A Law Unto Himself

‘Yes, and went on to have four more children: the twins, Sebastian and Benedict, Miranda and last, but definitely not least, William. I dare say you will meet them all in due course, although probably not Lucilla, who is both mine and Beatrice’s half-sister. She’s the only child of my father’s marriage to Beatrice’s mother. She’s in the States at the moment with her husband, Nick Barrington. He has extensive interests and connections in Hollywood, and they’ve gone there to recruit a new star for a new film that is presently casting.’

Francesca had heard all about her hostess’s fascinating family background, so very different from her own with its staid ranks of ducas and contes; its many, many Valerian aunts and uncles; its traditions and its shibboleths.

‘Bad flight?’ Elliott asked her, glancing into his driving mirror and observing her too pale face.

She was a beautiful woman, even with the sculptured pared-down thinness of her face. Her hair was like polished silk, hanging thick and heavy on to her shoulders, her make-up immaculate, the golden eyes wary and shuttered, and yet for all her poise and beauty, for all the immaculateness of her appearance, there was none of the plastic dullness that sometimes characterised such perfection.

Her elegance was unmistakably Italian, and yet there was at the same time just a hint of her English heritage, in the mobility of her face and that faint, betraying wariness of her eyes.

He would have to warn Bea again not to expose Francesca to Oliver. He would make mincemeat out of her, and the girl was just vulnerable enough to be hurt by his abrasiveness.

He could see Oliver’s viewpoint, though; a man who had been deceived in the way that he had been deceived was bound to have been hardened by the experience and to want to hold the female sex at a distance.

The prettiness of the English countryside, even in the gloom of the damp October afternoon, was a surprise to Francesca. Her mother had come from the north, a small mining community to which she had no desire to return and with which she had no ties, since she had been orphaned young.

But this… this soft mingling of greens and golds, this pale sunlight that softened cream stone walls ancient with lichen… this very quiet delicacy of colour appealed strongly to her. Even the autumn melancholy of the landscape was in tune with her own sombre thoughts; not of the man she had lost, because she was honest enough to admit to herself that she had not loved him; not even for the honours that would have been hers as his wife. No… it was the loss of self she mourned most… the realisation that she had blindly and willingly allowed herself to be formed into the most suitable image for a granddaughter of the Duca di Valeria. She had even connived at the image-making herself, had willing allowed herself to be moulded and fashioned into an artificial role. It was the betrayal of herself that hurt the most; the realisation that through both laziness and cowardice she had abandoned her rights to be herself… to be independent and to make her own life.

Once while she was at university there had been a boy. He had wanted to be her lover… a wild ragazzo from the streets of Naples, sponsored by a wealthy benefactor because of his intelligence. She had not been able to hide from him her indifference to his feelings.

He had accused her then of not being ‘real’, of not being a person in her own right. She had listened gravely to his insults and then calmly cut him out of her life, relieved, if the truth was known, to end the acquaintanceship with him, because deep down inside her part of her had been disturbed by him, not sexually, but mentally, and she had resented that quiet ripple across the placid surface of her life.

How complacent she had been. How stupidly, wantonly complacent.

She closed her eyes, and Elliott, glancing at her through his mirror, was thankful that they were nearly home. If she was going to burst into tears, he would rather it was when Bea was there to cope and commiserate. As the thought formed, her eyelids lifted, and the golden eyes flashed proud rejection of his thoughts back at him.

So she was not as remote and serene as she appeared. She had pride and spirit. She would need them if she was to succeed in her plans to form a completely new life for herself, more in step with the modern world than the old-fashioned protected one of her grandfather.

‘Nearly there,’ he told her, turning off the main road and driving through the small Cotswold village that was only a handful of miles from his and Beatrice’s home.

The village delighted Francesca, and she swiftly recognised the Tudor architecture of the stone cottages. History was her love, and because her mother was English she had studied British history in almost as much detail as she had Italian.

‘Here we are.’

Elliott turned in through the gates of the mellow Cotswold house. Even before they had left the car, the front door was thrown open and a young woman came hurrying out. Older than Francesca, she nevertheless had an unexpected youthfulness that the Italian girl hadn’t anticipated, having heard many times of how Beatrice had been the mainstay and substitute mother to her family after her parents’ death.

She wasn’t as tall as Francesca herself, and was slightly plumper, a baby clutched in one arm while a blond-haired little boy ran forward to fling himself into Elliott’s arms almost before the car door was open.

‘Welcome to England,’ Beatrice greeted her with a warm smile. ‘Come inside. You must be feeling the cold after Italy. You must tell me if your room isn’t warm enough. The central heating’s on, but all the bedrooms have fires and we can light one for you if necessary. I hope you won’t mind dining en famille tonight. Henrietta, who runs the house and us, is away visiting friends at the moment, and I’m afraid everything is rather disorganised.

‘By the way,’ Beatrice asked her, as she urged her inside the house, ‘what are we to call you? Francesca… or do you have a nickname—Chessie perhaps?’

Beatrice’s warm, friendly smile touched something inside her that reminded her very much of her mother.

No one in il Duca’s household was allowed the informality of having their name abbreviated, and consequently all her life she had been Francesca; a graceful, elegant name, which she suddenly realised had often been a very difficult one to live up to. Chessie, now… Chessie conjured up a very different image indeed. A Chessie might be permitted all kinds of follies and foolishnesses never permitted a Francesca, and so, turning her back on the rigorous training of twenty-four years, Francesca returned Beatrice’s smile and said firmly, ‘Chessie will be fine.’

Chessie…

She savoured the name to herself as she followed Beatrice upstairs. It had an untrammelled, freedom-loving sound to it that she liked; it made her feel young and vibrant… it made her feel she was free of the burden of being the granddaughter of the Duca di Valeria, the rejected promised wife of Paolo di Calveri.

From her room she could see over the surrounding countryside. She felt curiously at home here in a way she had not expected. She liked her hostess, and suspected she would also like her host once she had got to know him.

Initially she had protested when her godparents had arranged this break for her, but she had been too listless to resist their plans. Now that she was here, though, she wondered that she had never thought of coming before. Here no one knew about her and Paolo, apart from her hosts. No one cared that she was the granddaughter of il duca… no one would ever call her ‘Francesca’ in that curt, disapproving tone of her grandfather’s that had so often chilled the warmth of her youth.

Here she was Chessie… a young woman just like any other, with enough qualifications to find herself a job should she so wish… with surely her whole future spread out in front of her, rather like her view of the pretty countryside.

A sense of eagerness and adventure she had not experienced in a long long time flowed through her. She started to unpack her cases, humming as she did so.

CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_01a1401b-38fc-5bea-9c73-f83e6b30297a)

‘THIS DINNER PARTY, are you sure you do not need any help?’ Francesca asked gravely, with memories of her mother’s dinner parties and the days of anxiety and tension that preceded them lest she fell short of her father-in-law’s exalted standards in some way and called down his wrath upon her head.

Beatrice laughed.

‘No… everything’s under control. Most of the food was prepared last week before Henry left, and it’s in the freezer… as for the rest… well, our friends are very easygoing and quite happy to take pot luck.’

‘Pot luck?’ Francesca wrinkled her forehead and obligingly Beatrice explained the phrase for her.

‘But the silver—the crystal… You have no maid, and surely these will need to be cleaned?’

‘Henry and I did all that before she left. We live quite simply here, Chessie,’ Beatrice told her gently.

Immediately Francesca flushed, and Beatrice was quick to comfort her.

‘Please don’t be embarrassed. We know that you come from a very different and far grander background than ours.’

‘My mother says that the formality insisted upon by my grandfather is no longer necessary, but nothing anyone can say will make him change his ways. My mother says he takes pride in them. He is very arrogant.’

‘And you both love him and resent him,’ Beatrice guessed. ‘It’s hard, isn’t it, to constantly strive for the approval and affection of someone who only seems to notice you’re there when you do the wrong things?’

‘Very,’ Francesca agreed bleakly. ‘So… if I cannot help with the meal, perhaps I could take charge of the children.’

‘No. What you can do is to make yourself so alluringly beautiful that none of my male guests will be able to take their eyes off you, and with their wives watching them watching you, I shan’t have to worry if my food isn’t up to scratch, shall I?’ Beatrice teased her, calmly accepting the change of subject and its implications. She had no intentions of putting any pressure on Francesca to discuss the past or her family with her; she simply wanted the Italian girl to feel at home with them. Sometimes she had such a look of taut constraint that Beatrice ached to tell her that what she was enduring would eventually pass, but she sensed that Francesca was too proud to welcome any intrusion into her personal pain, however well-meant.

‘Could you help us?’ Lucia had begged her in that unexpected telephone call four weeks ago. ‘We have a god-daughter, a charming, beautiful girl, who is simply fading away before our eyes. She needs a change of scene, a change of life-style…” And she had gone on to explain to Beatrice exactly what had happened.

‘It is not in her heart that she is hurt, but in her pride, in her belief in herself, and these can be even harder wounds to bear. But I think they will heal more easily if she is away from Italy, and more especially if she is away from her grandfather.’

And so Beatrice had readily agreed to invite Francesca to stay. And not just because of the debt she herself owed the Fioris.

It had been Lucia who had counselled her so wisely when she had thought her own love for Elliott to be hopeless—she had believed that it must be impossible for him to love her. But even without that debt she would still have wanted to help.

Elliott arrived home an hour before their dinner guests were due.

‘I take it Oliver’s still included in the guest list?’ he asked her, after mixing them both a drink, bringing them up to the bedroom, and telling her to sit down for five minutes and relax.

‘Yes.’ She looked at him uncertainly. ‘Elliott, I’m not trying to matchmake, but it occurred to me that Chessie might be the ideal solution to Oliver’s research problem. You know he’s desperate to find someone to take over the Italian research on his latest book, and that he can’t get away himself. Chessie has a history degree.’

‘She also has a stunning figure, a beautiful face, and the kind of vulnerability that will make Oliver tear her to shreds if he gets the mood on him, and you and I both know it,’ Elliott warned her grimly, interrupting her, and then adding, ‘I’m not saying it isn’t a good idea… on the face of it. But Oliver’s lethal. He’s also a man and very human…’