The Italian Millionaire’s Marriage

How badly did he want her?

She could hear him walking back and forth on the other side of the door.

Badly enough to break his word?

His footsteps stopped, then resumed again.

Badly enough to risk looking weak in his own eyes?

Silence. The footsteps had stopped right next to the door.

Holding her breath, Harriet kept her eyes fixed on the handle, which she could just see in the moonlight.

Very slowly it moved. There was the faintest noise as the door was opened a fraction, perhaps half an inch. Then it stopped.

She waited for it to move again, to open. She couldn’t breathe. She could almost feel the air vibrating with the tormented indecision of the man on the other side. But he would come to her because she willed it so fiercely.

But then the incredible happened. Instead of opening further the door moved back, closing the tiny gap, and the handle was softly returned into place.

After that there was silence.

CHAPTER NINE

IT WAS a relief to spend a few days in the Vatican museum. Absorbed in the world that had always sustained her, Harriet thought she would soon be able to forget Corzena.

But the talisman failed this time. Halfway through a fourteenth-century parchment she would find herself thinking of the door that had so nearly opened, and then closed.

Closed against her. That was the thing that hurt. Marco had tested the door just far enough to discover that she’d left it open for him. Then he had rejected her. What message could be clearer?

From their manner to each other on the drive home nobody could have discerned anything in the air. For him, there probably hadn’t been, she thought bitterly.

She returned home on the third evening to find Lucia eagerly looking for her.

‘Your father called,’ she said. ‘They’re back, and so anxious to see you. We’re all three invited to dine tomorrow night. I tried to call you and Marco but you both had your phones switched off. So I said yes for us all. Did I do right?’

‘Of course. My father! How did he sound?’

‘Thrilled by your engagement. He’s longing to see you. I found him almost likeable. I’m sorry, cara, I know he’s your father, but there it is. But if he’s good to you, I forgive him everything.’

Marco arrived for supper and heard the whole story.

‘It makes a tight schedule now we’re so busy getting ready to go to Venice for the weddings,’ Lucia observed. ‘But when I suggested putting it off until we returned he was most insistent that it must be tomorrow. Still, it’s natural that he should be eager to see you.’

‘It’s a tighter schedule than you know,’ Marco said. ‘After tonight I was planning to sleep at my office to get through everything that needs doing before we leave for Venice.’

‘I suppose you could always ask your uncle and Guido to delay their weddings?’ Harriet suggested in the satirical tone she often used to him.

‘True,’ Marco said, appearing to consider this seriously. ‘But they’re so unreasonable that they’d probably put their weddings before my clients.’

He smiled at her to show that he was sharing the joke. Harriet wondered if she really had been joking. This was the first time she’d seen him since Corzena, and he’d just told her that after tomorrow she wouldn’t see him again for days. To her dismay she discovered that it was a relief.

To cheer herself up she concentrated on the thought of her father.

‘Tell me everything he said,’ she begged Lucia.

‘Again? All right, cara, I understand. He asked after you many times, were you well, were you happy in your engagement, could he give you to Marco with an easy mind? All the questions a loving father asks.’

‘And which he’s waited a very long time to ask,’ Marco said drily. ‘I wonder what lies behind this.’

‘Does my father’s interest need an explanation?’ Harriet flashed.

‘His sudden interest does.’

‘I’m engaged. Isn’t that enough?’

‘Yes, I suppose so. Now, it’s late and I must be going.’

She treated herself to a new gown for the following evening, elegant, figure-hugging black silk that made a perfect setting for Marco’s gift of a diamond tiara. The hairdresser settled it into her upswept hair.

She touched the diamonds, feeling how cold they were: as cold as his attempt to spoil the evening in advance by his sceptical remarks about her father. But why should he have done so? she wondered. He could be hard, unfeeling, but this had felt like a deliberate attempt to hurt her.

She and Lucia were to travel together in the chauffeur-driven car, while Marco drove straight there from work. The d’Estinos lived in Rome’s most fashionable quarter, near St Peter’s, in a street where most of the other buildings were embassies. As they arrived they could see Marco getting out of his own car. He glanced at Harriet’s magnificence and nodded.

‘I knew that tiara was right for you,’ he said. ‘Not every woman could wear it.’

As they approached the wide front doors, standing open, flooding the gardens with light, her father appeared, flinging wide his arms and bearing down on her. ‘Harriet, my dearest daughter. After so long.’

He embraced her in a bear hug, the first for years. He was wearing an overpowering cologne, and she had to fight not to flinch. He looked older than his years, and had put on too much weight, giving a strong impression of self-indulgence, and her acute instincts told her that there was something false and theatrical about this display.

But he was her father and she’d longed for this moment, so she smiled and told herself how wonderful it was.

He was all smiles to Lucia, and greeted Marco like a long-lost brother. Marco was, as always, courteous, but his manner lacked warmth. The older man’s obsequiousness disgusted him, and Harriet sensed it, even if her father didn’t.

Also unaware was his wife. Harriet saw that the wicked step-mother had vanished. In her place was a thin, brittle little woman, suddenly anxious to proclaim her connection to a step-daughter she’d previously despised.

Only Olympia behaved normally, cheeking Marco like a younger sister, embracing Lucia and Harriet, teasing everyone out of their unease.

As more guests arrived and Guiseppe d’Estino’s attention was taken up with greeting them, Harriet took her sister aside, resisting Olympia’s efforts to escape.

‘Darling I’m joint hostess, I really have a lot to do-’

‘You can do it when you’ve spent some time with me, little sister. Why does our father act as though he’s only just found out about my engagement?’

‘Because he has. That phone message you left for him when you arrived never reached him. Mamma made sure of that.’

‘But you knew at Manelli’s party,’ Harriet said. ‘Didn’t you-?’

‘No, I didn’t tell him, because I didn’t want him madder at me than he was already. He was furious when I turned Marco down. The title, you see.’

‘But it’s not Marco’s title.’

‘Darling, he’s a count’s nephew. Pappa’s a snob, and Mamma’s even worse. I really must be going, someone’s calling me-’

She danced away, leaving Harriet to digest what she’d read between the lines. Guiseppe wanted Marco in the family as the husband of his favourite daughter, but Olympia wouldn’t oblige. Then he’d remembered that Harriet was also his child, so she would have to do instead. She’d even been promoted to favourite offspring, now that she