His Lost-and-Found Bride

Dario was nodding enthusiastically. ‘In Tuscany? I wonder how in the world Burano ended up working there? Wouldn’t it be wonderful if it was another of his works?’

A Renaissance art lover. The passion and enthusiasm in his eyes was for the art, not for Lucia. Not for his woman.

Where had that come from?

Cold air prickled his skin and he shifted on his feet. Lucia hadn’t been his woman for twelve years—she hadn’t wanted to be.

And he’d had to live with that. He’d had to support the fact she wasn’t able to continue their relationship and allow her the space she’d needed to heal. No matter how much it had ripped his heart in two.

No one else had ever come close to the love he’d felt for Lucia. How could they? She’d been the mother of his child. And even though that was something she wanted to forget, her place in his heart had been well and truly cemented there.

But even he hadn’t realised how much.

‘Forgive me.’ Dario nodded. ‘I have to go. I have business to attend to. Please, take all the time you need.’

Lucia gave a gracious nod of her head as Dario walked swiftly down the path towards the waiting motorboat.

She turned and pressed her hand against the heavy wooden door of the church and smiled at Logan. There was a gleam of something in her eye. He only hoped it was for the contents of the church and not for the retreating back of Dario. The spike of jealousy had been unexpected—a feeling he hadn’t dealt with in years.

‘Ready?’ she asked.

He nodded and she pushed the door and it groaned and creaked loudly on its hinges as it swung back. The church wasn’t lit.

The only light that streamed in came through six muted stained-glass windows above the altar.

It took a few seconds for his eyes to adjust to the dim light. He caught his breath.

The fresco on the wall was magnificent and stretched from one end of the church to the other. His feet moved automatically towards it.

Over his years in Italy he’d seen many frescoes—but none quite like this. It was completely and utterly unique, almost like a timeline through the first book of the bible.

She rested her hand on his arm. ‘I’ve never seen anything like it before, and I’m quite sure I’ll never see anything like it again.’ He could hear the amusement in her voice at his reaction. ‘It’s a little different from the Madonna and Child, isn’t it?’

He shook his head as he took in more and more of the fresco. He recognised the characters—at least, he thought he did. Adam and Eve, Noah, Moses, Jacob and his sons. But the thing that made these characters unique was the fact they were all completely naked.

He spun to face her. ‘What on earth...?’

She laughed. ‘I know. It’s why the Italian Heritage Board hasn’t bothered to make demands on the family. The Catholic Church would be outraged by these scenes.’

Logan moved forward. He just couldn’t stop smiling. He was trying to think rationally. ‘Adam and Eve—you might expect them to be naked. But the rest...’ He kept looking at the scenes. ‘It’s amazing. I mean, apart from their nakedness the depictions are accurate. Eve with the apple, Moses leading the Israelites through the Red Sea, Noah on the ark, and Jacob with his twelve sons.’ He let out a laugh. ‘Joseph is even holding his multi-coloured coat instead of wearing it.’

She shrugged her shoulders. ‘Naked bodies were pretty much the fashion during Renaissance times.’ Her brow creased slightly. ‘But usually they had something—anything—draped around about them. These ones are totally original.’

Logan stepped back a little. ‘But there’s something else, isn’t there? I can’t quite put my finger on it.’ He paused, staring hard at the scenes, looking between one and another.

She nodded, with an amused expression on her face. ‘Give it time, Logan. You’ll get it.’

She was teasing him. It was almost like throwing down a challenge. So he took a few minutes, concentrating hard until, finally, the penny dropped.

He turned to her in amazement. ‘It’s the faces, isn’t it?’ He stepped right up to the fresco, staring first at the face of Adam then at the face of Moses, then Noah. ‘It’s the same face.’ His eyes scanned one way, then the other. ‘It’s the same man and woman in every scene.’

Lucia was laughing. ‘You’re right. The family don’t have any official records about who commissioned the fresco. The name of Burano has just been passed down through the family. That’s why we’ll have to do a comparison. And we’re not quite sure why it’s the same faces in all the scenes. I’ve spoken to the family about it at length. We think there’s something a little narcissistic in it. We think that when the original Brunellis commissioned the artist they asked for the faces to be made in their image.’