The Italian Count s Defiant Bride

by Catherine George

  ‘I most certainly did not!’

  ‘It was very soon after you left me, Alicia.’

  She stared at him in blank astonishment.

  ‘You do not believe me?’ He shrugged. ‘It is the truth. Your mother swore to me that you had gone away.’

  Alicia regrouped hurriedly. ‘I had. When I got back from Paris I was so—so miserable I was sent off with Megan to stay with her grandmother in Hay-on-Wye for a while to recover. Or try to.’

  Francesco’s jaw tightened. ‘I was told nothing of this during the visit. Megan’s parents were there to support your mother. Also the large brother.’ He smiled grimly. ‘They were unmoved by my anguish. Your mother insisted that you never wanted to see me again.’

  Alicia stared at him, shaken, feeling the warmth drain from her face.

  ‘You are very pale. Do you have brandy, Alicia?’ asked Francesco gently. He got up to take her by the hand and led her to the sofa.

  ‘No.’ She tried to smile, but her lips were stiff. ‘I’ll make some tea in a minute.’

  ‘Tell me what to do and I will make it,’ he commanded.

  ‘No. First I just need to sit and get my head round this.’

  Francesco sat beside her, keeping tight hold of her hand. ‘I swear it is the truth, Alicia.’

  ‘I’m sure it is. It would be easy enough to disprove. But it’s a shock, just the same,’ she said huskily, her throat thickening. ‘I just wish I’d known.’

  ‘Piangi!’ he ordered, and held her close.

  Alicia obeyed, but not for long. She blew her nose in the handkerchief Francesco produced, but when she tried to move away he held her tightly, one hand sliding under the ancient cardigan to smooth over the silk covering her shoulders.

  ‘No, piccola. Stay. It is easier to talk like this, no?’

  Oh, yes. Half seduced by his touch, the mixed pain and pleasure of his endearment made it all too dangerously easy. But, a voice in her brain quickly reminded her, although his mother had been partly to blame for her headlong escape from matrimony it had been Francesco’s words that had actually sent his bride on the run. Words that had remained, engraved in her mind, ever since. Alicia pushed at his restraining arms until he released her, then went back to the chair. Sniffing inelegantly, she mopped away the last of her tears and smiled at him in bleak apology as she drew the cardigan closer.

  ‘I’m afraid I’ve ruined your handkerchief.’

  ‘Gran Dio, what does that matter?’ His eyes glittered like blue flames. ‘When you ran from me you ruined my life!’

  Alicia met the look head on. ‘I thought I was giving it back to you, Signor Conte. I was sure you’d go back to your mamma and Montedaluca, glad to be free of your unsatisfactory bride. I’m sure the contessa was thrilled.’

  ‘As I have told you,’ he said harshly, ‘she was not.’

  ‘I find that hard to believe.’

  ‘Nevertheless, it is the truth. When she saw my despair, my mother confessed to much regret that she had not behaved well towards you.’

  ‘To a “freckled schoolgirl with red hair and a figure like a boy”,’ quoted Alicia with deadly accuracy.

  Faint colour rose along Francesco’s patrician cheekbones. ‘You overheard?’

  ‘Except for the Italian for freckles, which I already knew, your mother took good care to speak English.’

  ‘So that the servants would not understand,’ he said stiffly.

  ‘But that I would.’ Alicia shrugged. ‘Not that it matters any more, Francesco. That schoolgirl grew up fast.’

  ‘And no longer has a figure like a boy.’

  ‘Nor was my hair ever red!’ That was something which had annoyed her almost as much as the rest of the contessa’s comments had hurt.

  His eyes moved over her with a look as tactile as a caress. ‘You have matured into an alluring woman, and I was not the only man who thought so tonight.’

  ‘I see a lot of men in my work,’ she said indifferently.

  The eyes slitted. ‘Is there one you see more than others?’

  ‘Several I look on as friends to share a meal with.’

  ‘And a bed?’ he demanded.

  ‘You have no right to ask me that!’

  ‘I have every right,’ he said through his teeth. ‘I am your husband.’

  ‘You gave up any right to call yourself that on our wedding night,’ she shot back.

  He took in a deep, unsteady breath. ‘Alicia, in my frustration and disilluzione, I uttered words I have regretted bitterly through all the years since. If you could have witnessed my anguish when I found you gone, you would have had your revenge.’

  She shrugged impatiently. ‘I wanted escape, not revenge.’

  ‘And threw your rings on the floor!’

  ‘Better than having theft added to my sins,’ she retorted. ‘I scrubbed myself, pulled on my old clothes and ran off via the service lift with my back pack, desperate to get away before you came back.’

  ‘You had no thought that I would be demented, thinking of you alone in Paris?’ Francesco’s jaw tightened. ‘I was such an ogre, Alicia?’

  She shrugged. ‘If not an ogre, you were nothing like the man I fell in love with. Though the change had started long before then. When I arrived to stay in Montedaluca before the wedding, you were different, so preoccupied with your business affairs, that you had very little time for me. Almost from the start I began to wonder if I was making a big mistake. But I just didn’t have the courage to put a stop to all the preparations your mother had made. Afterwards I wished to God I had. You said such terrible things; I was heartbroken. But not for long,’ she added quickly. ‘My heart soon healed once I cut you out of it.’

  They stared at each other in tense silence.

  ‘So. Tell me what happened next,’ said Francesco at last.

  ‘Not much. I spent a long time with Meg, pulling myself together, then I had another holiday alone with Bron in Cornwall. And then I went to college. Only not here in Cardiff, as originally planned.’

  ‘Because you thought I might trace you there?’

  She gave a flippant little laugh. ‘Heavens no, that never occurred to me. I knew you’d rung Bron a few times to ask about me, but because you never came after me—or so I thought—I assumed you were glad to get shot of me. I transferred to the university where Megan was reading law, and I changed to economics because by then an art-history degree with a year’s study in Florence was the last thing I wanted.’ She smiled at him sardonically. ‘You wouldn’t have recognised the convent schoolgirl, Francesco. I was the archetypal student—with body piercing, bare midriff even in the dead of winter, and skirts so short they terrified my mother. I dyed multi-coloured streaks in my hair, drank beer in the union with the rugby team, and partied like mad.’

  He sat very still, his eyes locked with hers. ‘You held me responsible for this?’

  Alicia nodded vehemently. ‘Of course I did. But after a while Bron read the riot act, and told me I was worrying Megan so much her work was suffering, which meant her parents were worried too. So I put you out of my mind, cut the partying and got down to work myself.’

  ‘And in time my pride would no longer allow me to continue pleading with Signora Cross for news of you,’ Francesco said bitterly. ‘She is a very strong lady.’

  ‘Life has shaped her that way.’

  ‘She has never told you more about your father?’

  ‘No.’ Suddenly Alicia could take no more. ‘Enough of this, Francesco. Would you please go now?’

  He got up at once. ‘Va bene. But I will take you to lunch tomorrow.’

  She shook her head. ‘Sorry. I’m having lunch with Megan.’

  ‘Then I shall come here in the evening.’ His eyes locked on hers. ‘Make very sure you are here, Alicia. I will not return to Montedaluca until the problem is resolved.’

  ‘Oh, very well,’ she said wearily. ‘But come after dinner, please.’ No way was she going to prepare a meal for him. ‘Do you want t
o ring for a taxi?’

  ‘No.’ His jaw tightened. ‘I will relieve you of my unwanted company immediately. A domani.’

  ‘Goodnight.’ Well aware that she’d offended him, Alicia saw him to the door. She locked up and turned out the lights, and with a grateful sigh made for her bedroom, suddenly so tired it was a struggle to go through her usual routine before she crawled into bed.

  An hour later she gave up all idea of sleeping and got up again, cursing Francesco for spoiling what should have been a wonderful day. Wales had beaten Italy—which for her was a particularly personal triumph—and the party she’d organised had been a success, except for the presence of Francesco da Luca. She should have been on cloud nine. Alicia sighed irritably, made some tea, propped up the pillows on her bed and sat upright against them, unable to get the da Lucas’ visit to her mother out of her mind. In the morning she would ring Bron to get her side of the story before Francesco returned tomorrow night. Bronwen Cross had obviously not wanted her daughter to go back to her bridegroom.

  But Alicia felt no animosity towards her mother, who early on in life had learned to make her own way. Bronwen Cross’s father had died when she was twelve, and her mother a relatively short time later during Bron’s first year at Cardiff University. At the time the newly-orphaned Bronwen was lodging in the home of Huw and Eira Davies in a room in the attic flat they let out to students to help pay the mortgage on their Victorian town house.

  Huw Davies was a solicitor, and in spite of the long hours he worked in his aim to achieve partnership in his firm he was a godsend to his grieving young lodger in sorting out the legalities after the death of her mother. In exchange Bron looked after his young son, Gareth, during Eira’s trips to the ante-natal clinic at nearby Glossop Terrace, the hospital where the second Davies baby would soon be born.

  After Megan had arrived Bron was only too happy to continue with her babysitting services, and soon became so much a part of the family that, when she discovered to her horror that she herself was pregnant, it was to Eira that she turned in despair. There was no question of abortion for someone of Bron’s faith, nor of giving her baby up for adoption. She also flatly refused to name the father, or to ask him for support as Huw urged, but due to a modest inheritance from her mother Bron was able to rent the entire attic flat of the house in Blake Street and carry on at university. And when Alicia was born at the end of September, in good time for the autumn term, Eira volunteered to look after her along with her own children for a small fee the young mother insisted on. It was an arrangement which not only suited everyone, but allowed Bron to combine motherhood with studying for a fine-arts degree.

  Alicia sighed. From earliest memory she’d had two mothers, since Eira Davies had always treated her as one of her own. To add to the mix, Alicia had a ready-made brother and sister from the start in Gareth and Megan, and, because the toddlers referred to their much-loved babysitter as ‘Bron’, as soon as she could talk Alicia did the same.

  Her background, or lack of it, had been a huge part of Alicia’s ineligibility from Contessa Sophia da Luca’s point of view. As if freckles, dimples, ‘red’ hair and lack of curves were not enough, her son’s fidanzata was the child of a single mother and unknown father. Bad news all round from the contessa’s point of view. Though, to be fair to Francesco, he had not cared about Alicia’s lack of pedigree. His sole objection had been to a bride who was so far from his expectations on their wedding night his outraged reaction had ended their marriage before it began. And since that fateful evening in Paris Alicia had never laid eyes on Francesco again until today at the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  ALICIA slept so late next morning there was no answer when she rang her mother. Frustrated, she left a message for Bron and went off to lunch in Blake Street.

  ‘Rhys has just nipped out with Gareth,’ Meg said, hugging Alicia. ‘So, how did the party go?’

  ‘Like clockwork, thank heavens.’ Alicia hesitated, but left any mention of Francesco until they were all together. ‘Mum and Dad still in Hay?’

  Meg nodded soberly. ‘Grandma’s not too good, so the parents are staying put there for the time being.’

  Which right now left Gareth as the only available eye-witness to the contessa’s visit. Alicia would have preferred to speak to her mother first, but she needed answers before tonight’s encounter with Francesco. She kept up a flow of chatter to describe the party as she helped a rather subdued Meg with the lunch, and when the two men came back the four of them sat down to eat in the dining room, in the bay window looking out on the garden.

  ‘Posh today,’ commented Gareth as Rhys, the trainee surgeon, carved the roast.

  ‘It’s not often the four of us are together any more,’ said Meg, passing vegetables. ‘Besides, yesterday’s triumph calls for something more special than the kitchen table.’

  ‘Amen to that,’ agreed her brother, eyeing Alicia as he filled her glass. ‘You look tired today, cariad.’

  ‘Big day yesterday.’

  ‘Was your party a success?’ asked Rhys.

  Alicia nodded. ‘It certainly was. Not a hitch. Though for the money the company shelled out that’s hardly surprising.’

  ‘Talking of money, people, we’ve found a house,’ said Rhys, then rolled his eyes as his wife glared at him. ‘Wasn’t I supposed to say that?’

  ‘I wanted to break the news myself,’ Megan said crossly, but smiled at him to soften the blow. ‘The house is in Heath, Lally. My hot-shot surgeon will be able to tumble straight out of bed into his shift at the hospital.’

  ‘Why the hell do you want to saddle yourself with a mortgage at this stage in your career?’ demanded Gareth.

  ‘Because I have this clever, trainee-solicitor wife who is willing to support me until I actually am a hot-shot surgeon. And, although we have great digs here with your parents, we want a home of our own,’ said Rhys, and leaned over to kiss Megan.

  ‘For goodness’ sake,’ said Gareth in disgust. ‘Shouldn’t you two be over the lovebird stage by now?’

  ‘Killjoy!’ jeered Alicia, and smiled encouragement at the other two. ‘Don’t mind the crusty old bachelor here; it’s sweet to see a married couple billing and cooing.’

  Gareth raised a sardonic eyebrow. ‘You, of course, being such an expert on marriage.’

  ‘Pig!’ snapped Megan, glaring at him. ‘Take no notice, Lally. He’s in a snit because his latest squeeze has just dumped him.’

  ‘Oh, bad luck.’ Alicia smiled at Gareth sweetly. ‘Did I ever hear this one’s name?’

  ‘Dawn, wasn’t it?’ asked Rhys.

  Megan shook her head. ‘That was the last one.’

  ‘Her name is Julie,’ said Gareth shortly. ‘And we parted by mutual consent.’

  ‘Which means she wanted an engagement ring,’ said his cynical sister. ‘Who’s for pudding?’

  After the meal Alicia sent the men into the sitting room to watch a recording of the previous day’s victory while she helped Megan clear up.

  ‘That was gorgeous, Meg. Your mother couldn’t have done better.’

  ‘Praise indeed!’ Megan eyed her anxiously as she switched on the dishwasher. ‘Something’s wrong, isn’t it?’

  ‘You could say that.’ Alicia braced herself. ‘I bumped into Francesco at the stadium yesterday.’

  Meg sat down at the kitchen table with a thump. ‘What happened?’

  ‘I cut him dead at first, but he nobbled me after the match, insisting we talk.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘Not a lot, really. We had a brief argument outside the stadium, then he let me go on my way, or so I thought. But he turned up at the party last night and insisted on taking me home.’

  ‘So he knows where you live now?’ Meg shot her a troubled glance. ‘What did he want? Or shouldn’t I ask?’

  ‘If you mean was he after my body, no. But he’s coming back to the flat to see me tonight. To settle things.’

  ‘A
bout a divorce?’

  Alicia nodded. ‘Though why he’s taken all this time to get round to it beats me. Maybe because he’s a Catholic.’

  Meg rolled her eyes. ‘And how! The full nuptial-mass at your wedding was overpowering. Or was it all those lilies in the church?’

  ‘Probably the waves of disapproval wafting over to us from the contessa.’ Alicia pulled her up. ‘Come on, let’s join the men. I need to grill Gareth about something.’

  Rhys paused the tape as they went into Eira Davies’s comfortable sitting room. ‘I don’t suppose you angels made coffee?’ he said hopefully.

  ‘You’re right, we didn’t,’ his wife agreed. ‘Sit down. Alicia has something to say.’

  Gareth patted the sofa beside him. ‘Then she can come and sit by me to say it.’

  Alicia shook her head and perched on the arm of the chair opposite him so she could look him in the eye. ‘Yesterday I was late joining you at the match because I bumped into Francesco da Luca on my way into the stadium.’

  Gareth started up, but she waved him back.

  ‘Sit down and listen, please.’

  ‘So what did the Count of Monte Cristo have to say for himself?’ sneered Gareth.

  ‘Not much at the time. But he turned up at the party last night, and insisted on taking me home.’

  ‘What was he after? A spot of auld lang syne between the sheets?’ Three pairs of eyes regarded Gareth with such distaste that he shrugged a defiant apology. ‘Sorry. Go on, Lally, what happened?’

  ‘Francesco informed me,’ said Alicia evenly, ‘that very soon after I ran away from him he brought his mother here to Blake Street to look for me.’

  ‘What? Is that true?’ Meg gaped at her in astonishment. ‘When was this?’

  ‘While I was in Hay with you.’ Alicia looked pointedly at Gareth. ‘You would know exactly when, I believe.’

  Meg rounded on her brother in fury. ‘You were actually here when they came? And never said anything?’

  Gareth flung up his hands. ‘Hey, back off. It wasn’t my fault. Bron swore us to silence about his visit. She said Alicia had finished with da Luca for good, and made us promise not to let him know where she was.’ He eyed Alicia uncomfortably. ‘I wasn’t happy about it. I don’t like the man, but he looked so bloody desperate that day I couldn’t help feeling sorry for him. And even the contessa looked as though she’d had all the stuffing knocked out of her.’