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in breathless panic.
‘For heaven’s sake tell mel’ she urged, her voice throbbing with low and intense passion.
Rozzano’s liquid eyes seemed unnaturally intent on hers, as if he could see the havoc in her mind. ‘Your mother, Violetta, was the daughter of my father’s great friend Alberto D’Antiga. She was to be my father’s bride. But she jilted him.’
She wondered curiously if Rozzano felt insulted on behalf of his father. He gave no hint of it. On the contrary, she thought, her skin prickling with sensation, he was leaning elegantly against Frank’s desk and looking her up and down as if he was giving marks out of ten for every inch she possessed. And the muscles in her body grew tense in response as she battled to stop herself melting into the chair.
He’d be used to that kind of response, she thought crossly, and made sure that he suspected nothing. With a scowl, she said flatly, ‘That doesn’t explain why you’re here.’
The dark eyes became veiled and she wondered if she’d been imagining his appraisal. ‘I look after Alberto D’Antiga’s affairs. We have old family connections and he is ill and alone in the world,’ Rozzano said, a surprising tenderness creeping into his voice. ’Your grandfather is growing weaker every day, Sophia. He will be delighted to know he has a granddaughter.’
‘Hmm. This is the man who drove my mother away from the home she loved!’ Sophia reminded him vigorously.
‘You feel nothing for an old and sick man who is your blood relation?’ Rozzano’s reproachful glance was putting her to shame.
She heaved a sigh and came off her high horse. ‘Of course I do. What’s past is past. I’m sorry he’s not well. And yes, I’d like to contact him. He’s the only family I have now.’ Efficiently she whipped a pen and small notebook from her handbag. ‘Can you let me have his address?’
‘Certainly. Il Conte D’Antiga; that’s D apostrophe, capital A...’
‘Il Conte...’ She looked up to see if the prince was teasing her but he appeared to be perfectly serious.
‘His palazzo is called Ca’ D‘Antiga,’ he drawled. ‘Capital C—’
‘Just a minute!’ Shock widened her smoke-dark eyes. ‘A...count? In a palace? You’re having me on, aren’t you?’ she said with a nervous laugh.
‘No. He is, as you say, a count.’ He saw her disbelief and added quietly, ‘There are many palazzi in Venice. A few hundred. And there are many minor nobles. We still keep our titles, even after Napoleon abolished them. Sophia, I would not lie about this. What would be my motive? Think about it Surely you don’t imagine that D’Antiga would have been so anxious about his daughter’s marriage if he were a butcher or a gondolier, or perhaps an ice-cream seller?’
‘I—I don’t know!’ she mumbled, unable to take in what he was saying. It made horrible sense suddenly. ‘I s-suppose,’ she said slowly, leaping to a conclusion that made sense to her and stumbling over her words, ‘he was desperate. He’d lost his money and needed his daughter to marry someone rich to preserve—’
‘He’s wealthy. Always has been.’
With her idea shot down in flames, she shook her head slightly to clear the confusion there. ‘Then why did he insist on this loveless marriage?’
‘You have to be careful of fortune hunters,’ Rozzano said abruptly. ‘If wealth marries wealth, the partners are equal.’
Sophia let her horror show. ‘No wonder Mother ran away if that’s the way you aristocrats think!’ she said indignantly, putting the notebook firmly away. ‘Love is the only reason for marriage! Anything else would make a mockery of marriage vows taken before God! I’m proud that she valued love more than money—’
‘She could have had both.’ The prince smiled a little wryly at her raised eyebrows and spoke slowly and with emphasis as if aware that her fuddled brain was working at a snail’s pace. ‘Your mother was an heiress with a fortune of her own.’
Silence. Stunned by his claim, she stared at him, frowning. That couldn’t be right. They’d been horribly poor. They’d shivered in the draughty vicarage and worn extra jumpers and socks against the cold. If there had been money, it had long since gone.
She tried to speak, to tell them this, but the words wouldn’t come.
Rozzano had moved closer and was now standing over her. She had to look up to see his face, her eyes skittering nervously over his superb body.
Was he deliberately dominating her? she wondered. She contemplated jumping up and doing a bit of striding around herself, but she knew that right at this moment her legs would buckle. A weak, rubbery goo seemed to have replaced her bones.
He pushed back his jacket and thrust his hands into his pockets, drawing her unwilling attention to his narrow waist and slim hips. She lowered her eyes. He was speaking and his purring voice curled into her with remorseless insistence, distracting her even from the staggering claim he’d made about her mother.
He is unbelievably magnetic, she thought, terrified that he’d realise—rightly—that her shallow breathing wasn’t entirely due to his revelations. Desperately she struggled to stop herself reacting so stupidly to Rozzano’s highoctane sex appeal and to attend to what he was saying.
‘But you’ll find that your grandfather,’ he was telling her smoothly, ‘is a kind and generous man. He would be very happy to see you take your place in Venetian society.’
She gave a short laugh, seeing herself parading in a tiara and ermine-trimmed robes, or whatever count’s granddaughters wore. Probably fluorescent Versace and a baseball cap nowadays, she thought mefully, trying to make herself see the funny side.
Rozzano frowned faintly at her scathing expression. ‘You’re amused?’
‘No. Yes. I’m sorry. But it’s so crazy! I apologise if my reaction has offended you. It’s just that I think you should check your facts. Far from being an heiress, my mother was impoverished.’
‘How do you know?’
She gave him a pitying glance. ‘Because of the way we lived. I know she adored us. She would have shared her money with us, then left it to Father. But he and I lived from hand to mouth! He never had a bean. Look at me! Look at these clothes! They hardly shout “Heiress!”, do they? They come from the local nearly new shop!’
She cast a realistic glance at herself. It wasn’t surprising that he’d been riveted by her appearance. Having compared her to the photo of Violetta D‘Antiga, he would have begun to wonder how Violetta could have given birth to such a poorly dressed shambles of a woman!
‘All I know is that she didn’t touch her trust fund. It’s still intact in a Venetian bank,’ Rozzano said relentlessly.
‘But... why would she do that, deliberately make herself poor?’ Sophia demanded in disbelief.
‘Pride and fear,’ answered Frank. ‘Violetta’s father was—is—one of the trustees. She would have had to ask him to release the money. From what your father said, I gather she felt her happiness would have been compromised by wealth—something she didn’t want to risk. I had the whole story from your father; it’s in this letter.’ He held it out to her.
‘I can’t believe that!’ she cried vehemently, desperate to deny it all, afraid of the doubts crowding her mind, afraid there might be some truth in this preposterous story.
Suddenly she felt very scared, as if the ground had been swept from under her to leave a gaping hole beneath. And she was falling into it, like it or not.
Words spun around her mind. Italian. Venice. A count. An heiress. Obviously she’d fallen asleep by the window in Frank’s waiting room and this was a dream, prompted by thinking of the prince. She drove her top teeth into her lower lip.
And knew she was awake.
Shaking,