Of course he hadn’t—and Dante knew his sister was fully aware of that fact. ‘I don’t believe so.’ He sat back even further, legs outstretched, grinning as his sister narrowed her eyes at him.
‘Dante, don’t be tiresome.’
‘Early days, remember?’
‘Si, I know. But I’ve been so worried about you, mio fratello, I just want to share in your happiness that’s all. Tell me a little about her, about how you met.’
Damn. Now what was he supposed to do? He’d never been very good at this kind of thing even when the object of his supposed affections wasn’t made up. Dante glanced towards the lake, hoping for inspiration. A group of young people, armed with kayaks and paddleboards, were on the beach just outside the castle gates—probably wedding guests. Guido mentioned that Maddie had introduced water sports for the summer months.
Maddie. Of course. He had already based his fictional girlfriend on her physically. What harm in borrowing a little bit more?
Crossing his fingers, he attempted a casual tone. ‘She works here at the Castello Falcone. I met her when we had a planning meeting last month.’
‘And?’
‘And what?’
‘Did you like her immediately? Was there chemistry?’
Dante thought back to the moment when he had glimpsed Maddie across the lake, gazes holding, blood thundering. To the way he had been aware of every inch of Madeleine while she showed him around the stable block, the way he had tried to get under her skin, repayment for the way she seemed to get under his. The way he had assiduously avoided every place she might be in the three days since they’d met, working from the office in his suite of rooms in the main part of the castle instead of setting up in the main offices at the back as he usually would. ‘I don’t know about like,’ he said slowly. ‘But there was definitely chemistry.’
‘And now you’ll be working together all summer! Just promise me, Dante, don’t try and sabotage this out of some ridiculous sense of loyalty to Violetta. It’s been five years. It’s time to move on.’
Dante didn’t answer. He had moved on, but he had learned his lesson; his heart couldn’t be trusted. If he was ever to consider marriage again it would be to someone practical, someone who could help him run his business empire and wouldn’t be overawed by the social demands his title still commanded even in republican modern-day Italy.
‘So you met, there was chemistry and now you and...what’s her name, did you say?’
Dante knew when he was beat. ‘Madeleine. Maddie.’
‘Now you and Madeleine get to spend the summer together. It couldn’t be more perfect. I can’t wait to meet her.’
Hang on, what? ‘Meet her?’
‘Si; oh, silly me, that’s the whole reason for the call. I’ve been so tired, Dante, not at all like myself—Phil even made me go and see the doctor, ridiculous, overbearing man.’ Luciana’s voice softened as she said her husband’s name, just as it always did.
Dread stole over Dante’s heart. He hadn’t been imagining the dullness in Luciana’s eyes, the shadows darkening them. ‘Is everything okay?’
‘Apart from having a dozen tests and goodness knows how many needles stuck in me? Si. At least, the doctor wants me to slow down for a while, but nothing worse than that. But how can I, with the boys and the vineyard and my fundraising and everything else I have to do? The truth is I’m just run-down. So Phil is insisting I take a good, long vacation. That I come home for a few weeks and let the Italian air revive me.’
‘You’re coming here? To San Tomo?’
‘Isn’t it wonderful?’
‘Yes.’ And it was. Of course it was. If only he hadn’t just lied to her.
‘I thought I’d spend a few days with you and then head to Lucerne to see Mama. I can get to know Arianna properly all over again and meet your Madeleine, plus get away from this dreary winter. My flight leaves in three days, via a stopover in Singapore. I’ll be with you on Thursday!’
‘Thursday?’ Dante mechanically took down his sister’s flight details, promising someone would be there at the airport to pick her up; all the while his brain was whirling, trying to work out a plan. Luciana would land in Rome in less than a week. She may choose to spend a few days in the apartment she had inherited from their father there, but knowing his sister she would be straight onto the high-speed train which would whisk her up to the north of the country in a matter of hours.
He had four days to work out a plan.
Maybe he could say his girlfriend had had to return to England?
Only he had not only named her and described her, but he had also given the name and description of someone here in the castello.
Maybe he could send Maddie back to the UK for a few weeks—or to his Rome office or Milan?
Only she had a summer’s worth of weddings lined up and ready to go.
He could admit the truth. Break his sister’s heart in the process—and find himself dating half of her friends in order to make it up to her.
He was in trouble whatever he did.
Unless...
Maybe, just maybe, he could salvage this situation after all.
* * *
Maddie hadn’t felt like taking her usual lunchtime walks around the lake over the last few days. Her whole body still flushed when she thought about the moment she realised that her mystery bather and the Conte Falcone were one and the same—and when she remembered the peculiarly charged feeling permeating the air when he’d turned his whole focus onto her.
Instead Maddie had been exploring the vast gardens at the back of the castle. The formal walled gardens and flower gardens gave way to woodland and there were plenty of paths to wander through, plenty of interesting sights to discover, from little stone summer houses to statues, all relics of a nineteenth-century Falcone with a taste for whimsy. She had a similar ancestor; he had installed a gothic folly by the Capability Brown designed lake. It was a popular wedding spot now, which probably made her Byron-idolising ancestor turn in his equally gothic grave.
Maddie stopped when she reached the carved stone bench she’d discovered yesterday, sitting down in the pretty flower-strewn glade to eat the small picnic lunch she carried with her. She’d soon learned that if she didn’t leave her desk she wouldn’t get a chance to eat. There was always some crisis. At least this current crop of wedding guests seemed sensible; they were, in the main, a cheerful outdoorsy lot and today most of the party had headed into the mountains for a trek, some of the younger contingent taking kayaks onto the lake instead.
Unwrapping her sandwich, Maddie stretched her legs out, tilting her head to the sun. Bliss.
Only...she had the sense that someone was watching her. She gave the glade a quick glance around. Nothing. But Maddie couldn’t shake off the feeling that she was definitely not alone. Had one of the castle dogs followed her out, looking for a bite of her sandwich? ‘Ciao,’ she called out and waited, feeling a little foolish as she was answered with nothing but silence, until a branch rustled and a small, slim girl stepped into the clearing.
Maddie had had very little to do with children, and to her eyes the child could have been any age between five and ten. Her long, dark hair was in two messy braids, wisps escaping at every turn, and there were smears of dirt across her face, but Maddie noticed the cut of her torn shorts and the quality of her T-shirt. This urchin was expensively dressed—and didn’t care about keeping her clothes neat.
‘You look like you’ve been through the wars,’ Maddie said in Italian.
The girl gave her a tentative smile. ‘I’ve escaped.’
‘Where from?’
‘From the castello. My au pair wanted me to take a siesta. Sleep! On a day like this.’ The girl looked scornfully up at the sky and Maddie had a moment’s sneaking sympathy for the hapless au pair tasked with taming this wild child.
‘It does s
eem a shame,’ she agreed, breaking her sandwich in two and holding half out to the fugitive. ‘Here, you must be hungry. I know adventuring always gave me an appetite when I was your age. I’m Maddie.’
‘Arianna Falcone.’
Of course she was. Now Maddie could see the Conte in the proud tilt of the girl’s chin, in the blue of her eyes. ‘Nice to meet you, Arianna.’
‘So this is where you’re hiding?’
They both jumped guiltily as a stern voice echoed through the glade and Maddie felt her treacherous body jump to attention as the Conte strode into view. He looked cool despite the heat of the day, in well-cut linen trousers and a short-sleeved white shirt.
He took in the situation with one cool glance. ‘Aiding and abetting my daughter, signorina?’
‘Only with half a sandwich.’ Maddie smiled at the unrepentant child.
‘That’s half a sandwich more than she deserves. Piccola, poor Isabella is looking everywhere for you. Go, find her and make your apologies.’
‘But it’s too lovely a day, Papa. I don’t want a siesta.’
‘Then, my child, you shouldn’t have got caught. But, as you were, go and take your chastisement like a Falcone. Then, if you’re good, we can go sailing this afternoon.’
The mutinous expression lightened and Arianna threw her arms around her father before taking off and running back in the direction of the castle, her half of Maddie’s sandwich still clasped in her hand. To Maddie’s surprise, and no little apprehension, the Conte made no move to follow his daughter, remaining in the glade and fixing Maddie with an inscrutable look.
With an inward sigh she put her own half-sandwich back in its bag. The cook had stuffed it full of mozzarella, rocket and sun-dried tomatoes; there was no way of eating it in any kind of dignified way, and Maddie needed all the dignity she could muster in front of this man.
‘It’s a lovely day.’
Small talk? Seriously. ‘Yes.’ Not the most articulate of responses, but all that expensive education teaching Maddie etiquette hadn’t prepared her for how to answer when a man said one thing, but his body language said something quite different. Dante Falcone was ramrod-straight, gaze fixed firmly on her, looking more as if he was about to deliver a lecture rather than discuss the weather.
Deliver a lecture or devour her whole. Maddie curled her hands into fists, refusing to give in to the urge to smooth her red skirt down, but she couldn’t help recalling what happened to girls in red who talked to wolf-eyed strangers in the woods.
Oh, what big eyes you have...
‘Would you be kind enough to accompany me on a short walk? There is something I would like to discuss with you.’
Maddie tried not to give her half-sandwich a longing look. She wanted to sit, eat and just be, not go for what was bound to be an excruciatingly uncomfortable walk. She had spent less than two hours in Dante Falcone’s company and in those two hours he had deliberately embarrassed her, she had embarrassed herself, she’d been borderline rude several times. Why would she put herself through a second dose of that?
‘Please,’ he added. And then he smiled. And that changed everything.
The smile transformed Dante Falcone’s face, softening the sharp, lean edges, transforming the saturnine look into something warmer, something Maddie wanted to get close to, his good looks no longer remote, statue-like, but flesh and blood and all the more attractive for that. Desire, new, hot and heavy, flooded through her, drying her throat and taking all capacity to think and reason away.
She reached for words, any words, but found none. Instead she nodded as he turned away towards a path she hadn’t yet explored, supremely confident that she’d follow him. And she did, her feet powerless to disobey.
‘You speak Italian very well.’
That was ironic; right now she could barely manage English. ‘I went to a finishing school near Geneva. We spoke mostly French and Italian there.’
Maddie sensed rather than saw the rise of his elegant brows. ‘And what brought you into event management?’
‘I kind of fell into it,’ she said carefully, but the Conte didn’t react, merely waited for her to carry on and reluctantly she did. ‘I grew up in a house a little like the Castello Falcone.’
‘I see.’
There was no condemnation in the words, but Maddie couldn’t help bristling. People often assumed that she’d spent her time floating around like some Jane Austen heroine, arranging flowers and making calls and considering it work. She straightened her shoulders, matching her pace with his. She was proud of what she had achieved. It would be nice if someone else was too.
‘When I was growing up my family made a half-hearted effort to make Stilling Abbey pay its way; there was always a part of the roof to be repaired or a chronic case of damp or a huge heating bill. My parents thought allowing the public onto the premises once a month for two hours would be enough to raise some money—and they resented the mild intrusion of that. But when I was fifteen, I realised the reason why the much less architecturally and historically interesting manor house further along the valley was always busy—why they were actually making money—was that they made visitors feel welcome. That more opening hours, a café, a playground for the kids and space for weddings and parties were the key. All I had to do was convince my parents and find the money to get everything ready.’
It sounded so easy, summarised like that. But the reality was it had taken months to persuade her parents to open up the sacred ground of generations of Fitzroys to the general public five days a week, months to apply for the loans and grants to get the basic infrastructure in place. In return she had agreed to go abroad to finishing school for her A-level years. There might not have been money for the roof, but there was always money to ensure the children received the right kind of education. In Maddie’s case an education which would enable her to marry well.
Her great-great-great-aunt might have been a famous suffragette, but feminism had yet to penetrate the thick medieval walls of Stilling Abbey.
‘Impressive. Why did you leave?’
The old feelings of anger and unfairness hit her squarely in the chest and Maddie blew out a deep breath, almost welcoming the familiar bitterness as it washed away the last remnants of desire. ‘The abbey is entailed along with the title.’ Again she sensed Dante raising his eyebrows in surprise. ‘And in England the title goes along to the eldest son, not the eldest child.’
‘Same here, but titles are merely an historical anomaly and estates must be divided fairly amongst the children. My sister received half of my father’s estate.’
‘Not the castello though?’ Maddie couldn’t stop a sharp bitterness coating her voice.
‘She lives in New Zealand so she had little use for it. But she also thought the Falcone ancestral home should stay with the title.’
‘At least she had a choice.’ Maddie speeded up her pace, furious with herself for giving so much away. She had loved every stone of the old abbey, known every inch of the grounds, thrown herself into making it a profitable concern—but it had been made very clear to her that she had no long-term future at her home. Her brother might care more for geology than history but the abbey was his. Maddie had even joined forces with other people in her position, eldest daughters, adopted children and children born outside of marriage, all disinherited by an old patriarchal system. But for all her justifiable anger she had been keenly aware just what a privileged problem being cut out of the succession to a title really was. In the end she had done her best to let go of the resentment and decided to do what she had been raised to do; marry into another ancient estate instead.
That hadn’t turned out that well either.
Dante didn’t say anything for a few long minutes and Maddie was relieved as she stomped along. That was all her past. No more aristocratic titles for her. The only time she would step inside a stately home would be in gainf
ul employment or as a paying visitor—apart from the times she went back to Stilling Abbey as a visiting relative with a life of her own elsewhere.
No. She had a plan. Over the next few years she intended to find out who she was when she wasn’t an Honourable, wasn’t the daughter, sister or wife of someone deemed more worthy because of his Y chromosome.
See what she was worth apart from her value as a blue-blooded brood mare. If anyone would ever look at her the way her ex-fiancé looked at his soon-to-be wife.
‘Is that why you came here? For a fresh start?’
Maddie sucked in a breath, surprised at the insight in the casual question. ‘Partly. I wanted to get away from the UK, to travel, to stand on my own two feet—but that takes money and I don’t have any of my own.’ She glanced at him with a self-mocking smile. ‘One doesn’t need anything as common as wages when one lives at home and waits for a suitable Duke or Earl to come along. I’m here for the cold, hard cash.’ And to get away from England and her old life, but there was no need for Dante to know about that. She’d exposed enough already.
‘And then?’
‘Travelling,’ she said promptly. ‘I am going to see the world.’
‘All of it?’
‘As much as I can. I’m going to work my way around. One thing every girl who has grown up in a huge, falling-apart house knows how to do is use their hands. I can waitress, clean, muck out horses, pick fruit. I’m not afraid to get my hands dirty.’
‘What are you afraid of?’ His voice was soft, reflective, almost as if he was asking himself the question.
How could she answer that when the choice was so wide? Afraid she would never have a perfect kiss? That no one would ever look at her as if she was the most desirable being in the world? That she would never know who she really was? She’d never admit that to the tall, dark man next to her.
‘I’m a Fitzroy. We don’t admit to fear.’
Their walk had taken them deeper into the pine forests which populated the mountain shelf on which San Tomo and the lake resided, the path beginning to wind up into the slopes. Dante stopped and turned and Maddie followed suit, surprised to see they had already begun to make their way uphill along the meandering path. The valley spread out before them, the lake reflecting the brilliant blue of the sky. In the centre of their eye line the graceful spires of the Castello Falcone soared, mirroring the mountains behind.
Summer Romance with the Italian Tycoon Page 4