by Liz Fielding
Or was that subconscious string-pulling, too?
Or was she just thinking too much? No one was going to be reading this. No one at Maybridge High gave two hoots what she was doing. Including Tom.
But that would be too cruel.
Instead, I’ll tease you with these photographs of olives and artichokes growing in his garden, before I go out and indulge in another Italian passion. Ice cream.
‘Sarah … How was your weekend? Did you get to—’ Pippa winced as if thought was painful ‘—where was it?’
‘Isola del Serrone. Yes, thanks. Your instructions were perfect.’
‘Great. How was it?’
‘Fine. Walked around a bit, took some photographs, trespassed on private land, as you do.’
‘Oops! Were you chased by a hairy farmer with a shotgun?’
She laughed. ‘He wasn’t hairy and he didn’t have a gun.’ Deadly with a kiss, though. It was the kind you dreamed about. Woke wanting more … ‘There was a slightly sticky moment until I’d convinced him that I wasn’t a paparazzo sneaking around in the bushes. The fact that I was using nothing more dangerous than a mobile phone to take photographs seemed to do the trick.’
‘A paparazzo? Good grief. Did you stumble across some celebrity’s private love nest?’
‘No.’ The house, what she’d seen of it, had been comfortable, in the way that a well-used family home was comfortable, rather than luxurious. ‘It’s the landowner’s cousin who’s famous. Isabella di Serrone?’
‘Really? Federico is crazy about her.’ She shrugged as if she couldn’t see the attraction.
Sarah laughed. ‘It gets better. Once he realised that I was a mad Englishwoman out in the midday sun, he took pity on me and invited me to lunch.’
‘A result!’ She waited, then, when nothing was immediately forthcoming, ‘Well, don’t keep me in suspense. Good-looking? Married with seven children? Name?’
Matteo hadn’t been wearing a ring. She hadn’t looked but it was that hand thing again. Cutting bread. Dressing the salad. Big, capable, sun-darkened, with a touch delicate enough to pluck a bursting ripe grape. No ring.
‘Hello? Earth to Sarah.’
Sarah shook her head. ‘It was lunch, that’s all. You?’ she added quickly.
Pippa gave her a thoughtful look, but let it go.
‘The usual. Clubbing Saturday night until stupid o’clock. Sunday cooking and cleaning. Looking at you, all golden glow, I definitely made the wrong choice. Next time you go exploring the countryside I’m coming with you.’
‘The Roman pavement at Arpino has been recommended,’ she said, straight-faced.
‘Really?’ Pippa pulled a face. ‘You can have too much ancient history, don’t you think?’
‘I’ll take that as a no, then.’
‘What about the woman in the photograph you showed me?’ she asked, as they reached the entrance. ‘Any luck finding her?’
‘Yes and no. From what Matteo told me, it appears that Lucia died in a flu epidemic in nineteen forty-four,’ Sarah told her.
‘Really? Sometimes life sucks …’ Then, with a got you look, ‘Matteo?’
Rats …
‘She worked for his family. Wet-nursed his grandfather, apparently.’
‘Eeeuw.’ Then, ‘So is that it? End of search?’
‘Death is pretty final, Pippa.’
‘But it’s not the whole story, is it? Don’t you want to know who she was? Didn’t this guy tell you anything about her family?’ her friend pressed.
‘Only that his grandfather had put a memorial plaque in the church.’
‘You saw it?’ Pippa asked.
‘No. There wasn’t time,’ she added lamely. It was too late to regret rushing away, turning down his invitation to the grand tour. She could have asked him to show her the plaque. It would have seemed perfectly natural after their ridiculous conversation about the statue. ‘I should have lit a candle.’
‘There’s nothing to stop you from going back,’ Pippa remarked.
‘No …’ Except that if he saw her he’d think that she was pursuing him. She blushed to think of the postcard she’d sent him. That he had ignored.
What on earth had come over her?
‘We could go down there one evening,’ Pippa suggested hopefully. ‘With the Isabella connection, I am sure Federico could be persuaded to drive us.’
‘I don’t know. Lex didn’t want me to do anything. Maybe I should leave well alone.’
‘Of course. But let me know if you change your mind.’
Matteo stared up at the gap in the wall. While everything else had been restored, that had been left untouched. An escape route. He’d used it himself as a boy, a youth, sneaking down to the village to play, to meet girls. Innocent times. And maybe that was it.
Every man who came of age looked at it, smiled to himself and left it for the next generation.
He turned away, walked up the hill towards the olive grove to see how far they were from harvest, his foot brushing the lemon thyme as he passed.
The scent brought him right back to Sarah Gratton.
She had not asked for his number, or offered her own. Hadn’t called him, despite the ready-made excuse of the statue. Maybe he should have made less of a joke of it, but they had laughed a lot.
He stopped. Forget the excuses, he had expected a call, or at least a note to thank him for lunch. She was that kind of woman.
And if she wasn’t, she could have called to ask if he’d found one of the tiny pearl earrings she’d been wearing. Or to wonder if she’d left her dark glasses in the car. Any one of a dozen excuses—he’d heard them all—would have done.
The last thing he’d expected had been nothing.
It was like waiting for the other shoe to drop and he couldn’t relax. Couldn’t get her out of his head.
He had begun to dream about her—her eyes, the silk of her hair, her skin. No amount of hard physical work as he threw himself into the week-long preparations for the harvest before he had to leave on a Europe-wide round of meetings could rid him of them.
‘Plant life in tissue paper. It’s someone’s lucky day.’ Sarah looked up as Pippa placed a basket containing a mass of yellow tissue paper on her desk. Handed her the heavy cream envelope that came with it. ‘It seems that you have an admirer, Signora Gratton. Could it be that the not hairy farmer with a famous cousin who gave you lunch wants a replay?’
The first bell rang.
‘Saved by the proverbial,’ Pippa said. ‘For now.’
Alone, Sarah opened the envelope.
A gift from my garden for your small terrace. To keep the pelargonium company. Matteo.
Heart beating much too fast, she opened the layers of tissue. The scent told her what the tissue hid long before the tiny dark-green-and-gold leaves emerged from its silky folds.
Not something expensively exotic from a florist but lemon-scented thyme, dug from his garden and placed in a simple terracotta pot.
Personal. Special.
It was only later, after she’d carried it home, protecting it from the crush on the tram, had found a place where it would catch every last moment of available sun, that she wondered how he knew about the geranium. Pelargonium. Of course the botanist would use its proper name.
She’d mentioned her apartment, but she hadn’t told him anything about it. About her terrace, or the plant her students had bought her.
He must have gone to the school website and from there it would be the work of moments to track her back to Maybridge High and the link to her blog.
She didn’t know whether to be flattered by the effort, or annoyed that he’d checked up on her. Making sure she really was who she’d said she was. Or had taken so long about it. It had been over a week …
Oh, don’t fool yourself, Sarah.
You’re flattered.
He could easily have sent the plant without her ever knowing what he’d done. Instead, he’d shown her the effort he had taken.
&n
bsp; She rubbed the tiny leaves to release the oils then, with the scent on her fingers, she used her phone to take a photograph. Okay, now her blog had a purpose. Where had she got to?
… Italian passion. With luck … Ice cream. Meanwhile, this plant—Thymus citriodoros ‘Aureus’—arrived on my desk at lunchtime, a wonderfully lemon-scented souvenir of my day in the country with a man who might have been prescribed by my great-grandfather to cure my broken heart. Tall, dark, with eyes that could make you forget your name and a kiss to melt your bones, steal your senses under a warm Italian sun. The kind of man to fall into bed with and think the day well spent. Perfetto.
Well, that would give the Headmaster something to think about, she thought as, grinning, she uploaded photographs of the olives and artichokes in Matteo’s garden. A photograph of the thyme he’d sent her, cooched up against the pelargonium. Just in case he looked again.
She’d just hit ‘publish’ when the phone rang.
‘Pippa?’
‘Are you sitting down?’
‘Er … yes.’
‘Well, hold on to your hat, sweetie, while I tell you something that you really ought to know about the not-hairy farmer who sent you plant life.’
‘He’s married?’
‘Nothing so boring. The man is a Count.’
Matteo was at the end of a long day that had been all about the commercial end of the business.
It wasn’t his plant-breeding skills, or his new generation of vines that was his most vital asset to the co-operative. It was his title that helped to sell what they produced at the premium it deserved.
It had started in the vineyards with tours of the production facilities, the ancient caves where the wine was stored. There had been a suitably rustic lunch in the open, a picture opportunity for the buyer’s website.
Finally, at the end of a very long day, he had wined and dined the buyers in the Rome palazzo.
As the last one was finally decanted into a taxi he turned to Bella, who had repaid his hospitality by performing like the star she was, making it an evening the buyers would never forget.
‘Thanks for your help tonight,’ he said.
‘Just doing my bit. And I owed you for last week.’
‘No. You can always hide out here, you know that. I apologise for being so bad-tempered about it.’
‘You have many responsibilities, Matteo. Stephano and I are a great trial to you,’ she said, looping her arm through his as they walked backed up to the first floor. ‘Actually, the British buyer was charming. I’m taking him shopping tomorrow. For his wife,’ she added when he gave her a sharp look.
‘An experience he will never forget. Try to leave him with enough money to pay for the wine he’s ordered.’ He looked at her. ‘How are you?’ She shrugged, stepped away as he reached the door of his study. ‘Are you and Nico on speaking terms yet?’
‘I called him.’
‘And?’ he prompted, tugging at his tie, flipping on his laptop.
‘And we have spoken.’ She leaned against the door frame. ‘So? Who is Sarah?’
‘Sarah?’ He repeated the name casually. As if the earth had not suddenly lurched.
He’d been trying very hard not to think about Sarah.
He’d been doing quite a fair job of it until he found himself describing his wine as liquid sunshine and was sideswiped by the image of her smile.
‘Thank-you-again-for-today Sarah?’ Bella prompted. Then, when he looked genuinely blank, she pushed herself away from the door, flipped through the pile of unopened post on his desk and pulled out a postcard, snatching it out of reach when he would have taken it. ‘The “… I can’t cook as well as Graziella but, if you’re prepared to risk it, maybe I can return your hospitality one evening?” Sarah?’
‘When did that arrive?’ he demanded.
‘I’m not sure. There’s no stamp. It must have been delivered by hand.’
‘She doesn’t know this address.’ Or did she? He’d told Bella’s driver to take her wherever she wanted to go. Maybe she’d asked him to drop her off here. He could easily find out …
She put her head on one side. ‘She knows Graziella so I’m assuming she’s a country acquaintance.’ She turned the card over. ‘A tourist if her choice of postcard is anything to go by. One whose first language is English.’
‘That’s because she is English. She’s teaching at the international school. I met her in Isola del Serrone last weekend. We had lunch together.’
‘Well, fast work, dear cousin. You didn’t leave here until nearly eleven. I have to admit I thought you were rather slow when that Swiss buyer made it plain that she was interested in more than your finest vintage. If I’d known she had competition …’
‘It’s not like that,’ he protested.
‘No?’ She waved the card as if to fan her cheeks. ‘So tell me, is she one of those cool English blondes?’
‘No.’ Not cool. ‘Not blonde …’
‘Brunette? Redhead?’
‘Something between the two.’ The colour of a ripe chestnut new from the shell.
‘And her eyes?’
‘Bella …’
‘She has added a PS. Apparently, “you have made the shortlist”.’ She raised her eyebrows. ‘What shortlist would that be?’
He resisted the urge to snatch the card from her hand. Betray an urgency that he’d been denying for more than a week. Instead, he smiled.
‘She has a vacancy for a dark-eyed Italian lover. I thought, since I’m at a loose end, that I might apply.’
Bella looked momentarily startled, then she laughed. ‘Okay, keep your secrets,’ she said, ‘but if this has been sitting here for over a week you should give her a call before she gives the job to someone else.’
‘Bella …’ She turned in the doorway. ‘Have you decided what you’re going to do?’
‘Don’t worry, I’ve got project meetings at the studio all this week and a ton of scripts to read back at the apartment. The field will be clear for you to woo your pretty teacher.’
‘That’s not—’
But she was gone and she was right. Her marriage was her affair. She and Nico had to sort it out between them. If the media would give them the privacy to work it through.
Not this side of hell …
The Serrone family had been their own personal soap opera since his father first sat behind the wheel of a Formula One racing car. The affairs, his turbulent marriage, his death.
The near destruction of his mother when the ‘nanny diaries’ had hit the headlines after the crash that killed him. Every row, every item of crockery that had been hurled, smashed, every argument relayed in lurid detail by the woman who was always there. His nanny. Printed in the gossip rags to feed the readers’ prurient imagination. Making his mother out to be some kind of neurotic monster who wasn’t fit to be the wife of a hero, the mother of a small son, until she broke down under the strain. The grief.
How much was that kind of betrayal worth?
And now there was Katerina’s warning. Was it genuine, or was that just an attempt to get back under his skin? Did she really think he would ever trust her, or anyone, ever again?
He loosened his collar, sat down, read Sarah’s message, written in a clear, elegant hand. He’d deliberately left it to her to get in touch, torn between wanting her to call and hoping that she would not.
So much for that.
This morning, before the buyers had descended on him, he’d got out his spade, dug up one of Nonna’s precious herbs and sent it to her. A prompt, permission to get in touch, or because he couldn’t get her out of his head? He couldn’t have said. In the event, it had been unnecessary.
Sarah had wasted no time in extending an invitation to the dance. She must have thought he’d ignored her note, wasn’t interested. And his response, when it had finally come, subtle to the point of non-existence, must have seemed like a gentle thanks but no thanks.
He checked the time. Too late to call her now …
ITALIAN FOR BEGINNERS
I told you about my weekend, didn’t I? I told you about the train, the views, the garden I visited, lunch.
Well, listen up. There’s more.
A lot more.
The truth is that I cheated you. Missed out at lot of really interesting stuff. The part about being mistaken for a paparazzo with my little phone camera for a start. That was different.
And I cut the bit about being kissed by a total stranger who is, let me tell you, the hottest man I’ve ever met. Bar none. And here’s the really big news. Not only is he the world’s greatest kisser, but he’s a Conte. That’s Italian for Count, just in case you’re wondering. The real deal. Not like one of those Johnny-come-lately blokes in the House of Lords. His family have been Contes for centuries. Lots and lots of centuries and you don’t get many of those to the pound in Maybridge.
Not that I knew he was a Conte when he kissed me. I did mention that he’d kissed me, didn’t I? Without so much as a by-your-leave.
Frankly, that’s a bit off. Not the kissing—that was pure movie. You know, the bit where the man and woman just look at one another, the music swells to become throbbingly intense and cut to crashing waves … It’s the not telling that I’m complaining about. I mean, how often is a girl going to be kissed by an aristocrat? I would have liked the chance to properly savour what is undoubtedly going to be a once in a lifetime moment.
He did earn a few Brownie points by sending me home in his film star cousin’s limousine. I was actually mistaken for her for all of, oh, ten seconds. Shame I’m not interesting enough for anyone to pay for the photographs the paparazzi took of me or I’d be on the front cover of the latest gossip magazine and you’d be reading all about my love life in the hairdressers.
Actually, if they’d known about that kiss they might start to get interested, because it seems that Conte Matteo di Serrone was quite a playboy in his time. Just like his father before him.
Contes, film stars … I am having a high old time here in Rome.
She would have to delete it. In a minute. Just in case there was someone out there, besides a neurotic Louise, who was actually reading her blog.