Prince's Virgin In Venice

by Trish Morey

  She’d left it here.

  On purpose?

  The moment the thought popped into his mind he discarded it. He was far too world-weary. While plenty of women he’d met would, Rosa wouldn’t play games like that. She wasn’t the type.

  It looked old. She would be sure to miss it.

  He should return it. There were no excuses. He knew where she worked.

  He should give it to the housekeeper and have it delivered. Rosa would have it back in a matter of hours.

  He should return it.

  He twirled the delicate earring in his fingers, held it to his nose as if by doing so he could conjure up her scent.

  He should return it.

  His fingers closed around it where it lay in his palm and he slipped it into his trouser pocket.

  He would return it.

  Later.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  ‘WHERE DID YOU get to?’ Chiara cried, bolting upright in bed and turning on her bedside lamp the second Rosa walked into the tiny basement flat the girls shared. ‘I’ve been worried sick about you.’

  ‘I got lost,’ Rosa said, checking the time on the alarm clock glowing red. Four-thirty a.m.

  She unzipped her gown and let it slip down her body for the second time that night, shivering at the memory of the first. She would have time for an hour’s sleep if she put her head down on her pillow right now.

  Sleep? After what she’d experienced tonight? She might be kidding herself about that. But at least she’d have an hour to savour the memories.

  ‘I’m really sorry I suggested carrying your phone for you,’ Chiara said, watching her prepare for bed. ‘I feel so bad for ruining your night.’

  ‘Don’t worry about it. How was the ball?’

  ‘So much fun,’ she said, and her face lit up before she could think better of it. ‘I tried to find you. We searched and searched and I called the hotel in case you’d come back, but nobody had seen you. I didn’t expect to be home before you.’

  ‘It’s okay. Forget it.’

  ‘So where were you?’

  ‘I met someone,’ Rosa said, sliding between the sheets. ‘He invited me to a party he was going to.’

  ‘He? A man? You went to a party with a stranger?’ Chiara was all agog. She swung her legs out of bed and sat up. ‘You?’

  Rosa didn’t take offence at her friend’s surprise. She knew what she meant.

  ‘What was he like?’

  ‘Oh, Chiara...’ Rosa sighed, propping herself up on her elbow, head resting on her hand. ‘You should have seen him. He was tall, and strong, and... I wouldn’t call him really handsome—but powerful-looking. With the most amazing blue eyes I’ve ever seen.’

  ‘What was his name?’

  ‘Vittorio.’ Even now the sound of it on her tongue was delicious.

  ‘And he asked you to go to a party with him?’

  She smiled. ‘Si.’

  ‘Why?’

  Rosa shrugged. This part could do with a bit of airbrushing of the truth. She plucked at some imaginary fluff on her sheet. ‘He felt sorry for me that I was missing my costume ball after I’d spent so much money on a ticket.’

  ‘And there was a party, I hope?’

  ‘Oh, yes. In this amazing palazzo right on the Grand Canal. It even had a second piano nobile—can you imagine? The party was on the second level and the first level was set up with the entertainment. They had music and jugglers and opera singers, and even gymnasts performing on ropes. It was amazing. And you should have seen the costumes, Chiara! Amazing.’ Rosa punched her pillow and settled down. ‘Can you turn off the light? We have to get up soon.’

  ‘And you were at this party all night, then?’

  ‘Uh-huh. Turn off the light.’

  ‘And then you came home?’

  ‘I’m tired,’ Rosa said, hugging her precious secret to her, not willing to share just yet. She might tell Chiara one day about what had really happened. Maybe. ‘And we’ve got to be up in less than an hour.’

  Chiara sniffed and extinguished the light, clearly recognising the sense in Rosa’s words and the fact she was not going to hear any more tonight.

  ‘All right, have it your way. But I want all the details tomorrow!’

  ‘Goodnight,’ said Rosa noncommittally, snuggling into her pillow, and only then noticing the press of her earring stud into her flesh. In her rush to get to bed she’d forgotten to take her earrings off. She removed the offending article and reached for the one on the other side—only to find it gone.

  She sat up, switching on the lamp.

  ‘What now?’ said Chiara grumpily. ‘I thought you wanted to go to sleep?’

  ‘I can’t find one of my earrings.’ Her eyes searched the floor around the bed. She got out and shook her dress, in case she’d dislodged it when she’d pulled the gown over her head. But of course it wasn’t there, because she hadn’t done that at all.

  ‘Go to bed.’

  ‘They were my grandmother’s,’ she said. ‘A gift from my grandfather on their wedding day.’ And, apart from her mother’s sewing machine, they were the only thing of real value she had.

  ‘Go to bed!’ Chiara repeated grumpily. ‘Look for it tomorrow.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Turn off the light!’

  Rosa did a quick sweep with her hands of her bedding and her pillow before she complied and climbed back into bed. She switched off the light and settled back down.

  Where could it be? She’d been wearing them both at Vittorio’s. She remembered seeing them when she’d looked in the mirror in the bathroom. But that had been before...

  Dio. But at least if it was there someone might find it—a cleaner or a housekeeper—and she might be able to get it back. Better that than thinking it had fallen out on her way home somewhere along the twisty calles.

  Either way, if she couldn’t find it here she’d go looking after her shift tomorrow—today.

  One night only.

  She thought about Vittorio’s warning that one night was all there would be, that it wasn’t an affair and he didn’t do for ever. If he was at home she wouldn’t pester him. She wouldn’t ask for him. She just wanted her earring back, if it had been found. And if he learned she had visited he’d understand why she’d had to come back. She was sure he would.

  So she’d retrace her steps to his palazzo, and if she didn’t find it on the way she’d knock on the door. There was no harm in asking, surely?

  * * *

  Rosa was almost overcome with exhaustion by the time she finished her shift. She’d been exhausted before she’d started, though for an entirely different reason, but by the end of the shift it was pure drudgery weighing her down. It seemed every visitor had hung around until the end of Carnevale and then checked out today, which had meant changeovers in almost every room.

  By the time she was finished all she wanted to do was collapse in a heap in her bed. Except that wouldn’t get her pearl earring back, so she changed into jeans and a jacket and headed out into the tortuous calles of Venice once again, trying to retrace her steps.

  It was no wonder she took a wrong turn once or twice—she was so busy looking at the ground in front of her—but eventually she found it: the gate where she’d made her escape that morning from Vittorio’s palazzo. She rang the buzzer and waited. And waited.

  She rang the buzzer again.

  Eventually the door opened to reveal a stern-looking middle-aged woman. ‘This is a private residence. We’re not open to visitors.’

  ‘No,’ Rosa said, before the woman could shut the door as abruptly as she’d opened it. ‘I was here last night. I lost an earring.’

  The woman shook her head. ‘I think you have the wrong residence.’ She started closing the gate again.

  ‘I was with Vittorio,’ Rosa said. ‘
I don’t want to bother him, but it was my grandmother’s earring, given to her on her wedding day. I think I may have lost it here, and if I could get it back...’

  The woman sniffed as she opened the gate a fraction more, looking Rosa up and down as if finding her story hard to believe and yet not impossible. ‘Vittorio is no longer here. I don’t know when he’ll be back. He’s not in Venice very often.’

  ‘I didn’t come to see Vittorio,’ said Rosa. ‘It’s my grandmother’s earring I’m looking for. That’s all. I promise.’

  The woman sighed. ‘Then I’m sorry. I can’t help you, I’m afraid. I cleaned that room myself. Nothing was found.’

  And she eased the door shut in Rosa’s face.

  It could have been worse, Rosa thought, heading home, still checking the ground in case her earring had come loose during the evening and fallen out on the way home. The housekeeper might have practically slammed the door in her face but at least she’d listened to her. At least she knew she hadn’t lost it there.

  ‘I’m sorry, Nonna,’ she said as she got closer to home and there was still no sight of the missing earring. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t take better care of it for you.’

  The streets had no answer.

  It was gone.

  She’d thought she’d got off scot-free, but maybe this was the price she had to pay, Rosa rationalised as she dragged herself back to the hotel and her tiny basement flat and home to bed. For nothing came without a cost. She knew that.

  Maybe one lost earring was the price she had to pay for one night of sin.

  And the worst part of it was her night with Vittorio had been so special, so once-in-a-lifetime, she almost felt the loss of one of her grandmother’s earrings was worth it.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  THE SUMMONS FROM his father’s secretary came within five minutes of Vittorio’s arrival back at the castello. Vittorio snorted as he settled back into his rooms. Some things never changed. His father had never once come to him, let alone met him at the castle doors when he’d returned from being away. Not when he’d come home as a child on holiday from boarding school in Switzerland. Not when he’d come home after three years of college in Boston.

  Although there was something to be said for knowing how a person worked. You knew exactly how to press their hot buttons.

  ‘At last,’ his father said when Vittorio arrived thirty minutes after the summons.

  On the Guglielmo Richter Scale, as Vittorio had termed it as a boy, his father seemed to be in good spirits, and he wondered if he shouldn’t have taken longer to accede to his father’s request.

  ‘I’ve been waiting for news. I thought you might have had the decency to let me know before now, but now that you’re finally here tell me everything.’ Prince Guglielmo clearly enunciated his demands as he wandered from one side of his office to the other. In his blue double-breasted jacket, and with one hand tucked behind his back, he looked as if he was inspecting the guard.

  Through the vast windows behind him Vittorio could see down to the glorious sweep of Andachstein coast that separated Italy from Slovenia, and the swarm of white yachts that lay at anchor in the protected harbour while their occupants entertained themselves in the casinos, clubs and restaurants that lined the white sand beaches. Even at the tail end of winter they came in their droves—the rich and famous, the billionaires and their mistresses, the actors and actresses. The only difference was that in summertime it would be a sea of white and there wouldn’t be a spare berth anywhere.

  His father stopped pacing.

  ‘Well? Have you set a date?’ the older Prince prompted. ‘Can we alert the press, the public? I need to get Enrico on to it immediately, before the news leaks from other sources.’

  Other sources. Clearly his father didn’t trust Sirena to keep a secret. If there had been one to keep. But he didn’t say that. Instead he frowned and said, ‘Have I set a date...?’ He was being deliberately obtuse, playing the game.

  His father snorted, impatience winning over civility, edging him higher up the Guglielmo Richter Scale. ‘You and the Contessa Sirena, of course. Who else?’ He fixed his son with a gimlet stare. ‘Have you agreed a date?’

  Vittorio picked up a paperweight from his father’s desk—a crystal dragon, symbol of the principality—and tossed it casually from one hand to the other. He saw his father’s eyes follow the object that he’d been forbidden to touch as a child. He half expected him to snap now, tell him to put it down in case he dropped it, as he had then. But his father said nothing and Vittorio sighed. It was time to put his father out of his misery.

  He put the paperweight down and leant with both hands against the desk, wanting no distractions when he delivered his message. ‘There is no date. There will be no marriage. At least not between Sirena and me.’

  ‘What?’

  His father’s voice boomed so loud in the cavernous room that Vittorio swore the windows rattled.

  ‘When are you going to take your responsibilities seriously?’

  ‘There’s no rush.’

  ‘There is a rush! It was all supposed to be organised. You two were supposed to come to an agreement. All you had to do was set a date and it seems you can’t even be trusted to do that.’

  ‘Actually, I have an idea,’ Vittorio suggested. ‘If you’re so desperate to welcome Sirena into the family business, why don’t you marry her yourself?’

  His father spluttered and banged his fist on the desk. ‘You damned well know this isn’t about the Contessa. This is about providing Andachstein with an heir. Without a prince there can be no principality. Andachstein will be swallowed up into the realm of Italy.’ He looked his son up and down with disdain. ‘You might like to think you’re invincible, my son, but you won’t last for ever, you know.’

  ‘Look, Father,’ he said with a sigh. ‘It will happen. I will marry again. But don’t expect that I’m going to fall in with your plans just because it’s what you want. And don’t make such a big deal out of it.’

  ‘I’m dying!’ Guglielmo blurted, his face beetroot-red.

  The son who had grown up with a father who had always used drama to bend the people around him to his will said, ‘We’re all dying, Father.’

  ‘Insolence!’

  ‘I’m thirty-two years old. I’m not a child, even if I am your son. So if you’ve got something to tell me then simply tell me.’

  ‘Heart problems.’ His father spat out the words.

  Heart problems? But that would mean... Vittorio bit back on the obvious retort while his father waved his hands around, looking for words.

  ‘Something to do with the valves,’ his father said, ‘I forget the name. So fix it, I told the doctors. Replace them. And they told me that while one of them was operable the other was more problematic. They say it is fifty-fifty that I would survive the operation. Without it they say I most likely have less than a year to live.’

  Guglielmo collapsed into the chair behind his desk, suddenly weary, and Vittorio noticed that he looked more like an eighty-year-old, rather than the sixty he was supposed to be.

  ‘I’ve decided to take my chance on life,’ he said, ‘rather than on some cold operating table.’ He turned to his son. ‘But I want you married before I die, whatever happens.’

  ‘Dio,’ Vittorio said, with the shock of realisation reverberating through his body. ‘You’re actually serious.’

  ‘Of course I’m serious!’ he said. ‘And I have a son who won’t face up to his responsibilities and do what his duty demands of him.’

  Vittorio’s hands fisted at his sides. Dying or no, his father was not getting away with that one. ‘I faced up to my responsibilities once before. Don’t you remember? And look how that turned out!’

  His father waved his arguments aside. ‘Valentina was weak. She was a bad choice.’

  ‘She was your choice,’ Vittori
o snarled.

  His father had decided on the match before the two had even been introduced. The first time they’d met Vittorio had been smitten. She’d seemed like a bright and beautiful butterfly and he’d fallen instantly and irrevocably in love with her. And he’d believed her when she told him that she loved him.

  But she had been young and impressionable, and he’d been too foolish to see what was in front of his face. That the family helicopter pilot she’d insisted move with her to the castello at Andachstein, so that she could continue her flying lessons, was teaching her a whole lot more than how to handle a helicopter...

  He would never forgive himself for not talking her out of leaving with her lover after he’d confronted her with the knowledge that they’d been seen together. He’d been too gutted. Too devastated. He’d loved her so much and she’d betrayed him, and so he’d let her run distraught to her pilot and escape, tears streaming down her face.

  He’d never been sure who had been at the controls when they’d hit the powerlines that had ended their lives.

  ‘Dio, Father, don’t you understand why I don’t want you to have anything to do with choosing another bride for me?’

  It was as much about getting out from under his father’s thumb as it was about the fact that he’d sworn never to be such a fool again. Never to trust a woman’s lies. Never to let his heart control his decisions.

  His father mumbled something under his breath. Something mostly incoherent. But Vittorio was sure he heard the word ungrateful in the mix.

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘something has to be done and I don’t have long to wait. I’m giving you three months.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Three months should be perfectly adequate. Find your own bride, if you must, but you’re getting married in the Andachstein Cathedral in three months and that’s my final word. I’ll have Enrico make a list of the best candidates.’

  His father couldn’t be serious. But then, Vittorio had thought he was joking about dying. Heart problems. A year to live. If it were true, Vittorio would be the new Prince of Andachstein, not just the heir apparent.