She handed him a scrap of paper, and he studied it before saying briefly, ‘I’ve heard of them. They have a good reputation. Have you been in touch?’
‘Certainly not. This is your show.’
‘Really?’
‘I only obtained their name,’ she said indignantly. ‘You said yourself that you’re the world’s worst businessman.’
‘All right, all right.’ He held up his hands as if fending off a swarm of bees.
It was going all wrong. Why didn’t he take her into his arms and make everything perfect? Why couldn’t he apparently see that now they were free to love each other? Unless he didn’t want to see it.
‘You’d better get back to bed,’ he said. ‘I’ll sleep pretty well here. Goodnight.’
‘Goodnight,’ she said despondently, turning away to the door.
‘Julia.’
‘Yes?’ She turned back, heart beating with hope.
‘Thanks for all you’ve done—about the money and the hotel and everything. Goodnight.’
‘Goodnight,’ she said again, and closed the door behind her.
Vincenzo listened to her go into his room, cursing under his breath, wondering what was suddenly wrong with him.
Why should such an apparently simple thing have become so hard? She stirred his blood and his heart more than any woman had ever done, including his faithless fiancée. And what could be more natural than to ask her to be his wife?
But the words had frozen in him because he couldn’t dismiss the picture of her face when she’d said it was better to use people than trust them. He closed his eyes, trying to blot out the memory, but it was replaced by another one: Julia saying, ‘I’ll do what I have to—whatever that might be.’
And if he could obliterate her voice and her expression, there was another memory that could never be dismissed because he could still feel it in his flesh: their first night together when she had loved him with wanton abandon, taking him on, challenging, demanding, giving, with a desire that was as fierce as it was dazzling.
Only afterwards, when he knew her story, had the niggling questions come.
Me? Or was I just the man in her bed when her need was great?
‘Better to use people…’ She had said it.
He wanted to shout a denial, to say she wasn’t like that. But, as she’d so often told him, he knew nothing of her true self: as little, perhaps, as she did herself.
Today she had reclaimed her daughter’s heart, but there were still matters to be sorted out. Not just living arrangements, but the child’s attachment to himself and her baby brother.
For Julia, their marriage would make solid, practical sense. If he proposed now, she would say yes but he wouldn’t know why. They would set up home with the children, the perfect picture of a happy family.
And he would never be quite certain of her or her love, as long as he lived.
The next day Vincenzo discovered the reason for Julia’s numerous heavy suitcases. Somehow, in a mere two days, and in between dealing with lawyers, she’d found the time to buy up half the clothes shops in London.
Her hair had been cut short, brushed back and styled elegantly against her head. She no longer felt any need to hide her face from the world, or anybody in it.
She had drawn a line between her past and her future, and her transformation had rocked him onto the back foot. If he hadn’t known what to say to her before, he was totally at sea now.
He concentrated on practical business, contacting the firm she’d mentioned. A posse of dark-suited men descended from their offices in Milan, looked the palazzo over and expressed enthusiasm. There were discussions with Julia. How much could she invest? What value did she put on her restoration work? Finally they declared that they already had investors on their books eager for just such an opportunity.
They agreed to the idea of a Carnival party to make the press announcement, after which serious work would begin, to have everything ready for the following year.
When they’d gone Vincenzo walked around the empty building, trying to come to terms with the way his life had been turned upside down yet again, but this time in a manner that offered him new hope.
‘To come back,’ he murmured. ‘To see it come alive again.’
‘It’ll be wonderful,’ Julia said. She had been keeping a little behind him, in the shadows.
He looked at her, thinking that here was something else to unsettle him. He was just about growing used to her changed appearance.
She might have stepped out of the pages of Vogue. She was elegant, groomed to perfection, wearing a white silk shirt and the very latest fashionable trouser suit in dark blue. The perfume that reached him was as clear and subtle as a spring flower.
She belonged in a palace, he realised. The lost soul he’d first met had been an aberration. Now she was mistress of the situation, mistress of her own life at last. She exuded confidence from every pore, every sleekly groomed line. He could almost feel her being carried away from him by an irresistible current.
‘I’m going to start work down here,’ she said, indicating the great hall.
‘I thought this was where we were having the press party.’
‘It is. This will give us a point of interest to show people.’
‘I see. Good idea.’
Would they ever, he wondered, have anything else to talk about but business?
Julia watched him standing at the foot of the great staircase, looking up.
What did he see? Perhaps it was his fiancée, the woman he had loved more than all the world, slowly descending, receiving the tribute of his radiant expression? Was this why he had suddenly become unable to draw closer to her?
‘I’d better be going,’ she said. ‘Rosa knows something’s up, and she wants to be told everything.’
He grinned. ‘I can just hear her saying it.’
‘Will you be in for supper tonight?’
‘I’m afraid not. The tourists are already beginning to arrive for Carnival, and the restaurant is busy. We’ll have to move fast if this place is going to be ready for the big evening.’
An army of cleaners moved in the following day. Julia took Rosa along to see them at work, and to keep a jealous eye on the frescoes.
‘I’m going to set up work just here, behind the staircase,’ she told her. ‘I might even give a demonstration at the party.’
‘Aren’t you going to wear a beautiful dress?’
‘If I’m going to paint, I’m probably better in jeans. But you can wear a beautiful dress. What about the one you told me about, the one your mother bought for you?’
‘But aren’t—you my mother?’
‘Yes, darling, but she was too.’
Suddenly Julia remembered that Rosa had never wept for Bianca’s death, and, perhaps, now she might feel that she never could. She hurried to say, ‘You don’t have to choose between us. It’s all right to love us both.’
Rosa’s eyes were wide with relief. ‘Is it really?’
‘Of course. You’ve got two mothers. She’s Mamma and I’m Mummy. It’s all very simple.’
She hugged the little girl and Rosa seemed happier, but Julia still had the feeling that something was being held back. Patience, she told herself.
The next moment Rosa startled her.
‘When are you and Uncle Vincenzo going to get married?’
‘I—what makes you think that we’ll get married?’
‘But you must. It would make everything perfect. He can’t keep living in a hotel.’
How like a child, Julia thought, to see the matter in a sensible light. It was true that there were many realistic reasons for their marriage. And just as many reasons why it could never happen.
‘It takes a little more than that,’ she said carefully. ‘People have to love each other as well.’
‘But of course he loves you. Do you want me to ask him?’
‘No!’ Julia exploded before she could stop herself.
‘All rig
ht,’ Rosa said plaintively. ‘I only thought—’
‘Darling, do me a favour,’ Julia begged. ‘Stop thinking. Put it right out of your head.’
She thought she’d gained her point, but a moment later Rosa said, ‘Is it Gina?’
‘Who?’
‘Gina, that he was going to marry. Everyone says he was dotty about her, but that was ages ago.’
‘And everyone still talks about how she swept down that staircase and he looked at her adoringly,’ Julia couldn’t help saying. ‘Even now, so long after.’
Rosa looked at her wisely.
‘Perhaps you should make them talk about you,’ she said.
For years afterwards, Julia wondered if she’d known, even then, what her daughter was planning. She denied it to herself, but sometimes even her own secrets were hidden from her.
Carnival started on February tenth, the first day of a two-and-a-half-week-long feast of gaiety and indulgence.
‘Aaaa-aaah!’ Julia greeted the day with a luxurious sigh up to the deep blue sky. ‘This is gorgeous. I can’t believe it’s still so early in the year. Look at this weather.’
‘The sun always comes out for Carnival,’ Vincenzo told her, ‘even if it goes in again afterwards.’
The festivities were everywhere. Outrageous costumes, topped by mysterious masks, could be seen whirling through the piazzas and peering around corners.
Harlequin and Columbine, Pantalone, Pulcinello, Pierrot, Pierrette: they all danced through the music-haunted streets, celebrating the wild liberty that came with anonymity.
Rosa seemed to have forgotten her resolve to play no part in the jollity, except that Julia sensed it was not so much forgotten as put aside for the moment. She now seemed determined to make Julia take her responsibilities as hostess seriously.
The party was to be in eighteenth century dress, and brilliant costumes began to appear in Julia’s room, to be pored over, then returned to the hire shop. Rosa was ruthless about discarding any that did not appeal to her.
‘But I rather like that gold one,’ Julia said.
‘The white one is better,’ Rosa said firmly.
It was truly a glorious dress, satin and brocade, with a tiny waist. In a few minutes Julia was surveying herself in the mirror, adding yet one more persona to the long list she’d acquired recently.
She wasn’t quite certain who this mysterious creature might be, with her sequinned gown and mask. But she felt it might be fun to be her for a while.
When the cleaners had finished work at the palazzo they were able to move into a few rooms temporarily, and oversee the arrangements. Over five hundred people would be there. Some were press, others had bought costly tickets. Venice was alive with rumours and nobody wanted to miss this event.
Even baby Carlo was brought to sleep there for a couple of nights, for no Venetian was ever too young for Carnival.
Acting on Rosa’s instructions, Julia had not mentioned her costume to Vincenzo, who, as far as she knew, had made no plans to dress up.
‘Shame on you,’ she teased. ‘You’re the host of this party and you should be wearing satin knee breeches and lace.’
But she’d misjudged him. He was a Venetian, and satin and lace held no terrors for him. On the night he appeared before her in all his glory. Eighteenth-century garb suited him. The brocade of the black and gold coat and the lace at the neck had the strange effect of underlining his masculinity.
‘Dressed like this,’ he said, ‘a rake could go out on the town and—’ He broke off with a wistful, reminiscent sigh.
‘Fine,’ she told him. ‘We’ll go out on the town—but together.’
He might have answered, but Gemma looked in to say, ‘Rosa has a surprise for you.’ She vanished, leaving the door open.
After a moment Rosa appeared. She was wearing a pink satin carnival dress. It was grand and glorious, sweeping the floor, with sleeves like wings. On her head she wore a bonnet of pink satin and lace, and in her hand she held a pink, full-face mask on a stick.
Slowly she advanced towards them, the mask held up over her face, and sank down in an elegant curtsey. They all smiled and applauded, and she rose.
But she did not remove the mask, just stood there, her shoulders seeming to sag. It was Julia who reached out to draw the mask away, revealing that behind it the child was in tears.
She didn’t try to hide them now, just stood there with them sliding down her cheeks.
‘This is the dress you told me about?’ she said.
Rosa nodded.
‘Mamma bought it for me, for Carnival,’ she said huskily. ‘But I wouldn’t wear it because I was angry with her for going away. Now—’ a sob shook her ‘—now I want to tell her that I’m sorry, and it’s too late.’
At last she could hold back no longer, and when Julia opened her arms she went into them, weeping.
Julia held her close, torn between pain for her child and happiness that Rosa had opened her heart to her.
‘It’s not too late,’ she said. ‘There’s still a couple of days of Carnival to go. Tomorrow we’ll go to San Michele together.’
‘Can we really?’ Rosa was transformed.
‘Tonight everyone can see how lovely you look. And tomorrow you can tell her all about it.’
‘Can I wear my dress to San Michele, for Mamma?’
‘Of course you can.’ She dried the child’s tears.
When Rosa had gone Julia glanced at Vincenzo who had remained silent and very still, watching them. She wished she could read the expression in his eyes, but his jewelled mask concealed them.
‘Aren’t you going to get dressed?’ he asked. ‘I don’t even know what you’re wearing yet.’
‘Excellent. Then you won’t know which one is me. I think I’ll enjoy that.’
‘You’ll drive me too far.’
‘I probably will in the end, but we aren’t nearly there yet.’ Her eyes dared him. ‘It’s going to be a fascinating journey.’
‘Julia—’
‘I think people are arriving. You’d better go and greet them.’
‘What about you? This is as much your night as mine.’
‘I’ll be there.’
From the first moment the evening was a triumph. The knowledge that the Palazzo Montese was to live again had aroused interest all over Venice, throughout the hotel industry, and among those who passed their lives in one hotel after another.
Julia left the spotlight to Vincenzo, while she worked in the corner she had set apart for restoration, answering a stream of fascinated questions. She was dressed quietly and simply in velvet trousers and silk shirt.
Rosa was having the time of her life, but at last she came and fetched Julia determinedly, taking her hand and drawing her upstairs. Gemma was there, and the two of them helped her to dress.
‘Time to go,’ she said at last. ‘This way.’
Brooking no argument, Rosa took her hand and led her down as far as the top of the main staircase.
‘Darling, I don’t think—’
‘Go and stand in front of that picture, the one of Annina.’
Too dazed to do anything but obey, Julia went down to stand before the picture. Something drew her eyes up to the wild face of the woman who had once seemed so like herself in her misfortunes.
Not any more. It was time to do what Annina had never been able to do, to seize her fate and wrest it to her own will. An excitement was growing in her. She knew now why Rosa had done this.
Behind her she could hear the buzz of the crowd fall silent. Slowly she turned.
Vincenzo was standing at the foot of the steps, looking up at her. As she had always known he would be. As Rosa had always known he would be.
Slowly Julia began to descend, a vision in shimmering white, her face covered by a white lace mask. After a few steps she removed it, looking down on the man who never took his eyes from her.
His hand moved up to his own mask, seized it, tossed it away. Now she had a clear view of
his face, and it was brilliant with love and happiness. It was the look she had longed to see.
He didn’t take his eyes from her as she approached closer and closer. The masks were gone. Now there was only truth.
‘Who—are you?’ he asked uncertainly.
She was standing before him. Slowly she kissed him, then drew back at once.
‘That’s who I am,’ she said. ‘The woman who loves you.’
Once more she laid her lips on his, and kept them there while his hands settled on her waist, lifting her into the air, while not letting his mouth part from hers.
The crowd broke into applause, although none of them was really sure why. Somebody must have started it, but it could have been anyone. It might even have been a little girl, watching gleefully from above, determined to make this turn out right. A good organiser. Her mother’s daughter.
There were still formalities to be gone through, guests to be greeted, smiles to give. But everything that happened now seemed part of a dream, and the only reality came at the end of the evening when Rosa led them to the side entrance, where a gondolier was waiting.
As they pulled away Vincenzo blew her a grateful kiss, before leaning back against the cushions, drawing Julia into his arms.
‘I think it’s all been taken out of our hands,’ he said.
‘Perhaps it’s the only way it could happen,’ she agreed. ‘Why did everything suddenly become so hard?’
‘A thousand times I came to the edge of telling you how much I love you, and want to marry you. But I became afraid in case you thought I was seizing you for fear of what I’d lose. I wanted you to trust me and I didn’t think you ever would.’
‘If you’d told me that you loved me, I’d have trusted and believed you,’ she said fervently. ‘And I could have said that I love you.’
‘I wasn’t sure that you did. You tried so often to warn me that you couldn’t love me.’
‘That was foolish of me. I love you with all my heart.’
‘If you say that, I have nothing else to want. I know now that I was wrong. Not everyone leaves. I’m not going to let you leave me.’
He kissed her fiercely, letting his passion make the argument for him, feeling her response give him the answer that said more than speech.
A Venetian Affair Page 49