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‘Angie, I am very glad to meet you.’
She sensed that he was studying her, just as she was doing with him. That was fine. She knew she didn’t have to fear being looked at, even when she’d just got off a plane.
The lovers had finished their greeting and disentangled themselves, a little self-consciously. Heather introduced Angie to her future husband, who then said, ‘This is my brother, Bernardo.’
‘Half-brother,’ murmured Bernardo at once.
The drive to the Martelli house just outside Palermo took half an hour. There was so much beauty about Sicily to be taken in that Angie became dazed by the profusion. The hot streets of Palermo soon gave way to the countryside with its riot of flowers and the gleaming blue sea that came more into view as they climbed higher. At last a great three-storied building came into sight, and Lorenzo, from the back seat, called, ‘There it is.’
The Residenza stood on an incline overlooking the sea. It was a magnificent mediaeval edifice of yellow stone. In their own way the Martellis were princes and they lived appropriately.
‘That’s your home?’ Angie gasped.
‘That’s the Residenza Martelli,’ Bernardo replied. He was concentrating on the road, and didn’t seem aware of the quick look Angie gave him.
A moment later they had swung into the courtyard, and there was Baptista Martelli just emerging onto the great steps to wait for them. She was a small, frail-looking woman in her sixties, who looked as though life had aged her prematurely. Her hair was white and her face delicately beautiful. Angie regarded her with interest as Heather’s future mother in law, but she was also fascinated to know what kind of a woman took in her husband’s illegitimate offspring and reared him with her own sons. Baptista greeted her warmly, although Angie couldn’t help reading the message in her eyes.
A will of steel, she thought. She’ll cover it with charm, but it will always be there.
But then Baptista smiled at her, and her sharp eyes softened to warmth.
A dangerous enemy, Angie thought, but a wonderful friend.
She noticed the exuberant hug Lorenzo gave his mother, while Bernardo contented himself with a peck on the cheek. His behaviour was faultless, yet the manner was courteous rather than loving.
A maid was detailed to show the two young women to the bedroom they were to share, and then bring them to the terrace where Baptista would be waiting for them with refreshments.
Their room had two large four-poster beds, hung with white net curtains. More net curtains hung at the floor-length windows that led out onto the broad terrace overlooking a magnificent garden. Angie, who was a demon gardener when she could get the time, promised herself a leisurely exploration of that garden. Beyond it the land stretched away, reaching to dark, misty mountains on the horizon.
The maid was unpacking their cases. Angie hurriedly changed out of the serviceable jeans she’d worn for travelling, into a light, floaty dress of a blue that turned her eyes to violet. When they were both ready the maid led them out onto the terrace and round to the front of the house where Baptista was seated at a small rustic table, laden with refreshments. Bernardo and Lorenzo were also there, handing them to their seats and filling their glasses with Marsala.
‘May I get you something to eat?’ Bernardo enquired, indicating the candied fruit ring, zabaglione, Sicilian cheesecake and coffee ice with whipped cream.
‘My goodness,’ Angie said faintly.
‘Baptista is the world’s greatest hostess,’ he said. ‘When she doesn’t know what her guests will like, she orders everything, just in case.’
‘Baptista’, Angie noticed. Not ‘my mother’. She remembered how quickly he’d said ‘half-brother’ at the airport, and for a moment she felt a frisson in the air. Her instincts were telling her that this was a complicated man who carried his own tensions everywhere. She felt her curiosity rising.
He helped her to food and wine, and gently asked if she had everything she needed, but he took little part in the general conversation. Angie thought she would never have known him to be a brother of Lorenzo, about whom so much was light, from his curly hair to his smile. Everything about Bernardo was dark. His skin had the weather beaten swarthiness of a man who lived amongst the elements. His eyes were so dark they seemed almost black, and his hair was truly black.
His face intrigued her. When in repose it had a set, rock-like quality. His eyes were deep set and full of secrets, his mouth slightly heavy. But it became mobile and changeable as soon as he spoke, and animation glowed from him.
At last Baptista indicated that she would like to be left alone with Heather. Lorenzo slipped away and Bernardo turned to Angie. ‘May I show you the gardens?’ he asked.
‘I should love that,’ she said happily, taking the hand he offered.
The great garden of the Residenza was a show place, tended by a dozen gardeners. At its centre was a large stone fountain featuring mythical beasts spouting water in all directions. From this relayed a dozen paths, some wandering past flower beds, others curving mysteriously into the trees. Bernardo conscientiously pointed out every variety of plant, and she had the feeling that he had learned them as a duty. It was as though this magnificent place forced him to be something he wasn’t. Angie’s curiosity increased.
‘Have you and Heather known each other very long?’ he asked.
‘About six years. She had a job in a paper shop just around the corner from where I was doing my medical training.’
‘Ah, you’re a nurse?’
‘I’m a doctor,’ Angie said, slightly nettled at his assumption.
‘Forgive me,’ he said hastily. ‘Sicily is still a little old-fashioned in some respects.’
‘Evidently.’
They walked side by side for a few minutes. ‘Are you annoyed with me?’ he asked at last.
‘No,’ she said too quickly.
‘I think you are. Try not to be. I spend my life in the mountains where people still hark back to an earlier age. To you, perhaps, we would appear rough and uncivilised.’
He didn’t smile, but there was a gentleness in his manner that won her over. Her curiosity about him was growing.
‘I’m not annoyed,’ she said. ‘It was silly of me to make a fuss about nothing. I was telling you about Heather. We got to know and like each other, and eventually moved in together. We’ve shared a home for several years now.’
‘Can you tell me something about her? She’s so different from—that is, Lorenzo—’ He stopped in some confusion.
It was odd, she thought, that this man from a wealthy background should seem so shy and ill at ease. Whatever else he might be, he wasn’t a smooth-tongued charmer, and she liked him better for it.
‘Lorenzo has played the field with ladies of easy virtue and you’re wondering what Heather is like,’ she supplied cheerfully.
Bernardo coloured and pulled himself together. ‘Since Renato approves of her I know she’s not a lady of easy virtue,’ he said hastily. ‘He speaks of her in the highest terms.’
‘She doesn’t speak of him in the highest terms,’ Angie said darkly. ‘She says he behaved outrageously.’
‘Yes, I’ve heard the story about that evening. I think those two will always be at odds, with Lorenzo in the middle, being pulled each way.’
‘I’m interested to meet Renato. What’s he like?’
‘He’s the head of the family,’ Bernardo said with a hint of austerity in his tone.
‘And that really means something here, I guess.’
‘Doesn’t it mean something in your country?’
‘Not really,’ Angie said, considering. ‘Of course, we all respect my father, but that’s because he’s been a doctor for forty years and helped thousands of people.’
‘Is that why you became a doctor too?’
‘We all did, my two brothers and me. And my mother was a doctor when she was alive. She died while I was still doing my training.’
‘Then your parents founded a dynasty.’
Angie laughed. ‘I wish Dad could hear you. He never encouraged us to follow his footsteps. I remember him saying, “Whatever you do, don’t go into medicine. It’s a dog’s life and you won’t get any sleep for years.” Of course, we all did. But I must tell you—’ she eyed Bernardo mischievously, ‘that in England a man doesn’t get respect just for being a man. In fact—’
‘Go on,’ Bernardo said with a smile far back in his dark eyes. ‘You are longing to say something that will be “one in the eye” for me.’
‘When I took my medical exams, it was a point of honour with me to get higher marks than either of my brothers. I did too.’ She giggled as gleefully as a child. ‘They were so mad.’
The smile had reached Bernardo’s mouth. He was regarding her with delight. ‘And your Papa?’
‘Before the exams he said, “Go for it!” and afterwards he said, “Good on you!”’
‘And what did your brothers say?’
‘Before or after they’d put arsenic in my soup? They just doubled up with laughter at the thought of what I had in front of me.’
‘And what was that?’
‘Four years of post-graduate work. General medicine, general surgery, accident and emergency, obstetrics, gynaecology, paediatrics, psychiatry and general practice.’
‘It sounds terrible,’ Bernardo said, half laughing, half frowning.
‘It was. I think it’s made as nightmarish as possible to discourage the weaklings. But I’m no weakling. Look at that.’ She clenched her fist and bent her arm in a ‘Mr Muscleman’ pose.
Bernardo laid tentative fingers on the barely perceptible bulge. ‘I’m terrified,’ he said with a smile. ‘All these qualifications, and you’re only—’ he regarded her warily. He’d been going to say ‘only a little girl’ but decided hastily against it.
‘I’m twenty-eight years old,’ she declared, ‘and a lot tougher than I look.’
‘You could scarcely be less,’ Bernardo observed, with an admiring glance at her fairy figure.
She laughed and ran a few steps ahead of him to where the path vanished into a tunnel of trees, and turned, skipping backwards, teasing him. As holiday romances went, this one showed signs of going very well. He didn’t run after her as another man might have done, but simply held out his hand, watching her, until she stopped skipping and laid her fingers lightly in his palm.
Hand in hand they strolled among the trees, while a sense of enchantment crept over her. It was nothing he said or did. He wasn’t the most handsome man in the world. He wasn’t even the most handsome man she’d romanced, but his looks pleased her deeply. The smile that had started at the airport was growing by the minute.
‘I think this garden is wonderful,’ she sighed, gazing around her.
‘Yes, it’s perfect,’ he agreed.
A touch of constraint in his voice made her look at him quickly. ‘But you don’t like it?’
‘I’m—not comfortable with perfection,’ he said after a moment. ‘For me, it is too precise. A man cannot feel free in a place like this.’ He checked himself abruptly and gave a polite smile.
‘Where can he feel free?’ she asked, her interest growing every moment.
‘When he’s up high among the birds, where the golden eagles fly so close that it feels as though he’s their brother.’
‘Golden eagles?’ she echoed eagerly. ‘Where?’
‘In my home in the mountains. I come here very little. My real home is Montedoro.’
‘Let me see—monte means a mountain, and “oro” is gold. Is that right?’
‘You know Italian?’
‘My mother’s sister married an Italian. When I was a child we visited them every summer.’
‘And you are right. It is “mountain of gold”.’
‘Because of the golden eagles?’
‘Partly. But also because it’s the first place the sun touches at dawn, and the last place it leaves at sunset. It’s the most beautiful place on earth.’
‘It sounds like it,’ Angie said wistfully.
He gave her a curious look. ‘Would you—?’ He broke off with a grunt of embarrassed laughter. ‘That is, I wonder if—?’
‘Yes?’ she encouraged him.
Bernardo drew a deep breath while Angie waited eagerly for what she was sure he was going to say.
‘Hey—Bernardo.’
He came back to himself with a start. Angie had the strangest feeling of waking from a dream. And there was Lorenzo, coming along the path, hailing them. ‘Time to get ready for dinner,’ he called.
As Angie returned to the house with the two of them she was disappointed but not discouraged. Bernardo wanted to show her his home, she was certain of it, and she was every moment growing more eager to learn all about him. The evening lay ahead, and if she couldn’t tempt that invitation out of him, she was losing her touch.
She joined Heather in their room and threw herself onto her bed, putting her hands behind her head, with a sigh of pleasure.
‘C.H. or S.A?’
‘S.A.,’ Angie said happily. ‘Definitely S.A.’
Heather looked alarmed. ‘You be careful!’
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ Angie said innocently.
‘Oh, yes, you do. I’ve seen you when you’ve set your heart on twisting a man around your little finger. You’ve got all the tried and tested tricks and a few you invented. But Bernardo doesn’t strike me as a man to be fooled with.’
‘He isn’t,’ Angie confirmed. ‘He’s terribly serious and thoughtful.’ She chuckled. ‘That’s why he’s going to be such a challenge.’
‘I give up.’
‘Yes, do, darling. I’m beyond redemption.’
For dinner she wore a dress of blues and greens in the kind of glowing shades that belonged on a peacock. Many blondes couldn’t have got away with it, but Angie looked like a star. She wondered if Bernardo would think so.
She had her answer as she descended the great stairway a little behind Heather, and had the satisfaction of seeing Bernardo look right past the bride, the official guest of honour, to seek out herself. There was even more satisfaction in the subtle change that came over him at the sight of her. He became more alive, every inch of him responding to her as intensely as she was responding to him. She felt a tingle of happy expectancy deep inside as he took her hand and began to take her around his friends and family, introducing her.
Now that she had a chance to study Lorenzo more closely she realised how delightful he was, and she could understand her serious minded friend being bowled over by him. Perhaps he was a touch immature, but his looks and charm were both overwhelming, and no doubt he would soon grow up.
But she couldn’t warm to Renato, who struck her as an unpleasant, cynical man, harsh and overbearing. He was tall and splendidly built, but although there was no doubt about his physical attractions, and he greeted her pleasantly, she disliked him, and she could see that her friend was going to have to fight him some time soon.
