Page 5 of Prince of Masks (Hearts of Bluestone #2)

Amelia can’t come with us.

Nonna doesn’t like her very much.

Nonna isn’t the sort of witch to make anyone outright uncomfortable, but she’s certainly the sort of woman to cut down any chastising of me. Even Mother can’t always get away with telling me off if Nonna doesn’t agree.

All in all, she puts Amelia in her place.

I love that about her.

I love that she can stand up to even Grandmother Ethel. I love how she tells off Mother, and even my father sometimes. I love that she prefers me over Oliver.

Yes, that’s it.

Most of all, I love how she loves me.

So the veil to Naples, then another taxi out past the mountains and scorched earth for over an hour, it doesn’t bother me.

It’s worth the suffering of travel—

Because this is where I end up:

At the villa wrapped in vines.

Not such a large home, something of a small manor, but certainly charming and rustic in its restored beauty. The faded pink facade is enough to tug a smile onto my face as I clammer out of the taxi and into the strange heat of Italy’s desert lands.

But that smile splits into a grin as I look up the stairs where an older woman wearing floral overalls and rubber boots waves a dirt-streaked hand.

Mother’s only just getting out of the taxi, but I abandon her and run up the steps. The short heels of my vintage 1920’s shoes clack on the stone.

Nonna spreads her arms—and I run right into her open embrace. The hit of perfumed flowers and rich soil is instant.

Must have been in her greenhouse.

Her arms, wrapped firmly around me, are thick, but not flabby. Not sagged or too soft. They are thick as branches, sturdy, strong .

Nonna is strong.

I smile into her embrace.

My cheekbone is pressed against the hard line of her collarbone. I don’t pull away.

Nonna murmurs into my hair, “Now why are you not in school?” There’s no judgement in the way she asks, her voice is soft, and she adds, “Not that I’m unhappy to see my favourite grandchild.”

I tug away with a smile. “You’re not supposed to say that.”

“Say what?” She shoots me a fleeting wink.

Mother lags behind, not in the same hurry that propelled me into a run up the stairs in the afternoon’s sun. Her voice carries, “Olivia is home early for her preparations. We come from her dress fitting in Milan.”

“Oh.” Nonna’s small smile is mischief.

Whatever Mother is selling, Nonna is not buying. She just rests her hand, sprinkled with dirt granules, on my shoulder and steers us around to face the weathered doors to the villa.

It’s not hot, exactly, not like the south of Spain in the middle of the year, but it is warm and dry enough that, as she leads the way through the peeling-wallpapered hall to the sitting room, the ceiling-fans circling above is an instant reprieve.

Mother follows, peeling off her slender, white leather gloves finger by finger. “Are you still determined to live without air-conditioning? It is an easy upgrade, and of course Hamish and I will pay for it.”

Nonna sinks into the patterned couch, dated but well kept. The sort of sofa one could nap on in the dead of summer, and it would be better than a rest in bed. I know from experience.

She shoots her daughter a sharp look. “Why do I need that when I have fans?”

I don’t need to look at Mother to know she clacks her fingernails; I hear the familiar, annoyed sound as I side-step the shabby coffee table.

Nonna lifts her hand, slender and gentle, to beckon me. “Oh, the whispers I hear about you.”

I slip onto the couch, my knees pushed up against the side of her leg.

My smile is twisted. “What whispers?”

Her arm comes down on my shoulders. She tugs me closer to her. “A variety of proposals,” she says. “More than a dozen. Of course, how can we be surprised? Men must be crawling through fire to get to you.”

I glance at Mother.

She’s tossed her coat and gloves onto the side-table, where they are draped, unattended.

Nonna has not as many servants as she should.

Mother’s mouth puckers with the annoyance of it all as she drops into the armchair across from us. Her tight smile lifts to me before she reaches for a photo album left out on the coffee table.

“I don’t know about a dozen ,” I scoff, and I stay in Nonna’s hold, stay in the warmth and the ease of her company. “I only know of two that Father’s considering.”

Slowly, Mother turns over page after page in the picture album, finding herself in the images, finding her children, and her father who is long gone now.

I love photo albums. Suppose that’s why it has been left out—for me to flick through.

Mother beat me to it.

Nonna draws back my attention. “And who are you considering?”

I bite down on a laugh.

Who am I considering?

Good one.

She draws her arm back from my shoulders before she shifts to face me. “At least tell me you have a sweetheart at school.”

I just shake my head—especially under the sudden inky feel of Mother’s gaze on me.

Nonna doesn’t play the game the way she should. She’s in it, as we all are, but she plays by her own rules.

Nonna is gentry. Or she was before my mother married up.

My parents met at Bluestone. Mother came in as gentry, got close with Amelia, and after years at the academy, my father had fallen in love with her. He made an offer before they graduated.

And that’s that.

Nonna hasn’t taken to the rise of society that the marriage brought her. She should live better, or with us at Elcott Abbey.

She refuses.

Stubborn, Mother calls her.

I consider Nonna, the stains on her overalls, the dirt she gets on the couch, the lazy braid of her grey hair.

I wonder if she’s the reason I am the way that I am. That her eternal casual approach to our roles in the world, her reclusive ways, her bond with nature over society, is in my blood, and it’s the reason I don’t quite fit in the way that I should.

Maybe I took after Nonna more than anyone else in the bloodline.

A sharp jab dents my side.

I bite down on a wince.

Nonna’s fingertip still pokes into the soft flesh beneath my rib. “Tell me, girl. Who has your lips at school?”

“No one, of course.” I lift my chin. “I am there to learn.”

She scoffs. Her hand retreats. “You keep your secrets, then. Don’t pity me, an old witch out here, alone—no stories to feed my vines.”

My grin is accompanied by a faint blush.

I would tell her something, something small, like that I have an interest in Eric Harling, and I would tell her some small details about him… if Mother was not around.

But she is, and she makes herself known as she cuts in with a sigh, “It is your choice to be away from the world, Mother. You would do better with us. You must consider it. And if you maintain this stubbornness for independence, then have The Pink Cottage.”

The Pink Cottage is one of many cottages on the grounds of Elcott Abbey. It is, however, the largest and best kept of them all. Closest to the manor, too. Only a ten-minute walk through the gardens, or a minute or two on one of the buggies.

I would love for Nonna to live so close.

I tell her that. “I will visit you all the time. We can have tea every day—and I will show you my animals.” I’m practically beaming at the prospect. “Oh, you’ll love them. And you can hear me play whenever you like.”

Mother’s smile is faint, as is the nod she gives.

Approval.

I feel lighter.

But Nonna gives the same answer she always does whenever the matter is raised: “I will leave this home when I am taken out in a casket, Vittoria.”

Mother clacks her nails, her steady stare lethal. “Alone.”

I suck my lips inwards. Eyes wide, I stiffen on the couch. I become a statue, silent and unmoving.

Mother’s right.

I would never say that to Nonna, obviously, but still. I get it. I hate that she lives out here, alone, so far, so stubborn.

When her husband, Grandfather Vincenzo, passed away, Nonna didn’t want to move out of the home she shared with him.

A little villa out in the mountains, an hour’s drive from a small city.

Privacy, but close to civilisation. A rare thing, so she believes.

But it isn’t, because we have the same in England at Elcott Abbey, where the nearest village is a thirty-minute walk, and the closest town is a half-hour drive.

But then, Nonna loves her land. Her land is great. It has a greenhouse, a small vineyard, it houses a servant’s cottage and a barn not even within eyesight of the back porch.

But it’s still just a gentry villa.

This home is where Nonna’s heart is.

Mother loathes it.

“Is that what you want?” Mother demands and, with a huff, slams the photo album shut. “To die alone in this house, so far from your child, your grandchildren?”

“I am not alone,” she sniffs and lifts her nose, proud. “Your brother visits twice a month—”

Mother scoffs. “Oh, does he? He lives only an hour from here, but I am so pleased to know he makes the effort—twice a month.”

My mouth tilts at the reminder of Uncle Aldo’s existence.

He isn’t all that familiar to me. He’s gentry, married low to a commoner. And, according to Mother, he’s awful lazy, entitled, wanting ‘hand-outs’ all the time, and a drunkard.

I met him a handful of times here, at this very villa, over the years—but on my ninth birthday at Nonna’s, Aldo went on some booze-fuelled rampage about bloodlines, everyone wearing masks, hypocrites, and him deserving more.

Mother punched him.

She broke a nail.

Then she punched him again.

Never saw her act that way before. The gentry in her came out. And I never saw Uncle Aldo again.

That’s not a sad thing. I didn’t like him then.

“Mila is great company,” Nonna says, her tone firm. “She has been with me every day for twenty-three years. One could say she’s something like… family.”

Mother tosses the book onto the coffee table. It lands with a smack that I feel in my bones. “Mila is a krum and a servant.”

Okayyyyy.

I did not expect to be invited along to a war. Feels like I’ve toppled into a pot of boiling water.

Mother and Nonna must have been in a fresh bicker about this before I came for a visit today.