by Julie Sarff
Oh my. His forever bride. Brandon’s being so sappy again. I am truly the luckiest person in the world.
Chapter 23
An hour later at Ca’ Buschi, the party is in full swing. In the main salon, the furniture has been cleared away and a five-piece band is playing jazz tunes. Everybody’s here, all the staff, Jason, Anna, my parents, my boys and all of Rupa’s relatives. There are several more people who I don’t recognize. When I ask Brandon who they are, he whispers back, “They’re Rupa’s biggest donors. I invited them if they made a large donation to her rescue. I promised when I got Dario and Rupa back together that I would help them make their rescue more financially viable.”
Gaa, he’s such a perfect man! And to think I almost ran away from him. I head over to give my parents a giant hug.
“I can’t believe how big the boys have gotten,” my mother sniffles. “But we’ll be seeing them more often. Brandon says he’ll fly us here to visit whenever we want. But you go dear, you should mingle. After all, you are the bride.”
I am, aren’t I? Yes, I should visit with my guests. I head off to the dining room where extra help has been hired to serve the lunch. Ada is here, sneering at the buffet and making disparaging remarks. No matter how beautiful Villa Buschi’s dining room is –-and it is resplendent with ornate centerpieces of cascading white flowers running down the huge mahogany table-- it will never live up to the dream of the twelve course lunch that Ada Brunetti was looking forward to at Castello di Roppollo. I stare at her and wonder if anything could ever change the sour expression on her face. Then, as if by magic, something does change the expression on Ada’s face. From afar, she spies him and her sour expression changes to a look of lust. The object of her affection is none other than Signor Tacchini, who inches his way across the dining room.
Is it just me or is there a twinkle in Ada’s eye when Signor Tacchini takes a seat at the table next to her?
“Why, Filippo Tacchini, you old so-an-so, I haven’t seen you in ages,” she gushes.
“Not since you used to run around the village in your stocking feet,” Signor Tacchini banters happily.
I almost drop my plate of antipasti on the floor.
After the lavish lunch, which many people eat standing up due to the lack of space at the table, the crowd moves into the main salon. Dancing breaks out as twilight engulfs the villa. Brandon whirls me around the dance floor with expertise. He doesn’t seem to mind my two left feet. Jason and Anna join us, and Dario and Rupa sort of sway with the beat. Uncle Tomasso takes his bride of forty-five years into his arms, and the newest couple of the evening, Ada and Signor Tacchini surprise everyone by doing an ethereal waltz, gliding about the floor.
It’s as we’re all applauding Ada and the gardener that I hear footsteps running down the main hall and turn to see Luca and Matteo practically mowing people down in an effort to get to Brandon. When they reach him they fling their arms around his knees.
“Look who came.” Luca points to the archway of the main salon. I crane my neck to see Signora Casetti enter in a daring red dress that ties over the shoulder.
“You invited her?” I ask Brandon.
“Well,” he shrugs, “I’m starting to get use to her. She’s around all the time.”
I catch a flash of leg as she crosses the room, the slit on her dress is cut very high. Who would have thought she would make such an elegant figure in those pince-nez glasses of hers? Just then, the band stops to take a small break and Signora Cassetti heads our way. She’s about to kiss us on the cheeks and tell us, “complimenti”, when she sees something across the room and her head swivels sharply.
“Why, I don’t believe it!” she cries, “Is that you, La Zafferana?”
Chapter 24
Several eyes, including mine, anxiously follow her gaze. From across the room, Ada Brunetti throws up her hands and comes striding over shouting, “La Scarletina!”
I swear I’ve entered the twilight zone, or the Bermuda Triangle, or Hogwarts school of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Or something! This can’t be happening, I must have misunderstood. I am about to fall on the floor as the women stride to each other and embrace in the middle of the main salon.
“How long has it been since we were in boarding school together?”
“Where have you been all these years?”
They are yelling and hugging as I feel my knees buckle.
“Party over, party over,” I snap a second later and begin running around the main salon in a most animated fashion. I snatch drinks out of people’s hands and begin to push them towards the door.
“Hold on, folks,” Brandon commands. “Party’s still going, she’s just joking.” To me he whispers, “Calm down.”
How can I stay calm? How can I?
“Please go on with the party. Signora Casetti, Signora Brunetti, Rupa and Dario, oh and you too, Francesca di Campo, will you please join Lily and me in the library,” he says in such a way as to put on the façade that nothing is wrong. His words are expressed in the lightest, airiest of tones as if what just happened isn’t about the strangest thing that I’ve ever witnessed in my life.
After the six of us file into the library, Brandon closes the door.
“I’m so sorry, ladies,” Brandon begins in really stilted Italian, “But did I hear you right? Did you Signora Casetti call Signora Brunetti ‘La Zafferana?’”
“Yes, she did, so what’s it to you?” Ada pipes up rudely. Wow, even talking to one of the biggest stars in the world she is still incredibly unfriendly.
“Yes, yes, they are old, silly, made up school names. I haven’t seen Ada in so long. When we were younger we were in the orphanage together in Turin. We all had different colored dresses that were made by the headmistress. Such a sweet woman, do you remember Ada?”
“I hated her,” croaks Ada.
Signora Casetti laughs as if it’s a good joke. “Surely you jest, Ada, she was the warmest woman.”
“But Mother,” interrupts Dario, who looks faint from having put two and two together, “I thought you were raised by your aunt.”
“Aunts, plural,” she spits out. “I was in and out of the orphanage depending on who had the money to take care of me. My mother left me there when I was two. And my father died when I was a baby. At least, that’s what mother told her sisters who eventually raised me.”
She looks around for sympathy but nobody breathes. All I am thinking is: DNA test. DNA test!
I look around the room to see if everyone is thinking the same thing. Poor Rupa has shut down completely, her face is paler than mine.
Dario must be quickly adding up all of Carlo Buschi’s money in his head and Brandon must be freaking out. Freaking out! It would be just like Ada to want Villa Buschi for herself.
“Well, you had it better than me, Ada, at least you had aunts who came for you now and then.”
“Uh-huh,” I murmur in a moment of clarity and then my inner Matlock takes over, “And you say you went to boarding school together as well?”
Dario, Rupa and Brandon glance at me as if to say, is that the most important question you have at the moment?
I give them a strained look. Yes it is.
“Yes, at age eight, there is no more orphanage, so they shipped us off to a boarding school near Verona. It was run by nuns. It wasn’t so bad.”
Ada makes a sour face. It’s clear she thinks the boarding school was worse than hemorrhagic fever, or toxic fumes or something equally as bad,
“I see, and you haven’t seen each other since?”
“Bah,” Ada spits, “I never get out of the countryside much. I should come to Arona more often. So no, to answer your question, Lily Bilbury, if it’s any of your business, I haven’t seen Elena Casetti in probably forty years.”
“Ah yes,” Signora Casetti murmurs. “But I knew you by the sparkle in your eye.”
Incredible. This is so incredible. I think my head will explode. And to think Ada has no idea who she is.
I le
an in to scrutinize Dario’s mother’s face. Come to think of it, she does kind of resemble that long line of Buschi ancestors depicted in the paintings that hang in the hallway above us. She has the same round nose.
“What’s wrong with all of you? Why are you staring at me like that?” Ada snaps.
“Mother,” Dario says gently, “How many people knew about your childhood nicknames at the orphanage?”
“Nobody knows. Only people connected to the orphanage in Turin knew our nicknames,” Ada exhales crossly.
“Yes,” Signora Casetti sighs, “We would go filing out on walks right in downtown Turin and headmistress would call us all by the colors of our dresses.”
“That old bat was too lazy to even learn our proper names.”
Signor Casetti laughs as if Ada has just said the darndest thing.
The rest of us, however, are silent. In my head I am thinking Carlo Buschi must have kept tabs on his daughter. He knew she was at the orphanage, and he knew what her nickname was.
Oh my, it’s all a little sad, isn’t it? To think that Buschi never went and claimed Ada. She had to be raised first in an orphanage and then by different aunts. But things were different back then, and if Carlo Buschi and Ada’s mother weren’t married, having a child out of wedlock was probably a heavy burden.
“I’m so sorry, Mother. About the orphanage, that is. I never knew,” Dario exhales.
“Bah.” Ada bats at the air with a fist. “My parents were poor. A baby girl wasn’t of much importance.”
“Mother,” Dario explains, “I don’t think you have any idea just how important you are. You have always been so to me. But there’s something we need to tell you.” He glances at Rupa, Francesca and I and we all give him an encouraging nod.
“I believe your parents may not have been poor… at least your father wasn’t. What I am trying to say is that you may be the daughter of one of the wealthiest men in Arona’s history,” Dario utters in one big breath.
“Are you an idiot?” is all Ada replies before she gives her son a cold, hard stare.
September
(Aglow with Autumn)
Chapter 25
Three months later, I drive my new Mini Cooper (blue with white racing stripes) up the horrible oxcart path of a driveway towards Villa Buschi.
Today I don’t park in the parcheggio. Instead, I drive around to the converted barn that is a five-car storage garage. I hit the button on my remote control and wait for the door to open. Once I safely stow my car, I move Brandon’s wedding present in the little garage office. You see, since I didn’t know we were getting married, I never got my husband a gift.
“Be good,” I say to the present before exiting the garage and closing the door behind me. I make my way up the hill to the villa and duck through the side entrance. With any luck, Brandon hasn’t returned from his business meeting yet. I enter the main hall and a conversation wafts out of the kitchen. I can hear Elenora say, “It’s so good to have a family in this house. I wonder when the last family lived here. It must have been before Carlo Buschi bought the place.”
She’s absolutely right, it is good to have a family in this villa again. It’s only been this way for a week because Brandon, me, and the boys have just returned from two months in America. The first thing Brandon and I did after we got married was go on a honeymoon to the J.W. Marriott in Capri. We were there for a week among the sunshine and lemon trees. The hotel overlooked the town, and they allowed me to put my lounge chair right in the pool. After that, we spent time in Paris and London, while my mother and father stayed on at Villa Buschi to watch the boys. Thankfully, Anna and Jason used the time to find a place of their own, a condo in Baveno, not far away.
Brandon and I spent an entire month on our own and then the six of us flew back to the states. It was so great to be home in Colorado. Although, I’m not sure how much Brandon liked sleeping in my old room with all my stuffed animals on the bed. We stayed a week before renting an R.V. and doing the grand Colorado tour with the boys. Then, it was off to Malibu to see Brandon’s beach house. There I finally met Brandon’s head of household in the flesh. Horatio apologized a million times for having been so rude to me when I was a maid working under his tutelage at the villa. I told him not to worry, it was all water under the bridge. Finally, we returned to Italy, after staying a week in Brandon’s flat in Manhattan.
Thinking about it now, it seems like a dream. The last few months have been the best of my life.
But I have to say, Arona is my home and it was good to return. Today we’re having a family luncheon as soon as everyone arrives. The great news is that we get to keep the villa. Any day now, Signor Fini should be coming over with the paperwork that says the Italian state recognizes Brandon’s purchase of the estate as legal and above board. You see, Ada Brunetti turned out to be Buschi’s heir. A DNA test proved it. Tragically, they had to exhume Carlo Buschi’s body to do the match, to make sure they really were father and daughter.
Anyway…
The important thing is that Ada didn’t want the house after all. She wanted the 21 million euros. And the first thing that Ada did with her money was take Signor Tacchini on a world cruise. They’ll be gone for almost a year.
So all’s well that ends well, I think, as I hear voices from the game room. I head down the hallway to find Beatta Cavale, and my boys whiling away time in the game room. Rocket is here as well, stretched out in a patch of sunshine. Xerxes, Brandon’s cat, is in hiding, not sure what to think of his new feline housemate.
“Good morning, Beatta,” I call out. (What? You didn’t think we would leave her down there in Civita with a house that’s going to slough off into the abyss, did you? I hired her as a nanny, and she’s superb.)
“Good morning,” she replies with an easy smile.
The sound of a powerful engine maneuvering its way along the ox-cart path drifts through the open door.
“Ah, sounds like Brandon’s finally home, if you’ll excuse me.”
Beatta and the boys nod and I hurry away. I have to catch Brandon before he finds his present on his own.
But I’m too late. When I reach the garage, I find Brandon looking curiously at the office door.
“What’s in there, Lily?”
Woof, comes the sound from the opposite side of the door.
“It’s my wedding present to you!” I say happily, and turn the doorknob. Phil is standing there, looking a little dejected and confused as always. All these months of being stuck in a kennel have been so hard on him. It’s time he has a place to call his own, with a family to love him.
Brandon smiles slowly. “My wedding present is a dog? You know you’re not supposed to gift animals. What if I return him?”
“You’d never do that!” I smile confidently.
“So, you think you know me that well?”
Woof, cries Phil again.
“Of course I know you that well. I know you extremely well. You’re my husband. Don’t be silly.”
******
The End
Lily Bilbury and friends will return in a new series: Lily Bilbury, Ace Detective.
Books by this author:
The Sweet Delicious Madness Cozy Mystery Series
The Hope Diamond
The Heir to Villa Buschi
The Treasure of Croesus
The Knotty Bride
The Royal Biography Cozy Mystery Series
The Prince and I
The Princes’ Secret
The King of Scotland (coming late fall 2015)
The Witches Pendragon Cozy Mystery series
The Witching Hour (coming October 2015)
Magda Pendragon: Heir to Arthur (coming Spring 2016)
The Classic Cozy Mystery Series
Murder at Mudswell Manor (coming late Winter 2015)
Author’s Note
Thank you dear reader, for taking the time to read about Lily’s misadventures. I have a particular brand of humor and my characters may not
be everyone’s cup of tea. I understand that. If you liked this book please take a few minutes and leave a review. Indie authors do it all on our own from start to finish, and unlike indie films, we are generally not celebrated. Having delved into the world of indie books I have found some truly amazing authors and it has enriched my life. I recently read something that said ‘promote what you like, rather than bash something you don’t.’ I think these are good words to live by and I leave good reviews for books I truly enjoy.
Special thanks to my editors who keep me on the straight and narrow. If you are interested in knowing when future works release please join my newsletter. Please note I don’t spam anyone. I only announce giveaways, free promotions or new releases.
To join the newsletter list (I only send out information about new releases and never spam) or to read my blog click http://juliesarff.com/mybooks.html
Blooper Reel
What, no recipes? No, I’m sorry no recipes this time. Life has been crazy! So how about a blooper reel? The rough draft of The Hope Diamond was 130,000 words long. It was originally released as Sweet Delicious Madness and the Many Mysterious Deaths of Silvio Berlusconi, and the word count was cut to 95,000. When it was re-released as The Hope Diamond, it was cut to 84,000 so here are the outtakes.
Sweet Delicious Madness
and the Many Mysterious Deaths of Silvio Berlusconi
Julie Sarff
Late September