The Impatient Groom

He set his jaw in determination, knowing he had no choice but to take drastic action. Otherwise he didn’t know what the devil he was going to do about Enrico—how to curb him, help him, and ensure he did no more damage to the unwary.

Only yesterday he’d tried to talk some sense into him. Enrico had laughed and said that life was for living and who but a fool wanted to work in an office all day? He fumed at the memory. Did his brother imagine that a publishing empire ran itself?

Turning away in rage when some drunken guests collided and knocked over a valuable medieval candle-stand, Rozzano hardened his heart.

As the elder son of one of the most ancient and noble Venetian families, he had a duty to protect the honour—and the survival—of the Barsini name. Enrico and his loathsome brats must not take the title in the event of his death.

He needed an heir. There was no escape then. He had to find a wife. Rozzano drew in a harsh breath, shaken by the finality of the decision he’d made.

Slowly his fingers curled, shaping his finely shaped hands into belligerent fists. He swallowed back the bile that had risen to his throat and groaned. What he did for this family!

Turbulent emotions battled for his heart and mind. He’d vowed not to become involved with a woman ever again. Four years, three months and four days ago, to be precise. He knew that moment of his wife’s death almost to the hour! His even white teeth savaged his lower lip as he struggled for self-control.

A searing black venom blazed in his eyes as bitter resentment fuelled his loathing. Because of the part Enrico had played in his wife’s death, he would have to throw himself on the marriage market again. He’d be forced to choose a woman he didn’t love—couldn’t love—and he’d have to play the doting husband for the rest of his life. What a sentence!

Grim-faced, he thought of the women he knew, the ones who adored him, the many who flirted and were more than willing. He’d give none of them house room.

‘Damn you, Enrico!’ he ground out through his teeth. Happiness would continue to evade him. He had everything—and he had nothing. Except the fatherly affection of an old man.

He groaned. D‘Antiga! He’d almost forgotten!

The church clock chimed and he checked his Cartier watch with a sharp exclamation. First things first. He must leave.

Somewhere in southern England, a solicitor waited with news of D‘Antiga’s fortunes—and this alone had intrigued him enough to draw him half-way across Europe. Maybe they’d found D’Antiga’s runaway daughter! If so, he would not be obliged to run the D‘Antiga estates any longer, on behalf of his late father’s friend.

His expression became smooth and implacable again. His passionate anger was ruthlessly suppressed. Thoughtfully, Rozzano began to descend the gilded stairway. Maybe he could take back the reins of the Barsini publishing house from his brother and get it running smoothly again!

Exhilarated at the prospect, he headed for the water-gate. A nod of his head brought the waiting servants to life, one hurrying to alert his boatman, one passing him his long wool coat, briefcase and gloves.

As always, others smoothed his path for the whole of the tedious journey. When he left his palazzo he travelled by motor launch to Venice’s airport for the flight to London. After a night in his suite at the Dorchester, a chauffeured car took him to the private plane, which conveyed him to an airport on the south coast of England. From there he was driven to a small village in Dorset called Barley Magma.

Il Principe Rozzano Alessandro di Barsini stepped from his hire car looking as immaculate and composed as if he’d just woken and dressed ten minutes earlier.

But even before breakfast he’d dealt with yet another crisis of Enrico’s making, spoken at length to his broker and taken several calls from his publishing outlets around the world. In the car he’d dealt with urgent papers, switching his mind with alacrity from his own affairs to those of D‘Antiga’s perfumeries.

‘Yup, that’s it,’ encouraged the hire driver when he hesitated.

They’d stopped outside a tiny grocer’s shop on the end of a terrace of houses whose golden stone was glowing softly in the September sunshine. A perplexed frown fleetingly dared to spoil the smoothness of Rozzaao’s high, broad forehead and irritation tightened his jaw. A fool’s errand, then. A mistake. He felt the disappointment keenly.

Abruptly he turned back to the car. ‘I have no business with a grocer.’

‘Nah! The solicitor rents rooms above,’ the driver told him cheerfully. He knew wealth when he saw it and anticipated a fat tip. ‘Door round the corner.’

Still doubtful, Rozzano nevertheless thanked him politely. This didn’t look hopeful. ‘Come back for me, if you please. Say...an hour?’

He thought he’d be out before that, but he could always sit beneath the large oak tree and work on his papers. Quickly he strode to the open door at the side of the building. His face showed no hint of his thoughts, which were that there was surely a mix-up.

How, he wondered, as his hand-stitched leather shoes trod each uncarpeted step upwards, could a small-time solicitor in a rural backwater have any connection with the Venetian aristocracy? Let alone solve a thirty-threeyear-old mystery!

His hopes fading, he entered the poorly appointed of fice. A young woman at a desk seemed to be trying to type and gossip on the telephone simultaneously. Without looking up she covered the mouthpiece and snapped a scratchy, ‘Yes?’

His dark eyes narrowed but his tone remained civil and very—perhaps ominously—quiet as he approached her desk.

‘Good morning. I have an appointment. Rozzano Barsini—’

‘Oh! The prince!’ The woman dropped the phone in shock, blushed scarlet and knocked over a pile of files and a mug of coffee, causing Rozzano to step back quickly before his sharply tailored jacket was ruined. ‘Blast! Oh, I’m sorry, Your—um—Highness!’ In confusion, she tried to mop up the mess, apologise and stare in awe all at the same time.

He handed over his soft linen handkerchief, hoping wryly that she wouldn’t curtsey. Her knees looked alarmingly poised to do so.

‘Please calm yourself,’ he said, wearied with the effect his name invariably produced.

He was an unwilling celebrity. Since his wife’s death, the media had been obsessed with his life, reporting every minor detail—and the partying extravagances of his brother. Rozzano controlled the urge to say bitingly that column inches in a newspaper didn’t make someone a god.

‘I’ll wait till you’re ready to announce me,’ he said instead, his voice stiff with restraint.

The secretary cleared up, then flapped and fluttered her way to an inner office from where he could hear an excited conversation developing.

Suppressing a sigh, Rozzano cast a doubtful eye over a rather tired-looking sofa and, easing the knife creases of his dark navy trousers, made himself as comfortable as possible on a rickety wooden chair. Wishing he hadn’t wasted his valuable time, he reached for his phone, to make a few calls.

Only then did he notice the woman sitting by the window. ‘Excuse me! I thought I was alone. Good morning,’ he said politely, tucking his mobile phone back in its slimline holster at his waist

She acknowledged him with a smile that softened her sooty grey eyes. ‘morning,’ she replied easily.

Her voice was so low and lyrical and warmly welcomeing that it immediately had the effect of soothing his irritation.

She must have been aware of who he was, because the secretary had screeched it to the Four Winds, but she seemed relaxed and apparently unimpressed. It was a pleasant change. He looked away out of habit, because up to now he’d avoided possible entanglements with women like the plague, but her reaction had been so surprising that he gave her a second glance.

An amused smile lifted the corners of his mouth and softened his stern features. He’d been forgotten—or dismissed! It was such a novelty that he found himself both intrigued and enchanted.

She was looking out onto the street, her blissful expression suggesting she was dreaming of something delightful. With some regret, Rozzano remembered his manners and turned away again, but not before he’d been deeply struck by the gentle repose of her face and body.

Unlike the fashionably tiny and bean-thin young women he knew, she was quite tall, large-boned and curvaceous—a kind of homely earth-mother type. And yet...

Pretending to flick through an ancient bridal magazine, he tried to work out what was puzzling him. Her clothes, maybe? He’d retained an impression of an ill-fitting gentian-blue polyester dress that sagged at the hem, and a caramel brown cardigan of an uncertain age and style. He hadn’t missed those incredible legs, though—long, slender and bare, tanned to a gleaming, smooth gold and with ankles so shapely that he could pleasurably imagine his hands curving around them. Yet she wore oldfashioned and poorly made shoes—although, he conceded, they’d been well polished. And her rich toffee-coloured hair had been dragged back from her face into a tight, thick plait as if she disapproved of frivolity.

Nothing there, then, other than those legs, to make the heart beat faster. In that case, what had caught his attention, what was so utterly fascinating? Riveted, he put his mind to the conundrum.

Allora. He had it! Excitement glittered in the depths of his shadowed dark eyes. Incongruously, an air of refinement pervaded her whole body. It revealed itself in her perfect posture—the ramrod-straight back, the graceful carriage of her head with its delicate, almost fragile features, and the demure arrangement of those staggeringly beautiful legs.

Interesting. Perhaps he’d strike up a conversation, he thought with idle curiosity...

‘Mr Luscombe’s ready for you now, Your Highness!’ the secretary announced loudly, too loudly, her eyes shining with excitement.

‘Thank you.’

Astonished that he felt annoyed because he hadn’t been able to speak to the blissfully unaware Madonna, Rozzano brought his interest under control, rose and strolled at his usual leisurely pace into Luscombe’s office. As the elderly solicitor greeted him, he heard the secretary add sneeringly, dismissively, ‘Oh, and you’re to come in too, Miss Charlton.’

He swivelled on his heel, startled. The serene, dreaming Madonna had indeed followed him in! What the hell had she to do with the D‘Antiga millions?