Chapter Four
Sanzio relaxed into his first-class airline seat, legs outstretched as they winged east across the ocean. His glance flicked to the woman seated beside him, her legs slanted neatly away from him, reading on her tablet.
Donna Eleanora da Verano Bastoni. His bride of two weeks.
He’d given her no time to change her mind.
Instead, he’d whisked her straight off to Florence to tell her father, who had at first been astonished that a man like Sanzio Bastoni would marry his despised younger daughter, then gleeful at the prospect of another rich son-in-law to bleed in exchange for a rundown palazzo.
Sanzio, however, had no intention of letting him bleed him indefinitely—besides, there was Tonia’s husband he could bleed as well, Sanzio knew cynically.
That event had set the timetable for Sanzio’s own wedding, a spare civil ceremony with no guests, followed immediately by a flight to Buenos Aires to honeymoon with Eleanora’s mother—who had taken her daughter’s unexpected marriage with British equanimity and unfussed welcome to them both—while Tonia spent the Marquis’ money on an opulent extravaganza wedding at his chateau.
The new Marquise and her eager bridegroom were now on their own lengthy honeymoon in the South Pacific, so Sanzio felt it time to return to Italy and get stuck into the Palazzo’s restoration.
His glance went to his bride again, veiling slightly. Did he regret what he’d gone and done? No, he could safely say he didn’t. Things were working out well. As if aware of his scrutiny, Eleanora looked up from her tablet, her head turning towards him. There was a diffident look on her face.
‘Is everything all right?’ she asked.
‘Absolutely.’ Sanzio gave an assured—indeed, reassuring—reply.
He was still getting his head around the total contrast between the two sisters.
Oh, not just outwardly—he’d known that from his very first sight of Eleanora waiting outside his office—but in their characters.
Eleanora could not have been more different.
And definitely in a good way. It had been, he knew, what had convinced him their marriage would be workable.
Helping himself to two glasses of champagne from a passing flight attendant, he handed one to Eleanora, lifting his in salute.
‘Let’s drink to the Palazzo,’ he said. ‘To making it as beautiful as it deserves!’
As he tasted the softly foaming liquid, his eyes stayed on his bride. She looked just as she had from the very first—‘neat’ was the kindest descriptor. His own words just now echoed in his head. The Palazzo was not all that deserved his attentions.
And it would teach Donna Antonia da Verano, now the Marquise de Rochevallet, a lesson she would not enjoy in the slightest…
* * *
Eleanora leant forward against the seat belt as Sanzio’s monster car turned in through the rusting iron gates, inset into high stone walls overgrown with ivy either side that marked the boundary of the Palazzo’s grounds. She was eager to be home.
The word hesitated in her head. The Palazzo had passed from her father’s ownership to Sanzio Bastoni’s. After centuries of ownership by the da Verano family, it now belonged to a man whose forebears had once been penniless peasants working the da Verano estates.
A man whose wife she now was. A man she was gradually getting used to, getting to know.
He was dynamic, incisive, determined, but those were the qualities, she appreciated, which had enabled him to make his way out of poverty and into the wealth he now enjoyed.
He was also straightforward, straight-talking and, Eleanora had increasingly found, considerate.
Being treated with consideration wasn’t something she was used to.
Her father and sister thought of no one but themselves, and as for her brisk, no-nonsense mother, though Eleanora knew she loved her daughter, she also knew her devotion was for her beloved horses.
‘Let’s see what’s been happening while we’ve been away,’ Sanzio said now, as the Palazzo came into view.
Work had most definitely started. Scaffolding caged the front and sides, and she could see men at work up by the crumbling roofline and broken guttering.
‘Once we’d got the OK from the conservation authorities we could get going,’ Sanzio said now, satisfaction in his voice as he brought the car to a halt beside a couple of builders’ vans in front of the huge stone fountain—dry for years, thanks to a cracked base and broken pipework—and cut the engine.
He got out and so did Eleanora. She felt her heart lift.
How good it was to see restoration work underway after so many years of neglect and dilapidation.
A sense of shame filled her. Her father’s insatiable hunger for money to support his spendthrift lifestyle meant he’d long ago stripped the Palazzo of anything valuable—paintings, objets d’art, antiques, furniture.
Giving nothing back for maintenance. Now, water and damp had got in, the roof leaked, patching the ceilings with mildew.
Window frames and floors were starting to rot, the electrics were shot, the plumbing too, crumbling masonry on the external walls, interior walls faded and paint peeling, everything shabby and dilapidated.
As for the gardens, apart from the inroads she’d managed to make around the one still habitable wing, nature was reclaiming apace.
More than shame filled her. She heard again Sanzio’s declaration to her at the Viscari, telling her how his ancestors—and all those who’d toiled on the da Verano estates—had built the Palazzo with their ill-paid labour.
Now, seeing the neglect all around her, eroding their hard work of so long ago, guilt stabbed at her too.
We were the lordly aristocrats whose wealth built the Palazzo but we neglected our responsibility and our heritage, heedlessly squandering our money, and now it’s up to a man my sister thought too lowly to bestow with her ladylike hand to save it—
One of the roofers was shinning down the scaffolding and coming across to them.
‘How’s it going?’ Sanzio put to him. Eleanora knew he’d been keeping in touch online with the project manager he’d appointed to oversee the work, but clearly, he wanted to hear from the workers themselves.
Eleanora left him to it and got their cases out of the car’s boot, taking them in to the habitable wing.
As she carried Sanzio’s into the bedroom that was to be his, she felt a sigh fill her.
For a moment—a yearning, hopeless moment—a pang went through her.
Oh, to look like Tonia! To be a woman men would gaze at with desire.
One man—
No, she must not let such thoughts in. They had nothing to do with why she had married Sanzio, or he her.
So far, all through their time together, she had schooled herself sternly to keep such thoughts at bay.
At the estancia she and Sanzio had stayed in a guest casita, thankfully with a bedroom each.
If her mother thought anything of it, she said nothing, and Eleanora was grateful.
I must just continue calmly, as I’ve been doing. Appreciating him for the person he is, what he’s doing for the Palazzo, and trying my best to ignore his impact on me.
Sanzio would have married Tonia for passion—her sister’s indelicate anticipation of a scorching wedding night replayed uncomfortably in her head—but that was nothing to do with the marriage he’d made instead.
And never could be.
That was the truth of it.
And I must just accept it—
But she sighed again all the same.
* * *
‘Mmm, that smells good!’ Sanzio said appreciatively as Eleanora came out on to the terrace bearing bowls of freshly cooked pasta for their first dinner together at the Palazzo.
As they sat down at the wooden table, he poured them each a glass of the robust local red wine he’d picked up at the village supermarket while they shopped for provisions en route to the Palazzo.
The wine was basic but strong. Ideal for simple fare like pasta.
He lifted his glass. ‘A toast, Eleanora—to coming home.’ His eyes caught hers, and held.
‘It’s good to be back,’ she said. ‘Thank you—for making it possible. For making all this possible.’ She gestured widely at the Palazzo, the scaffolding just visible to the side.
‘It will be a joint effort,’ he averred, taking a mouthful of wine.
‘Thanks to your money,’ Eleanora replied.
He nodded. ‘But it will take your expertise too, when we come to the interiors. After all—’ he gave his slanting smile ‘—what would a poor boy like me know about fancy furnishings? That will be your contribution.’
‘Well, I’d like to keep on with the gardening too,’ she said. ‘It will keep me busy when you’re in Rome.’
‘I won’t be there for a good while—I can afford to take a break from business,’ Sanzio said.
‘I’ll be here, pitching in—following in my ancestors’ footsteps!
’ He gave a smile. ‘Manual work can be enjoyable, and satisfying. Especially—’ his smile turned wry ‘—when it’s optional.
I’ll have a lot to learn, though. I’ve done construction work in my time, but historic restoration is a specialist job. ’
He reached for the Parmesan and grated a generous amount over his pasta, then got stuck in. ‘This is good!’ he announced approvingly. ‘Really tasty sauce!’
She flushed, as if unused to compliments, which, knowing her father and sister, she doubtless was. ‘Thank you,’ she said diffidently, making a start on her own pasta.
‘Can Tonia cook? We always ate out,’ he posed.
‘I’ve never seen her do so,’ Eleanora replied. ‘And she does like eating out.’
‘And what about you?’
‘Well, I don’t socialise much,’ she answered. Her expression changed suddenly. ‘Sanzio, you mustn’t let me…inhibit…your…your social life.’
He frowned. ‘Social life?’
‘Well, yes—in Rome. When you go back there.’
‘I was assuming,’ he told her, ‘that you’d come with me.’
She stared across at him. ‘I couldn’t possibly!’
‘Why not? You’ve dined with me at the Viscari already, remember.’