‘What?’
Bianca’s reply was just as explosive as his had been.
‘I have just been congratulated on my engagement by an old family friend who tells me he will be delighted to come to my engagement party in a fortnight,’ Luca bit out grimly.
‘Oh, grief…’
Bianca’s voice was hollow. He heard her take a breath. ‘OK, Luca, I’ll try and find out what Matteo has done.’
‘Matteo?’ There was an edge in Luca’s voice—he could hear its sharpness himself.
Bianca’s, however, was even sharper. ‘What are you trying to imply, Luca? That I hadanyidea about this?’ Her tone hardened. ‘Still indulging in your conceited vanity that I might actuallywantto marry you and let the whole world think so?’
Her derision stung. Rightly so. He should not have said that. He knew she deplored their charade as much as he did. Because that, after all, was the only way to regard it.
There is nothing between us except in Matteo’s deluded longings.
Yet even as he asserted it, memory challenged. That day at hispalazzohad drawn him and Biance closer together as they had exhumed the past to exorcise it. Get it out of the way.
But out of the way for what?
The question hung unanswered…unanswerable.
Bianca was speaking again, brisk and impersonal. ‘I’ll speak to Matteo and phone you back.’
She cut the call.
Slowly, Luca put his phone down. Conscious, with a sense of confusion and disquiet, that it had been good to hear Bianca’s voice again…
But what has that to do with deepening this unholy charade with, of all things, an engagement party conjured out of Matteo’s imagination? Dear God!
Surely there had to be a way to knock it on the head?
But when Bianca phoned back, his heart sank.
‘I asked Matteo over lunch,’ she said, her voice heavy. ‘He said he wanted it to be a surprise for us, but he is glad we know. He says he’s invited “everyone”—whatever that means…you’d know better than I—and it will be in two weeks’ time. It is shortnotice, he admits, but Giuseppe will see to it all. All I have to do,’ she went on, her voice hollow, ‘is buy a beautiful gown for the evening.’ She paused. ‘He…he sounded so happy, Luca. I didn’t have the heart to show how dismayed you and I are by it.’
He could hear the choke in her words and gave a resigned sigh. ‘I can’t see a good way out of it—not without hurting Matteo. All we can do is play along…for now, at least.’
He got off the line, his disquiet mounting. This whole deception was getting deeper and deeper. Now he would be parading Bianca as his fiancée—hisfidenzata—deceiving his friends with a lie. Because what else could it be but a lie? There was nothing between Bianca and himself. Not any longer.
Yet even as he made the assertion in his mind he knew, with even more confusion and disquiet, that that, too, was a lie…
With Bianca at the heart of it.
CHAPTER TEN
BIANCASTAREDATher reflection. The evening gown she had bought in Pavenza had been Matteo’s choice. He’d seen it on the website of Pavenza’s most upmarket boutique and urged her to buy it. For herself, she would not have chosen it. It was strapless, silvery white, falling from a softly draped crystal-beaded bodice in silken folds to her ankles. It was exquisite—but it looked far too much like a wedding dress…
But if this was the gown Matteo had set his heart on, she could not refuse him—whatever her misgivings. She wore it now with a delicate, light-as-air chiffon shawl, woven through with silver thread, gathered over her elbows.
Her jewellery was Matteo’s wife’s pearl collar, once again, with the pearl bracelets on either wrist and the matching pearl and tortoiseshell combs fastening the elegant up-style of her hair, exposing the pearl drop earrings against her throat.
On her finger gleamed the emerald and pearl ring Luca had bought her. Her eyes dropped to it. Disquiet showed in her expression. The ring was proof of the lie she was perpetuating, and now it would not just be Matteo she was lying to, but his friends as well.
The warning words of that old poem flitted in her head.
Oh, what a tangled web we weave