Royally Claimed. Marie Donovan

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СКАЧАТЬ nodded, but he wasn’t about to drink a whole bottle on his own and show up hungover to pick up Julia. Benedito had an inordinate capacity for vinho and would not show a single bad after-effect.

      The kitchen was bigger than most in the Azores, the stove and oven wall tiled in blue-and-red Portuguese tiles and inset oak cabinets. The exposed walls had been sponge-painted peach and gold over beige in some unfortunate past decade and Frank was planning to change that. The master bathroom was powder pink, his mother’s favorite color, but probably not Stefania’s, the bride-to-be’s.

      On the other hand, Stefania and her groom probably didn’t give a fig about the wall color and only wanted a big soft bed. That certainly had been his first priority when he and Julia had stayed there.

      Unfortunately they had leapt before they looked, straight into bed. He didn’t ever regret making love with her, but in the end, it hadn’t been enough to keep them together. What a miracle that had brought them both back to the Azores at the same time.

      Somehow the uncanny Benedito had read his mind. “Don Franco, did you have a nice lunch with the senhorina?”

      “How did you know I had lunch with her?” He made cheese and sausage sandwiches on crusty bread for him and Benedito and put the rest of the food away.

      “The waiter is my second cousin’s daughter-in-law’s brother.” Benedito opened one bottle of wine and a plastic container of marinated olives from the farmers’ market. He poured the wine and ate the olives out of the container with his gnarled fingers. Benedito abandoned his manners with gusto when he was away from his wife.

      He offered some to Frank, who gave up on his own manners and accepted. Pure heaven. “A close family connection,” he said sardonically. “Yes, we had a nice lunch and then had coffee and pastéis de nata in the park.” He’d left the box with Julia—she looked as if she could stand to gain some weight.

      “Ah, yes, the park.” Benedito nodded knowingly. “Quite the box of pastéis it was.” He made a zipping motion across his lips and winked.

      “How do you know that? Were you skulking in the shrubbery or is the gardener there your nephew?” He restrained himself from chucking an olive—or the entire container—at Benedito’s head.

      “Leonor’s nephew.”

      “Of course.” Frank sighed. A fishbowl of a life, that’s what he led. And of course, Benedito had ducked the question if he had indeed been skulking in the shrubbery. It was fair to say Frank wouldn’t have noticed if the entire Portuguese Army had been doing reconnaissance missions in the bushes. He finished his sandwich and turned on his laptop to do some business. “Benedito, can you install the new faucet in the downstairs powder room? The old one is leaking.” If Benedito was busy, maybe he would stop bugging Frank.

      No such luck. “Senhorina Julia certainly is beautiful.”

      “Mmm-hmm.” Frank stared at his email program, mentally willing him to go away. Two dozen emails from various people on his estates.

      “She is very smart, an advanced nurse in a big American hospital, according to her neighbors.”

      “Yes.” Good Lord, the old man had been busy this afternoon.

      “A wonderful companion for any red-blooded man.”

      That was hovering on the border of disrespect, even if Frank knew exactly what he was talking about and agreed one hundred percent. He lifted his eyebrow and scowled at Benedito.

      “Will you be seeing the senhorina again?” the old man pressed.

      “Maybe if I can get some privacy for once!” Frank shouted, finally losing his temper. “With waiters and gardeners and neighbors all reporting back to you as if you were my guardian and I were a virginal princess out in the world for the first time? How do you expect me to do anything with her? Tell me that!”

      “Ah, to be alone.” Benedito nodded, his eyes wide, as if the idea of privacy was a new and strange concept. To him, of course, it was. “Don Franco, if you would excuse me, I have to check on some building supplies.”

      “Fine, go.” Frank waved his hand and forced himself to read his email from the mainland. Problems with wine caskets, grapevines, animals needing the vet, two of his fieldhands fighting over the same girl. Fortunately, relatively small things, although Frank recalled the girl in question being quite pretty and flirtatious. And with a mean, burly father. He toyed with the idea of inquiring whether the two fieldhands had turned up with black eyes and fat lips received after their fight, but the more he stayed out of their personal business, the more smoothly it ran.

      Involving the Duke in romantic quarrels would bring shame and embarrassment upon the parties involved. Better that the Duke focused on his own romantic problems. And even better that the Duke stopped referring to himself in the third person.

      Frank grinned and immersed himself in estate business for the next couple hours, thoughts of Julia always at the edges of his mind.

      Benedito popped into the kitchen again. “Boa tarde, Don Franco.”

      “Yes, good evening to you, too. Did you take care of those building supplies?”

      “Yes, and picked up the paint, as well.”

      “Paint? But we never chose any colors.”

      “But I did, Don Franco. So you would have more time to spend with the young lady.” Benedito nodded conspiratorially.

      Frank bit back a groan and thanked him. What hideous palette did Benedito choose?

      “And Don Franco, I received a call from the mainland.”

      “You did?” He didn’t even know Benedito had a cell phone.

      “Yes, yes.” Benedito waved his hands impatiently. “Leonor, my beloved wife…” He paused dramatically.

      “Yes, I know who she is.” Leonor was the housekeeper at the fazenda. In addition to the traditional agricultural holdings for an annual pittance Frank leased use of several outbuildings for small local businesses and artists’ studios. It boosted local income and kept families together since they didn’t have to send the men and young people off to Lisbon for jobs.

      “Leonor needs me at home.”

      “Is she all right?” Frank asked. Leonor had the constitution of a mule and if local legend was correct, had last been ill in the early 1980s—a mild cold.

      “She, ah…she, well…she has, um, female problems!” Benedito finished triumphantly.

      Frank supposed it was possible, not being in that line of work, although Leonor had to be in her late sixties. But the magical phrase “female problems” was like playing the ace in a game of poker—the trump card that nobody argued with. “Female problems.”

      “Yes, yes. Oh, terrible female problems.” Benedito shuddered at the horror, whether real or imagined.

      “And I suppose they came on suddenly and you need to rush back to the fazenda to help care for her.”

      “Oh, Don Franco, I am glad you understand.”

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