New Year Fireworks. Diana Hamilton

took Sabrina’s elbow to help her up the broad staircase and escorted her to a sitting room rich with antiques and bright sunlight. Donna Maria was seated at a gilt trimmed desk with reading glasses perched on the end of her nose, skimming what Sabrina guessed was a last-minute to-do list.

      She looked up at their entrance. Pleasure flooded her face at the sight of her son. “Marco! I was beginning to think you would not arrive in time for dinner.”

      He bent to kiss her on both cheeks. “Traffic was a nightmare, Mama.”

      The duchess welcomed Sabrina with a voice that was a few degrees warmer than on her previous visit but stopped well short of gushing.

      Marco’s sister, on the other hand, more than made up her mother’s reserve. She was a slender brunette in orange-striped leggings and an eye-popping electric-blue tunic that echoed the blue streak in her short, spiky black hair. With a yelp of delight, she threw herself into her brother’s arms for an exuberant reunion.

      Laughing, Marco had to cut into her torrent of Italian. “AnnaMaria, be still long enough for me to introduce to my houseguest.”

      “So this is your American, eh?” She turned in the circle of his arms and raked Sabrina from head to foot with the critical eye of an artist. “Mama told me you look much like Gia. I think … The hair, yes. The eyes, a little. But not the mouth. Or the bones. Those wonderful bones are yours.”

      Sabrina could have kissed her!

      “Ah, here is Etienne and my beautiful bambinos. Come meet Marco’s American.”

      The burly French sculptor carried a doe-eyed little girl in one arm. A boy of four or five swung like a mischievous chimp from the other. The boy let go only long enough for his father to engulf Sabrina’s hand in a thorny palm.

      “A pleasure to meet you, Ms. Russo.”

      “And I, you. I attended an exhibit of your work at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art a few years ago.”

      “Ah, oui. The Paris au Printemps Exhibition.”

      He didn’t ask her opinion of his work but the question came through in a quizzically raised brow. Sabrina responded with a warm smile.

      “I was especially intrigued by one piece. I think it was titled An Afternoon in Montmartre. I was amazed at how you captured the quarter’s vibrancy in two pieces of twisted metal and a rope of flickering neon.”

      “AnnaMaria! Take charge of these monkeys! I want to go out on the terrace and speak more with this so very intelligent and charming woman.”

      “You have no time for flirting, Etienne. If Mama is done with me, we need to feed and bathe the children before we dress for dinner.”

      “An entire house full of servants,” the sculptor complained with a good-natured grin, “and she insists we feed, scrub and tuck these two in ourselves.”

      “Go!” the duchess instructed her daughter and son-in-law. “See to your children.”

      “What can we do to help?” Marco asked his mother.

      “Nothing. Everything is as well ordered as it’s going to be. But I hope you and Sabrina will excuse me if I, too, go rest a bit before dinner.”

      “We’ll go up, as well. We can unpack and have an aperitif before the hoards arrive.”

      He and Sabrina accompanied the duchess up the grand staircase and parted company on the third floor.

      “You’d best be downstairs by a quarter to seven to greet our guests,” she told her son.

      “We will.”

      She turned toward the east wing, hesitated. Her glance flicked from her son to Sabrina and back again. “Have you warned her about the paparazzi?”

      “Not yet.”

      “They could be … difficult.”

      “We’ll don our armor before we come downstairs.”

       “Bene.”

      Sabrina contained her curiosity until Marco escorted her into his suite of rooms in the east wing. She caught a glimpse of their bags set side by side on a padded bench in a cavernous bedroom before demanding an explanation.

      “What was that about?”

      “You’re not the only one who has fed the beasts,” he commented with a dry reference to the articles his mother had pulled off the Internet about her. “They attacked like sharks after Gianetta’s death. One tabloid even hinted I had somehow sabotaged the sailboat.”

      “Dear God! Why would you do that?”

      “The usual reasons. Jealousy, anger, to rid myself of an inconvenient wife so I could marry my mistress.”

      Shrugging, he opened the doors of a parquetry chest to display a well-stocked bar.

      “It didn’t seem to matter that I had no mistress. What would you like to drink?”

      “It’s going to be a long night. I’d better stick with something nonalcoholic for now.”

      Marco chinked ice into two glasses and twisted off the lid on a bottle of Chinotto. The dark liquid fizzed like a carbonated drink and had a unique taste that combined bitter and sweet at the same time.

      “We always allow a few members of press to take photographs at the ball. Be warned, they’ll have an avid interest in you.”

      “Because I resemble Gianetta?”

      His dark eyes held hers. “Because you will be the first woman I’ve invited to the ball since Gianetta.”

       Ohh-kaay.

      Sabrina took another sip of the fizzing soft drink and willed her heart to stop hammering against her ribs. The waltz Marco had described so beautifully earlier suddenly seemed to have picked up in tempo. She couldn’t shake the feeling she’d just been swept into a sultry tango.

      The tempo kicked up yet again a little over an hour later.

      Gowned, gloved, her hair anchored high on her head with the topaz-studded comb, she swept out of the bedroom in a glitter of gold. Two paces into the sitting room she caught sight of Marco and stopped dead.

      Her jaw sagged. Her breath got stuck somewhere in the middle of her throat. The best she could manage was a breathless whisper.

      “Wow.”

      “My sentiments exactly,” he answered in a low growl. “You look magnificent, Sabrina mia.”

      His eyes devoured her as he crossed the room. Hers drank in the snowy white tie and pleated shirt, the black tails, the jeweled insignia of some royal order pinned to the red sash that slashed across his chest.

      Tonight, Sabrina realized as her heart drummed out a wild beat, her handsome doc was every inch a duke.