A Law Unto Himself

‘Meaning?’ Beatrice questioned him uncertainly.

‘Meaning that to you, my dear wife, he may behave like a perfect gentleman, but where women less wrapped up in their husbands are concerned, he can be… well, let’s just say that he has all the usual male appetites and that he’s quite capable of satisfying them and then ejecting the woman concerned from his life with rather brutal efficiency.’

‘You think he’d try to seduce Chessie?’ Beatrice asked uneasily.

‘I don’t know. He’s one of those men who’s a law unto himself, and I wouldn’t like to predict what he might do.’

Beatrice’s eyes rounded in astonishment. Her husband was an astute judge of character and normally very crisp and to the point in giving his opinion of his fellow men.

‘Well, I only thought that tonight we could see how they get on, and then…’

‘Liar,’ Elliott interrupted her ruthlessly. ‘You intended to dangle Chessie in front of him like a very tempting piece of bait, in the hope that her expertise in Italian history will prove so irresistible that it will outweigh his legendary dislike of working with women.’

‘And do you think it will?’ Beatrice asked him slyly.

Elliott looked at her in their bedroom mirror and eventually said grimly, ‘Unfortunately, yes.’

‘Unfortunately for Oliver or for Chessie?’

‘Potentially, for them both!’

In her own bedroom, Chessie too was looking into a mirror, but she was alone with her reflection, unlike Beatrice and Elliott.

‘Nothing too formal,’ Beatrice had advised her when she had asked her what she should wear, and she only hoped that what she had chosen would be suitable.

Her grandfather had set great store by the correct appearance, and Chessie was not sure where on the scale of formality her scarlet Valentino wool crêpe dress would stand.

True, it was very plain, the soft fabric draped subtly to reveal her curves… true it had a high, round neck, and long, all-covering sleeves… but it was also short, just above the knee, and the colour itself was so eye-catching that it scarcely needed any further adornment.

She had left her hair down, catching it back with a gilt bow. She was wearing matching gold bow earrings from which a pearl was suspended, and a collection of fine gold bangles which made a soft musical sound when she moved.

Sheer black tights, high-heeled suede pumps, the Chamade perfume she had switched to only months ago, and which she still wasn’t completely sure about. It was so different from the cool, fresh fragrance she had worn before. A fragrance chosen by her grandfather as being ‘suitable’ for a young woman of his house.

The dining-room of the Cotswold house was barely a fifth of the size of that in her grandfather’s palazzo but it had a welcoming warmth that Francesca infinitely preferred.

The problem was, as one of her aunts had austerely told her, when as a teenager she had dared to complain that the vast, echoing rooms of the seventeenth-century palazzo had no warmth about them, that she and her mother had been ridiculously indulged by her father, who had broken the tradition of centuries in refusing to move his new bride into the family home, but who had instead bought a pretty little villa on the outskirts of the city with its own private garden and an informal courtyard that Francesca remembered with nostalgic longing.

When her grandfather’s health had started to fail, though, her father had given in to family pressure to move himself and his family into the family home.

The palazzo was a vast, echoing place with marble floors, and a quantity of rococo gilt mirrors. It cost a fortune to maintain, and it was only by judicious marriages and deploying their resources into commerce that the family had been able to retain a home that was really more a museum-piece than suitable for modern-day living.

Francesca knew that her mother had never felt wholly comfortable living there. For one thing, she was no longer really in charge of her own household, the palazzo being run by a maiden aunt of the family, who refused to allow anyone to take over from her.

The palazzo possessed a vast warren of higgledy-piggledy rooms on the floors above the grand reception-rooms, more than enough to house all the aunts, uncles, and cousins who lived there.

It must be rather nice to be like Beatrice and to have to share this lovely home with only one’s husband and children. Had she married Paolo, her home would have been in a palazzo even more enormous than her grandfather’s. Francesca frowned thoughtfully. If she had never really looked forward to such a prospect, then why had she not said so? Why had she allowed her grandfather to dominate her life?

‘Do you think everything looks all right?’ Beatrice asked her, anxiously coming into the room and mistaking her frowning introspection for a critical study of her table.

‘It looks lovely,’ Francesca told her truthfully. ‘What time do your guests arrive?’

‘Any minute now. Elliott will serve them drinks in the drawing-room, while I help Henry in the kitchen. I wonder, Chessie, would you be very kind and help Elliott to entertain them? I’ve invited two other couples: the local doctor and her husband, who’s a lecturer at Oxford; a business colleague of Elliott’s who lives a few miles away and his wife; and another neighbour of ours, Oliver Newton. He’s a writer. I don’t know if you’ve heard of him. He writes under the name of Dominic Lacey.’

‘I’ve seen his books. He writes thrillers, doesn’t he?’

‘Sort of. He’s an expert on Elizabethan England, and he sets his books in that period. They’re very popular. He’s having problems with his latest one, though. His main character, a spy working for Francis Walsingham, is sent to Italy to find out as much as he can about a supposed Borgia plot against Elizabeth, and it seems that Oliver is having problems with the research into the Italian part of the book. He was saying only the other day that he can’t spare the time to go to Italy himself and that he may well have to employ a research assistant. I thought…’

She broke off as the doorbell rang.

‘Oh, heavens, they’re arriving already.’

There were no nuances of the fine art of entertaining that were not known to Francesca. She mingled with Beatrice’s guests with the quiet grace she had inherited from her mother, adding to it the sophisticated polish she had learned from her aunts, keeping the conversational ball rolling, parrying questions that threatened to become too curious and deftly making each person she spoke to feel that she was genuinely interested in what they had to say.

‘Who is she?’ Oliver Newton asked Elliott, as they stood together by the fire. He had been watching her for the last five minutes, studying the elegant grace of her body, acknowledging that she was an extremely beautiful and skilled woman.

‘The god-daughter of some friends of ours. Let me introduce you.’

Oliver had arrived while Francesca was talking to Helen and John Carter, the doctor and university lecturer, and although she had seen him arrive, good manners had dictated that she did no more than give him a brief glance.

Now he was coming towards her with Elliott, and the tiny shock she had experienced on seeing him redoubled. He was not a handsome man, his features were too hard for that, but no woman could ever overlook him. His eyes were the colour of the sea-spray on the wildest parts of the Italian coast, his hair dark enough to belong to one of her cousins.

The thought sprang into her mind that here was a man who would defy God himself to achieve what he wanted; a man who owned no master… no higher authority… no barriers.

‘Francesca, allow me to introduce you to a friend of ours, Oliver Newton.’

‘Oliver, meet Francesca, C…’

‘Valera,’ Francesca supplied quickly for him, deliberately omitting her title, and introducing herself as she had done to the other guests by extending her hand and saying firmly, ‘Please call me Chessie.’

His flesh felt hard and dry, its contact with her own sending a shocking pulse of sensation through her skin that made her pull away from the handshake.

The silver-ice eyes registered her reaction and mocked her for it.

‘Chessie?’ he questioned, smiling cruelly at her. ‘I think not. Francesca suits you much more. Besides, I abhor nicknames.’

His arrogance took her breath away; that and his blatantly obvious desire to hurt her, and, thus challenged, she reacted in a way she herself would never have expected, looking him full in the eyes and saying coolly, ‘Since we are hardly likely to meet frequently, I don’t think it can really matter how you choose to address me, Mr Newton.’ And then she turned her back on him and walked calmly over to the Carters, neither of whom had seen the small by-play, and both of whom welcomed her back enthusiastically.

‘Who did you say she was?’ Oliver questioned Elliott again, apparently unaffected by her rebuke.

‘The god-daughter of some Italian friends of ours.’

‘Mm… with no husband or lover in tow, and some very expensive tastes, to judge from her clothes. What’s she doing here, Elliott?’

‘If you really want to know, why don’t you ask her?’

Oliver’s eyebrows rose, but Elliott wasn’t a man to be challenged or disconcerted by the cool stare of those hypnotic eyes.

‘Dinner, everyone,’ Beatrice announced, opening the drawing-room door.