Page 2 of Awakened in Her Enemy's Palazzo

Out of nowhere images of a cool green oasis...the dappled light, the silence, the tall swaying trees, an encounter with a deer or a wild boar...began to slide slowly through Theo’s head.

His jaw clenched. He was determined to divest himself of any reminder of his past, and he prided himself on not being sentimental, but the idea of that green oasis being destroyed made nameless things tighten in his chest.

‘You’re talking about the forest on the northern slopes?’ Theo pinned the man with an obsidian stare that made the guy shift uneasily in his seat and consult the blank screen of the tablet on the desk beside him.

‘Northern—I think so. All mountain. Yes, not suitable for—But a holiday village would—’

Theo pushed away the image of denuded forest slopes and the sound of machinery. ‘A non-starter,’ he said coolly. ‘It is a protected area, and there are clauses in the deeds of the palazzo.’

‘Of course. Palazzo della Stellato...such an evocative name.’

Theo responded to the man’s exaggerated Italian pronunciation with a stony look.

‘There are other sections that we have already had tentative enquiries about—from several developers who have made it known they would be interested. Let me see... The Wenger Group...’

As one man, all the legal team began to desperately scroll through their assorted devices.

‘I have the details here. They approached your father last year, I believe, but he was never... Not a criticism, of course—he was old school, which was understandable, given the historic nature of the estate...’

‘I’m not interested in history.’Only escaping it.‘And, no, I do not want to sellsomeland.’

The hand Theo ran across the dark surface of his dark hair suggested impatience that they couldn’t keep up with him.

‘The lot. The palazzo, the contents, the land—just get rid of it all. I want nothing.’

Just the portrait that had hung in his father’s study. Was it still there? he wondered. Had his father kept it there to remind himself of his guilt? Or had he rewritten the past to make it easier to live with?

He could feel shocked eyes following him as he left the room. Not that he cared, but all the same he was glad he had bitten back the unspoken rejoinder that had hovered on the tip of his tongue.

I wantnothing that reminds me of that bastard.

It would have been sharing too much.

‘Half?’Grace echoed. ‘You mean half the books?’

She glanced around the shelves of the library they were sitting in. The lawyer was sitting in the chair that Salvatore had sat in when she’d read to him, and it made his absence more of a stark reality than the funeral had.

‘Oh, how kind. But I couldn’t break up the collection...it’s far too valuable. One or two books, maybe?’

‘Miss Stewart, I don’t think you quite understand...’ the man said slowly. ‘When I say “half”, I mean half ofeverything: the palazzo, the estate, the money. It has been left jointly to you both.’

Grace stared at him blankly for a moment, and then laughed, although this wasn’t funny. It was crazy. Which was most likely the way her laugh sounded too.

‘He’s left me—?’ She had to have the wrong end of the stick. ‘Why—no, that can’t be right—go back and check. I think you’ll find—’ She half rose in her seat and collapsed weakly back again as her voice faded.

‘Would you like a glass of water?’

The man whose neatly trimmed beard was flecked with white smiled kindly at her.

Grace shook her head, thinking she wouldn’t have said no to a brandy. She held her clasped hands tight in her lap—not that it disguised the fact she was shaking. A few deep breaths and the volume of the buzzing in her head lessened, her temporary numbness melting away leaving shock and disbelief.

‘You’re not joking?’ She almost immediately dismissed the idea. ‘Sorry, no...no, of course not.’

Could lawyers joke?

Observation of her own immediate family—her brother was a member of that profession—suggested not, but then her other brother, the psychiatrist, never laughed at her jokes either. Nor her ecologist sister, whose TV series had just been sold to the States.

They were a gifted bunch, her family, and they tried to be kind about Grace’s deficiencies—the fact that Grace was not the most academically gifted of the Stewart clan. But she knew that her parents—her Oxford professor dad and historian mother, both acknowledged experts and bestselling authors in their fields—had been gutted when Grace had, to everyone’s surprise, including her own, got the grades to secure a coveted Oxford place but had chosen instead to embark on a nursing degree.

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