The Italian's Token Wife

‘Will you accept it as a token of my regret for my treatment of you?’

His voice was low, and there was still that note in it she could not identify. But she was in no state to analyse his tone of voice.

Her throat tightened. ‘I can’t take this,’ she got out. ‘Please—it is quite unnecessary. You are paying me so much money that—’

Her words were cut off. Rafaello’s hand had snaked out and set down on hers.

‘No,’ he said, and there was a sharpness in his voice that made her look at him almost fearfully. ‘Of that we will not speak. Now…’ his voice changed again ‘…if you like the necklace put it on. It will go well, I think, with what you are wearing.’

Yes, thought Magda desperately, that’s how I must think of it—as nothing more than an accessory to the dress. And the dress, and everything else that Olivia did to me, is just part of what Rafaello wants. He’s got fed up with having such an eyesore in his house, and he’s done something about it. Don’t, don’t read anything more into it. You mustn’t, you mustn’t!

So, obediently, she picked up the necklace, which was light as a feather in her fingers, and made to put it on. Her fingers fumbled at the back of her neck, trying to fasten it. In a moment Rafaello was there, his hands sliding away her fall of hair and his fingers brushing hers as he took the necklace from her.

‘Allow me…’ he murmured, and started to fasten the necklace.

The butterflies inside her went crazy—and every drop of blood in her body dropped to her feet. She gasped as the nerve-endings in the delicate nape of her neck quivered with exquisite sensation.

If she could capture that moment for ever she would glimpse heaven, she thought, her eyes fluttering shut as she gave herself to the lightest, most blissful feeling.

Then it was gone, and so was Rafaello, back in his seat, viewing his handiwork.

And her.

‘Today,’ he said softly, and his eyes drank her in like a rare, vintage wine, ‘we start again.’

The whole day was like a dream—and Rafaello was like a different person, Magda thought. As if he had never looked at her and seen nothing more than the last person his father would welcome as his son’s bride. That Rafaello seemed to have vanished. Now there was only a man—the most beautiful man in the world to her—sitting opposite her and treating her as if she were a princess. It was a heady, heady feeling, and she had to try very hard to keep her feet on the ground, lest she soar upwards with the butterflies that stayed with her all through lunch, fluttering inside.

Over lunch, which seemed to last for ever and yet but a moment, he kept the conversation very impersonal. He told her about Lucca, and Tuscany, and Italy, and conversation ranged from the historical to the contemporary, as he regaled her with the mores and the customs of modern Italians.

Even though she felt awkward at first, and could only respond to his conversation in stilted phrases, gradually, as the wine in her glass went down, she slipped into the kind of enquiring questioning she’d given his uncle the evening before, and found herself relaxing and talking normally. She drank it all in, storing the time away as a precious memory, a dream that seemed, quite unbelievably, to be happening in real life. And all the time, as they talked, she was aware of a current running like electricity through her body, making it harder and harder to refrain from doing what she just ached to do—stare and stare at the homage to male beauty that was the perfection of Rafaello di Viscenti.

It was as lunch ended that another reality finally penetrated.

Benji.

With a pang of guilt she said, as Rafaello placed his credit card on the table for the waiter to collect, ‘Please—would it be possible—may I phone Maria—to see if Benji is all right?’

‘Of course.’ He smiled his ready assent.

He extracted his mobile, dialled and spoke rapidly, then disconnected.

‘Benji has had an excellent morning, eaten a hearty lunch, and is now sleeping peacefully,’ he reported. ‘However, Maria suggests that it would be good if you were there when he wakes. In which case perhaps we shall leave a more extensive tour of the city for another occasion, and content ourselves with making nothing more than a short passagiata along a section of the walls. It is a very pleasant stroll to take.’

Under any circumstances the walk along the famous walls of Lucca would have been pleasant, but for Magda it was blissful. She worried a little that her feet would be pinched in the beautiful cinnamon-coloured high heels that Olivia had procured for her, but the leather was so soft, the fit so perfect, that there was no problem at all. Only, as she walked she was conscious of the effect of the high heels, how they lifted her hips and made her sway.