The House in Amalfi (21 page)

“Absolutely remarkable,” I said, looking at the high-backed brocade sofas and silk carpets, the gold lamps and little gilt tables filled with beautiful jeweled objects. Somehow it didn’t quite match up with the first version of Lorenzo I’d seen, in the paint-spattered shorts.

“What can I offer you to drink?” he said, being the perfect host. “Perhaps a glass of champagne?”

Acting the perfect guest, I said, “Yes, thank you.”

“I always think champagne is such a celebratory drink,”
I added, desperately making conversation, and the modern-day Pirate smiled and agreed there was nothing better.

I perched on the edge of a gold brocade chair and he sat opposite on the edge of a sofa. “And how are your chickens?” he asked.

“Oh, my goodness, I forgot to thank you for the chicken feed!” I exclaimed guiltily. “It’s only thanks to you I didn’t poison them all with parakeet food! They’re doing well, I think. At least they’re not protesting as much. I have to admit, though, I daren’t go into that coop yet. I’m scared to death of that rooster.”

He laughed, and I noticed how his eyes crinkled at the corners. He looked quite different when he laughed, more approachable. I thought he was probably a very interesting man, though I was never going to get the chance to find out.

“Cute dog,” I said as she came over to inspect me. “What’s her name?”

Lorenzo laughed. “Oh, come on now, tell the truth: she’s the ugliest dog you ever saw, right? Her name is Affare—the Italian word for ‘bargain’—because she cost me nothing and she’s the best bargain I ever had. Apart from the vet’s bills to fix her up. I found her on the street near my office; I noticed she was there every day, getting thinner and thinner. Then she must have been hit by a car, because one morning I found her bloodied and with a broken leg and ribs. Nobody wanted a dog this ugly. She looked at me and I looked at her. . . .” He shrugged. “What could I do? She was mine.”

“And you were hers,” I said, feeling unexpectedly touched by his story. I took another look at Affare, the bargain dog, sitting next to her master, her long white snout sniffing the air, her stump of a tail tucked under. She had the smallest eyes of any dog I’d ever seen, a long nose, rough white fur, and short legs. It would take a leap of faith to see beauty in her, but
I guessed it was her inner beauty that had captured the great Lorenzo Pirata.

“
Perdona, signore
, luncheon is served,” Massimo said from the doorway.

We followed him into a dining room almost as big as the room we had just left. It was painted a faded gold, with a carved green marble fireplace at each end and a long series of French doors. Through them I caught a glimpse of a wide terrace with a row of extraordinary sphinx heads overlooking the wide vista of the coastline. The long dining table could seat at least twenty, and our two places arranged at the far end looked a little lonely.

Lorenzo held my chair and I took a seat. “This is like Buckingham Palace,” I said, sounding like the dumb eight-year-old I used to be instead of the modern woman of the world I supposedly was. But the Pirate smiled and said perhaps it wasn’t quite as grand as that and, in fact, the family rarely used these rooms, except for the holidays, Christmas and suchlike, when there were big parties. He’d thought I might like to see them.

“Thank you,” I said. “I’m thrilled; I’ve never seen a place like this before—let alone eaten lunch in one.”

Massimo was serving a pasta dish: tiny ravioli filled with crabmeat in a buttery sauce. They were delicious and I said so, enjoying the food despite myself.

“I’m glad to see you appreciate good food,” the Pirate said, “though looking at you, I wouldn’t have thought so.”

“You think I’m too skinny?” I said indignantly, and instantly regretted it. But he laughed.

“I think you are quite beautiful, Lamour Harrington,” he said, completely throwing me off. Of all the things he might have said, this was the most unexpected.

Somehow I got my wits back together. “My father always
told me that, though of course that was just a father speaking. I never believed him,” I added.

“Fathers always see beauty in their daughters,” Lorenzo said, and remembering Aurora, I told him I thought his daughter was extremely beautiful.

“I only wish she were more aware of it,” he commented as a maid in a pale blue dress and a white apron came to take our empty plates.

“You sound like every father there ever was,” I said, smiling. “They never seem to want to lose their daughters to another man.”

“That’s probably true,” he agreed, pouring more wine, as Massimo appeared with the next course: a platter of delicious-looking scampi, prepared with white wine and shallots and garlic.

“This is heaven,” I said, letting go of inhibitions and taking another sip of the wine. I was beginning to enjoy myself. My eyes met the Pirate’s over the rim of the wineglass. He was smiling.

I was on my third glass and feeling no pain. I leaned closer, elbow on the table, chin in hand. “What’s so funny?” I asked, looking him in the eye.

“I’ve never met anyone like you.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Man, woman, or beast?”

“Oh, definitely woman,” he said, laughing out loud this time.

The maid cleared our empty plates and Massimo appeared again with a salad and a silver-edged wooden board with an array of cheeses. I had the sense to turn down another glass of wine, though I got the feeling it was too late. I thought guiltily I had let down my defenses and we hadn’t even gotten to the “business” part of the meeting yet. I refused the cheese.

“Then shall we take our coffee out on the terrace?” Lorenzo asked. “I’d like to show you the view from there.”

The terrace could have accommodated several of my little houses. It wrapped around the entire front of the Castello in a great sweep, shaded with stone-columned pergolas laden with honeysuckle and jasmine and hot pink bougainvillea. A narrow reflecting pool ran for a hundred feet or more along the rim of the terrace, with jets of water arching over it, exactly like the famous pool in the Alhambra gardens in Granada, Spain. Tables and comfortable chairs were arranged in the shade of striped awnings and under the leafy pergolas. Games, a backgammon set and an enormous chess set with silver pawns, and books were strewn around. The landscape architect in me appreciated the casual informality, achieved despite such a grand setting. It was like an outdoor living room, and obviously this was a place where the family spent a great deal of time.

I leaned on the balustrade gazing at the fantastical vista of the Bay of Salerno spread out for my pleasure, at the green indented coastline and the aquamarine sea blending into the azure sky. “I want to reach out and touch it,” I said, smiling at Lorenzo Pirata, who had come to stand next to me, “just to make sure it’s not a painted backdrop.”

“Even Hollywood could not match this,” he said, but his eyes were on me and not the view.

“And all these sphinxes? What did your ancestors do? Send a pirate ship to Egypt?”

He laughed and said that they probably had and the sphinxes had indeed come from Egypt and as far as he knew had been purchased by his great-great-grandfather, long before it became fashionable to loot Egyptian and Greek artifacts.

“There is a receipt in the archives,” he said. “I forget exactly the sum paid, but it was certainly not what they
were worth. So I suppose it was an act of piracy in a way.”

Massimo poured the coffee and we took our cups and sipped it, still looking out across the bay in which my father had drowned in the storm. Now there was barely a flicker of wind and the sea was like a sheet of glittering blue glass.

“I’ve never seen a storm here,” I said. “What’s it like?”

He shrugged. “Very Italian. Dramatic, fierce; thunder, lightning, winds that swirl and moan all around, tearing out trees, blowing down roofs, wreaking destruction. Fortunately, they don’t occur very often. And usually only in winter.”

I was staring at the view but could feel his eyes on me. “My father died in a storm like that,” I said.

“I remember. It was a great storm and it came early that year.”

‘Did you know my father?”

He nodded. “I knew Jon-Boy. We had a business arrangement about the house.”

“Oh, of course, the house,” I said, remembering it was the reason I was here.

“My wife also knew your father,” he said. “She enjoyed his novel very much. I remember she said it was a window into the man’s soul.”

“Your wife was right. It was.” I turned to look at him. I thought that under different circumstances I might be interested in this man. I might want to get to know him better, see what lurked beneath that smooth urbane surface. Find out if there were tempests and volcanoes burning inside or whether Lorenzo Pirata was a cool customer, a man always on the surface of life. Looking into his eyes, I didn’t want to believe that. For some odd reason, even though I knew he was my enemy, I wanted to believe that the charm was his social facade and underneath was the real man, the one who liked nothing
better than restoring his old fishing boat in the company of his dog.

“I’d like to meet your wife,” I said.

“Marella died seventeen years ago. Aurora was only three.”

I could have bitten out my tongue. “Oh, I’m so sorry.”

“You couldn’t know that,” he said in a brisker tone. “And of course, Jon-Boy is one of the reasons I brought you here today.”

“Only one of the reasons?” I asked mockingly, because I knew he was being polite, not to say charming, before dropping the bombshell and asking me to sell my house back to him.

“There were two,” he said. “The first was that I wanted to have lunch with the woman whose ambition is to keep free-range chickens, and whose company I’ve enjoyed enormously. The second is more serious, I’m afraid.”

“I’m afraid, too,” I said. “I have no idea what you are going to say, but I have the feeling it’s not good.”

He held his arms wide, palms up in a shrug. “I have no choice. It’s certainly not the end of the world,” he added curtly, sounding quite different from the man of a few moments ago. “But I have to tell you, Lamour, you’ve made a grave mistake coming back to Amalfi. Of course I understand you wanted to see the place where you lived as a child, and where you were happy with your father. That’s the reason I allowed you to stay and said nothing. Until now.”

I held up my hands. “Stop! Stop! Did you say
allowed
me to stay? What right have you to ask me to leave? The house belonged to my father. Now it’s mine.”

We were face-to-face. “I’m sorry, Lamour,” he said, “but the house did not belong to Jon-Boy. It was leased by him from the Pirata estate. That lease became void with his death.”

My knees buckled and I sank into a chair. The house I considered my real home,
my true happy home
, did not belong to me. But Jon-Boy had told me it was ours, that he would always live there. Was Lorenzo Pirata trying to cheat me out of my home? And if so, why?

“It would be best,” I heard him say, “if you enjoyed the rest of your little holiday, and then returned to Chicago, picked up your life there. After all, there’s not much in Amalfi for a foreign woman alone.”

I shot to my feet, suddenly angry. Who the hell did he think he was, talking
at
me,
the little woman
, telling me to go home to Chicago like a good girl? The hell with him! Besides, there was more to this than met the eye.

“You want me out of here,” I said trying to keep my voice calm. “And I want to know
why
? What’s your secret, Lorenzo Pirata? What are you hiding? Is it something to do with my father’s death? The man who hated the water, who hated boats, who never set foot in one? The same man who supposedly sailed out into a storm and never came back? Did you have something to do with that, Signor Pirata? Or am I imagining things, the way we
women
so often do?”

Affare got to her feet, growling softly. “I’m very sorry, Lamour,” Lorenzo said quietly. “But those are the facts.”

“You’re only telling me exactly as much as you want me to know,” I said. “But I’ll tell
you
something, Signor Pirata. I’m not going anywhere. I’m here to stay. And I don’t care how many legal documents and fancy lawyers you throw at me.”

I stalked from the terrace into the house, feeling his eyes on me. I turned at the door. He was standing where I’d left him, watching me. “Oh, and thank you for a wonderful lunch,” I said, polite to the last. Mrs. Mortimer would have been proud of me.

I threw off my new sandals and ran down the
scalatinella
to the house. From now on I would go barefoot, the way I had when I was a kid. The soles of my feet would become tough again, and so would I.

I ran into the house, flinging off my smart lunch-party clothes as I went. Upstairs, I dragged on a pair of old shorts and a T-shirt. I glared around.

This was
my
room,
my
house,
my
home. Nobody would ever get me out of here. As if to prove it was mine, I pried open the can of apricot paint, grabbed the roller, and started on the walls.

It was seven o’clock before I took a break and a hot shower to get the aches out of my back. I wandered restlessly in the garden, making mental notes of things that needed to be done, promising I would delay no longer and that tomorrow I would begin its rescue.