He didn’t answer—but then what could he have said? She’d only spoken the truth, after all, about how very different their backgrounds were.
A thought struck her, and her brow furrowed. She turned her head towards him.
‘Giuseppe, the doctor and that jeweller addressed you as “Signor Visconte”—which I assume is the Italian version of “Mr Viscount”, or whatever.’ She forbore from putting any sardonic tone into her voice, keeping it neutral. ‘But I don’t remember you using that title in England?’
‘Because I wasn’t aviscontethen,’ came the reply. ‘My father was still alive.’ He paused, overtaking yet another vehicle. ‘He died three years ago. Together with my mother.’
His voice had no expression in it—but she heard emotion all the same. It took her aback.
‘How…?’ she faltered, and then went quiet.
‘A plane crash. My father was a diplomat, and spent most of his life in other countries because of it. My mother went with him usually. They were in a light plane in South America when a storm hit, downing the plane. There were no survivors.’
‘Oh, God, how awful…’ She knew there was sincerity in her voice—how could there not be? ‘I’m sorry,’ she said quietly. ‘That must have been unbearable for you. You don’t even have siblings…’
She knew from her time with him in London that he was an only child, as was she. It was something they’d had in common. And now there was something else.
Having no living parents.
‘It was hard,’ he acknowledged. ‘Matteo… Matteo was a tower of strength for me. I’d… I’d always been close to him, and to Luisa. With my parents abroad, I often spent the school holidays with them—they were very good friends of my parents. He helped me through a very bad time when my parents were killed.’
She was silent for a moment. Then, ‘You are all but a son to him,’ she said. ‘Not just a godson.’
‘Yes.’
He didn’t say any more, and she respected his silence. Knowing what he’d gone through—losing his parents so traumatically, so tragically—could not but draw on her sympathy. Did it make her feel different about him? Thoughts flickered…circling, unsure, uncertain. Feeling their way…
Silence fell between them again, and Bianca went back to looking at the passing countryside, glad to let her thoughts subside. The landscape was becoming hillier, and more forested. After a while Luca turned off the autostrada onto a quieter road, leading deeper into the countryside, and then again onto a smaller road that wound around the foot of a hill, gaining elevation as it did so.
He slowed, and Bianca could see an impressive-looking ornate pair of three-metre-high gates with gilded scrolling set into high stone walls. She could see there was a lodge situated just behind the gates, and as Luca turned the car towards them someone issued from the lodge to throw open the gates.
Luca slid down his window. ‘Luigi…grazie.’
The man beamed, and Bianca could see him glancing curiously at her. Luca said something more to him, in rapid Italian which she could not follow, and then he was closing his window, Luigi was standing away, and they were moving off down the wide, gravelled drive.
Ahead, Bianca could see their destination.
She had thought her uncle’s grand villa large—but this was, indeed, apalazzo, much older than Matteo’s opulent nineteenth-century house. Bianca could see at once why her uncle had called Luca’s home an historic architectural gem. She gazed at it appreciatively, impressed. Despite its size and grandeur, it was quietly beautiful, with a charm about it that was instantly obvious. It might be a historicpalazzo, but it was also clearly a home, too.
Strange feelings went through her as they drew up outside it on the broad white gravel carriage sweep.
Luca’s home.
His natural environment.
His ancestral pile…
His very own personal stately home…
Thoughts hollowed out inside her, whether she wanted them to or not.
No wonder he thought I wouldn’t fit in here.
His words to her echoed in her head.
‘We come from very different worlds, Bianca…’
Totally different.