The Impatient Groom

“We’ve got three weeks to make arrangements before our wedding day.” Title Page CHAPTER ONE CHAPTER TWO CHAPTER THREE CHAPTER FOUR CHAPTER FIVE CHAPTER SIX CHAPTER SEVEN CHAPTER EIGHT CHAPTER NINE Copyright

“We’ve got three weeks to make arrangements before our wedding day.”

“Rozzano!” Sophia cried in horror. “We can’t get married that soon! It’s crazy. Six months would be much more sensible—”

“Sensible! Who wants to be sensible?” His eyes glittered.

“Marriage is for keeps, Rozzano. It would be awful if we made a mistake.”

“Four weeks, then!” he said forcefully. “You can’t possibly ask me to wait any longer! We want to be together, don’t we?” He turned her face and lovingly, lingeringly, kissed her mouth. “We’ll be perfect together, Sophia. I know we will. So,” he said, smiling fondly at her, “we’d better start planning the wedding of the decade!”

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Next month, join us in a toast to another happy

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The Mistress Bride (#2056)

by

Michelle Reid

The Impatient Groom

Sara Wood

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CHAPTER ONE

FROM the shadows of the musicians’ gallery, Rozzano watched his sister-in-law’s birthday celebrations and fought a losing battle against the inevitable. He just had to marry. It was an appalling idea—but he couldn’t face the alternative. A vicious claw of pain dragged at his stomach.

In the beautiful eighteenth-century ballroom below, high-maintenance mistresses were performing prettily for their well-heeled lovers and dazzling beauties purred in the arms of elderly tycoons. Several guests were roaming around and slyly fingering the antiques in an attempt to price them.

His chest inflated with a tight, angry breath. These were his possessions, his palace—and these people were defiling them. He despised the crowd his brother ran around with. Tawdry, the lot of them.

And in the midst of the excited, empty chatter his lying, cheating, work-shy brother swaggered like a peacock, flaunting himself and the wealth of the Barsinis while the birthday girl bitched in a corner and her spoilt children screamed and squabbled and stuffed themselves with expensive delicacies.

Prince Rozzano Alessandro di Barsini allowed himself the rare luxury of a malevolent scowl. He had a reputation for being the perfect, urbane gentleman. It would astonish people if they could ever see him otherwise. But Barsini emotions were not for public display.

‘Have emotions if you must!’ his father had said on one memorable occasion. ‘But have the decency to keep them to yourself!’

So all the consuming hatred and fury he felt for his relations had been kept totally private—but, hell, was it good to let the mask slip for a few moments!

Tonight, being polite to everyone for the last hour had tested his patience to breaking point and he was finding it harder and harder to restrain himself in the face of his brother’s excesses. As a child, he had spent painful long hours in isolation, forcing his volcanic passions into the required strait-jacket shaped by his exacting father. After thirty-four years of self-discipline, he had learned his lesson well.

He’d coped by diverting his explosive energies to high-danger, high-energy sports that demanded that he push himself to the limit. But increasingly there were times when Enrico went too far and Rozzano’s control was sorely tried.

Contempt tore at his sensual mouth. He found his brother repulsive, vulgar and immoral. Even now, Enrico was caressing a woman’s back. She was married, with two children—one of the many mistresses Enrico supported. An impotent fury surged through him like a burning acid that his brother should flaunt the woman in the family palazzo!

He thought of the day Enrico had been born and how the tiny, black-haired scrap of humanity had melted his heart. Enrico had seemed like a miracle to him. But he’d been four years old then, and unaware that the innocent gurgling baby would systematically poison the lives of everyone he came in contact with—just for the sheer hell of it.

Rozzano went pale. The poison was in him too. It grieved him to feel such extreme anger and revulsion for someone of his own Mood—but he could never forgive Enrico for what he’d done. Not ever.

He set his jaw in determination, knowing he had no choice but to take drastic action. Otherwise he didn’t know what the devil he was going to do about Enrico—how to curb him, help him, and ensure he did no more damage to the unwary.

Only yesterday he’d tried to talk some sense into him. Enrico had laughed and said that life was for living and who but a fool wanted to work in an office all day? He fumed at the memory. Did his brother imagine that a publishing empire ran itself?

Turning away in rage when some drunken guests collided and knocked over a valuable medieval candle-stand, Rozzano hardened his heart.

As the elder son of one of the most ancient and noble Venetian families, he had a duty to protect the honour—and the survival—of the Barsini name. Enrico and his loathsome brats must not take the title in the event of his death.

He needed an heir. There was no escape then. He had to find a wife. Rozzano drew in a harsh breath, shaken by the finality of the decision he’d made.

Slowly his fingers curled, shaping his finely shaped hands into belligerent fists. He swallowed back the bile that had risen to his throat and groaned. What he did for this family!

Turbulent emotions battled for his heart and mind. He’d vowed not to become involved with a woman ever again. Four years, three months and four days ago, to be precise. He knew that moment of his wife’s death almost to the hour! His even white teeth savaged his lower lip as he struggled for self-control.

A searing black venom blazed in his eyes as bitter resentment fuelled his loathing. Because of the part Enrico had played in his wife’s death, he would have to throw himself on the marriage market again. He’d be forced to choose a woman he didn’t love—couldn’t love—and he’d have to play the doting husband for the rest of his life. What a sentence!

Grim-faced, he thought of the women he knew, the ones who adored him, the many who flirted and were more than willing. He’d give none of them house room.

‘Damn you, Enrico!’ he ground out through his teeth. Happiness would continue to evade him. He had everything—and he had nothing. Except the fatherly affection of an old man.

He groaned. D‘Antiga! He’d almost forgotten!

The church clock chimed and he checked his Cartier watch with a sharp exclamation. First things first. He must leave.

Somewhere in southern England, a solicitor waited with news of D‘Antiga’s fortunes—and this alone had intrigued him enough to draw him half-way across Europe. Maybe they’d found D’Antiga’s runaway daughter! If so, he would not be obliged to run the D‘Antiga estates any longer, on behalf of his late father’s friend.

His expression became smooth and implacable again. His passionate anger was ruthlessly suppressed. Thoughtfully, Rozzano began to descend the gilded stairway. Maybe he could take back the reins of the Barsini publishing house from his brother and get it running smoothly again!

Exhilarated at the prospect, he headed for the water-gate. A nod of his head brought the waiting servants to life, one hurrying to alert his boatman, one passing him his long wool coat, briefcase and gloves.

As always, others smoothed his path for the whole of the tedious journey. When he left his palazzo he travelled by motor launch to Venice’s airport for the flight to London. After a night in his suite at the Dorchester, a chauffeured car took him to the private plane, which conveyed him to an airport on the south coast of England. From there he was driven to a small village in Dorset called Barley Magma.

Il Principe Rozzano Alessandro di Barsini stepped from his hire car looking as immaculate and composed as if he’d just woken and dressed ten minutes earlier.

But even before breakfast he’d dealt with yet another crisis of Enrico’s making, spoken at length to his broker and taken several calls from his publishing outlets around the world. In the car he’d dealt with urgent papers, switching his mind with alacrity from his own affairs to those of D‘Antiga’s perfumeries.

‘Yup, that’s it,’ encouraged the hire driver when he hesitated.

They’d stopped outside a tiny grocer’s shop on the end of a terrace of houses whose golden stone was glowing softly in the September sunshine. A perplexed frown fleetingly dared to spoil the smoothness of Rozzaao’s high, broad forehead and irritation tightened his jaw. A fool’s errand, then. A mistake. He felt the disappointment keenly.

Abruptly he turned back to the car. ‘I have no business with a grocer.’

‘Nah! The solicitor rents rooms above,’ the driver told him cheerfully. He knew wealth when he saw it and anticipated a fat tip. ‘Door round the corner.’

Still doubtful, Rozzano nevertheless thanked him politely. This didn’t look hopeful. ‘Come back for me, if you please. Say...an hour?’

He thought he’d be out before that, but he could always sit beneath the large oak tree and work on his papers. Quickly he strode to the open door at the side of the building. His face showed no hint of his thoughts, which were that there was surely a mix-up.

How, he wondered, as his hand-stitched leather shoes trod each uncarpeted step upwards, could a small-time solicitor in a rural backwater have any connection with the Venetian aristocracy? Let alone solve a thirty-threeyear-old mystery!

His hopes fading, he entered the poorly appointed of fice. A young woman at a desk seemed to be trying to type and gossip on the telephone simultaneously. Without looking up she covered the mouthpiece and snapped a scratchy, ‘Yes?’

His dark eyes narrowed but his tone remained civil and very—perhaps ominously—quiet as he approached her desk.

‘Good morning. I have an appointment. Rozzano Barsini—’

‘Oh! The prince!’ The woman dropped the phone in shock, blushed scarlet and knocked over a pile of files and a mug of coffee, causing Rozzano to step back quickly before his sharply tailored jacket was ruined. ‘Blast! Oh, I’m sorry, Your—um—Highness!’ In confusion, she tried to mop up the mess, apologise and stare in awe all at the same time.

He handed over his soft linen handkerchief, hoping wryly that she wouldn’t curtsey. Her knees looked alarmingly poised to do so.

‘Please calm yourself,’ he said, wearied with the effect his name invariably produced.

He was an unwilling celebrity. Since his wife’s death, the media had been obsessed with his life, reporting every minor detail—and the partying extravagances of his brother. Rozzano controlled the urge to say bitingly that column inches in a newspaper didn’t make someone a god.

‘I’ll wait till you’re ready to announce me,’ he said instead, his voice stiff with restraint.

The secretary cleared up, then flapped and fluttered her way to an inner office from where he could hear an excited conversation developing.

Suppressing a sigh, Rozzano cast a doubtful eye over a rather tired-looking sofa and, easing the knife creases of his dark navy trousers, made himself as comfortable as possible on a rickety wooden chair. Wishing he hadn’t wasted his valuable time, he reached for his phone, to make a few calls.

Only then did he notice the woman sitting by the window. ‘Excuse me! I thought I was alone. Good morning,’ he said politely, tucking his mobile phone back in its slimline holster at his waist

She acknowledged him with a smile that softened her sooty grey eyes. ‘morning,’ she replied easily.

Her voice was so low and lyrical and warmly welcomeing that it immediately had the effect of soothing his irritation.

She must have been aware of who he was, because the secretary had screeched it to the Four Winds, but she seemed relaxed and apparently unimpressed. It was a pleasant change. He looked away out of habit, because up to now he’d avoided possible entanglements with women like the plague, but her reaction had been so surprising that he gave her a second glance.

An amused smile lifted the corners of his mouth and softened his stern features. He’d been forgotten—or dismissed! It was such a novelty that he found himself both intrigued and enchanted.

She was looking out onto the street, her blissful expression suggesting she was dreaming of something delightful. With some regret, Rozzano remembered his manners and turned away again, but not before he’d been deeply struck by the gentle repose of her face and body.

Unlike the fashionably tiny and bean-thin young women he knew, she was quite tall, large-boned and curvaceous—a kind of homely earth-mother type. And yet...

Pretending to flick through an ancient bridal magazine, he tried to work out what was puzzling him. Her clothes, maybe? He’d retained an impression of an ill-fitting gentian-blue polyester dress that sagged at the hem, and a caramel brown cardigan of an uncertain age and style. He hadn’t missed those incredible legs, though—long, slender and bare, tanned to a gleaming, smooth gold and with ankles so shapely that he could pleasurably imagine his hands curving around them. Yet she wore oldfashioned and poorly made shoes—although, he conceded, they’d been well polished. And her rich toffee-coloured hair had been dragged back from her face into a tight, thick plait as if she disapproved of frivolity.

Nothing there, then, other than those legs, to make the heart beat faster. In that case, what had caught his attention, what was so utterly fascinating? Riveted, he put his mind to the conundrum.

Allora. He had it! Excitement glittered in the depths of his shadowed dark eyes. Incongruously, an air of refinement pervaded her whole body. It revealed itself in her perfect posture—the ramrod-straight back, the graceful carriage of her head with its delicate, almost fragile features, and the demure arrangement of those staggeringly beautiful legs.

Interesting. Perhaps he’d strike up a conversation, he thought with idle curiosity...

‘Mr Luscombe’s ready for you now, Your Highness!’ the secretary announced loudly, too loudly, her eyes shining with excitement.

‘Thank you.’

Astonished that he felt annoyed because he hadn’t been able to speak to the blissfully unaware Madonna, Rozzano brought his interest under control, rose and strolled at his usual leisurely pace into Luscombe’s office. As the elderly solicitor greeted him, he heard the secretary add sneeringly, dismissively, ‘Oh, and you’re to come in too, Miss Charlton.’

He swivelled on his heel, startled. The serene, dreaming Madonna had indeed followed him in! What the hell had she to do with the D‘Antiga millions?

‘Would you like coffee, Your Highness?’ suggested the secretary, in a sickeningly unctuous voice.

He shot her a hard look. ‘In my country,’ he said softly, pained that he felt driven to make the rebuke, ‘women take priority over men.’

‘Yes, Jean, bring coffee for everyone!’ The solicitor’s glare at his secretary said it all.

And then Luscombe turned his attention to the seraphic woman behind Rozzano. As the solicitor drew her forward and welcomed her, the anger in his face inelted away and he was all smiles.

So was Rozzano, though he wasn’t sure why. Smiling hadn’t been in his repertoire of expressions for a long time, but when he looked at the Madonna it just happened. While she solemnly shook the solicitor’s hand, he reflected that her very presence seemed to have a balmy effect on his seething brain.

As Frank Luscombe completed the introductions, Rozzano took Sophia Charlton’s slender and graceful hand and, on a totally uncharacteristic and flamboyant impulse, bent low to kiss it.

He looked and smelled gorgeous, she thought, staring at the top of his smooth, dark head and still trying to recall where she’d heard his name before. Since he was a prince, she supposed that she must have read about him attending some jet-set party or a film premiere. How glamorous!

And then his eyes lifted to hers—warm, inky-black and magnetic. Sophia was startled. This was no playboy. He had depth. Intelligence.

A glow relaxed all her muscles, the same inner glow she’d felt when he’d first walked into the waiting room and she’d heard his rich, chocolate-syrup voice and its intriguing accent.

His arrival had prompted her to dream of meeting her prince one day, falling in love and having his children. Even if that ‘prince’ turned out to be a farmhand or an estate agent, he’d be a prince to her!

And they’d have children. Four would be perfect. Sophia sighed. She longed for a baby. The desire had grown more urgent as her biological clock had begun to tick away. Although she’d always made the best of whatever situation she was in, a family would make her life complete.

Humour and common sense dragged her back to reality. Out here in this quiet country setting, white horses bearing spare bachelor princes, farmhands or estate agents were thin on the ground. Especially ones who’d fall madly in love with a thirty-two-year-old spinster in a terminally ill brown cardy!

Amused, she imagined Prince Rozzano leaning down from his white stallion and hooking her up to sit in front of him. He’d unbutton her demure cardigan and fling it away in a fit of unbridled passion.

She stifled a giggle and paid attention, her face as sombre as she could make it.

‘So please, take a seat. And I must apologise for Jean,’ Frank was saying. ‘She’s a temp. My own secretary is on maternity leave.’

‘How lovely!’ she said, suppressing her envy. ‘But I’m sure it’s been difficult for you,’ Sophia sympathised.

She sat down and tried to make her too short skirt cover a bit more thigh. The prince had already given her legs a couple of glances. Unfortunately she couldn’t tell if he’d disapproved or enjoyed the experience.

The secretary knocked on the door and placed a tray on the solicitor’s desk, her hands clumsily knocking against the phone as she did so. Simpering, she handed the prince a cup, looked disappointed when he coolly declined her further services via milk and sugar and stalked out in a sulk, leaving Sophia and Frank to reach for their own less than pristine mugs.

Frank sighed. ‘I give up!’

Sophia’s eyes were laughing at his mock despair. ‘If you’re stuck any time in the future, I could always pop in and give you a hand,’ she offered. ‘I used to do Father’s typing and accounts for him.’

Frank looked bemused. ‘I thought you ran a day nursery before you stopped working to care for him?’

Her face grew soft with the happy memories of those days. ‘I did. I adored it, too,’ she admitted. ‘But I helped Father in my spare time. Frankly, I’d do anything now—so long as it doesn’t involve night or daylight robbery, pushing drugs or—’ She stopped, realising she’d gabbled on without her usual sense of caution. This definitely wasn’t the place to mention prostitution!

‘Or?’ prompted the prince.

‘Anything illegal.’ She made the words as prim as possible.

‘Ah.’

From the look in his eyes, it was plain that he knew exactly what she’d meant! Demurely she continued. ‘Apart from the voluntary work I do at the school, I’ve been out of work since Father died.’ She grimaced. ‘You know what it’s like finding a job here, Frank. If I lived in a town it would be easier, but I can’t afford to move.’

A low laugh escaped when she remembered her last attempt at finding employment.

‘Share it, please, Miss Charlton,’ murmured the prince, the expression in his eyes veiled by his impossibly long lashes.

Both men seemed interested, so she gave a shrug and shared. ‘I was desperate for any kind of work,’ she told them solemnly, ‘so last week I applied for a job as a bin man—person,’ she corrected, remembering to be politically correct.

‘Bin...person?’

The prince’s English was amazing, but obviously aristocrats didn’t know about such things. Solemnly she explained. ‘Refuse collector.’

The prince’s only response was a millimetre lift of his eyebrows. Not a man to wear his humour on his sleeve, then. She was seized by a wicked desire to shock him, or to force a smile to crack that composure.

Frank was more forthcoming. ‘And?’ he queried, grinning.

‘Looking around at the competition, I thought I had a good chance,’ she said, keeping her expression deadpan. ‘Then in came a guy with a shaven head, tattoos and a vest, bursting at the seams with Herculean muscles. I knew all was lost. Given an hour or two I could manage the first three of those, but not the last!’

Frank laughed. She thought the prince was smiling, but she kept her eyes firmly ahead. For some reason he was making her feel edgy. What could he possibly have to do with her?

‘I think,’ Frank observed, still chuckling, ‘you’ll soon have better things to do than to collect other people’s rubbish.’

The prince leaned forward a fraction. Sophia treated herself to a quick glance. From the slight lift of his shoulders she deduced that he was tense, even though no such emotion showed on the perfection of his smooth, oliveskinned face.

But as a vicar’s daughter she’d had practice in reading small gestures. Perception came with the job. How else did you know when a widower was being brave but really wanted to talk and weep over his bereavement? Or that the jar of home-made jam, which one of the parishioners had brought in, was only an excuse for needing a heartto-heart about their wayward daughter?

Her wandering mind suddenly snapped back, to focus on the present situation. And suddenly she was tense too, wondering how an Italian nobleman fitted in with Frank’s mysterious phone call, which had promised she would hear something to her advantage.

‘Like...the offer of a job as a nursery nurse?’ she had asked hopefully.

‘Much better,’ was all Frank would say at the time.

But that was what she wanted—to return to the career she’d adored, surrounded by children, loving them, mothesring them.

‘Sophia?’

Her hand went to her mouth in dismay and then she gave a small laugh of apology, used to missing conversations when she retreated into her inner fantasy world.

‘sorry! I’m a terrible drifter!’ she said amiably.

‘Thinking of Hercules and his vest?’ suggested the prince.

Her eyes twinkled Beneath that cool exterior lurked a decent sense of humour! She felt irrationally pleased.

‘I was thinking of children,’ she told him, with unconscious tenderness. ‘I wish I could find work with them.’