Loving Venus (Sally-Ann Jones Sexy Romance) (12 page)

     “So your great-grandfather demanded he meet this Antipodean and he was dispatched by train from Venice post-haste, let me tell you. The old man liked him, despite himself, and gave the young couple his blessing although secretly he was broken-hearted at losing his beloved child. He ordered that a fabulous ball be held for his daughter and her fiancé, for they were engaged within hours. And she wore the dress that is hopefully still in the trunk where I put it all those years ago, when she was on the train bound for Naples and the ship that would take them all the way to Fremantle, Western Australia. I washed and ironed that beautiful gown lovingly and stored it carefully with lavender but I
’ve never taken it out to look at it because…”

     Tonia’s voice wavered and her sister put her hand reassuringly on her forearm and nodded at her to go on. “Because,” the housekeeper continued, “Elisabetta was my best friend and not a day goes by that I don’t think of her and wish I
’d been able to see her again. She never did come home, you know. She married her young man and they had a beautiful little girl, your mother, Lucia. But Elisabetta died a few hours later. Your great-grandfather blamed Australia for her death. He said it was a barbaric place with no good doctors or hospitals, but I know that that isn’t the case at all.”

     Tonia clicked her tongue as if to snap herself out of her melancholy. “So. Her dress is waiting for you, Bella. I hope. Shall we walk up the hill together and take it out?”

     Annabella smiled at Tonia with tears in her eyes. “I’d like that very much, if it’s all right with you.”

     “Of course it is. Now that you are here, I feel as if a little bit of Elisabetta has returned too. You
’re very like her, you know. She, too, was loving and kind and brave. She even won the
Palio
one year, having disguised herself as a man by tying her hair tight under her hat and binding her breasts. The de Roccos were always better equestrians than their old allies, the Ferri counts, and it had been so many decades since the golden boar had been victorious that it was getting embarrassing. So your great-grandfather and old man Ferri hatched their plot to win the great race.

     “You can imagine how devastating it was for him to lose her. He had a son, of course, Alessandro’s grandfather, but he wasn
’t as strong as his sister. She inherited all the de Rocco fire and sparkle, as you have,
cara
.”

     “You
’d better go and get that frock organized, you two, or the dancing will have started before you’ve even left this table,” Tomasina chuckled. “It is fun to reminisce, though, I agree. Now, off you go, both of you, and have fun, Annabella. I hope you’ll dance with your second cousin.”

     Annabella snorted ruefully. “I doubt it, Tomasina. He probably won’t even deign to come near me. He’ll be too busy cavorting with Claudia.”

     “
Che sera, sera.
What will be, will be,” Tonia said philosophically. “But you’re right, sister. We must go and get this
signorina
sorted out before this evening.
Dottore
is going to be her escort, the lucky thing.”

     “Come and tell me all about it soon, promise?” Tomasina asked Annabella, squeezing her hand affectionately across the table. “Now that I
’m better, Tonia should go back with you to the big house and stay there. So you will come and see me,
no?”

     “Of course I’ll come. But are you sure you’re well enough to manage on your own, Tomasina?” Annabella asked, worried.

     “Bah! I’m as fit as a fiddle. Besides, Tonia is too much of a perfectionist for me to be able to stand her being here for more than a few days. She’s always cleaning and scrubbing and polishing. She doesn’t realize she is too old for all that. The housework will keep for another week, I tell her. But will she listen to her little sister? No! She is impossible! You must take her back, Annabella, before she drives me crazy!”

     All three women laughed, knowing only too well that Tomasina was joking. Then Tonia levered herself up from the table and the other two followed suit.
     “Will you carry my little bag for me, Bella?” she asked. “As my sister has just so kindly reminded me, I’m not as young as I was.”

     “Gladly,” Annabella assented, adding, “
Ciao
, Tomasina. God bless. See you soon.”

     Tomasina stood in her doorway to wave to them as they crossed the square then disappeared into the dark, windy alleyway of a street that led up the hill, to Casa dei Fiori, Annabella looking forward to finding her grandmother Elisabetta’s dress and trying it on.

Alessandro yawned, stretched and took a few steps back from the canvas on which he
’d worked all day without even a break for water or coffee. He was too exhilarated to feel thirsty or hungry. His Annabella was beginning to emerge from the creamy background on which he was painting, becoming more and more real with every brush-stroke. He felt as if she were a living, breathing woman. Here, in this very cottage. He could almost speak to her. Her lovely emerald eyes gazed upwards at the starlit sky and only he knew the secrets that were hidden in their green lustre.

He wanted her more than he had ever wanted anything in his whole life. He wanted her even more than Casa dei Fiori and its estate, more than the glory of winning the
Palio
. But he wouldn’t be tainted by her convict sensibilities. She may be beautiful. As beautiful as Titian’s Venus of Urbino. But her beauty was only skin-deep. She’d never be good enough for him. Except here, on this tightly-stretched canvas where he could mould and shape her as he willed.

     He knew he must stop for the day. He could, he believed, paint for weeks without a break, so eager was he to finish the picture. To have her completely in his possession. But the rational part of his brain told his heart and soul that it would be madness to continue for another minute. It was important he paint only when he was at his freshest. The work must be as perfect as she was.

     Reluctantly, he cleaned his brushes and neatly ranged his paints so they would be waiting for him when he started again in the morning, as soon as the light was right. Only then did he go to the old, noisy refrigerator and gulp a carafe of cold water. He didn’t feel hungry, for food at least, but he knew he must eat, if only to retain his strength for his project. He gobbled several figs, a bunch of grapes, the heel of a loaf of bread that was almost stale.

     Tonight was the ball in Fortezza Rosa and he half hoped he
’d go there with Claudia, walking down the hill to the village at sunset and perhaps not stumbling back to the cottage until dawn, as they had in previous years. But she didn’t seem to have returned from Siena.

     Realising he was hot and sweaty from his day’s work, he stripped out of his clothes and stood under the cold shower. His body wasn
’t used to being confined within four walls all day and he felt restless. Damn it, he decided, he would go to the ball with or without Signora Silvestro. There’d be plenty of single village girls only too happy to dance with him.

Tonia and Annabella climbed a little-used spiral staircase to the attic. Annabella had never been up so high and gasped in delight at the view from the turret window as they went up, up, up. As a child, it would have seemed a fabulous adventure to come here but her one visit to her great-grandfather’s house had been too full of other even more exciting activities for there to have been even one day left to explore the villa.

     The housekeeper took from her belt the big bunch of keys that hung there and examined them thoughtfully. It was obvious she hadn
’t been here for years because it took her several seconds to select the one that unlocked the heavy, arch-shaped door.

     The two women stepped through a curtain of cobwebs into a dome-ceilinged room where dust-motes danced in the late-afternoon sunlight. Grimy dust-sheets were draped over items of furniture – old lamps, a harp, a rocking-chair and, incongruously, a Welsh dresser. Annabella flew to the window to admire the bird’s-eye view over her now neatly-weeded and supported vines while Tonia walked slowly around, trying to ascertain which of the many trunks might contain the dress she was seeking. She opened several before she found the right one, exposing to sunlight Venetian lace tablecloths that might not have been seen for centuries, a mangy mink coat, boxes of costume jewellery and untidy heaps of shoes. There were gloves of every colour and fabric, photograph albums full of sepia pictures, stacks of fine china and Murano glassware wrapped in ancient, crumbling yellow newspapers. The air became sweet with the mix of ghostly perfumes released from these treasures. Lily of the valley wafted from the mink, roses from a silk scarf the colour of wisteria blossom, musk from the gloves, vanilla from a cashmere shawl.

     Annabella abandoned her window seat to pore over these moth-eaten treasures. The debris of her ancestors’ lives. Then she turned to look at the housekeeper as the older woman cried, “I think it’s here, Bella!”

     Tonia was prising open a suitcase crafted of the finest pigskin whose quality had barely been diminished by the years. However, its catches were rusty and stiff with age but finally yielded to her proddings and pokings and, with a creak, snapped apart and allowed her to lift the lid, untrapping the scent of lavender that could have been picked yesterday. Annabella knelt down beside Tonia as they looked inside. Layer upon layer upon layer of almost transparent tissue paper had to be set aside before, in triumph, the housekeeper lifted out the wonderful dress that Elisabetta had worn for her last night at Casa dei Fiori.

     Annabella gasped at its beauty. It was of softest, palest eau de nil silk, a creamy colour that was almost green, almost lemon. The silk caught the dying sunlight and drank it in thirstily, becoming alive and seeming to ripple, bounce and lift like wavelets on a lake. As Tonia stood to allow her to see its whole length, the full skirt billowed out from the tiny waistband like seafoam. Annabella knew it would fit her perfectly. It could have been made for her by Rome’s finest couturiere. Shoe-string shoulder straps held up the bodice, on which hundreds of tiny sequins of silver, aquamarine, emerald and lapis lazuli had been sewn. The bodice was tightly-fitted and she knew without having to be told that it would flatter her figure as nothing she had ever worn before had done. The wide waistband was of the same silk, cut on the cross, and then the knee-length, bell-shaped skirt frothed out. Fifty-two years had passed since this dress had been touched by a human hand, yet it looked as wonderful as it must have looked for Elisabetta who, Tonia was telling Annabella, had been driven to Florence in the Bentley especially to buy it.

     “So,
cara
,” Tonia asked. “You think it will do?”

     Annabella laughed. “Do? I think it’s the most gorgeous thing I’ve ever seen in my life. I can’t believe I
’m lucky enough to wear it. Hang it in my room, Tonia, and I’ll go and bathe and wash my hair. I’m hot after our walk up the hill from Tomasina’s house.”

     With that, she dashed down the spiral staircase and, flinging off her clothes as she went, ran into the bathroom where she showered, hardly daring to believe the wonderful dress would actually still be there when she emerged. She felt as if she were living a dream, with the most important ingredient missing. Alessandro. Yet, in this dress tonight, perhaps…

                         CHAPTER NINE

“You look fabulous, Annabella,” Umberto breathed as he watched her sashay down the stairs to the foyer of Casa dei Fiori where he was waiting for her. “The belle of the ball. I am honoured to be able to escort you.”

     “Don’t be silly, Umberto!” she giggled. “It’s just an old thing that belonged to my grandmother. Tonia dug it out of the attic for me.”

     “You don’t mean that. I can see it in your eyes. You adore wearing it, and so you should. You are a stunningly beautiful woman, even in jeans, but in this you are …”

     “Divine.”

     The deep voice was hoarse, almost a growl.

     Annabella and Umberto turned to see Alessandro in the open front door. He was resplendent in a cream dinner jacket that hugged his broad shoulders and back and swung easily at his sides. Black trousers, beautifully cut and of the finest Italian wool, emphasized the powerful, lean length of his legs. On his feet, shoes so shiny they reflected the moonlight.

     Annabella sucked in her breath sharply. She’d never seen him looking so compellingly handsome. She couldn’t bear to wrench her hungry gaze away from his dark, brooding eyes, the full lips that were slightly parted to reveal perfect white teeth, the stubborn jaw where even a recent shave could not entirely erase the blue-black shadow that bespoke his potent masculinity.

     I want to make passionate, unrestrained love to you, his eyes declared as they unashamedly raked every inch of her body, lingering on the huge eyes, then the soft lips that trembled into an uncertain smile. They swept eagerly down and contemplated the rise of her breasts, before worshipping the ripe curves of her hips and buttocks.

     I want to melt against you and feel the crashing of your heart against mine, her eyes divulged as she gripping the banister, feeling as if her legs would buckle under her. Was it normal to yearn to feel a man’s arms tight around you, she wondered, to long for the taste of his lips? She was sure it was not, because the sensation was so powerful she could barely walk. She really did feel as if she were about to faint yet normally she was a strong, healthy young woman who could work all day in the hot sun and not be troubled in the least. Surely ordinary, modest women did not feel such desperate hunger?