The Temptation of Gracie

by Santa Montefiore

  ‘But I can’t bear to see her unhappy.’

  ‘Unhappiness won’t kill her either. If Anastasia experiences only joy in her life she’ll never learn to empathise with others. I think the worst thing you can hope for as a parent is that your child is always happy. Unhappiness drives us deeper. It enables us to connect with people on a deeper level, to understand them and to sympathise with them. It makes us kinder. I don’t want Anastasia to suffer either, but I acknowledge that suffering is an important life lesson.’

  ‘I don’t trust that Giovanni. He’s much too handsome and pleased with himself. How on earth did he manage to seduce Anastasia so quickly and where did she meet him?’

  ‘I imagine they met in the garden. I can’t imagine they spoke very much because he can’t speak English.’

  Carina scrunched up her nose. ‘He doesn’t speak English!’

  ‘I don’t think they do a lot of talking, Carina.’

  ‘Good God. It just gets worse!’ She groaned and slumped her shoulders.

  Gracie put a hand on her arm and left it there. ‘I think it’s wonderful that she’s having a romance with a young man like Giovanni.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because everyone should be madly in love at least once in their life. Some never experience it at all.’

  ‘And I suppose it doesn’t matter that she’ll leave on Saturday and never hear from him again.’

  ‘No, it doesn’t matter. It’s a holiday romance that she’ll remember for ever.’

  ‘Do you think she’s been careful?’ Carina asked suddenly. ‘God forbid we have a teenage pregnancy.’ She sighed heavily and shook her head. ‘I wish she’d confided in me.’

  ‘Of course she’s been careful. She’s a very bright girl. The young nowadays are well-educated in that department, I’m sure.’

  ‘I hope so.’

  ‘I know you’re too old to take advice—’

  ‘I’m not too old, Mum.’ Carina smiled pathetically and put her hand on top of her mother’s. ‘I need your advice. I really do.’

  ‘All right. Don’t let on that you know. Anastasia asked me not to tell you and she mustn’t know that you spotted her this morning. Play ignorant until she comes to you. Then act surprised. Be supportive. Enjoy it with her. If she wants to share it with you she won’t want to be judged or criticised. It’s a privilege if your daughter wants to include you in her life. If it all goes wrong, be there to listen and sympathise. What she needs from you is support and encouragement and not condemnation. She’s young and she’s having a lovely time.’

  ‘Poor Alex.’

  ‘No, not poor Alex at all. Giovanni is a fly-by-night romance. Anastasia will return to London having made a firm friend in Alex. Who knows what will happen down the line.’

  ‘I suppose you’re right.’ Carina squeezed her mother’s hand and looked at her steadily. ‘Mum, you’re not sick, are you?’

  Gracie looked surprised, which was reassuring. ‘Sick? Of course not.’

  ‘If you were, you’d tell me, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Yes,’ she replied. ‘I would.’ She might not have told Carina something like that before, but Italy had brought them closer and now she realised, with certainty, that were she ever taken ill, Carina would be the first person to know.

  Carina was relieved to have overreacted. ‘I worried about you last night,’ she confessed. ‘I thought maybe you had come out here as a dying wish.’

  Gracie laughed at such an absurd idea. ‘That’s just silly,’ she chided.

  ‘I panicked. I realised suddenly what it would be to lose you.’

  Gracie’s eyes shone. ‘You’re not going to lose me, dear,’ she said. ‘Not yet, anyway.’

  Carina’s eyes welled with tears and she reached out to hug her mother. Surprised and touched beyond words, Gracie hugged her back in silence.

  Anastasia returned to her room after a swim to find Carina in the bathroom drying her hair with the hairdryer. She glanced at her bed and wondered whether her mother had noticed the pillow there, moulded into the shape of a body. She poked her head round the door. ‘Morning, Mum,’ she said brightly, watching her mother closely in the reflection of the mirror. But Carina smiled back and went on drying her hair. Anastasia muttered ‘Phew’ and began to dress.

  When Gracie appeared for breakfast everyone made a great fuss of her. Rex pulled out her chair and Carlo brought her a pot of tea without being asked. Lauren and Alex went to the buffet to get her a plate of pastries and fruit while Madeleine offered advice on how to deal with sunstroke were it to strike again. Wendy, Tiff and Brigitte crowded around the table asking dozens of questions all at once. Everyone agreed it had been the heat and Wendy offered to lend her a sunhat. ‘It’s bright pink but it will keep the sun off,’ she said with a grin.

  ‘It’s so pink it might frighten the sun away all together,’ Tiff added.

  ‘Better not,’ said Brigitte. ‘I haven’t perfected my suntan yet.’

  Gracie declined for she had brought her own, but she was very touched by their concern.

  Carina and Anastasia were the last to emerge; Carina in a pale blue sundress and espadrilles, Anastasia in the tiniest pair of denim shorts and sparkly silver Keds. Alex eyed her long brown legs with appreciation, the three Manchester girls with envy. Gracie watched them both with pride.

  ‘Granny!’ Anastasia exclaimed. ‘Are you okay?’ She bent down and planted a kiss on Gracie’s cheek. ‘You smell nice.’

  ‘Thank you, dear,’ Gracie replied, patting her granddaughter’s hand, which was resting gently on her shoulder. ‘It’s rose and honey.’

  ‘It’s lovely, Granny.’

  ‘I’m so glad you’re better, Mum,’ said Carina, sitting down at the next-door table. ‘We’d better keep you out of the sun today.’

  ‘I have wonderful pills for headaches, should you need them,’ said Madeleine. ‘I never travel without an entire medicine cabinet. I have a pill for everything.’

  Anastasia went inside to help herself to the buffet. Alex followed. ‘Could those shorts get any shorter?’ he asked.

  Anastasia grinned at him. ‘Well, if they could they’d be pants.’

  He laughed. ‘Don’t get me wrong, they look great.’

  ‘It’s much too hot to cover up.’ She reached for a plate.

  ‘And it wouldn’t be fair to the only young man in the group.’

  ‘Ah, I saw the old silver fox giving them the once-over, you know. He might be old but he’s got a roving eye, that one.’

  ‘For your grandmother.’

  ‘Sweet, isn’t it,’ she said, helping herself to the pastries. ‘These are so good. Have you tried them?’

  ‘Even my mother has tried them,’ he replied. ‘And she usually considers wheat the enemy.’

  ‘We’re all going to return home as fat as butter.’ Anastasia glanced at him, tall and slim, the sort of build that didn’t easily put on weight. ‘Well, some of us will,’ she added wryly.

  ‘I don’t think you have anything to worry about either.’

  ‘Isn’t that lucky then,’ she replied, coquettishly taking another pastry and adding it to the pile on her plate. Alex smiled admiringly and followed her back onto the terrace.

  After breakfast the group assembled for their lesson. They put on their aprons, retrieved their clipboards and perched on their stools, chatting now with the effortlessness of old friends. Ilaria watched them with pleasure. ‘All the buds have opened now,’ she told her mother proudly.

  ‘They always do, in the end,’ Mamma Bernadetta agreed. ‘Some take a little longer but others respond quickly to the magic.’ She rubbed her fingers against her thumb and narrowed her eyes. ‘It’s all in the taste.’

  Ilaria clapped her hands. ‘Welcome back to Mamma Bernadetta’s cookery class. Today you are going to learn how to cook crostini di fegatini, spaghetti alla primavera, pollo al Marsala e peperoni rossi, and to finish we have chosen a big dessert, in case you haven’t eaten enough,
Mamma Bernadetta’s very special banoffi pie. But don’t be fooled, Mamma Bernadetta’s banoffi pie is not like the ordinary banoffi pie you will have eaten before. No, it is certainly not. Mamma Bernadetta’s banoffi pie is her own mother’s secret recipe. We are going to share it with you if you promise not to tell anyone. Okay?’

  The students nodded enthusiastically. Gracie remembered her grandmother’s stamppot, for which she made the same claims as Ilaria. She wondered whether the magic Ilaria spoke of, was, in fact, all in the mind rather than in the ingredients. If they believed it had special qualities it most likely tasted better. If anyone had the power to seduce the mind it was Ilaria.

  Anastasia was feeling sleepy. Four nights spent with Giovanni were now beginning to take their toll. Even though Ilaria was witty and entertaining Anastasia began to feel heavy between the eyes. She pinched the skin on the bridge of her nose in an attempt to wake herself up. She wished she could sneak off to bed – her own bed – and catch a few hours’ sleep. And then Ilaria said something that jolted her back to her senses. ‘This was Count Gaetano Montefosco’s favourite dish.’ Anastasia sat bolt upright and blinked at Ilaria in astonishment. Then she glanced at Gracie, expecting her to look surprised, or agonised, or both, but her grandmother did not flinch. In fact, she looked as if she hadn’t even heard. Ilaria went on: ‘Gaetano Montefosco was Count Tancredi Bassanelli’s grandfather, a big collector of art and a lover of food, Italian food, of course. Mamma Bernadetta’s own mother, Mamma Agata, cooked for him when he was a boy and banoffi pie was his most favourite. Now you will see why.’

  Anastasia was now fully awake and alert. Gaetano Montefosco’s name vibrated in the air long after Ilaria had uttered it. Anastasia heard nothing of the lesson that ensued. All she could think about was Gaetano Montefosco. Yet the count’s grandfather would have been far too old to have been her grandmother’s lover, even Anastasia with her poor understanding of mathematics could work that out. But it was too much of a coincidence that he was called Gaetano as well as being an art lover.

  Then it hit her like a ball of light in the very place where only a moment ago she had felt nothing but heaviness. The man her grandmother loved was right here in this very castle. She didn’t know why it had taken her so long to work out. Obviously, Gracie had not wanted to give her lover away by using his real name, so she had used his grandfather’s name instead. It all made perfect sense now. The reason for her coming here in the first place was because of him – because of Count Tancredi Bassanelli – the man she had loved and lost. Gracie had lived at La Colomba, which was about half an hour’s bicycle ride from the castle. Hadn’t she said she used to bicycle there? It wasn’t surprising that she hadn’t been interested in leaving the castle, because the reason for her return was inside the castle, not at La Colomba. That place was full of ghosts. Anastasia had felt them.

  In the break Rex sat with Gracie in the shade and monopolised her with such unwavering concentration that Anastasia could no more tear her away than separate a dog from its bone. Instead, she found Alex and lay on the grass beside him and talked about nothing. After lunch Gracie went for a siesta and Anastasia and Alex headed down to the pool. Rex sat in the shade reading a book while the women lay on loungers, dozing and chatting in the sun and periodically cooling off in the pool.

  Anastasia wanted to confide in her mother about La Colomba, Gaetano, Gracie’s lover, and her suspicions that Gaetano was, in truth, Count Tancredi Bassanelli, but she had promised her grandmother that she wouldn’t tell, so she was left with no option but to ruminate on it on her own. It would have helped to have someone to discuss it with. Two minds were always better than one. Of course, she could simply ask her grandmother. But she felt it was intrusive somehow. If Gracie had wanted her to know his identity she would surely have told her already. Of course there was every chance that Anastasia was mistaken and that it really was just a coincidence that Count Tancredi Bassanelli’s grandfather was called Gaetano. But Anastasia sensed that she was right. It was a feeling she had, just beneath her ribcage. She would bide her time and, if the right moment arose to bring it up, she would seize it.

  When the sun started to sink in the western sky, Madeleine went off for her walk. Rex wandered up to the castle in the hope of finding Gracie. Wendy, Tiff and Brigitte were still fast asleep (Wendy was snoring), and Lauren and Carina hadn’t drawn breath since they had come down. Anastasia wondered what on earth they had to talk about for so long. Alex asked Anastasia if she wanted to play tennis. Tennis was not one of her strengths, but as there was nothing else to do except stroll into town, which did not appeal, or sit with Rex and Gracie sipping tea, which appealed even less, she decided that tennis was the lesser of all evils. ‘All right,’ she agreed, wrapping herself in a towel. ‘I’ll play, but only if we knock up. I don’t want to have to play a game.’

  ‘Knocking up suits me too,’ Alex replied. ‘Rex gave me a hard time earlier in the week. I’m all for an easy life.’ They walked up to the castle together then went their separate ways to their rooms to change, agreeing to meet down at the tennis court where they hoped to find racquets and balls in the pavilion.

  Anastasia slipped into her micro-shorts and a T-shirt and wandered off down the grassy path in the opposite direction of the pool. Midges hovered in the balmy air and crickets sang a noisy chorus in the long grass. She thought of Giovanni. She looked about hoping to spot him but the gardens were quiet apart from the busy endeavours of nature. She assumed he’d gone home and smiled to herself as she thought of him preparing the barn for her. Replacing the candles perhaps, smoothing down the rug, anticipating the feel of her as she anticipated the feel of him, and counting down the hours. How time dragged, she thought, as the court came into view.

  She noticed at once how run-down it was. The surrounding fencing was rusted, the door completely off its hinges and leaning against one of the posts. The surface of the court was made of a strange, red-coloured earth. Strips of white tape were nailed to it to mark the lines. Some of them had peeled off. Seeds from a nearby tree had blown onto the court only to be half-heartedly brushed into mounds outside the lines. The brush was lying at one end but Anastasia was not about to use it, even though the wind had carried some of the seeds into the playing area.

  Alex hadn’t appeared yet. While she waited, she thought she’d look and see if there were racquets and balls in the pavilion. That was run-down too, she noticed. The white paint was peeling and speckled in a light green mould. She made her way towards it. As she approached she suddenly heard a woman’s laugh. A deep, throaty, dirty laugh. She stopped and cocked her ear. Silence. She waited for it to come again, but it didn’t. She looked around. However, it could only have come from the pavilion. She stepped closer, careful now not to make a sound. With mounting curiosity she reached the wall just beside the open door and held her breath. The laughter came again and this time Anastasia recognised it. It belonged to Madeleine! Madeleine then said something in Italian, followed by another throaty laugh that was indisputably hers. Anastasia’s heart stalled. Who was she with? But Anastasia knew. Even before she heard Giovanni’s reply, she knew; because she feared it so.

  Anastasia remained a moment by the door. Her head told her they were making love, her heart told her they couldn’t be. Surely there was some mistake. Perhaps they had met as Madeleine returned from her walk and Giovanni had offered to show her something in the pavilion. A nesting bird perhaps? Something so innocent that she would later laugh about it and her ludicrous imagination. But she had to be sure. She edged round the side of the pavilion to where a window was partly obscured by mould and ivy. Stealthily she crept like a cat across the grass until she was positioned directly below it. She took a breath, fearful of what she might see, hopeful that it was nothing more than two innocent people sharing a joke. Then, inch by agonisingly slow inch, she raised herself to her full height and peered in through the glass.

  She could only just see past the moss, but the little that she saw was
enough to confirm her worst fears. There was nothing innocent about the joke they were sharing. She stifled a sob and sneaked away. Just as she was setting off up the path at a run Alex was walking down it towards her.

  He saw her stricken face and frowned. ‘Are you all right? What’s happened?’

  ‘I don’t want to play tennis any more,’ she said.

  ‘All right.’ His eyes strayed behind her to the pavilion. ‘I’m sorry, I got delayed talking to your mother.’

  ‘Where is she?’ she asked.

  ‘On the terrace.’

  ‘I need to speak to her.’

  ‘Sure. I’ll come with you.’ They fell into step. ‘What happened down there? You’re as white as a sheet.’

  ‘I saw a snake. A huge snake. The size of a cow. I hate snakes more than anything!’

  Alex looked unconvinced. ‘A snake the size of a cow is a pretty monumental snake.’

  ‘Yes, well, it was big.’ She sniffed and wiped her eyes. ‘I’m never going down there again, that’s for sure.’

  ‘You didn’t really want to play tennis anyway,’ said Alex. He put his arm around her. ‘I’m sorry you saw a snake. Had I been there I would have slain it for you.’

  ‘Don’t worry. It took me by surprise, that’s all.’ Her expression hardened and she quickened her pace. ‘If I see it again, I’ll slay it myself.’

  Chapter 21

  Carina registered her daughter’s unhappy face – and the hard stare she gave her as she hurried past her table – and excused herself at once. Lauren watched her run after Anastasia then asked her son what had happened. ‘She saw a snake,’ Alex explained, taking Carina’s empty chair for himself. This seemed perfectly acceptable to Lauren.

  ‘Well, I’m not going to head down to the tennis court then,’ she replied with a shudder. ‘I hate snakes.’