Chapter Nine
It became abundantly clear to Dante, within about ten minutes of arriving on the terrace and sitting down to enjoy a platter of food and bottle of ice-cold prosecco that his grandmother had managed to make appear so swiftly, that no matter how prepared they’d thought they were, it was definitely not going to be enough.
Not if they were going to get through this week unscathed.
Not if they were going to be able to convince his grandmother that they were truly in love. The kind of love where you knew not only the surface level, biographical details of a person’s life, but also the dust and grime that resided in the nooks and crannies of their personalities.
Allegra was too skilled an investigator to outright ask for such details. No, she bided her time and dug around the edges. Watching with those eyes that reminded him, just briefly, of a crow’s looking for a morning feast.
She might have left eighty in the rear-vision mirror several years ago, but Allegra could still run rings around just about anyone, intellectually.
Something Charlotte was evidently recognising.
She’d had one sip of prosecco then swapped to water, apparently deciding she needed to keep her wits about her.
Dante reached for a piece of bread and dipped it in oil—oil that he knew would have been produced from his grandfather’s prized trees, on the southern edge of the property.
The trees were planted when Alberto had been a boy, by Alberto and his father, and they ran in straight lines from the base of the hill and halfway up it.
It was the perfect vantage point, Alberto had once told Dante proudly, for the sun to catch the trees and make them grow lush with fruit.
The oil was the most robust and spicy Dante had ever tried.
Every year, Allegra would send several large, glass bottles to his home. It barely lasted six weeks.
‘And how come I am the first to tell, eh? Not your own parents, cara?’
Charlotte glanced at him and he felt her reluctance, as surely as his grandmother would. Inwardly, he winced. Charlotte would need to get better at covering her reactions if she wanted to be able to keep her secrets.
‘We’ll go to Charlotte’s mother next,’ Dante smoothed over the slight bump.
‘How come not first?’ Allegra persisted.
‘Are you complaining, Nonna? I would have thought you’d be thrilled to get the news before anyone else.’
‘I am. But also curious.’ She glanced back at Charlotte. ‘You’ll have to forgive me, Charlotte. At my age, I’ve learned to ask the questions I have when I have them. You never know if you’ll get another chance.’
Charlotte’s lips twisted with something like amusement. ‘That’s a trait I’m afraid we have in common. Dante will tell you that directness is something I have to constantly work to curb.’
He knew she was just forging a connection with Allegra but something about her statement made his insides harden with a need to reject that.
Because it was completely inaccurate. Fortunately, he could see a way to kill two birds with one stone.
‘You know there is not a single thing I would change about you, mi’amore,’ Dante corrected, reaching out and putting a hand on Charlotte’s knee.
Then kicking himself because somehow, even here with his grandmother just a few feet away, his body went into overdrive at Charlotte’s proximity, at the feel of her warm leg through the fabric of her pants, so he was suddenly forced to think of any number of unpalatable events just to get his body to stop stirring with unmistakable hunger.
He felt like some kind of out-of-control hormonal teenager, all over again, except even more out of control than the first time had ever been for Dante.
He ground his jaw, which made it a little harder to hold the carefree smile in place.
‘The truth is,’ Charlotte’s voice faltered a little. ‘My mother won’t be that thrilled and we wanted to just take a little while longer to enjoy the news—to share it with a happy audience—before we broach the subject with her.’
A question readily sprung to Dante’s lips but he stopped himself from asking it, just in time. Because naturally, as the doting fiancé, this was something he should already know.
‘Why on earth would your mother not be happy?’ Allegra asked, a hint of indignation in her voice. ‘Is there a problem with my grandson, I wonder?’
‘As if there could ever be a problem with Dante,’ Charlotte volleyed back a similarly coy, affectionate response and Dante’s gut rolled with something like admiration.
She was a skilled actress, that was for sure.
‘My mother just doesn’t really approve of marriage.
I was raised to see it as the exact opposite of what I should aspire to in life,’ she added.
Something in her voice told Dante that, though she was acting the part of his fiancé, this admission was the absolute truth.
And like any other truth she’d revealed to him during their acquaintance, it only served to spark a thousand more questions he wanted answers to.
‘Interesting,’ Allegra said. Dante recognised that tone.
It was her prelude to more questions. More interrogation.
He knew he should say something to protect Charlotte, to move the questioning on, but out of a purely selfish desire to know more he didn’t.
He sat back in his seat, as though he were the most relaxed man on earth and moved his arm from Charlotte’s knee to drape along the back of her chair instead, his fingers absentmindedly drawing circles against the silk of her blouse.
‘And why should she hate marriage so much?’ Allegra pounced, sipping her champagne and leaving a dusty pink lipstick mark at the top of the glass. ‘Particularly when you have found someone who evidently makes you as happy as my Dante does.’
‘My mother never had the good fortune to meet someone like Dante,’ she admitted, with a small shrug of her shoulders that would have dislodged his touch if he had any interest in allowing it to do so. ‘Perhaps if she had, she’d feel differently.’
‘Your father?’
Here, Dante felt a prickle of compunction. It was a step too far. Despite his interest in the subject matter and what Charlotte was revealing about herself, he knew this was not a conversation she wanted to have.
‘Nonna,’ his voice held a warning, but Charlotte was answering anyway, as if he hadn’t spoken.
‘They weren’t married and I wasn’t planned. I’ve never met him.’
The words formed cool, logical statements. There was nothing in them that spoke of heartbreak. But he felt it. There was something in the way her whole body had gone stiff and sharp, the way she looked like she was holding herself together with sheer willpower alone.
‘That might explain it,’ Allegra said with a nod, then her face softened into a smile that was both content and devastated. ‘I was fortunate enough to meet the love of my life, though I had to wait a good while.’
‘Oh?’ Charlotte asked, He felt her exhale, as if sensing that the danger had passed.
‘I was thirty by the time Alberto and I met. But I knew. I just knew.’ Her smile was wistful. ‘Like with you and Dante.’
Dante glanced at Charlotte and he was sucked back in time to that charity gala, when he’d seen her across the room and just known. Not that she was the love of his life—never again. But that she would be important, in some way. That he wanted her with the force of a thousand suns.
He was grateful Charlotte didn’t look at him, because he wasn’t sure what his features would reveal.
‘Alberto was very like him, you know,’ Allegra continued. ‘Sometimes, I look at Dante, and I see so much of my husband, his grandfather—,’
Dante’s heart turned over. His grandmother had never said that to him before.
‘It’s more than how they look, though. They are both so fiercely determined, so driven, so moralistic and strong, courageous too. Has he told you about the night he got lost in the woods?’
‘Nonna,’ his voice held a warning, but Allegra continued, unabashed.
‘He was only nine. He had just moved here and after...the accident,’ her voice faltered, ‘well, it was a difficult time. He left the house, without me knowing, after dinner.’
‘There was a cat,’ he said, remembering the night. ‘I followed it.’
‘You disappeared,’ she said. ‘And I didn’t realise, until the next morning. It was the middle of winter and he was out there in just his pyjamas. Can you imagine?’
‘You must have been terrified.’
‘I was terrified, he was not.’
‘It was an adventure,’ he said, with a lift of his shoulders.
‘I am sure you shaved ten years off my life.’
‘You seem to be doing just fine on that score,’ Dante said.
Charlotte did glance at him then and though she smiled, he saw the slight hint of mockery in her eyes. The teasing impishness that was the perfect antidote to the strange barrage of feelings his grandmother was washing over them.
‘He speaks very highly of you, Allegra.’
‘Well, I’m not surprised. I do feed him very, very well and he was always a greedy child.’
Charlotte laughed and Dante felt warmth light every single part of him.
He glanced away, towards the rolling hills, seeking comfort in their familiarity.
Hoping that, with that one glance, he could see and feel just like he always did when he came home.
Only, he’d never been home with Charlotte before.
* * *
‘Now, darling, Dante knows the schedule I keep, but for your benefit, we have an aperitivo here each day around seven. Dinner is served at eight. Once upon a time, I would have insisted on a walk around the estate, following dinner, but I’m not quite up to that, these days.
You, naturally, should enjoy the property, though.
Dante knows the best paths. I do not eat a big breakfast, but there is always coffee and fruit, and Rosaria will make you anything you’d like. For lunch, we—,’