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“We’ll go up, as well. We can unpack and have an aperitif before the hoards arrive.”
He and Sabrina accompanied the duchess up the grand staircase and parted company on the third floor.
“You’d best be downstairs by a quarter to seven to greet our guests,” she told her son.
“We will.”
She turned toward the east wing, hesitated. Her glance flicked from her son to Sabrina and back again. “Have you warned her about the paparazzi?”
“Not yet.”
“They could be … difficult.”
“We’ll don our armor before we come downstairs.”
“Bene.”
Sabrina contained her curiosity until Marco escorted her into his suite of rooms in the east wing. She caught a glimpse of their bags set side by side on a padded bench in a cavernous bedroom before demanding an explanation.
“What was that about?”
“You’re not the only one who has fed the beasts,” he commented with a dry reference to the articles his mother had pulled off the Internet about her. “They attacked like sharks after Gianetta’s death. One tabloid even hinted I had somehow sabotaged the sailboat.”
“Dear God! Why would you do that?”
“The usual reasons. Jealousy, anger, to rid myself of an inconvenient wife so I could marry my mistress.”
Shrugging, he opened the doors of a parquetry chest to display a well-stocked bar.
“It didn’t seem to matter that I had no mistress. What would you like to drink?”
“It’s going to be a long night. I’d better stick with something nonalcoholic for now.”
Marco chinked ice into two glasses and twisted off the lid on a bottle of Chinotto. The dark liquid fizzed like a carbonated drink and had a unique taste that combined bitter and sweet at the same time.
“We always allow a few members of press to take photographs at the ball. Be warned, they’ll have an avid interest in you.”
“Because I resemble Gianetta?”
His dark eyes held hers. “Because you will be the first woman I’ve invited to the ball since Gianetta.”
Ohh-kaay.
Sabrina took another sip of the fizzing soft drink and willed her heart to stop hammering against her ribs. The waltz Marco had described so beautifully earlier suddenly seemed to have picked up in tempo. She couldn’t shake the feeling she’d just been swept into a sultry tango.
The tempo kicked up yet again a little over an hour later.
Gowned, gloved, her hair anchored high on her head with the topaz-studded comb, she swept out of the bedroom in a glitter of gold. Two paces into the sitting room she caught sight of Marco and stopped dead.
Her jaw sagged. Her breath got stuck somewhere in the middle of her throat. The best she could manage was a breathless whisper.
“Wow.”
“My sentiments exactly,” he answered in a low growl. “You look magnificent, Sabrina mia.”
His eyes devoured her as he crossed the room. Hers drank in the snowy white tie and pleated shirt, the black tails, the jeweled insignia of some royal order pinned to the red sash that slashed across his chest.
Tonight, Sabrina realized as her heart drummed out a wild beat, her handsome doc was every inch a duke.
Ten
Marco wasn’t the only one rigged out in royal splendor for the night’s festivities.
His mother was stunning in a gown of white satin and a diamond tiara studded with emeralds the size of pigeon eggs. More emeralds cascaded from her ears and throat.
His sister and brother-in-law somehow managed to look both dignified and unconventional, AnnaMaria in a shimmering cobalt gown that highlighted the blue streak in her hair, Etienne in a black cutaway and a jaunty white silk scarf looped over one shoulder in place of a tie.
With everyone dressed so formally, Sabrina expected dinner to be a stiff affair. Instead, the guests were lively and the meal a gastronomical delight that included the expected lentils and savory stuffed sausage.
“For richness of life in the coming year,” the retired admiral seated next to Sabrina informed her as he speared a piece of sausage.
She’d already discovered he was Marco’s great uncle on his mother’s side and a real character. He wore his navy uniform, with thick gold ropes at both shoulders and a chest covered with medals. Bushy white whiskers sprouted from his cheeks and an eye patch covered one eye. His other eye kept trying to get a good look down the front of Sabrina’s gown.
Like when he shooed away the hovering waiter and insisted on refilling her wine glass himself.
“Allow me, Signorina.”
She rewarded his determined efforts by hunching her shoulders to display a teeeeeny bit more cleavage.
“Ahh,” the admiral murmured, his whiskers twitching. “Bellisima.”
She glanced up in time to catch Marco observing the byplay. Grinning, he lifted his goblet in a silent toast. She responded with a wink.
The mischievous wink hit Marco with almost the same impact as the sight of Sabrina in glowing candlelight. His fingers tightened on the stem of his goblet as he drank in the sight of her.
Until this moment, he’d wanted her with a hunger that seemed to multiply with each passing hour. Seeing her now, her face framed by those loose, careless tendrils, her eyes alight with laughter, turned hunger into something deeper, something richer. Something that made his heart constrict.
Marco hadn’t missed the startled glances Sabrina had drawn when the dinner crowd had first assembled. Most of them had known Gianetta, some well enough to have experienced her wild, almost frenetic highs on occasions like this. But Sabrina’s ready smile and genuineness had soon charmed them out of their initial uncertainty.
Nor did she falter during the long, lively banquet. Despite Uncle Pietro’s ogling and the fact that most of the conversation was in Italian, she held her own easily with young and old. Not surprising given her privileged background, Marco supposed. As Dominic Russo’s only child, she’d no doubt attended many functions like this. Yet Marco felt himself falling a little more in love each time she responded to a question with her less than idiomatic Italian or flashed him a laughing glance.
When her guests had finished their brandy-flamed lemon gateau and after-dinner coffee, the duchess nodded to her son. Marco rose with her.
“We have a half hour before the guests will begin to arrive for the ball,” Donna Maria announced. “Please use the time to refresh yourselves or enjoy drinks in the main salon while we do our duty downstairs.”
Marco used the loud scrape of chairs and general exodus to explain the drill to Sabrina.
“Mother traditionally grants interviews to society editors and entertainment TV reporters before the ball. It’s a good opportunity for her to push her favorite charities and latest projects. Unfortunately, it’s become a command performance for AnnaMaria and me, as well. Will you be all right if I desert you for a half hour?”
“I’ll be fine.” Her eyes twinkled. “Your uncle has offered to show me the gardens by moonlight.”
“The old goat!” Curling a knuckle, he brushed it over her cheek. “If I were you, I’d stick to the lighted paths.”
“I will,” she promised, laughing.
Her rippling amusement stayed with Marco as he joined Etienne to escort the duchess and AnnaMaria down the grand staircase. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d taken such delight in the sound of a woman’s laugh. Or such intense pleasure from the simple act of touching her.
The aftershocks from that touch were still with him when his mother and AnnaMaria seated themselves on a stiff-backed sofa in the green salon. Marco and Etienne took up places behind them.
Donna Maria’s ever efficient secretary had furnished a copy of the guest list to the various papers and TV networks weeks ago. They in turn had submitted their requests for interviews with particular celebrities, which had been coordinated with the individuals involved. Those interviews would be conducted when the guests arrived for the ball. This session focused strictly on the family whose roots went so deep into Neapolitan society.
Donna Maria presented brief prepared remarks before graciously inviting questions. Most concerned the drive she’d just launched on behalf of the victims of the floods that had devastated the village of Camposta. AnnaMaria and Etienne were asked about their latest exhibits. Marco fielded several questions concerning the seventeen-hour surgery he’d performed last month to separate twins conjoined at the base of their skulls.
He was beginning to believe they’d escape the session relatively unscathed with a reporter at the back of the room raised her hand.
“Sophia Ricci here. I have a question for His Excellency, Don Marco.”
“Yes?”
The reporter edged to the front of the gathering. She was in her early thirties, with a thin, attractive face and black hair razored into uneven lengths.
“I see a name has been added to the guest list. Ms. Sabrina Russo, of Arlington, Virginia.”
When she paused and let a small silence spin out, Marco lifted a brow. “Is that your question?”
“No, Your Excellency. I would like to know if Ms. Russo is the woman you were spotted with yesterday, disembarking from the ferry in Sorrento?”
A stir of palpable interest flowed through the reporters, and Marco smothered a curse. The hounds had picked up the scent sooner than he’d expected.
“She is,” he replied.
Pens clicked. Notebook pages flipped. While her rivals scribbled furiously, Ricci’s eyes gleamed with the triumph of having scooped them all.
“The same woman my sources tell me is currently staying at your villa?” she asked slyly.
He’d learned long ago the futility of attempting to deny the facts. “That’s correct.”
“May I ask how you met?”
“Quite by accident. Ms. Russo fell and sprained her ankle. Luckily, I was close by and was able to treat the injury. She’s been recuperating at my villa.”
“So is she your patient?” Ricci asked with dogged persistence. “Or your lover?”
Donna Maria’s head snapped up. AnnaMaria let out a little hiss. Marco forestalled their instinctive responses and answered with the authority bred into him by his heritage and his demanding profession.
“Ms. Russo is my guest,” he said coldly. “Now you must excuse us. We’ve kept her and our other guests waiting long enough.”
Ricci was no more immune to his icy stare than first-year residents at the hospital. She stepped back, momentarily cowed, as Marco offered the duchess his arm. Etienne did the same for AnnaMaria.
“That woman will be at her desk all night,” Donna Maria predicted grimly as they mounted the grand staircase. “You’d best warn Sabrina to expect the worst.”
“I will.”
“You know how they flayed Gianetta.”
His jaw set. “I know.”
How could he not? He’d had to force his way through them, protecting his shuddering, sobbing wife with his body the last time she checked into a rehab clinic.
“Sabrina is stronger than Gia. And …”
He searched for the right word to describe her.
“… and truer to herself,” he finished slowly. “She’d have to be, to resist Dominic Russo’s attempts to break her.”
The duchess halted halfway up the stairs. Marco met her frowning gaze with a steady one of his own. After a long moment his mother blew out a long breath.
“So it’s that way, is it?”
“It is for me.”
“And for her?”
The tension knotting the cords in his neck eased. “I’m working on that,” he said with a wry smile.
The duchess tapped the toe of her jeweled shoe. “You’d better ask her to stand beside you in the receiving line. That might spike the worst of their guns.”
Two steps down, AnnaMaria’s eyes widened. “Mama! You wouldn’t let Etienne stand with us to greet the guests until he made a respectable woman of me.”
Her loving husband snorted. “And whose fault was that? You wouldn’t agree to marry me until you were well into your ninth month. Have you forgotten how your water broke at the altar?”
“Please!” A pained expression crossed the duchess’s face. “Do not remind us. Marco, go find Sabrina.”
He located her in a circle that included three of his cousins and a long-time friend of his sister.
The all-female group was hunched forward in their chairs and deep in a discussion of last year’s American presidential elections. Not surprisingly, Sabrina heartily agreed with her European counterparts that a woman was more than capable of leading either the U.S. or Italy.
“I’m sorry but I need to steal you away,” he said with a smile.
She excused herself from her new friends and rose. The long column of her gown shimmered like molten gold as she hooked her arm through his.
“How’s your ankle?” Marco asked.
“Good. Except for a very short stroll with Uncle Pietro, I’ve kept off it.”
“Can you take a little extra duty? The ball guests are about to arrive. I’d like you to join me in the receiving line.”
She slanted him a surprised glance. “You told me this is the first time you’ve brought a woman to the ball since your wife died. Won’t it add fuel to the speculative fire if I’m included in the receiving line?”
