Page 24 of Modern Romance May 2026 Books 5-8
But explaining that to Dulcie would mean unravelling his all too recent history and, in doing so, he would reveal too much about the family she had married into, and his place in it. And what would be the point? She couldn’t understand. Unconditional love was clearly a cornerstone of her family life. Just look at how fiercely protective she was of Oscar.
He had a sharp, stinging flashback to Dulcie catching fire, the shake in her voice as she picked her brother over him, and the tension he’d been carrying for weeks now found a focus.
‘I’m sure you’ll get over it. Doing the wrong thing comes so naturally to you.’
A second after he spoke, even before he saw the stunned, uncomprehending look on her face, he regretted his words.
‘Would you like anything else, Signore?’
He swore silently. Valentina was back. He watched as Dulcie looked up at her and smiled.
‘Not for me,grazie, Valentina. All this beautiful sunshine has made me feel a little sleepy. I’m going to have a lie-down.’
As she pushed back her chair, he got to his feet, and she held his gaze for a full sixty seconds and then she held out her hand.
After another sixty seconds, he took it. It was like holding a piece of wood.
He followed her into her bedroom, closing the door behind them.
‘Dulcie—’
‘I really am quite tired.’ Her voice was wooden too, as if she were a bad actor speaking bad dialogue in a play he had written, and, not liking how that made him feel, he walked over to the adjoining door between their two rooms and made his own voice brisk.
‘Knock when you get up and I’ll come through and we can go down together.’
She nodded, and that mechanical nod was the last thing he saw before she closed the door in his face. Seconds later, he heard the key turn in the lock, and he turned and walked slowly over to the bed. He had spent most of his life feeling boxed in and contained by the personalities around him, defined by their dislikes and preferences. But now, even though he was locked out, not locked in, he had never felt more trapped.
His gaze moved slowly around his room. He loved the castle, knew that living there was a privilege. But he had never wanted to run the estate or be the heir apparent. Or become the caretaker-cum-manager of his entire family.
It had happened by osmosis. It didn’t matter that for most of his life somebody else had been technically in charge. His great-grandfather. Then his grandfather. His father. And, briefly, Edo, his charming older brother who was adored not just by his mother but by the very people who had lost their jobs in the redundancies Ettore had had to implement to pay back Edo’s debts.
Of course, nobody knew that. Just as nobody knew that it was he who had sat down with his father and convinced him that the only way to save the estate from the mess his grandfather left behind was to sell off the other properties that his forebears had amassed over six hundred years.
He hadn’t wanted to make those decisions. And yet, someone had had to make them. That someone should have been Edo.
But the wrong brother had died.
That was what his mother had thought. And said to him after Edo’s death.
He knew she’d been grief-stricken, raging against a world that had robbed her of her child. But he was her child too.
Her second son, the middle child, the spare, although truthfully, he hadn’t even been that. That would imply he could replace his brother and that simply wasn’t true. He’d known that for what felt like for ever, just as he’d known that his father doted on Sofia. His was the hand that had always got held by the nanny.
His body tensed against the horsehair and pocket-sprung mattress as he heard the creak of the French windows being pushed open next door.
Dulcie.
Getting to his feet, he walked towards his own closed windows, drawn to an image of her standing on her balcony like some modern-day Juliet—
He froze, his eyes narrowing incredulously through the glass, hardly able to believe what he was seeing as Dulcie twisted her body over the balustrade and began climbing down the twisted, woody trunk of the wisteria that clung to the stone outside her room.
She slithered down the last few feet and dropped to the ground. Then she wiped her hands on her dress, slipped her shoes back on her feet and started walking purposefully towards the gardens.
It was a surprisingly easy climb, Dulcie thought. As her feet touched the warm terrace, she felt grounded, metaphorically and literally.
Slipping her shoes back on, she headed towards the formal gardens. But they weren’t what interested her. And, walking swiftly, she made her way between the mathematically straight box hedges to what lay on the other side of a sun-soaked brick wall.
She hadn’t been lying to Valentina, she did feel exhausted physically and emotionally, but she was hardly going to fall asleep with that snarky comment Ettore had made about honesty replaying inside her head. As if he hadn’t just revealed to her hours earlier that he was a marquis who lived in this castle.
