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Yet, as he left, she found her legs going weak and it all came rushing back, a tide of emotion she couldn’t deal with. Wouldn’t deal with. Allegra sank into her chair, dropped her head in her hands.
Whatever either of them tried to believe, the past was not forgotten. It was alive and well and vibrating between them with a thousand torturous memories.
The sun was high and bright in the sky when they pulled away from the narrow street and into the clogged city traffic. Stefano was dressed casually in jeans and a crisp white shirt, the sleeves rolled back against his forearms.
‘I think you’ll like Abruzzo,’ he said when they’d cleared the traffic and the road stretched endlessly ahead of them, winding through dusty brown hills and fields of sunflowers ready for harvest. He spoke in a pleasant, impersonal tone that Allegra knew she should be thankful for but instead it grated on her nerves, made her hands clench in her lap. ‘It’s very relaxing there, very quiet. A good place for you to work with Lucio.’
‘I look forward to it,’ she said tersely, her face averted.
‘Good.’
They’d silently agreed on a tense truce, and Allegra wondered how long it would last. For Lucio’s sake, she couldn’t be distracted by Stefano when she worked with him. She knew that, saw it as her first consideration, and she knew Stefano did as well.
At least on that point—the only point, it seemed—they were in agreement.
They both lapsed into silence and drove that way for an hour as the plains and fields around Rome turned hilly, and then mountainous. In the distance Allegra glimpsed rolling fields of saffron, the small purple flowers with their distinctive red-gold stigma stretching to the craggy, snow-topped peak of Gran Sasso.
Stefano turned off the motorway and they drove on a small winding road through several hill towns, huddled against the unforgiving landscape as if they had but a desperate, precarious hold on this earth.
Allegra glimpsed an old woman, dressed from head to toe in black, leading a bony cow along the road. She grinned toothlessly at them, her eyes lost in wrinkles, and Stefano raised one hand in greeting as the car passed by.
There could be no mistaking that this region of Abruzzo was impoverished. Although she’d seen signs on the motorway for ski resorts, spas and luxury hotels, here the hill towns showed no signs of such wealth. The streets were narrow and near empty, the few houses and shops sporting peeling paint and crooked shutters. It was as if time had simply passed by these places, Allegra thought, and no one living there had even noticed.
They drove through another town and out into the countryside again, the rolling, rocky hills leading to mountains, a few falling down farmhouses huddled against the hillside, half a dozen sheep grazing on the desolate landscape.
‘What made you buy a farmhouse out here?’ Allegra asked, breaking an hour long silence.
Stefano’s fingers flexed on the wheel. ‘I told you, it’s my home.’
‘You mean you grew up here? I always thought you were from Rome.’
‘Near Rome,’ Stefano corrected, his eyes on the twisting road. ‘We’re less than a hundred kilometres from Rome, believe it or not.’
Allegra couldn’t believe it. The harsh beauty of this landscape was so different from the ostentatious wealth and glamour of the Eternal City.
She also couldn’t imagine that Stefano came from this place. She’d always assumed he was urban, urbane, born to wealth and luxury if not aristocratic pedigree and privilege.
‘Your family had a villa here?’ she asked cautiously and he gave a short laugh.
‘You could say that.’
He swung sharply on to an even narrower road, little more than dirt and pebbles, and they drove in silence for a few minutes more before coming to a sleepy village with only a handful of shops and houses. A few old men sat outside a café, playing chess and drinking coffee, and they looked up as Stefano drove through. They squinted at the car before cheers erupted from the café crowd and Stefano slowed the car to a stop.
‘Just a moment,’ he said, and Allegra watched in bemusement as he climbed out of the car and approached the men. They were impoverished old farmers, their remaining teeth tobacco-stained, greasy caps crammed on their heads.
Allegra watched as the men embraced Stefano in turn, kissed his cheeks and clapped him on the back. She looked on with growing surprise and wonder as Stefano kissed them back, held them by the shoulders and greeted them with the respect and love of a beloved son.
They talked for a few moments, loudly and with much excitement and agitation, and then Stefano turned to her, his expression tense and still, and beckoned for her to come out of the car.
Slowly Allegra did so. She was not a snob, and she’d certainly been among the lowest of society’s offerings in her seven years in London.
Yet, she realized, she’d thought Stefano was a snob. After all, he’d wanted to marry her for her social connections. He’d married someone else for them.
He put paid to that assumption by the way he laughed and smiled with these men, old and incredibly poor. He looked upon them as if they were his family, Allegra thought. As if he loved them.
‘Por Lucio,’ Stefano said. ‘She is going to help him.’
Allegra heard a chorus of grateful and delighted cries. Fantastico! Fantastico! Grazie, grazie, magnifico! And then she was embraced as he’d been, her face cradled by weathered hands as kisses were bestowed on each cheek, and she heard the men murmuring ‘Grazie, grazie’ in a heartfelt chorus of thankfulness.
Tears stung her eyes at their easy affection, their unsullied joy. She smiled back, found herself laughing, returning the warm embraces even though she knew not one person’s name.
She felt rather than saw Stefano watching her, felt both his tension and approval. The men wouldn’t let them go back in the car until they’d drunk a toast, the conversation continuing with a round of questions.
Would she stay long? Did she know Lucio—such a wonderful child? And Enzo—a man with such wisdom, such kindness! It was a tragedy, such a tragedy …
Allegra listened, nodding with deepening sympathy for this close community and the sorrow that had ripped it apart.
And yet Enzo’s death hadn’t ripped it beyond repair, she realized. If anything, it had made these men, this community, stronger. Closer. They clearly all cared deeply about Lucio, about Bianca … about Stefano.
She thought of her own family, the sorrow and betrayal which had left it in shreds. She thought of Stefano’s words only this morning, You haven’t seen your mother or your father since that night you ran away, and then her mind slid gratefully away.
She turned her thoughts back to Stefano, saw him smiling and laughing good-naturedly, his arm around the shoulders of one of the men who looked at him with the love of a father shining in his eyes.
Finally Stefano made his excuses and they returned to the car. People crowded around the windows, women in black and ragged children who laughed and slapped the windows in excitement.
Stefano honked the horn a few times to many more delighted cries, and then they drove off.
They drove in silence for a few minutes. Allegra’s mind whirled with questions. She hadn’t expected Stefano to act like that, to have such a genuine camaraderie with a bunch of poor farmers.
She glanced at him, saw his eyes on the road, and ventured cautiously, ‘Those men loved you.’
‘They are fathers to me,’ Stefano said. He spoke in a voice that brooked no questions, no comments. Allegra nodded even though her mind seethed with both.
She was ashamed to realize she knew nothing about Stefano’s family. Where was his own father, mother? Did he have brothers or sisters? What kind of childhood, what kind of life, had he had?
She didn’t know.
And, she realized with a rush of surprise, she wished she did. She wished she’d asked when she’d had the chance.
It was too late for that, she thought. Too late for both of them. The only relationship that could exist between them was one of distant professionalism. It was what she’d wanted all along, what she’d insisted on, yet now it made her sad.
Stupid. How could she be wanting something from Stefano now—now—when it was so clear that he wanted to give her nothing? Nothing she needed, anyway.
Finally Stefano turned into a long dirt drive, twisted oak trees shading the lane. Allegra glimpsed a farmhouse on one side of the road, a crude place with its roof caving in. She wondered why Stefano left such an eyesore on his property before her sights and senses were taken with the villa in front of them.
It was not ostentatious, Allegra saw at once, but it possessed every comfort. Begonias and geraniums spilled from hanging baskets and terracotta urns that lined the flagstone path up to the front door.
A young woman with luxuriant dark hair caught up in a bun opened the door and called a welcome. A little boy with the same dark, glossy hair stood next to her, keeping himself close to his mother yet also strangely, inexorably apart.
‘My housekeeper, Bianca,’ Stefano said quietly, ‘and that is Lucio.’
Allegra nodded, saw the boy stare into an unknown—and safe—middle distance. They climbed out of the car and she noticed that the air was sharp and cool, scented with pine and cedar.
‘Bianca.’ Stefano greeted her warmly and Allegra was ashamed to feel a piercing little stab of jealousy. ‘Hello, Lucio.’ He ruffled the boy’s dark hair, but Lucio didn’t look at him, didn’t say a word.
Stefano introduced her to Bianca, who shook her hand and smiled with hopeful gratitude. Allegra crouched down so she was eye-level with Lucio. His eyes didn’t meet hers, but still she smiled as if he were looking at her.
‘Hello, Lucio,’ she said quietly. ‘I’m happy to meet you.’
Lucio didn’t look at her, didn’t acknowledge her at all. It was as if she hadn’t spoken, or even as if she wasn’t even there.
Allegra hadn’t expected him to speak or even look at her, yet his utter indifference betrayed by not even one flicker of understanding was discouraging. Still she remained there, crouched down, for several long moments. She knew Lucio had to be aware of her on some level, and that would have to be enough. For now.
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