The Bride's Awakening

Chapter Four

VILLA ROSSO was dark as the driver let her out at the front door. Ana tiptoed through the silent downstairs, wanting to avoid her father, even though she was fairly certain he was asleep. Enrico Viale didn’t stay up much past ten.
She fell into bed, and then thankfully was fast sleep within minutes. When she awoke, the sun was slanting through the curtains, sending its long golden rays along the floor of her bedroom. Last night filtered back to her through a haze of sleep: the so-called business proposition, the billiards, the whisky, the kiss. She had no head for hard liquor at all. If she hadn’t had that whisky, she wouldn’t have kissed him, wouldn’t have let him kiss her. Wouldn’t now be wondering about all the possibilities—all the hopes—that kiss had given her, her body awakened to its natural longings, her soul singing with sudden, fierce joy—
Quickly, Ana swung out of bed and dressed. She strode downstairs, determined to put the thoughts and, more importantly, the treacherous desires Vittorio Cazlevara created within her out of her mind completely, at least for a morning. They were too seductive, too dangerous, too much.
She stopped short when she saw her father in the dining room, eating toast and kippers. Her English mother, Emily, had insisted on a full English breakfast every day and, sixteen years after her death, Enrico still continued the tradition.
‘Good morning!’ he called brightly. ‘You were out late last night. I waited up until eleven.’
‘You shouldn’t have.’ Almost reluctantly, Ana came into the dining room, dropping her usual kiss on her father’s head. She wasn’t ready to talk to her father, to ask him how much he knew. She remembered his lack of surprise at Vittorio’s return, or the fact that he’d asked her out to dinner. Had he known—could he possibly have imagined—just what the business proposition was? The thought sent something strange and alarming coursing through Ana’s blood. She didn’t know whether it was fear or joy, or something in between. Had Vittorio asked her father for his blessing? How long had he been planning this?
‘Come, have some breakfast. The kippers are especially good this morning.’
Ana made a face as she grabbed a roll from the sideboard and poured herself a coffee from the porcelain pot left on the table. ‘You know I can’t abide kippers.’
‘But they’re so delicious,’ Enrico said with a smile, and ate one.
Ana sat down opposite him, sipping her coffee even though it was too hot. ‘I can only stay a moment,’ she warned. ‘I need to go down to the offices.’
‘But Ana! It’s Saturday.’
Ana shrugged; she often worked on Saturdays, especially in the busy growing season. ‘The grapes don’t stop for anyone, Papà.’
‘How was your dinner with Vittorio?’
‘Interesting.’
‘He wanted to discuss business?’ Enrico asked in far too neutral a tone.
Ana looked at him directly, daring him to be dishonest. ‘Papà, did Vittorio speak to you about this—this business proposition of his?’
Enrico looked down, shredding a kipper onto his plate with the tines of his fork. ‘Perhaps,’ he said very quietly.
Ana didn’t know whether to be disappointed or relieved or, even, strangely flattered. She felt a confusing welter of emotions, so she could only shake her head and ask with genuine curiosity, ‘And what did you think of it?’
‘I was surprised, at first.’ He looked up, smiling wryly, although his eyes were serious. ‘As I imagine you were.’
‘Completely.’ The single word was heartfelt.
‘But then I thought about it—and Vittorio showed me the advantages—’
‘What advantages?’ What could Vittorio have said to convince her father that he should allow his daughter to marry him as a matter of convenience? For surely, Ana knew now, her father was convinced.
‘Many, Ana. Stability, security.’
‘I have those—’
‘Children. Companionship.’ He paused and then said softly, ‘Happiness.’
‘You think Vittorio Cazlevara could make me happy?’ Ana asked. She didn’t sound sceptical; she felt genuinely curious. She wanted to know. Could he make her happy? Why was she thinking this way? She’d been happy…Yet at that moment Ana couldn’t pretend she didn’t want more, that she didn’t want the things her father had mentioned. Children. A home of her own. To kiss Vittorio again, to taste him…
Some last bastion of common sense must have remained for she burst out suddenly, ‘We’re talking about marriage, Papà.’ Her voice broke on the word. ‘A life commitment. Not some…some sort of transaction.’ Even if Vittorio had presented it as such.
‘What is your objection?’ Enrico asked, his fingertips pressed together, his head cocked to one side. He’d always been a logical man; some would call him unemotional. Even after the death of his beloved wife, his calm exterior had barely cracked.
Ana remembered the one time he’d truly shown his grief, rocking and keening on Emily’s bedroom floor; as a girl, the sudden, uncontrollable display of emotion had shocked her. He’d closed her off from it, slammed the door and then, with a far worse finality, shut himself off from her rather than let his daughter see him in such a state of emotional weakness. The separation at such a crucial time had devastated her.
It had been two years before they’d regained the relationship they’d once had.
Now she knew she couldn’t really be surprised that he was approaching the issue of her possible marriage with such a cool head.
Vittorio’s arguments would have appealed marvellously to his own sense of checks and balances. Indeed, she shared his sense of logic, prided herself on her lack of feminine fancy. After living with her father as her lone companion for most of her life, the sentimental theatrics of most women were cloying and abhorrent. She didn’t, Ana reflected with a wry sorrow, even know how to be a woman.
Yet Vittorio had treated her as one, when he’d kissed her…
Even so. Marriage…
‘My objection,’ she said, ‘is the entire idea of marriage as a business proposition. It seems so cold.’
‘But surely it doesn’t have to be? Better to go into such an enterprise with a clear head, reasonable expectations—’
‘I still don’t even understand why Vittorio wants to marry me—’ Ana said, stopping suddenly, wishing she hadn’t betrayed herself. Just like her father, she hated to be vulnerable. She knew what it felt like to be so exposed, so raw, and then so rejected.
‘He needs a wife. He must be in his late thirties, you know, and a man starts to think of his future, his children—’
‘But why me?’ The words came, as unstoppable as the fears and doubts that motivated them. ‘He could have anyone, anyone at all—’
‘Why not you, Ana?’ Enrico asked gently. ‘You would make any man a wonderful wife.’
Ana’s mouth twisted. Her father also called her dolcezza. Sweet little thing. He was her father, her papà; of course he believed such things. That didn’t mean she believed them, or him. ‘Still, there would be no love involved.’
Enrico gave a little shrug. ‘In time, it comes.’
She was shredding her roll onto her plate, just as her father had done with his poor little kipper. Her appetite—what little there had been of it—had completely vanished. She looked up at her father and shook her head. ‘With Vittorio, I don’t think so.’ Her throat went tight, and she cursed herself for a fool. She didn’t need love. She’d convinced herself of that long ago. She didn’t even want it, and she couldn’t fathom why she’d mentioned it to her father.
Her father remained unfazed. ‘Still, affection. Respect. These things count for much, dolcezza. More perhaps than you can even imagine now, when love seems so important.’
‘Yet you loved Mamma.’
Her father nodded, his face seeming to crumple just a little bit. Even sixteen years on, he still lived for her memory.
‘Don’t you think I want that kind of love too?’ Ana asked, her voice turning raw. Despite what she’d said—what she believed—she needed to know her father’s answer.
Enrico didn’t speak for a moment. He poured himself another cup of coffee and sipped it thoughtfully. ‘That kind of love,’ he finally said, ‘is not easy. It is not comfortable.’
‘I never said I wanted to be comfortable.’
‘Comfort,’ Enrico told her with a little smile, ‘is always underrated by those who have experienced nothing else.’
‘Are you saying you weren’t…comfortable…with Mamma?’ The idea was a novel one, and one Ana didn’t like to consider too closely. She’d always believed her parents to have had the grandest of love matches, adoring each other to the end. A fairy tale, and one she’d clung to in those first dark days of grief. Yet now her father seemed to be implying something else.
‘I loved her,’ Enrico replied. ‘And I was happy. But comfortable, always? No. Your mother was a wonderful woman, Ana, be assured of that. But she was emotional—and I’m the one who is Italian!’ He smiled, the curve of his mouth tinged with a little sadness. ‘It was not always easy to live with someone who felt things so deeply.’ Snatches of memory came to her, swirls of colour and sound. Her mother crying, the cloying scent of a sick room, the murmurs of a doctor as her father shook his head. And then her mother pulling her close, whispering fervently against her hair how she, Ana, would be the only one, the only child. Love, Ana thought, did not protect you from sorrow. Perhaps it only softened the blow.
Enrico put down his coffee cup and gave Ana a level look. ‘Be careful to realize what you would be giving up by not marrying Vittorio, Ana.’
Ana drew back, stung. ‘What are you saying? That I might as well take the best offer—the only offer—I can get?’
‘No, of course I am not saying that,’ Enrico said gently. ‘But it is a very good offer.’
Ana sipped her coffee, moodily acknowledging the truth of her father’s words. She’d only given voice to her own fears—that there would be no other offers. Would she rather live alone, childless, lonely—because, face it, she was—than attempt some kind of marriage with Vittorio? She didn’t know the answer. She could hardly believe she was actually asking herself the question.
‘Vittorio is a good man,’ Enrico said quietly.
‘How do you know?’ Ana challenged. ‘He’s been away for fifteen years.’
‘I knew his father. Vittorio was the apple of Arturo’s eye. Arturo was a good man too, but he was hard.’ Enrico frowned a little. ‘Without mercy.’
‘And what if Vittorio is the same?’ She remembered the steely glint in his eye and wondered just how well she knew him. Not well at all, was the obvious answer. Certainly not well enough to marry him.
And yet…he was a good man. She felt that in her bones, in a certain settling of her soul. She believed her father and, more importantly, she believed Vittorio.
It’s all right to be sad, rondinella.
‘Vittorio needs a wife to soften him,’ Enrico said with a smile.
‘I don’t want him to be my project,’ Ana protested. ‘Or for me to be his.’ She was so prickly, had been so ever since Vittorio had proposed—if you could call it proposing. The word conjured images of roses and diamond rings and declarations of undying love. Not a cold-blooded contract.
‘Of course not,’ Enrico agreed, ‘but you know, in marriage, you are each other’s projects. You don’t seek to change each other, but it is hoped that you will affect one another, shape and smooth each other’s rough edges.’
Ana made a face. ‘You make it sound like two rocks in a stream.’
‘But that’s exactly it,’ Enrico exclaimed. ‘Two rocks rubbing along together in the river of life.’
Ana let out a reluctant laugh. ‘Now, really, Papà, you are waxing far too philosophical for me. I must get to work.’ She rose from the table, kissing him again, and went to get her shoes and coat; a light spring drizzle was falling.
Once at the winery, she immersed herself in what she loved best. Business. Just like Vittorio, a sly little voice inside her mind whispered, but Ana pushed it away. She wasn’t going to think about Vittorio or marriage or any of it until noon, at least.
In fact, she barely lifted her head from the papers scattered over her desk until Edoardo knocked on her door in the late afternoon. ‘A package, Signorina Viale.’
‘A package?’ Ana blinked him into focus. ‘You mean a delivery?’
‘Not for the winery,’ Edoardo said. ‘It is marked personal. For you. It was dropped off—by the Count of Cazlevara.’
Ana stilled, her heart suddenly pounding far too fiercely. Vittorio had been here, had sent her something? Anticipation raced through her, made her dizzy with longing. Somehow she managed to nod stiffly, with apparent unconcern, and raised one hand to beckon him. ‘Bring it in, please.’
The box was white, long and narrow and tied with a satin ribbon in pale lavender. Roses, Ana thought. It must be. She felt mingled disappointment and anticipation; roses were beautiful, but when it came to flowers they were expected and a bit, well, ordinary. It didn’t take much thought to send a woman roses.
Still, she hadn’t received roses or any other flowers in years, so she opened the box with some excitement, only to discover he hadn’t sent roses at all.
He’d sent grapes.
She stared at the freshly cut vines with their cluster of new, perfect, pearl-like grapes and then bent her head to breathe in their wonderful earthy scent. There was a stiff little card nestled among the leaves. Ana picked it up and read:
A new hybrid of Vinifera and Rotundifolia, from the Americas, that I thought you’d be interested in.—V.
She flicked the card against her fingers and then, betrayingly, pressed it against her lips. It smelled fresh and faintly pungent, like the grapes. She closed her eyes. This, she realized, was much better than roses, and she had a feeling Vittorio knew it.
Was this his way of romancing her? Or simply convincing her? Showing her the benefits of such business?
Did it even matter? He’d done it; he’d known what she’d like, and Ana found she was pleased.
For the rest of the day Ana immersed herself in work, determined not to think of Vittorio or the spray of grapes that remained on her desk, in plain view. Yet she couldn’t quite keep the thoughts—the hopes—from slipping slyly into her mind. She found herself constructing a thousand what-ifs. What if we married? What if we had a child? What if we actually were happy?
These thoughts—tempting, dangerous—continued to dance along the fringes of her mind over the next week. She caught herself more than once, chin in hand, lost in a daydream that was vague enough to seem reasonable. Possible. She found she was arguing with herself, listing the reasons why a marriage of convenience was perfectly sensible. Why it was, in fact, a good idea.
She didn’t see Vittorio all week, but every day there was something from him: a newspaper article on a new wine, a bar of dark chocolate—how did he know that was her secret indulgence?—a spray of lilacs. Ana accepted each gift, found herself savouring them, even as she knew why he was doing it. It was, undoubtedly, a means to an end, a way of showing her how it could be between them.
I think it could be good between us, Ana…Good in so many ways.
Remembering how it had felt to kiss him—how he’d felt, the evidence of his own arousal—made Ana agree with him. Or, at least, want to agree with him. And want to experience it again.
A week after her dinner with Vittorio, as the day came to a close, the sun starting its orange descent, Ana left the winery office and decided to walk the half-kilometre home along the winding dirt track, her mind still brimming with those seductive what-ifs. A new wealth of possibilities was opening up to her, things she’d never hoped to have. A husband, a child, a home, a life beyond what she’d already made for herself, what she’d been happy to have until Vittorio stirred up these latent desires like a nest of writhing serpents. Ana wondered if they could ever be coaxed to sleep again.
If she said no, could she go back to her life with the endless work days and few evenings out among old men and fellow winemakers? Could she lull to sleep those deep and dangerous desires for a husband, a family, a home—a castle, even—of her own? Could she stop craving another kiss and, more than that, so much more, the feel of another’s body against hers, that wonderful spiral of desire uncoiling and rising within her, demanding to be sated?
No, Ana acknowledged, she couldn’t, not easily anyway and, even more revealingly, she didn’t want to. She wanted to feel Vittorio’s lips against hers again. She wanted to know the touch of his hands on her body. She wanted to be married, to live and learn together like the two stones her father had been talking about.
Even if there was no love. She didn’t need it.
Stopping suddenly right there in the road, Ana laughed aloud. Was her decision already made? Was she actually going to marry Vittorio?
No. Surely she couldn’t make such a monumental decision so quickly, so carelessly. Surely her life was worth more than that.
Yet, even as common sense argued its case, her heart and body were warring against it, lost in a world of wonderful—and sensual—possibility.
Slowly, she started walking again; the sun was low in the sky, sending long lavender rays across the horizon. Villa Rosso appeared in the distance, its windows winking in the sunlight, its long, low stone fa?ade so familiar and dear. If she married Vittorio, she wouldn’t live there any more. Her father would be alone. The thought stopped her once more in the road; could she do that? Could she leave her father after all they’d shared and endured together? She knew he would want her to do so; this marriage—should it happen—already had his blessing.
Still, it would be hard, painful even. It made her realize afresh just how enormous a decision she was contemplating.
Could she actually say yes? Was she brave—and foolish—enough to do it?
As she came closer to the house, she saw a familiar navy Porsche parked in the drive. Vittorio’s car. He was inside, waiting for her, and the realization made her insides flip right over. She’d missed him, she realized incredulously; she’d expected him to come before now.
She’d wanted him to come.
At the front step she took a moment to brush the hair away from her face and wipe the dust from her shoes before she opened the door and stepped into the foyer.
It was empty, but she followed the voices into the study, where she checked at the sight of Vittorio and her father in what looked like a cosy tête-à-tête. Enrico looked up and smiled as she entered, and Vittorio stood.
‘We were just talking about you,’ Enrico said with a little smile and, despite the treacherous beating of her heart, Ana smiled rather coolly back.
‘Were you? What a surprise.’
‘I came to see if you’d like to have dinner with me,’ Vittorio said. He seemed entirely unruffled at being caught gossiping about her with her father.
Ana hesitated. She wanted to have dinner with Vittorio again but suddenly she also felt uncertain, afraid. Of what, she could not even say. She was afraid to rush, to show her own eagerness. She needed time to sort her thoughts and perhaps even to steel her heart. ‘I’m not dressed—’
‘No matter.’
She glanced down at her grey wool trousers and plain white blouse—which, aggravatingly, had become untucked. Again. ‘Really?’
Vittorio arched his eyebrows, a smile playing around his mouth. ‘Really.’ And, though he said nothing more, Ana knew he was surmising that she had a wardrobe of similarly unappealing clothes upstairs. At least they were clean and freshly ironed.
Still, she accepted the challenge. Why should she change for Vittorio? Why should she attempt to look pretty—if such a thing could be done—for the sake of this business arrangement? She lifted her chin. ‘Fine. Let me just wash my face and hands at least.’ He nodded, and Ana walked quickly from the room, trying to ignore the hurt that needled her, the little sink of her heart at his indifference to her clothes, her appearance. She wanted Vittorio to care how she looked. She wanted him to like how she looked.
Get over it, her mind told her, the words hard and determined. If you’re going to marry him, this is how it is going to be.
Her heart sank a little further. She wished it hadn’t.
Within just a few minutes they were speeding down the darkening drive, away from Villa Rosso, the windows open to the fragrant evening air.
‘Where are we going?’ Ana asked as the hair she’d just tidied blew into tangles around her face.
‘Venice.’
‘Venice!’ she nearly yelped. ‘I’m not dressed for that—’
Vittorio’s glance was hooded yet smiling. ‘Let me worry about that.’
Ana sat back, wondering just how and why Vittorio was going to worry about her clothes. The idea made her uneasy.
She found out soon enough. Vittorio parked the Porsche at Fusina and they boarded a ferry for the ten-minute ride into the city that allowed no cars. As the worn stone buildings and narrow canals with their sleepy-looking gondolas and ancient arched bridges came into view, Ana felt a frisson of expectation and even hope. What city was more romantic than Venice? And just why was Vittorio taking her here?
After they disembarked, he led her away from the Piazza San Marco, crowded with tourists, to Frezzeria, a narrow street lined with upscale boutiques. Most of them had already closed, but all it took was Vittorio rapping once on the glass door of one for the clerk inside, a chic-looking woman with hair in a tight chignon, wearing a silk blouse and a black pencil skirt, to open the door and kiss him on both cheeks.
A ridiculous, totally unreasonable dart of jealousy stabbed Ana, and fury followed it when the woman swept her assessingly critical gaze over her and said, ‘This is the one?’
‘Yes.’
She snapped her fingers. ‘Come with me.’
Ana turned to Vittorio, her eyes narrowed. ‘You talked about me?’ she said in an angry undertone, choosing to show anger over the hurt she felt inside, a raw, open wound to the heart. She could only imagine the conversation Vittorio must have had with this woman, talking about her hopeless clothes, her terrible taste, how pathetic and ugly she was…
She tasted bile, swallowed. What a fool she’d been.
‘She’s here to help you, Ana,’ Vittorio murmured. ‘Go with her.’
Ana could see racks of gorgeous-looking clothes—a rainbow of silks and satins—in the back of the boutique. They beckoned to her, surprisingly, because she’d never been a girly kind of woman. She’d avoided all things feminine, mostly out of necessity. She didn’t want to look ridiculous. Yet the enticement of the clothes was no match for the hurt—and fury—she felt now.
‘Perhaps I don’t want help,’ she snapped. ‘Did you ever consider that?’
Vittorio remained unfazed. ‘Is that true?’ he asked calmly, so clearly confident of the answer. Humiliatingly, his gaze raked over her, more eloquent than anything he could have said. Ana’s cheeks burned.
The woman appeared once more in the doorway, her lips pursed in impatience. She was holding a gown over one arm, frothy with lace. Ana had never seen anything so beautiful. She could not imagine wearing such a thing, or what she would look like in it. It could not possibly be her size.
‘Ana,’ Vittorio murmured, ‘you will look beautiful in these clothes. Surely you want to look beautiful?’
‘Perhaps I just want to be myself,’ Ana said quietly. She didn’t add that she was afraid she wouldn’t look beautiful in those clothes, or that she wished he thought she looked beautiful already. It was too difficult to explain, too absurd even to feel. She didn’t want Vittorio to want to change her, even if she was willing to be changed. Stupid, unreasonable, perhaps, but true. She shook her head and pushed past him to the door. ‘I’m sorry, Vittorio, but I’m not going to be your Cinderella project.’

Vittorio stifled a curse as he called back to Feliciana before following Ana out into the street. He’d thought she would appreciate the clothes, the opportunity to look, for once, like a woman. He’d thought he was giving her a gift. Instead, she acted offended. Would he ever understand women? Vittorio wondered in annoyed exasperation. He’d thought he understood women; he was certainly good with them. Allow them unlimited access to clothes and jewels and they’d love you for ever—or think they did.
Not that he wanted Ana’s love, but her gratitude would have been appreciated at this point. He gazed at her, her arms wrapped around herself, her hair blowing in the breeze off the canal, and wondered if he’d ever understand her. He’d thought it would be simple, easy. He’d thought her an open book, to be read—and discarded—at his own leisure. The realization that she was far more complicated, that he’d managed to dismiss her before even getting to know her, was both annoying and shaming.
‘I think perhaps you should take me home.’
‘We have reservations at one of the finest restaurants in Venice,’ Vittorio said, his voice clipped, his teeth gritted. ‘That’s why I brought you to this boutique—so you could be dressed appropriately, preferably in a dress!’
‘If you want to marry me,’ Ana replied evenly, ‘then you need to accept me as I am. I won’t change for you, Vittorio.’
‘Not even your clothes?’ He couldn’t keep the caustic note out of his voice. The woman was impossible. And, damnation, she was blinking back tears. He hadn’t meant to make her cry; the last thing he needed now was tears. He’d hurt her, and his annoyance and shame deepened, cutting him. Hurting him. ‘Ana—’
She shook her head, half-talking to herself. ‘I don’t know why I ever thought—hoped, even—that this could work. You don’t know me at all. We’re strangers—’
‘Of course I don’t know you!’ he snapped. Impatience bit at him, the swamping sense of his own failure overtook him. He’d lost control of the situation, and he had no idea how it had happened. When she’d come into the villa this evening and he’d seen how her eyes had lit at the sight of him, he’d felt so confident. So sure that she was going to marry him, that she’d already said yes in her mind, if not her heart. Hearts need not be involved.
Yet, even as Vittorio reminded himself of this, he realized how impossible a situation this truly was. He wanted to be kind to Ana; he wanted affection and respect to bud and grow. He wanted her loyalty; he just didn’t want her to fall in love with him.
Yet there seemed no danger of that right now.
‘I thought,’ he finally said, ‘this could be an opportunity for us to get to know one another.’
‘After you’ve changed me.’
‘After I bought you a dress!’ Vittorio exploded. ‘Most women would have been thrilled—’
‘Well, I’m not most women,’ Ana snapped. Her cheeks glowed with colour and her eyes were a steely grey. She looked, Vittorio thought with a flash of surprise, magnificent. Like a woman warrior, Boadicea, magnificent in her self-righteous anger, and all that vengeful fury was directed at him. ‘And most women I know,’ she spat, ‘wouldn’t entertain your business proposition for a single minute!’ With that, her eyes still shooting angry sparks at him, she turned on her heel and stormed down Frezzeria towards the Piazza.
This time Vittorio cursed aloud.

Standing alone, crowds of tourists pushing past her, Ana wondered if she should have gone back with that stick-thin saleswoman and tried on those gorgeous clothes. In one part of her mind—the part that still managed to remain cool and logical—she knew Vittorio had been trying to please her. Surprise her with a gift. It would have been the kind thing—the sensible thing—to accept it and go back into that dressing room. Part of her had even wanted to.
And part of her had been afraid to, and another part had wished Vittorio didn’t want to improve her. No matter what her father had said about smoothing stones and that ridiculous river of life, she didn’t want Vittorio to improve her. She wouldn’t be his little project.
And if he was thinking of marrying her—if she was actually still considering marrying him—then she knew he needed to accept that. Accept her.
She’d only walked a few metres before Vittorio caught up, grabbing her by the arm none too gently. ‘How are you planning on returning home?’ he asked, his voice coldly furious and, angry again, Ana shrugged off his arm.
‘Fortunately, there are such things as water taxis.’
‘Ana—’ Vittorio stopped helplessly and Ana knew he was utterly bewildered by her behaviour. Well, that made two of them. She stopped walking, her head bowed.
‘I know you think you meant well,’ she began, only to stop when Vittorio laughed dryly.
‘Oh, dear,’ he said. ‘I’ve really botched it then, haven’t I?’
She looked up, trying to smile. ‘I just—’ She took a breath, trying to explain without making herself utterly vulnerable. It was impossible. ‘I don’t wear dresses for a reason, Vittorio. It’s not simply that I have appalling taste in clothes.’ He looked so surprised, she almost laughed. ‘Is that what you thought? That I don’t know a designer gown from a bin bag?’
‘I didn’t—’ he began, and now she did laugh. She’d never expected to see the Count of Cazlevara so discomfited.
‘I’m a full-figured five foot eleven,’ she said flatly. ‘Designer gowns generally don’t run in my size.’
Surprise flashed briefly in Vittorio’s eyes. ‘I think,’ he said quietly, ‘you are selling yourself a bit short.’
‘I prefer not to sell myself at all,’ she returned rather tartly.
Someone tapped her on the shoulder and Ana turned. ‘Would you mind moving? I’m trying to get a snap of San Marco,’ a cameratoting tourist explained and, muttering an oath, Vittorio took Ana by the arm once more and led her away from the crowded piazza.
‘We can’t have a conversation here—let’s go to dinner, as I originally suggested.’
‘But I’m not dressed appropriately—’
Vittorio gave her an arch look. ‘And whose fault is that?’
‘Yours,’ she replied but, instead of sounding accusing, her voice came out pert, almost as if she were flirting. Except, Ana thought, she didn’t know how to flirt. Yet Vittorio was smiling a little and so was she. ‘If you’d let me change,’ she continued in that same pert voice, ‘instead of trying to turn a sow’s ear into a—’
‘Don’t.’ Suddenly, surprisingly, his hand came up to cover her mouth. Ana could taste the salt on his skin. ‘Don’t insult yourself, Ana.’ His expression had softened, his mouth curved in something close to a smile, except it was too serious and even sad. She tried to speak, her lips moving against his fingers, but he wouldn’t let her. ‘I’m taking you to dinner,’ he stated, ‘no matter what you’re wearing. Anyone who is with the Count of Cazlevara doesn’t need to worry about clothes.’ He smiled and his thumb caressed the fullness of her lower lip, the simple touch sending shockwaves of pleasure down into her belly. ‘You’ll find that’s one of the advantages of becoming a Countess,’ he said, and dropped his hand.