Lucy Gordon - The Italian’s Rightful Bride

‘Are you all right?’ Gustavo called to Joanna.

‘It’s in my eyes; I can’t see. Oh, heavens!’

She reached out and he took hold of her arm, shouting through the din, ‘Hold on to me.’

She clutched wildly and felt his arms go around her just as her foot gave way in the mud. Floundering, she seized him, but her hands slipped on his sodden shirt and she had to grasp hard.

She had the sensation of a hard, muscular body beneath her palms. It belonged to a stranger. The young Gustavo had kissed her with restraint and she’d forced herself to respond in kind, her arms demurely about his neck. She hadn’t dared yield to the impulse to run her hands over him, the way she seemed to be doing now.

It was a startling discovery, almost like touching him for the very first time. This was a man who concealed power beneath expensive clothes.

‘Are you all right?’ came his voice in her ear.

‘I think so,’ she said through the pounding water.

With one hand she was holding on to his arm, while her other was about his neck. And he was laughing. She could feel it along his arm, then her arms, and deep in his chest, pressed against hers. It seemed to go through her again and again, and she answered it with her own laughter, melting into his, so that there was no knowing where he ended and she began. And all the time she couldn’t see him.

‘One step at a time,’ he said. ‘Careful.’

She moved gingerly forward, one step, then two.

‘I can’t see where I’m going,’ she cried.

‘It doesn’t matter. I’m holding you.’

‘But how can you see?’

‘I can’t,’ he shouted cheerfully. ‘But sooner or later-Hey!’

The last word was a yell as his foot slid out from under him, so that he had no choice but to go down into the mud, taking Joanna with him, still clasped in his arms. She landed on top of him and they lay there, helpless with laughter.

The others, seeing what was happening, surged back to rescue them. Hands reached out and hauled them both up.

At last she managed to get her eyes clear and look around. Gustavo was sitting on the edge of the shallow bank, wiping his eyes and trying to brush his hair back.

He was covered in mud. It soaked his clothes so that they clung to him, revealing every line of his body. Now she could clearly see what she had only sensed before. His body was perfectly proportioned without an extra ounce anywhere. His sodden trousers clung to him so closely that he might as well have been naked.

Looking down, she saw that the same was true of her. Her breasts were outlined in vivid detail. She reckoned she must be light-headed because it was suddenly clear to her why female wrestlers used mud and why men cheered them on. But Gustavo wasn’t cheering. He looked astounded.

Another flash of lightning announced an even harder downpour. In seconds everyone was in vehicles heading back to the house. Joanna travelled with Gustavo but his attention was taken up with the road, which seemed to slip and slide away from the car.

Once inside they all headed for their bedrooms to dive under showers with cries of pleasure and relief. Joanna let the hot water lave over her, feeling good as the mud drained away, followed by soapsuds. But she was acting mechanically. With her eyes closed again, she was playing back what she had seen, playing it over and over, relishing every moment.

She had forgotten that Gustavo came from a line of princes, men who had lived in splendour while ruling ‘their’ people ruthlessly. To the world they presented an appearance of elegance. You had to get close to sense the leashed power, even menace, that lay beneath.

It almost made her laugh out loud to think that an accident had revealed more of his body than she had learned as his fiancée. But it had come years too late, when there could no longer be anything between them.

Then her laughter died.

She switched off the water and stepped out, wrapping herself in towels. Slowly she went to sit on the huge bed with its ornate painted bedhead.

Inside her head she lived it all again, the feel of him against her, firm and vibrant. And responding to her, as aware of her as she was of him. There had been no mistaking the look on his face. He’d been thunderstruck. Just as she had been.

What was he doing now? Sitting in his own room, thinking thoughts that echoed her own? Was he, too, filled with alarm? Or had it meant nothing, a brief flash of desire that had flared and gone?

Or perhaps lingered, as it had lingered with her?

She would know something when she saw him at supper. It would be there in his eyes, in the way he stood, in the sound of his voice when he spoke to her.

But when she went down Carlo said that Gustavo wouldn’t be joining them tonight. He’d received an urgent summons from a business acquaintance in Rome, and would be gone for several hours.

Joanna smiled and said that she understood how many calls on the prince’s time there must be.

But inwardly she whispered, Now I know all that I need to. I promised myself I wouldn’t let it happen again. It’s over. It’s over!

Later that night she slipped into her son’s room.

‘Billy, would you mind if I went away for a few days?’

‘Nope. Don’t suppose I’ll even know you’re gone,’ he said with a grin.

She flicked his hair. ‘Watch it, cheeky!’

‘Honest, Mum, now I’ve started riding, I’m having a great time. Besides,’ he added, ‘I think Renata copes better when I’m there.’

Joanna nodded. ‘I think so too. I’ll be a week. Tops.’

He regarded her satirically. ‘Have you got a boyfriend?’

‘No, I’m going to Etta’s wedding, and if I have any more lip out of you I’ll make you come with me. She did once ask if you could be a pageboy-’

‘I’ll be good, I’ll be good,’ he said, holding up his hands in a theatrical gesture of prayer.

She laughed and kissed him goodnight. But as she turned away she remembered something.

‘Do you know how Gustavo is managing with Renata now?’

‘Not well,’ he said. ‘I heard him talking to her yesterday. He started well enough, trying to be nice and all that. But he ended up telling her she’d do as she was told.’

‘Oh, give me patience,’ Joanna groaned. ‘He means well. He really isn’t the monster you thought, Billy.’

‘I know. Like you say, he does his best, but he doesn’t seem to know the right things to say.’

‘That sounds like him. Goodnight, darling.’

She slept little that night, trying to silence the voice that said it wasn’t too late to change her mind. She could abandon her trip and stay here.

At last she pulled herself together. If the prospect of a few days away could reduce her to a nervous wreck, then it was time she left.

Next morning she talked to Laura, who was totally under Billy’s spell and promised to take good care of him. Carlo promised the same thing.

‘Great kid,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry. I’ll try to keep him out of mischief, and if I fail I’ll make sure you never find out.’

‘It sounds like you’ve got it well sussed. I’d better speak to Gustavo now.’

‘I’m afraid he isn’t back yet.’

‘You mean-not back from last night?’

‘That’s right. He does this occasionally. If it’s been a very good dinner he wouldn’t want to drive home.’

‘No, of course not.’

‘And sometimes there might be another reason,’ Carlo said delicately.

For a moment she didn’t understand. ‘Another reason?’

‘Well, his wife has been gone for some months now, and Rome is full of attractive ladies who don’t ask for commitment. You could hardly blame him-’

‘Yes, I see what you mean,’ she said hastily. ‘Fine, I’ll catch him later.’

She left him before he could tell her any more and went to her room, cursing herself for her own stupidity. Where had her wits been wandering?

She threw some clothes into a bag, then went out to the dig and spent an hour talking with her team, who, as she’d known, were cheerfully unfazed by the thought of managing without her.

Suddenly she saw Gustavo’s car approaching and waited for him to stop as he’d often done before. But he drove past. There was nothing for it but to follow him.

She reached the house about ten minutes later and went to look for him in his study. Like the rest of the house it was awesomely impressive, with shelves of books climbing to the ceiling.

He looked up when she entered and smiled briefly, but she had the impression that he was no more relaxed than herself.

‘I’ve come to say that I’m going to England for a few days,’ she said.

He stared. ‘What did you say?’

‘I need to check some things in the British Museum.’

She was planning to do that as well. It seemed more tactful to say nothing about a wedding.

He set down the paper he had been holding and stared at her.

‘I don’t understand.’ His voice was curt.

‘I’m going to England for a few days.’

‘Nonsense,’ he said sharply. ‘There can be no need for that.’

Informing Gustavo should have been no more than a formality. Opposition was the last thing she had expected, and it had the effect of making her stubborn.

‘I think I’m the best judge of the necessity,’ she said coolly.

‘You have duties here.’

‘I’m aware of my responsibilities here, but you must leave it to me to decide how best to fulfil them.’

‘And your team? How will they manage?’

‘If my team couldn’t work on their own they wouldn’t be my team.’

Gustavo’s eyes became harder and obstinate lines appeared around his mouth.

‘Surely you’d do better to consult Italian museums?’

‘There are things I can only find in the British Museum.’

‘This is not a good idea,’ he said curtly. ‘I would prefer you not to go.’

Joanna regarded him with her head on one side. Gustavo was normally so punctilious that the sight of him growing angry was astonishing.

‘Gustavo,’ she said very gently, ‘I’m not asking your permission.’

‘Perhaps you should, since I’m employing you.’

She drew a deep breath and answered with restraint.

‘Even if you were employing me, it wouldn’t mean you controlled how I spend every moment of my time.’

‘What do you mean “even if”?’

‘Strictly speaking, you’re employing Manton Research, and I work for the firm. The only person entitled to give me orders is the managing director.’

‘And who is that?’

‘Well, it’s me, actually, but-’

‘In that case, Madam Managing Director, I have a complaint to make about one of your employees, a lady who seems to think she can do her job at long distance. I am paying your firm for her services and I expect you to provide them.’

Joanna’s voice was tight.

‘If Your Excellency would care to study the contract you signed, you will see that all such decisions are the prerogative of the managing director. I and I alone shall decide the best use of Mrs Manton’s time.’

‘Mrs Manton has barely arrived and does not have my permission to leave.’

‘Mrs Manton has my permission to leave, and does not need yours.’

‘Then I can only say that I consider her thoroughly unprofessional, and I suggest she thinks about that.’

Joanna stared at him, trying to get her bearings. This wasn’t the Gustavo she’d thought she knew, but a hasty, arrogant man who presumed to judge her.

It crossed her mind that if she’d been leaving to avoid reigniting her old feelings, then she need no longer bother. Just being in Gustavo’s company would protect her very nicely.

But she was in too much of a temper to give in now, and Gustavo’s own temper was reaching new heights.

‘Is this how your firm normally works?’ he demanded cuttingly. ‘Takes on a job, does it for a few weeks, then the head of the team vanishes and leaves the rest of the work to the underlings? I suppose there’s another job waiting for you, and you’ll run the two in tandem. Well, let me make it clear that I won’t tolerate-’

‘How dare you!’ she raged. ‘You ought to be ashamed of yourself, saying such a thing to me.’

He had the grace to become uneasy.

‘All right,’ he snapped. ‘I went too far.’

‘Much too far,’ she snapped back.

‘I retract my words, but not my opposition. How do I know you’ll come back?’

‘Because I’m a woman of my word,’ she said indignantly. ‘When I take on a job, I complete it. When I say I’ll do something, I do it, and what I say now is that I am going to England.’

‘If you do, you do so in opposition to my wishes.’

‘I’ll live with that,’ she flung at him, and walked out before he could reply.

SHE saw Billy as she was crossing the hall and beckoned him to follow her upstairs to his room.