Dark Venetian. Anne Mather

many, many years ago. We were great friends, and even after our schooldays were over we corresponded regularly. Then, when I married your grandfather, Joanna was one of my attendants.’

      Count Cesare began to look a little bored. ‘So? This woman … she is coming to stay here?’

      ‘Ah, no. Joanna I am afraid died, some fifteen years ago.’

      ‘Then get to the point,’ said Count Cesare impatiently.

      The Contessa smiled. ‘I will, Cesare, I will.’ She linked her fingers together thoughtfully. ‘Joanna did not marry until quite late in life, and the man she married was not by any means a rich man. Her parents had had a little money, but that had died with them, so naturally Joanna had to marry someone, in order to survive.’

      ‘She could have got a job,’ remarked Cesare dryly, unable as yet to see any point in all this story.

      ‘Ah, not almost forty years ago. Girls of Joanna’s upbringing did not “get jobs”, they married someone. So Joanna married Henry Bernard, an English parson, and went to live somewhere in the south of England. And some five years later she produced a daughter, Celeste, to whom I acted as godparent. Is my story becoming a little clearer?’

      ‘No.’ Cesare was blunt.

      ‘Ah, well, it will soon. Celeste was an adorable child, although I saw little of her after her eighteenth birthday. Joanna died, as I have already told you, and Henry Bernard had little time for anyone with money. So contact was temporarily severed, but occasionally Celeste wrote to me, and I replied, and from her letters I have gathered a little of her life story. When she was only twenty years of age she married a man already in his forties, a widower with one child, a girl of perhaps seven years of age. Unfortunately, this husband of hers was killed in a road accident when they had been married for only ten years, and Celeste was left with a seventeen-year-old stepdaughter and no money of any consequence.’

      ‘Money is not everybody’s yardstick,’ remarked Cesare idly. ‘Some people are extremely happy without any at all.’

      ‘Tch!’ The Contessa was scornful. ‘I have not noticed that you share that view. You seem to run through your money without any visible signs of a struggle.’

      Cesare smiled. ‘That is my concern,’ he said softly, and only his grandmother was aware of the slender veneer of patience he was controlling.

      ‘Very well. In any event, it is not important now. Let me continue with my story; Celeste is not a woman to be dashed by circumstances. No, instead of falling into a rut, she gained an invitation for herself and her stepdaughter to visit a distant cousin in the United States of America, and there she married again, this time a rich industrialist. Unfortunately, however, this man, Clifford Vaughan, was quite elderly when she married him, and he died only two years after their marriage leaving Celeste a wealthy woman at last.’

      ‘How convenient,’ said Cesare dryly. ‘And I suppose she loved him very much!’

      The Contessa shrugged. ‘I doubt it; it is not important. If she married him for his money knowing full well he would not live very long, who am I to judge her? I admire her. She is a woman after my own heart.’

      ‘Heart!’ Cesare shook his head. ‘And how much heart have you if you can countenance a marriage for mercenary gains only?’

      The Contessa smiled. ‘My dear Cesare, that is the only kind of marriage you are likely to make, is it not? So pray do not criticize me!’ Cesare rose negligently to his feet. ‘That is a little different. I do not intend marrying some old hag, not even for a fortune.’

      ‘No. And it is right that you should not. Old hags could not bear you strong sons, sons to carry on the name of Cesare.’ She fingered her pearls thoughtfully. ‘No, Cesare, you should marry Celeste Vaughan!’

      Cesare stared incredulously at the Contessa. At last her schemes were revealed, the reason for the comprehensive life story he had just listened to with complete disinterest. She had introduced him to girls before, but this time every circumstance had been weighed and found perfect. The woman was young, but not too young; charming, or so the Contessa believed; and rich, which to the Contessa Francesca Maria Sophia Cesare, was the most important thing of all. Her life-long desire was to restore the Palazzo, and to actually see it happening before she died was all she asked of what remained of her life; that and a great-grandson.

      Count Cesare shook his head. For a moment, the completely unexpected statement had thrown him off balance; momentarily he thought only of his own feelings in the matter. But now realization of what this might mean came flooding back to him, and he was necessarily more abrupt than he had intended.

      ‘It is ludicrous!’ he said coldly. ‘And if our visitors are to be this woman, and her stepdaughter, then I suggest you quickly contact the postal services sending a cablegram to England, or the United States, wherever they might be, informing them that circumstances beyond your control forbid such a visit at this time, or you may find there is no longer a Count Cesare at this address!’

      But his words did not have the expected reaction.

      ‘It’s too late,’ she replied complacently. ‘They are already staying at the Danieli, and I telephoned a welcome to them this morning, inviting them to stay here as long as they wish!’

       CHAPTER TWO

      EMMA sank down on to the side of the bed a little wearily, giving herself a welcome break from packing. It seemed quite ridiculous to her that Celeste should have unpacked so many articles when she must have known from the beginning that they would not be staying long at the hotel. But as Celeste had no intention of packing cases herself when she had Emma to do it for her, it was perhaps not so ridiculous after all, particularly as Emma knew that Celeste liked having beautiful things, things of her own, around her, secure in the knowledge of her own possessions. Emma had had good cause to remember that.

      Drawing a deep breath, Emma studied her reflection in the full-length mirror of the dressing table, just across from her. She saw a pale replica of herself, pale cheeks, pale lips and pale hair. Did she seem doubly insignificant after seeing again the riotous glory of Celeste’s red-gold curls, and flashing blue eyes? She could not fail to compare herself unfavourably with her stepmother, conscious as she was that a severe dose of influenza had left her mentally as well as physically depressed. She supposed she ought to feel grateful to Celeste for taking her away from a damp and chilly May in England to the warm, and deliciously heady climate of Venice in spring, but somehow anything Celeste did now seemed necessarily to have strings attached, and she had not as yet discovered what those strings might be.

      It had been a shock to the young Emma to discover her father’s passion for a girl young enough to be his daughter, particularly as it was only a few months after Emma’s mother’s death, and when he had married Celeste, Emma had had to force herself to be pleasant to her new stepmother. But she needn’t have bothered. Celeste had no time for young girls, and lost no time in persuading Emma’s father to despatch her forthwith to boarding school, despite the fact that his salary as an accountant would barely run to the fees.

      Emma had accepted school life. She had always been popular at the local school, and found no difficulty in making friends with girls at Saint Joseph’s Academy, near Aylesbury. Holidays were a different matter, and Emma was sent to various aunts and cousins until she was old enough to spend holidays at home without interfering with her stepmother’s life.

      Her father, much to her concern, seemed to deteriorate in stature every time she saw him, and she could only assume that Celeste’s constant demands for money were getting him down. In her final term at school when she was preparing for ‘A’ levels, he had died, and she had been sent for from school, never to return.

      When her father’s affairs were settled it was revealed that there was nothing left except the house they lived in, which had been left unconditionally to Celeste, who immediately told Emma that she intended to