CHAPTER SEVEN
ONE OF VITALE’S security team drove the four-wheel-drive up what Vitale assured her was the very last twisting, turning road because Jazz was carsick and they had to keep on stopping lest she throw up. It made her feel like an irritating young child and the politer Vitale was about the necessity, the more exasperated she suspected he was. So much for the honeymoon she had assured her family he was taking her on, even if events had conspired to ensure they only got to take a long weekend in Italy before the royal ball in Lerovia. It would be the honeymoon from hell, she decided wretchedly.
And then the car turned down a leaf-lined lane and way at the top of that lane lay the most beautiful house she had ever seen. Not as big as she had expected, not extravagant either. It was a sprawling two-storey farmhouse built in glorious ochre-coloured stone that was colouring into a deeper shade below the spectacular setting sun above. It was surrounded, not by a conventional garden, but by what looked very like a wild-flower meadow and the odd copse of leafy trees.
‘It’s gorgeous,’ she said, speaking for almost the first time since she had left the plane about something other than an apologetic reference to the reality that she felt ill again.
Vitale sprang out of the car and opened the passenger door with a flashing smile that disconcerted her, his lean, darkly handsome features appreciative. ‘I thought you mightn’t like it,’ he admitted. ‘It’s not luxurious like the town house or the palace. It’s more of a getaway house.’
‘It’ll probably still be fancier than I’m used to,’ Jazz pointed out, simply relieved that he was acting human again instead of frozen.
A light hand resting at her spine, Vitale walked her down the path and into a hall with a polished terracotta tiled floor. Jazz shifted away from him again to peer through open doors, registering that the furnishings were simple and plain, not a swag nor any gilding in sight, and she relaxed even more, smiling when Vitale called her back to introduce her to the little woman he called Agnella, who looked after the house. Jazz froze to the floor when Agnella curtsied to her as if she were royalty.
‘Why did she do that?’ she asked Vitale as they followed their driver and their luggage up the oak staircase.
‘Because you’re my wife and a princess even though I don’t think you quite feel like one yet,’ Vitale suggested. ‘I’m afraid you’ll have to curtsy to my mother every time you see her because she’s a stickler for formal court etiquette. When I’m King, which is a very long way away in my future,’ he admitted wryly, ‘I will modernise and there will be a lot less bowing and scraping. Unfortunately, the Queen enjoys it too much.’
‘Is that so?’ Jazz encouraged, stunned by his sudden chattiness.
‘Yes, the monarchy in Lerovia would never be described as one of the more casual bicycling royal families,’ Vitale admitted with regret. ‘Life at the palace is pretty much the same as it must have been a couple of hundred years ago.’
Jazz pulled a face. ‘Can’t say I’m looking forward to that. How on earth is your mother going to react to me?’ she prompted anxiously.
‘Very badly,’ Vitale told her bluntly. ‘I intend to break that news by degrees for your benefit. You’ll be attending the ball as my fiancée.’
‘Fiancée?’ Jazz repeated in surprise. ‘How... For my benefit?’
‘My mother is likely to go off in an hysterical rant and she can be very abusive. I don’t want to risk her throwing a major scene at the ball and I’m determined to protect you from embarrassment. I’ll tell her after the ball that we are already married but not with you present. Be assured that, whatever happens, I will deal with the Queen.’
Merely inclining her head at that unsettling information about the kind of welcome she could expect from his royal mother, Jazz walked into a beautiful big bedroom with rafters high above, a stripped wooden floor and an ancient fireplace at the far end. In the centre a bed festooned in fresh white linen sat up against an exposed stone wall while a windowsill sported a glorious arrangement of white lilac blossoms. ‘I really love this house. Can’t you just imagine that fire lit in winter? You could add a couple of easy chairs there and use that chest by the wall as a coffee table.’
Vitale blinked in bewilderment, stealing a startled glance at her newly animated face. ‘What a great idea,’ he intoned, although he had never in all his life before thought about interior décor or furniture. ‘We could go shopping for chairs.’
‘Could we?’ A little of her animation dwindling, Jazz wondered why she was rabbiting on as if he were truly her husband and the farmhouse their home and her colour heightened with embarrassment. ‘I was just being silly and imaginative,’ she completed, kicking off her shoes and settling down on the side of the low bed because she was tired, worn down by her stress and her worries.
‘We’ll look for chairs. I hired a designer to do the basics here and never added anything else,’ Vitale repeated a shade desperately, keen to keep the conversation afloat even if he had to talk about furniture to do it. He could not stand to see Jazz look so sad and her interest in the farmhouse had noticeably lifted her mood for the first time that day. Considering that it had been their wedding day, Vitale felt very much to blame. ‘I didn’t really have the time to think about finishing touches but I’m grateful for any advice.’
‘I’m sure you could hire another interior designer,’ Jazz told him quellingly, recalling the wealth of the male she was addressing and feeling even more foolish.
‘I’d prefer you to do it,’ Vitale asserted in growing frustration, having watched her face dim again as though a light had been switched out. ‘You won’t make it too grand.’
‘Well, no,’ Jazz agreed dulcetly. ‘I have no experience of grand, so I could hardly make it that way.’
He watched her slight shoulders slump again and strode forward. ‘Would you like to wear your engagement ring?’ he asked with staggering abruptness.
‘My...what?’
Eager to employ any distraction available to him, Vitale dug a ring box out of his pocket and flipped it open, it being his experience that women loved jewellery. Although, as he extended the opulent emerald and diamond ring, he was belatedly recalling that Jazz had been annoyingly reluctant even to accept the basics like a gold watch and plain gold stud earrings from him.
‘Lovely,’ Jazz said woodenly, making no move to claim the ring.
Vitale’s strong jawline squared with stubborn determination. He lifted her limp hand and threaded the diamond ring onto her finger until it rested up against her wedding ring. ‘What do you think?’ he was forced to prompt when the silence stretched on even after she had snatched her hand back.
‘Stunning,’ Jazz said obediently since she could see it was expected of her.
‘It is yours. I’m not going to ask for it back!’ Vitale launched down at her with sudden impatience, wondering if that was the problem. ‘When we split up, everything I have given you is yours!’
Instead of being reassured, Jazz flinched and rose upright in a sudden movement, colour sparking over her cheekbones. ‘And isn’t that a lovely thing to say to me on our wedding day?’ she condemned sharply. ‘Of course, it wasn’t a real wedding day, was it?’
Thoroughly taken aback by her angry, aggressive stance, Vitale stared at her with bemused dark eyes. ‘It felt real enough to me.’
‘But it wasn’t real! Did you think I was in any danger of forgetting that for a moment? Well, don’t worry yourself! I wasn’t in danger of forgetting for a single moment. I had no wedding dress. You haven’t touched me since I told you I was pregnant, not even to kiss the bride! I know it’s all fake, like the stupid wedding ring and the ceremony and now an even stupider engagement ring. You don’t want to be engaged or married to me. Did you think that little piece of reality could possibly have escaped my notice?’ she demanded wrathfully at the top of her voice, which echoed loudly up into the rafters.
‘I didn’t want to be engaged or married to anyone,’ Vitale confessed in a driven undertone while he tried to work out what they were arguing about. ‘But if I have to be, you would definitely be my first choice.’
‘Oh, that makes me feel so much better!’ Jazz flung so sarcastically that even Vitale picked up on it.
Instantly Vitale regretted admitting that he hadn’t wanted to be engaged or married to anyone. Was that quite true though? He had looked at Jazz throughout the day and had felt amazingly relaxed about their new relationship. But obviously, not kissing his bride had gone down as a big fail, but then Vitale had never liked doing anything of that nature in fron
t of other people.
‘I was trying to compliment you.’
‘News flash...it didn’t work!’ Grabbing up a case from her collection of brand-new matching designer luggage, Jazz plonked it down on the bed.
‘You’re pregnant and you’re not supposed to lift heavy things!’ Vitale raked censoriously at her.
Jazz ignored him, ripping into the case, carelessly tossing out half the contents and finally extracting a robe. ‘There’d better be a bath in there for me to soak in,’ she muttered, stalking across the floor to the ajar door of the en suite, checking that there was and then recalling that she didn’t have her toiletries.
In a furious temper she went back to check the luggage and, still finding the all-important bag missing, left the bedroom to go back downstairs and see if it had been left in the car.
Vitale released his breath in an explosive surge, genuinely at a loss. Somehow everything was going wrong. He had been too honest with her. He should never have mentioned splitting up or her keeping the jewellery. Angel had said women were sentimental and sensitive and all of a sudden that prenuptial agreement he had settled in front of her loomed like a major misjudgement. He had to turn things around but he hadn’t a clue how and he sprang up again, concentrating on the overwhelming challenge of needing to please a woman for the first time in his life.
The bath, he thought, and then he had it, the awareness of her love of baths prompting him. He grabbed the flowers on the window sill up and strode into the bathroom like a man on a mission.