Chapter Three
Sanzio saw her freeze. Never taking his eyes from her, he let what he had said sink in. He needed it to sink into himself as well. Had he really just said that? If he had, was he certifiably insane? Eleanora da Verano clearly thought so.
‘Are you insane?’ Her voice was hollow with obvious disbelief at what he’d just said.
He lifted a hand in an imperative gesture.
‘Hear me out before you condemn me to the nearest lunatic asylum.’ Or condemn himself.
He refilled his wine glass, gathering his thoughts.
They were hard to corral, because they’d shocked even himself.
Over the years he’d learnt to trust his gut instinct in business, and it had always paid off handsomely. But this? Maybe, indeed, he was insane.
Or then again, not. He got his thoughts into incisive order and launched forth.
‘You’ve not asked me two significant questions,’ he stated now. ‘The first is nothing to do with the Palazzo, and everything to do with your sister.’
He saw something flicker in her eyes, but she said nothing. It was clear as day there was no love lost between the sisters, and that, he thought with grim satisfaction, served his purpose well.
‘You’ve never asked why I wanted to marry Tonia,’ he said.
At that, her eyes widened. They weren’t dark like Tonia’s but hazel, he noticed for the first time. Or perhaps not hazel, exactly. More like amber. Or a rich, Oloroso sherry…
‘That’s pretty self-evident, I would have thought,’ she replied, cutting across his musings. ‘Tonia’s stunningly beautiful and has always had men wanting her!’
A caustic expression lit Sanzio’s eyes. ‘If I’d just wanted her for sex,’ he said casually, ‘I’d have simply had an affair with her. But I wanted her for more than that.’
He paused. Let his gaze rest deliberately on her unmade-up face, her starkly unflattering hairstyle, her shapeless suit doing absolutely nothing for her figure and her comprehensively dull and insignificant appearance, as if the very last thing she wanted was to have anyone look twice at her—or even once. So completely unlike her sister.
And now he was definitely sure he knew why.
She’s hiding from Tonia, giving up on herself because it’s her sister who is beautiful and desirable—so she puts herself down in comparison.
An old, familiar feeling came back to him. Once, long ago, in his youth, he had felt similarly inferior—a boy from his background, aiming to better himself? But determination had filled him, and he’d refused to be put down—stay down.
I never gave up on myself.
His eyes rested on Tonia’s sister, a woman born into a world so hugely privileged compared with his own origins, yet she had been crushed all the same. Had given up on herself.
I could change that.
Something moved within him, a flare of interest, but he set it aside for the moment, went back to answering his own question.
‘Tonia’s appeal,’ he spelt out, ‘was not just physical. Her appeal—’ he met her eyes with a level gaze ‘—was that she is Donna Antonia da Verano, the daughter of Il Conte di Crestoni.’ He paused. Then completed his point.
‘Just as you are, Donna Eleanora.’
* * *
She heard him pronounce the old-fashioned and these days seldom used honorific. She’d grown up with it but never used it personally, not spelling it out like that. Tonia loved to use it, though now, of course, she’d have a far grander title—Madame la Marquise de Rochevallet.
She looked at Sanzio Bastoni now, the man who’d been jilted by her sister. ‘That’s important to you?’ she ventured.
‘Yes,’ he said bluntly.
He drank more of his wine, replaced the glass with a snap on the damask tablecloth, sat up straight again. Suddenly he was looking formidable again.
‘Consider my situation, Donna Eleanora,’ he said.
‘I grew up in social housing, my mother—now dead—lived on welfare, my father was unemployed before debunking. I left school the moment I could, got any job I could. Saved every cent I could. Then—’ his expression was getting grim ‘—I started my progress to wealth. It’s taken me fifteen years, but now,’ he said, and she heard grimness replaced by satisfaction, ‘I can have anything I want. Anything at all. Including—’ his eyes never left her ‘—the daughter of an aristocrat for a wife. Hence—’ he paused ‘—your sister.’
He paused again. ‘Now that isn’t happening, I am, quite brutally, considering an alternative. You.’
She was still staring at him. ‘Signor Bastoni,’ she said, ‘there are dozens of aristo females out there who would happily snap up your hand in marriage! Just because Tonia rejected—’ She stopped, feeling awkward now.
He ignored the awkwardness. ‘Dozens, yes—but none have what you or your sister has.’ He paused again. ‘The da Verano Palazzo.’
Eleanora was puzzled. ‘But there are dozens of palazzos in Italy, probably in much better condition, and some very probably also come with marriageable aristo females!’
He looked across at her, mouth compressed. ‘We now come to the second significant question you have failed to ask me,’ he said. ‘Why am I interested in the Palazzo Verano?’
He kept his gaze on her. Answered his own question. ‘Because my ancestors built it,’ he said.
Eleanora’s mouth opened, then closed again. Then she spoke, shaking her head slightly. ‘Your ancestors? Signor Bastoni, I can assure you, it has always belonged to our family—the land, and subsequently the Palazzo—since the fifteenth century!’
A strange expression formed on his face. It was not, she realised, a pleasant one. His mouth twisted.
‘I said, Donna Eleanora, that my ancestors built the Palazzo Verano, not that they owned it.’
She frowned, not understanding. He was going on, the same harsh look on his face now. The formidable look in spades.
‘My ancestors, Donna Eleanora—’ she wished he would stop calling her that; it sounded like a jibe, a criticism, even a taunt ‘—were once peasants who toiled the land your ancestors owned. My great-grandfather moved to Rome from the da Verano estates early in the last century, and his forebears can be traced back in the public archives—yes, even lowly families like mine appear in archives!—to the time when the Palazzo was built in the eighteenth century. There are records indicating the names of some of the workers—they are held in the ledgers for the payroll—and they include my family.’
He paused again, and looked at her, and the expression in his eyes now was not kind.
‘Your ancestors ordered the Palazzo to be built, but it was the hard work, the sweat and labour of those like my forebears who actually built it. And it is for that reason, Donna Eleanora—’ and now there was a blade in his voice ‘—that I think it fitting that the descendent of those who did the work in building it now gets to own the palazzo they built, rather than it being owned by a man whose wealth came from the toil of the peasants on his land, the wealth he himself has squandered until he is facing the same kind of penury my family always knew. And that, Donna Eleanora,’ he finished, ‘is why I want to own the Palazzo Verano, and why I would like you, the Count’s daughter, to come with it. ’
He fell silent, sat back. She could read his expression now, read it all too clearly.
She reached a little shakily for her wine and took a larger mouthful than she’d intended. Then asked a question she wanted to know the answer to.
‘Did you tell my sister that?’ she asked.
He gave that laugh again. This time it had no humour in it. ‘Do you think she would have appreciated it?’ he asked.
Eleanora shook her head. ‘It would have embarrassed her. She’d have made you swear never to let anyone know.’
A dark eyebrow lifted. ‘Know that she was marrying one of her family’s former peasants?’ he said sardonically.
‘Yes,’ she answered bluntly. Tonia would have squirmed at the thought.
His eyes narrowed suddenly. ‘And you—are you embarrassed by such a disclosure?’ It was a challenge. One it was effortless for her to meet.
‘No,’ she said. Unlike her sister, it didn’t bother her at all. Not, of course, that it mattered a jot whether she was or was not embarrassed or anything else at all.
For a moment Sanzio Bastoni said nothing. Then he sat back again, reached for his wine again. Something had changed in his face again, relaxed.
‘Well, there you are,’ he said. ‘You see how well we would suit each other.’
At that Eleanora lost it.
‘I can’t believe you’re saying that! It’s completely insane!’
He toyed with his wine glass. ‘I don’t agree,’ he said. He smiled. There wasn’t exactly humour in it, but there was something all the same that made her listen. ‘Let me to explain why,’ he said.
* * *
Sanzio let his eyes rest on her, untroubled by her vehemence.
‘If I’d married your sister, your father would have been so pleased to have a rich son-in-law he could bleed—so he fondly thought!
—for years, that he’d have agreed to hand over the Palazzo.
He’ll do the same if I marry his other daughter.
You. So I both save on the purchase price—not to mention the tedious hassle of your father seeking to jack up the price!
—and I still get a da Verano wife along with the da Verano Palazzo. ’
He let his eyes rest on her. Her expression had tightened at his last words.
‘As a da Verano wife, Signor Bastoni, I hardly compare with my sister.’ Her voice was flat.
‘Exactly.’ His own voice was flat too.
She looked at him blankly, so he elucidated.
‘It will teach Tonia a salutary lesson—’ his voice was very dry now and harsh ‘—that her value to me was not herself, but her blue blood. It will show her that her sister will suit me just as well.’ His eyes hardened.
‘Your sister, Donna Eleanora, wanted my money, but she couldn’t stomach my lowly origins.
Now she can watch me marry you instead.’
His eyes glinted, his expression changing. That would not be the only thing Tonia would have to watch before he was done. His eyes rested on Tonia’s sister. So self-effacing, so overshadowed.
So unnecessarily—