Powerful Italian, Penniless Housekeeper. India Grey

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СКАЧАТЬ meant mentally. But if money is difficult, darling, you know Guy and I will help.’

      ‘No!’ Sarah’s response was instant. ‘Really, it’s fine. Something will come up.’ Her thoughts strayed to the letter she’d had a couple of weeks ago from her father’s publishers, the latest in a long line of requests she’d received for film options on The Oak and the Cypress in the eleven years since she’d inherited the rights. In the beginning she’d actually taken several of these offers seriously, until bitter experience had taught her that Francis Tate seemed to attract penniless film students with a tendency to bizarre, obsessive psychological disorders. Now, for the sake of her sanity and her burdensome sense of responsibility to her father’s memory, she simply refused permission outright.

      ‘How’s Lottie doing?’ Martha asked now.

      Sarah glanced uneasily across at Lottie, who was sitting on Angelica’s knee. ‘Fine,’ she said, hating the defensive note that crept into her voice. ‘She hasn’t even noticed that Rupert isn’t around any more, which makes me realise just what a terrible father he’s been. I can’t remember the last time he spent time with her.’ Latterly most of Rupert’s visits to the flat in Shepherd’s Bush had been for hasty and singularly unsatisfactory sex in his lunch hour when Lottie was at school. Sarah shuddered now when she thought of his clumsy, careless touch, and his easy excuses about problems at the office and the pressure of work for the evenings and weekends he no longer spent with her. She wondered how long he would have carried on the deceit if she hadn’t found him out so spectacularly.

      ‘You’re better off without him,’ Martha said, as if she’d read Sarah’s thoughts. Sarah sincerely hoped she hadn’t.

      ‘I know.’ She sighed and got to her feet, starting to gather up the plates. ‘Really. I know. I don’t need a man.’

      ‘That’s not what I said.’ Martha stood up too, reaching across for the wine, holding the bottle up to the light of the candle and squinting at it to see if there was any left. ‘I said without him, not without a man in general.’

      ‘I’m happy on my own,’ Sarah said stubbornly. It wasn’t exactly a lie; she was happy enough. But she only had to think back to the dark, compelling Italian who had kissed her at Angelica’s hen party to know that she was also only half-alive. Briskly she moved around the table, stacking crockery, keeping her hands busy. ‘You’re just missing Guy. You always get ridiculously sentimental when he’s not here.’

      Guy and Hugh and all his friends weren’t arriving until tomorrow, so tonight it was just ‘the girls’, as Angelica called them. Martha shrugged. ‘Perhaps. I’m just an old romantic. But I don’t want you to miss your chance at love because you’re determined to look the other way, that’s all.’

      Fat chance of that, thought Sarah, carrying the plates back to the kitchen. Her love life was a vast, deserted plain. If anything ever did chance to appear on the horizon she’d be certain to see it. Whether it would stop or not was another matter altogether.

      Looming ahead of her through the Tuscan night, the farmhouse was a jumble of uneven buildings and gently sloping roofs. The kitchen was at one end, a low-ceilinged single-storey addition that Angelica said had once been a dairy. Sarah went in and switched the light on, tiredly setting down the pile of plates on the un-rustic shiny marble countertop. Despite being utterly uninterested in cooking, Angelica and Hugh had spared no expense in the creation of the kitchen, and Sarah couldn’t quite stamp out a hot little flare of envy as she looked around, mentally comparing it with the tiny, grim galley kitchen in her flat in London.

      Crossly she turned on the cold tap and let the water run over her wrists. Heat, tiredness and a glass of Chianti had lowered her defences tonight, making it harder than usual to hold back all kinds of forbidden thoughts. She turned off the tap and went back out into the humid evening, pressing her cool, damp hands against her hot neck, beneath her hair. As she returned to the table Angelica was running through the catalogue of disasters that had beset the renovations.

      ‘…it seems he’s absolutely fanatical about having everything as natural and authentic as possible. He confronted our architect with this obscure bit of Tuscan planning law that meant we weren’t allowed to put a glass roof on the kitchen, but had to reuse the old tiles. Something to do with maintaining the original character of the building.’

      Fenella rolled her eyes. ‘That’s all very well for him to say, since he lives in a sixteenth-century palazzo. Does he expect you to live like peasants just because you bought a farmhouse?’

      Martha looked up with a smile as Sarah sat down again. ‘Hugh and Angelica have fallen foul of the local aristocracy,’ she explained. ‘From Palazzo Castellaccio, further up the lane.’

      ‘Aristocracy?’ Angelica snorted. ‘I wouldn’t mind if he was, but he’s definitely new money. A film director. Lorenzo Cavalleri, he’s called. He’s married to that stunning Italian actress, Tia de Luca.’

      Fenella was visibly excited. Dropping a celebrity name in front of her had roughly the same effect as dropping a biscuit in front of a dog. ‘Tia de Luca? Not any more apparently.’ She sat up straighter, practically pricking up her ears and panting. ‘There’s an interview with her in that magazine I bought at the airport yesterday. Apparently she left her husband for Ricardo Marcello, and she’s pregnant.’

      ‘Ooh, how exciting,’ said Angelica avidly. ‘Ricardo Marcello’s gorgeous. Is the baby his, then?’

      You’d think they were talking about intimate acquaintances, thought Sarah, stifling another yawn. She knew who Tia de Luca was, of course—everyone did—but couldn’t get excited about the complicated love life of someone she would never meet and with whom she had nothing in common. Fenella was clearly untroubled by such details.

      ‘Not sure—from what she said, I think the baby might be the husband’s, you know, Lorenzo Whatshisname.’ She lowered her voice. ‘Have you met him?’

      Across the table, Lottie was lolling on her grandmother’s knee, her thumb in her mouth. She was obviously exhausted, and Sarah’s own eyelids felt as if they had lead weights attached to them; leaning back in her chair, she tipped up her head and allowed herself the momentary luxury of closing them while the conversation ebbed around her.

      ‘No,’ Angelica said. ‘Hugh has. Says he’s difficult. Typical Italian alpha male, all arrogant and stand-offish and superior. We have to keep on the right side of him though, because the church where we’re getting married is actually on part of his land.’

      ‘Mmm…’ Fenella’s voice was warm and throaty. ‘He sounds delish. I wouldn’t mind getting on the right side of an Italian alpha male…’

      Sarah opened her eyes, dragging herself ruthlessly back from the edge of that tempting abyss.

      ‘Come on, Lottie. It’s time you were in bed.’

      At the mention of her name Lottie struggled sleepily upright, reluctant as ever to leave a party. ‘I’m not, Mummy,’ she protested. ‘Really…’

      ‘Uh-uh.’ Lottie had the persuasive powers of a politician, and usually Sarah’s resistance in the face of her killer combination of sweetness and logic was pitifully low. But not tonight. A mixture of exhaustion and an odd, restless feeling of dissatisfaction sharpened her tone. ‘Bed. Now.’

      Lottie blinked up at the sky over Sarah’s shoulder. Her forehead was creased up with worry. ‘There’s no moon,’ she СКАЧАТЬ