The Tuscan Child(100)

“I’ll still have the vineyards and the olive press,” he said. “I won’t exactly be poor.” He looked directly at me. “Neither will you, so it seems.”

“No, you’re right. I still haven’t digested that fact.”

“You could buy back your family home. You could become mistress of Langley Hall.”

For a moment an image flashed into my mind. I saw myself saying to Miss Honeywell, “I’m sorry but I’ll need you out by the end of term. I’m coming back to live here.” Then I laughed. “It’s funny but all my life that was what I dreamed of doing. I was driven to succeed so that I could buy my father’s house back for him. And now he’s dead and I can’t see myself as lady of the manor. I don’t quite know what I want to do yet.”

“Joanna,” he said slowly. “You didn’t need to stay here. You could have gone home with the English lawyer. But you sent him away, saying you would be needed for inquests. I wondered if that meant that you didn’t want to go.”

“You’re right,” I said. “I don’t want to go. I like it here. I like being with Paola and learning to cook and feeling that someone cares about me.”

“And me?” he asked. “Does part of your reason for staying mean that you do not want to leave me?”

“Yes,” I said carefully. “I think it does.”

He leaned toward me, put a hand under my chin, and pulled my face toward his. Then he kissed me hard and with longing. When we broke apart he laughed uneasily. “It is lucky we are on a terrace where we can be observed, or I don’t know where that would have led.”

“I’m a respectable young English lady,” I replied. “I expect to be courted properly.”

“Of course, my lady.” He laughed, his eyes flirting with me.

I looked at him, suddenly struck by a thought. “You could go back to London to finish your studies and then open your restaurant.”

“We could turn your Langley Hall into a hotel and restaurant,” he said.

“We?”

“Am I moving too fast? Maybe just as business partners, you know.”

“Why England? It’s rains too much. You could open your restaurant here as you once dreamed. You could turn this house into your dream restaurant. Imagine the diners sitting here on your terrace and feasting their eyes on the view before they feasted them on the food.”

“I would need to return to England first to finish my apprenticeship,” he said. “And you should pass your exam. And then, who knows?”

He reached across and took my hand. We sat there side by side on the terrace not saying a word while the sun sank behind the western hills and one by one lights twinkled on in the world spread out below us.





AUTHOR’S NOTE

The village of San Salvatore cannot be found on any map. It exists only in my imagination, although it is based on Tuscan hill towns I have visited. The German Gothic Line, north of Lucca, was real.