Only in the Night (22 page)

There was love and passion, admiration and respect, in his every word. He kissed her, and between kisses repeated her name again and again. And then lust took over.
Her
lust for her husband. She draped herself over Vittorio’s body in such a way that he could caress her back and bottom, toy with the crevice between its cheeks, fondle her orifices with searching fingers, excite the bud of pleasure hidden between her most intimate, warm and already moist lips while she took him, rampant and throbbing, deep in her throat. Such exquisite oral sex caused him very nearly to weep for the sexual bliss it produced for him. They came together in a shatteringly powerful orgasm and rubbed their lips, the skin of their faces, with the elixir that such sex can produce. They tasted of each other in their kiss and once more came before they fell asleep, exhausted by the joy of being one with each other.

The next morning they were in the bath. It was their habit to wash each other with a large sponge and a creamy almond-scented liquid soap made on the estate from their own almond trees. Eliza was scrubbing Vittorio’s back when he said, ‘Your friend Signora Dix, why do you always meet her in town, never ask her back here for your English tea party or a meal? She asked you to tea.’

The question took Eliza by surprise. How could she
explain that she wouldn’t feel comfortable about doing either of those things? Then she would have to explain to him that she sensed socialising with Amanda Dix and Philip Markham in any way other than according to the limits of the two women’s friendship was something that would not work. First and foremost Vittorio would not understand her. And she certainly would not go on to explain that the scandalous alliance between an English gentlewoman and an Italian farmer was a stumbling block to a closer friendship with the couple. What she did say was, ‘Well, I must one day.’

‘Good. When?’ he asked, sweet enthusiasm in his voice.

‘I hadn’t thought,’ she answered.

‘Next week. I’m going over there to cut the meadow today, I can ask them for you.’

‘Why is this so important to you, Vittorio?’ she asked as she kissed the back of his neck and squeezed the water-logged sponge over his shoulders to wash the soap away.

‘Because she’s one of the only English ladies like yourself who has become a friend you enjoy meeting. It doesn’t exactly worry me but I do sometimes think you have given up so much of your English ways and friends to marry and make a life here with me. I don’t want you to miss them and be discontent and maybe even …’

‘Stop right there, Vittorio. I have given up nothing. I miss nothing. You forget, we have my sisters and all their families, other English friends that we have known all our lives who drop in on us frequently. All those English holiday meals and treats I make when I cook – this is an Anglo-Italian house. We’ve known
each other practically all our lives, and have you ever known a Forrester to live in any way but the way they want to? Now, will it make you happy if I ask them to a grand and very English dinner?’

‘Well, not too English but I don’t mind grand. And I will help you, and so will Francesca.’

He had turned himself around in the bath to face her. How young and happy he looked to be doing this for her. All his life he had been doing everything for love of her. The least she could do was carry off a dinner for Amanda and Philip for him. There was nothing for it; it would be
their
invitation, not hers. She would make him a part of it and began by asking him, ‘Would you mind stopping in and inviting them for dinner any day that’s convenient for them next week? They are to arrive at five for drinks. That will give them time to see the gardens and the orchards if they like, even time to walk down to the lake and see the stables.’

Vittorio was thrilled. He took her in his arms and kissed her, caressed her breasts, all shimmery and slippery smooth as the puffs of steam swirled up and around them from the hot bathwater. Eliza was filled with a sense of joy at being able to make him happy. That was after all what they were all about, what they had always been about, and nothing more. How had she not understood that when she had been a young woman, and other people and the outside world had declared love not enough?

Philip and Amanda, Philip’s publisher and his researcher, and Amanda’s assistant, just back from a day in Lucca, entered the kitchen with bags of shopping for Maria. Amanda and Phillip were surprised to see Vittorio
sitting at their kitchen table having coffee with her. They had forgotten that he would be there all day cutting the fields.

Vittorio rose as soon as they entered and relieved Amanda of the shopping she was carrying. It was quite obvious to her and Philip that their house guests found him impressive and attractive. There seemed about him that day an aura of delight, a sense of joy, which combined with his unusually rough and handsome dark good looks was very winning. Philip felt obliged to introduce him to his guests. ‘These are friends who are staying with us. And this, everyone, is Vittorio, the farmer who cuts our meadow.’

Vittorio acknowledged them with a broad smile and a nod of his head, and then turned directly to Amanda and said, ‘Eliza asked me if I would, on her behalf, invite you and Mr Markham to come to dinner at the Villa Monetcatini.’

Amanda kept her surprise well hidden when she answered, ‘This evening? Oh, dear, that’s rather impossible. You see, it’s our guests’ last evening here and we have made plans. But do thank Eliza very much.’

‘Oh, that’s no problem. The invitation is extended for any evening of your choice next week,’ he told her, beaming with delight and then waiting for her to choose the date.

Everyone standing around, watching and listening, flummoxed Amanda. She found it impossible to find a way to reject the invitation in their presence without making an issue of it. Feeling utterly defeated and put upon, she managed to answer, ‘Thursday would be good, unless Philip has something on that I don’t know about?’

There it was. She had tossed the ball in to his court. He could get them out of the evening with some dignity. He was a man who knew how to handle awkward situations and get what was best for them in the most dignified manner. She very nearly sighed with relief.

Amanda was therefore stunned when she heard him say, ‘Thursday will be fine, and we thank Eliza very much for the invitation.’

Vittorio told them the time, and the plan suggested by Eliza. He was gone almost at a run in his enthusiasm to get away. Almost immediately their guests wanted to know about him and Eliza. Much later Amanda’s only comment about Philip’s accepting the invitation was issued when they were alone in their room dressing for dinner.

‘You couldn’t resist seeing the palazzo. Is that why we will be subjected to an evening that will probably be awkward for all of us, embarrassing even? Honestly, Philip, how could you? An evening with the farmer who cuts our meadow. I don’t mean to sound like a snob but in the fifteen or more years he has been doing the fields he has hardly spent fifteen minutes speaking to us.’

‘Yes, I suppose the chance of seeing the palazzo was why I accepted. Michael and Edwina said it was a rare invitation,
if
ever extended, so be flattered it was issued to us. After all, she is your friend, and friends do go to one another’s houses.’

‘You know very well we’re not that kind of friends, and so does Eliza. I can’t imagine what has prompted this invitation. It’s not going to be any easier for her than it is for us. Well, just don’t expect too much.
Eliza has told me it’s a very casual lifestyle at the Villa Montecatini.’

‘Amanda, you do understand that this dinner invitation is quite an honour for us? In all the years we’ve had this house, it’s only the third time we’ve been invited by one of our Tuscan neighbours to dine. I realise only now how little we have fitted into the community. Granted we probably set a certain amount of isolation upon ourselves. It could be either very boring or a tremendous surprise, or both. Let’s not think about it, just go.’

Philip was of course right. What was there to think about? And so she put it and any expectations of the forthcoming evening out of her mind, as did he, until they arrived at the closed entrance to the Villa Montecatini.

The massive iron gates hung on chipped stone pediments bearing twisted vines and ivy and were capped by what once must have been handsome crouching stone leopards, now worn away by the centuries and the weather. Looking through the bars up the avenue of cypress trees and overgrown shrubs, wild flowers and flowering bushes, many of them heavy with scorched roses, they were enchanted before they even opened the gates.

Amanda slipped into the driver’s seat of the Range Rover to drive it through the gates being opened by Philip. She sat silent, staring up the drive, while he closed them with a clang. All day the heat had been oppressive. Now though the sun was still hot and high in the sky, there was a warm but pleasant late-summer breeze ruffling the leaves of the rose bushes and shrubs, making the cypresses sway their length sensuously, as
if they were seducing Amanda and Philip to go forward and be embraced by the Villa Montecatini.

Back in the driver’s seat again Philip sat for some minutes, just taking it all in silently before he turned to Amanda and said, ‘Impressive for its decadent beauty. Jesus, is it ever! This only comes with time, centuries of it, and secrets, past souls. I can almost hear their laughter. I had no idea!’

‘Nor I.’

He put the Range Rover into gear and drove slowly up the gracefully winding drive.

‘That perfume – mint and roses, a hint of something like frankincense. The leftover scent of those who have passed on, having lived and loved here. God, what a romantic place,’ said Amanda.

The sky was a bright blue and seemed to widen as they drove up the incline along the avenue, to the summer song of the breeze in the trees and the sound of small animals scurrying through the undergrowth. It was more a passage through something mysterious, simple and lovely, than a three-quarter-mile drive before one was able to get a first glimpse of the house. Small by palazzo standards, it was a fifteenth-century classical building, and like the drive, not groomed to impress. However, it
was
impressive, with the look of being well lived in, a very much loved place and home.

The house was set high on a hill and the views in consequence sensationally beautiful, especially by contrast to the very English lawns and formal garden. Philip stopped the Range Rover close to the front door which stood open as were all the windows on the ground floor. The severe façade was softened
by dozens upon dozens of terracotta-potted trees and flowering plants, looking thirsty and worn down from days of heat and burning sun. Several period Chinese bamboo tables under white canvas umbrellas of considerable size and a scattering of wooden chairs, all askew, of which no two matched, a handsome and elegant French Empire chaise with an open book lying on it, gave the impression of having only just been evacuated by a household that had been lazing in the afternoon heat.

Amanda and Philip were looking down at the tennis court and a croquet lawn when they heard someone approaching the front door of the palazzo through the house. Assuming it was either Eliza or Vittorio, they turned to greet whoever it was. They were further surprised that it should be neither of them but an elderly houseman dressed in smart black and grey pinstripe trousers and a white collarless jacket with epaulettes on the shoulders and cuffs embroidered with slim bands of gold thread. He spoke only in Italian and suggested that they sit down at one of the tables and he would fetch Madam Signora Carducci as soon as he had poured them a Pimms. Then, passing each of them a small white linen napkin, trimmed in an exquisite two-inch band of ecru-coloured lace, and a large silver goblet, perfectly chilled, containing a paper thin slice of orange, a wedge of apple, a large sprig of fresh mint and a roundel of cucumber, he departed.

‘I simply cannot think of the Eliza Flemming I know over coffee and drinks in village cafés as Signora Carducci – and all this given over to a farmer lover, no matter how nice he appears to be. If we had not accepted this invitation, I could have kept my illusions
about Eliza. Born to all this and settling for Vittorio – what kind of a life is that!’

‘Your inability to love on the scale that Eliza can is showing again, Amanda. Give it a rest and face up to your friend’s life,’ said Philip, at the same time feeling a bit inadequate himself about his own limitations in the love stakes.

Eliza’s daughter Samantha appeared with the twins who introduced her to Amanda and Philip and promptly left them, to head down to the lawn for a game of croquet. They were just recovering from finding that Eliza had a grown-up daughter when Beatrice wheeled a magnificent 1920s pram through the front door. It was empty because walking directly behind her was Eliza carrying her son. She handed the baby to the nanny, and turning to Amanda and Philip, said with a welcoming smile, ‘He’s Vittorio’s and mine. We named him Julian after my father. Sorry I wasn’t here to greet you, welcome to our home.’

An hour passed before Vittorio found them down by the lake and joined them, nearly two hours more before the four of them returned to the villa. It was quite obvious to Eliza that Amanda and Philip could not quite cope with the house and the way she and Vittorio lived in it, never mind the fact that
he
lived in it at all. Adopting a ‘their problem, not ours’ attitude allowed her the luxury of not giving a damn and enjoying herself.

In the hall was a large console table whose gilt pheasants and other game birds beneath its
fleur de pêche
marble top were held together with a piece of clothes line and a pink ribbon. It was choc-a-bloc with Ming vases, dead roses in Tang bronze bowls, a lamp
with its torn and yellowed silk shade atilt, a stack of newspapers, a tennis racquet and a fishing rod. There were besides dozens more beautiful things used in the family’s everyday lives, assembled without a collector’s eye or any consideration for their value. The house and its contents simply overwhelmed Eliza’s guests, so much so they had to say something.