her way to the stairs when she noticed him in the gloomy hallway. “How lovely to see you. But you don’t look well. You’ve come to the right place. Dottore is here. He’s made Tomasina so much better. Now he will do the same for you, no? Come with me, into the kitchen, and he’ll listen to your chest. Maybe, like my sister, you have the flu. Eh? Vieni, come. Do as you are told. You are still old Tonia’s baby, you know?”
Loving Venus (Sally-Ann Jones Sexy Romance) Page 7
