Page 1 of Unveiled As The Italian's Bride
CHAPTER ONE
‘DANTE,MYBOY,it is time for you to marry once again. The time has come.’
Antonio D’Agostino’s hands fluttered, his eyes dampened, his mouth wobbled and he reached for the linen napkin at the side of his plate, which he pressed over his eyes for a few fraught seconds.
Summoned from Milan to his uncle’s palace near Venice, Dante watched this emotional spectacle with an element of wry scepticism. Antonio had been circling round this thorny subject for years, delicately sidestepping any outright conversations on the matter, content to lob arrows over a wall and hope one of them landed.
Now Dante sat back, pushed his plate to one side, adjusted his chair and stretched his long legs.
He was quite accustomed to his uncle’s emotionalism. Antonio D’Agostino could weep for Italy at the drop of a hat. He had shed tears over everything from the plight of displaced people to the fate of stray dogs. He was the polar opposite of Dante’s parents and Dante loved him for that.
Growing up, Dante’s uncle had been the one who had opened his eyes to the fact that life could actually be fun. Born into Italian nobility, both his parents had been the epitome of duty. Their aristocratic ancestry had come with obligations They had never allowed themselves to forget that and neither had they ever lethimforget it. It was drummed into his DNA, embedded from the day he’d been born, invisible chains around his ankles from the very day he’d been old enough to walk.
Until the day they’d died—being driven to the opera on a rain-drenched, foggy evening, taking his ex-wife, Luciana, with them in an accident that had changed the course of Dante’s life for ever—they had never once, strayed from what had been expected of them.
Vast estates were there to be managed... They had mixed with the right people, who all lived in the right places and had the right amount of blue blood running through their veins.
Anything else would have been unacceptable.
And for Dante, their only child, they had done their very best to position him on the same road down which they had spent their lives travelling. They had failed to factor in an irreverent, fun-loving, globe-trotting uncle who would probably have spent his lifetime living it up on his substantial inheritance had it not been for Efisio’s and Sofia’s deaths.
At this point, he had become the majority shareholder, thanks to Dante having relinquished much of his stake in the company years previously to focus on his own substantial holdings. Antonio had fed considerable money into the family empire and, in return, Dante had the freedom to hold the reins of his own holdings without having to split the very little time he always seemed to have at his disposal.
‘You know how I feel about...marriage,’ Dante said warily, but there was an undercurrent of warning in his voice, a reminder that this was a subject not open to discussion. ‘And, Antonio, tears aren’t going to get me to have a rethink on this. Marriage? It’s a place I have no intention of ever revisiting.’
Antonio sniffed and rang the bell for their food to be taken away.
Dinner had been served in the smaller of the dining rooms, which was still a stunning marvel of chandeliers, frescoes and ornate turquoise-and-gold wallpaper, only interrupted by four sprawling paintings of the Venetian canals.
Dante had no idea where this conversation was going but fondness for his uncle prevented him from summarily dismissing the conversation out of hand. He would politely hear him out andthendismiss the conversation out of hand.
‘We should have a brandy.’ Antonio got to his feet as soon as the dishes had been cleared away.
‘I have work to do before I retire.’
Antonio waved aside the objection.
‘How often do you make it to Venice, Dante, to visit your frail, old uncle? Once a year?’
‘Once every six weeks,’ Dante returned drily. ‘And let’s not forget summer, when I’m here every week for at least a couple of days at a time, sweltering in the heat and battling the crowds every time I get up the courage to venture into the city.’
‘Work, work, work.’ Antonio waved dismissively, ‘You’d better take my arm, Dante. I’m not a young man any more.’
‘You’re hardly ancient at seventy-two...’ But Dante obligingly supported the much shorter man as they made their way out of the dining room and towards one of the sitting rooms, favoured by his uncle because it overlooked the finest of the manicured gardens to the side of the palace.
Was it his imagination or had his uncle shed some weight? If so, it would do him no harm. If Antonio was fond of passing dark judgement on his nephew’s life choices, then Dante was equally outspoken about his uncle’s penchant for rich food, every morsel of which seemed to settle around his waist.
‘I am not going to be distracted this time, Dante. I mean what I say. It is time for you to marry. It is time for you to put Luciana behind you. I realise you still love her but she has been gone now for over four years and Angelina needs a mother.’
Dante stiffened. He was outraged and taken aback in equal measure by his uncle’s full-frontal invasion of his privacy. Diplomacy had been jettisoned and there was not a single syllable in Antonio’s remark that he didn’t find offensive.
He remained silent.
Emotionalism might be his uncle’s familiar terrain but it very much was not his. A rigorously unemotional upbringing had left no room inside him for that. That said, he was guarded and still as they entered the grand sitting room.
The palace might have been compact, compared to other grand Italian estates but it was still enormous and furnished with a level of ornateness beloved by his flamboyant uncle. Here, two of the walls were a dramatic red, and a lifetime of travelling the world was there for all to appreciate in the form of anything and everything that had been collected along the way. A statuesque African marble tribal priestess held court on a Persian rug of finest silk, framed by two exquisite watercolours from the Far East. Dante was pretty sure this was a one off, as the interior of palaces went.
‘So...’ He opened the conversation as he moved to sit on one of the deep chairs. ‘Can I ask what’s brought about this sudden urgency for me to find a wife?’
