Smothering a yawn, Frankie let herself be walked at a smart pace across the lawn. Yes, it was a lawn, definitely a lawn—well, possibly more of a stretch of parkland really, she finally decided an instant before she fell to an abrupt halt to gape at the quite spectacular building basking in the late-afternoon heat about a hundred yards ahead of them.
‘My home,’ Santino advanced, a firm hand on her elbow urging her on.
‘Your home? Where on earth are we?’ she mumbled in a daze.
‘About thirty miles from Rome. The paparazzi will not disturb us here. The estate boundaries are constantly patrolled and the surveillance technology which supports the security presence is of the highest calibre. A leaf doesn’t drop from a tree at the Villa Fontana without someone knowing about it.’
Fascinated, Frankie absorbed the breathtaking beauty of the centuries-old country mansion before her. A two-storey central block with an elaborate but very pretty facade was flanked on either side by curved wings creating an inviting sunlit piazza to the front. At the great domed and arched entrance beyond, the longest limousine Frankie had ever seen sat with blacked-out windows.
‘You’re about to meet my parents,’ Santino imparted without a flicker of expression, but his strong profile was taut. ‘You should feel honoured. Evidently they have dragged themselves all the way from Switzerland to make their shock, horror and disapproval known.’
Catapulted with a vengeance back into full awareness, Frankie gulped. ‘Your...parents?’
‘Once you dreamt of meeting them,’ Santino reminded her lethally. ‘You imagined how you would exchange recipes and knitting patterns with my mother. You wondered if you should write to them to reassure them that I was being wonderfully well looked after. And how heartbroken you assumed my poor mother must be because she lived too far away to even attend her own son’s wedding—’
‘Don’t remind me!’ Frankie exclaimed, her lovely face burning with chagrin as they mounted the steps to pass under the entrance arch.
Through the open doors beyond they entered a magnificent long hallway adorned with marble pillars and statues in alcoves. Thoroughly intimidated by the grandeur, Frankie dropped her volume to that of a frantic whisper. ‘All right, so I had about as much idea of your background then as a little green man landing from Mars, but I can’t meet your parents now, looking like this!’ She glanced down at herself to wonder in fierce frustration why she hadn’t long since binned a dress that resembled a crumpled dishcloth after a few hours of wear.
‘Francesca...it really wouldn’t matter if you were a saint of stunning perfection and poise. They would find your very existence no more palatable,’ Santino admitted with a wry twist of his mouth.
‘Why didn’t you warn me that your parents might be here waiting?’
‘They rarely visit me. But scurrilous publicity involving the family name would appear to have a very enlivening effect upon them.’
‘Look, you should deal with your parents on your own,’ Frankie muttered. ‘Not much point in getting them all worked up when I’m not staying around, is there?’
‘That’s my business, not theirs,’ Santino decreed with harsh emphasis, and he curved an imprisoning arm against her spine.
An anxious-looking little woman in a smart black dress was stationed outside the last door to the left at the end of the hall. She burst into frantic, low-pitched Italian. Santino made smooth, soothing responses.
‘My housekeeper, Lina. I’ll introduce you later. Visitors who refuse all refreshment unnerve her, and my mother can be rather intimidating,’ Santino confided in exasperation as he spread open the door on a very grand drawing room.
Her mouth dry as a bone, Frankie focused on the small, dark, exquisitely dressed older woman seated in a stiff-backed chair. ‘Intimidating’ was the word. The ice-blue of her suit matched her eyes, and Frankie finally saw the source of Santino’s superb bone structure. A tall distinguished man with white hair turned from the windows. He held himself with the same unbending reserve and formality as his wife.
‘Francesca...’ Santino murmured flatly. ‘Allow me to introduce you to my parents... Sonia and Alvaro.’
‘I will accept no introduction,’ Sonia Vitale asserted glacially. ‘Explain yourself, Santino! How could you disgrace us by allowing your outrageous association with this woman to be exposed by the press?’
‘We understood that this unfortunate affair had been buried some years ago,’ Alvaro Vitale advanced.
‘I made no such promise,’ Santino countered levelly. ‘Francesca is my wife and I expect you to treat her with all due respect and civility.’
Sonia Vitale ran coldly outraged eyes over Frankie. Her lip curling, she turned her imperious head away again in a gesture of lofty dismissal. ‘I will never receive that woman into my home as my daughter-in-law.’
‘Then you will not receive me either,’ Santino responded harshly. ‘And I shouldn’t think that would be too great a sacrifice. After all, you only see me once a year at Christmas as it is.’
F
rankie sent Santino an astonished glance and then focused on his mother again, shocked by the bitter hostility the older woman could not conceal when she looked at her son.
‘You must see that this is an inappropriate marriage,’ Alvaro Vitale intervened afresh. ‘I intend no disrespect towards your wife, but on one count your mother must surely be excused her frank speech. Francesca’s background scarcely equips her to take her place in our family—’
‘We are not royalty, Papà,’ Santino incised grimly.
‘It is a waste of time to try to reason with you, Santino. You could never be anything other than a disappointment to me,’ his mother condemned cruelly. ‘But you betray your brother’s memory with this insult of a marriage—’
Beside her, Frankie felt Santino’s big, powerful frame tense like a cat about to spring, but a split second earlier she had felt him recoil from his mother’s attack. She stiffened, fighting the most extraordinary urge to speak up in his defence.