Page 18 of Marriage Made In Hate

‘Excuse me,’ she said, ‘but I must take this.’ Her voice warmed as she spoke to her caller. ‘Andrew. Hi! No, this is a good time. I’m being driven. Have you had a chance yet to see what I sent you?’

Beside her, she could see Luca had stiffened. Five minutes later, when she’d hung up, he turned towards her. There was an open question in his glance. Astonishment behind it. She knew the reason for it.

‘As you probably took in,’ she said dryly, replacing her phone in her handbag, leaving it on her lap, ‘I work at an environmental science consultancy. That was my boss, Dr Andrew Stevens, who was very understanding when I told him about my uncle’s diagnosis and prognosis.

I have been very kindly given an indefinite leave of absence, but I’m using my spare time, when Matteo’s resting, to put in some research and collate some information from various reports, surveys and scholarly papers into specialist briefing notes for our team. ’

‘On environmental science?’ Luca’s voice was expressionless.

‘On environmental science, yes,’ Bianca echoed.

His gaze had, perforce, gone back to the road, but she went on speaking. Her own voice had an odd quality to it, she thought. Part defiant—part defensive.

‘Luca, six years ago, when you told me that as well as being common-as-muck I was also pig-ignorant—yes, I know you never used those actual words, but believe me that was what I heard—it hit home. It really hit home. It made me angry, as well as hurt—and I wanted to fight back. Oh, you were gone, and I wasn’t getting you back—I knew that.

But I wanted… I don’t know… I wanted to show you—prove you wrong!

I realised I couldn’t do anything about being common-as-muck, but I could do something about being pig-ignorant. So I did. I did do something about it.’

She paused a moment and he glanced at her again. Her hands were clenched over the handles of her handbag as she went on, not looking at him but out through the windscreen, dead ahead.

‘I hated school. I told you as much, I remember. I thought I was too smart to need it. That I was fine not knowing all that “stupid stuff” as I thought it. But you threw a light on me that for the first time in my life I didn’t like.

So…’ She swallowed. ‘I enrolled in my local further education college…signed up for some classes. I didn’t know what I wanted to study, but eco stuff was popular, so I went for that.

And—amazingly—I took to it. Got really interested. I passed the exams I needed and then…’

She took another breath.

‘And then I went to uni. I went as a mature student, to an east London campus, and I went and I stayed the course. A year ago I got my degree—Bachelor of Science—and then I got a job as a junior researcher at the consultancy I work for. And… Well, that’s it, really.

I find it fascinating, and sometimes I have a hard time remembering just how pig-ignorant I was when you knew me. ’

Her voice changed.

‘The thing about education is that when you start learning about one thing you realise there’s a hell of lot of other interesting stuff out there.

Being a student exposed me to things I’d never paid any attention to before—like cultural stuff and history, arty things.

’ An acid note crept into her voice now.

‘It was while I was a student that I also realised that the world was a lot more welcoming if I spoke RP English. I got taken more seriously…was much more accepted. It’s hypocritical, I know, but it’s made it easier to progress in my career. It shouldn’t, but it does.’

She paused again. Then, ‘People are quick to judge—for good or ill.’

For a long moment Luca was silent. Then he spoke. ‘And I was one of them, wasn’t I, Bianca?’

‘Yes, you were. But…’ She took a breath.

‘Your condemnation did me good in the end, didn’t it?

Without it—without you dumping me so brutally and making no bones about why I would never fit into your elite world—I doubt I’d have been angry enough…

hurt enough…to do what I did. Achieve what I have.

I’d probably still be pulling pints in the East End. ’

She could see Luca’s hands tighten on the steering wheel. When he spoke there was an edge in his voice, a self-condemning one.

‘That gives me a degree of comfort I don’t deserve.’

‘No,’ she agreed, ‘you don’t deserve it. But you can take the credit for doing good by me in the end.’

‘I never said you were stupid, Bianca, at least allow me that.’

‘Just not fit for the elite world you live in.’ She knew her voice had gone back to being flat again.

He didn’t answer—but then what could he have said? She’d only spoken the truth, after all, about how very different their backgrounds were.

A thought struck her, and her brow furrowed. She turned her head towards him.

‘Giuseppe, the doctor and that jeweller addressed you as “Signor Visconte”—which I assume is the Italian version of “Mr Viscount”, or whatever.’ She forbore from putting any sardonic tone into her voice, keeping it neutral. ‘But I don’t remember you using that title in England?’

‘Because I wasn’t a visconte then,’ came the reply. ‘My father was still alive.’ He paused, overtaking yet another vehicle. ‘He died three years ago. Together with my mother.’

His voice had no expression in it—but she heard emotion all the same. It took her aback.

‘How…?’ she faltered, and then went quiet.

‘A plane crash. My father was a diplomat, and spent most of his life in other countries because of it. My mother went with him usually. They were in a light plane in South America when a storm hit, downing the plane. There were no survivors.’

‘Oh, God, how awful…’ She knew there was sincerity in her voice—how could there not be? ‘I’m sorry,’ she said quietly. ‘That must have been unbearable for you. You don’t even have siblings…’

She knew from her time with him in London that he was an only child, as was she. It was something they’d had in common. And now there was something else.

Having no living parents.

‘It was hard,’ he acknowledged. ‘Matteo… Matteo was a tower of strength for me. I’d…

I’d always been close to him, and to Luisa.

With my parents abroad, I often spent the school holidays with them—they were very good friends of my parents.

He helped me through a very bad time when my parents were killed. ’

She was silent for a moment. Then, ‘You are all but a son to him,’ she said. ‘Not just a godson.’

‘Yes.’

He didn’t say any more, and she respected his silence. Knowing what he’d gone through—losing his parents so traumatically, so tragically—could not but draw on her sympathy. Did it make her feel different about him? Thoughts flickered…circling, unsure, uncertain. Feeling their way…

Silence fell between them again, and Bianca went back to looking at the passing countryside, glad to let her thoughts subside.

The landscape was becoming hillier, and more forested.

After a while Luca turned off the autostrada onto a quieter road, leading deeper into the countryside, and then again onto a smaller road that wound around the foot of a hill, gaining elevation as it did so.

He slowed, and Bianca could see an impressive-looking ornate pair of three-metre-high gates with gilded scrolling set into high stone walls. She could see there was a lodge situated just behind the gates, and as Luca turned the car towards them someone issued from the lodge to throw open the gates.

Luca slid down his window. ‘Luigi… grazie .’

The man beamed, and Bianca could see him glancing curiously at her. Luca said something more to him, in rapid Italian which she could not follow, and then he was closing his window, Luigi was standing away, and they were moving off down the wide, gravelled drive.

Ahead, Bianca could see their destination.

She had thought her uncle’s grand villa large—but this was, indeed, a palazzo , much older than Matteo’s opulent nineteenth-century house.

Bianca could see at once why her uncle had called Luca’s home an historic architectural gem.

She gazed at it appreciatively, impressed.

Despite its size and grandeur, it was quietly beautiful, with a charm about it that was instantly obvious.

It might be a historic palazzo , but it was also clearly a home, too.

Strange feelings went through her as they drew up outside it on the broad white gravel carriage sweep.

Luca’s home.

His natural environment.

His ancestral pile…

His very own personal stately home…

Thoughts hollowed out inside her, whether she wanted them to or not.

No wonder he thought I wouldn’t fit in here.

His words to her echoed in her head.

‘We come from very different worlds, Bianca…’

Totally different.

It was a disquieting thought, and one that hung uneasily in her consciousness.

She could see two heraldic beasts—mythical by the look of them—guarding the ancient-looking front entrance, and some form of hatch inset into the architrave.

Luca was cutting the engine and opening his door.

As he did so, someone emerged from the palazzo and came around to open her door.

Murmuring, ‘Grazie…’ she got out, looking around her.

Extensive gardens and grounds surrounded the palazzo , bathed in warm sunlight, and the scent of flowers was all about.

‘It’s very beautiful,’ she heard herself say.

‘Yes,’ said Luca.

It was all he said.

She realised, with a glance at him, that he was tense, and immediately knew why. Her sense of disquiet grew. He hadn’t wanted to bring her here—she was an interloper, an uninvited guest he was being forced to allow to be here simply for the sake of his godfather’s peace of mind.

But that isn’t my fault!

Protest replaced disquiet. She would not feel intimidated by Luca’s ancestral pile. Yes, it might have brought home to her how glaringly true his words to her six years ago had been, but that did not mean she had to apologise for the differences between them—not then, not now.