Page 133 of Modern Romance September 2026 Books 5-8

‘Just as you are, Donna Eleanora.’

* * *

She heard him pronounce the old-fashioned and these days seldom used honorific. She’d grown up with it but never used it personally, not spelling it out like that. Tonia loved to use it, though now, of course, she’d have a far grander title—Madame la Marquise de Rochevallet.

She looked at Sanzio Bastoni now, the man who’d been jilted by her sister. ‘That’s important to you?’ she ventured.

‘Yes,’ he said bluntly.

He drank more of his wine, replaced the glass with a snap on the damask tablecloth, sat up straight again. Suddenly he was looking formidable again.

‘Consider my situation, Donna Eleanora,’ he said. ‘I grew up in social housing, my mother—now dead—lived on welfare, my father was unemployed before debunking. I left school the moment I could, got any job I could. Saved every cent I could. Then—’ his expression was getting grim ‘—I started my progress to wealth. It’s taken me fifteen years, but now,’ he said, and she heard grimness replaced by satisfaction, ‘I can have anything I want. Anything at all. Including—’ his eyes never left her ‘—the daughter of an aristocrat for a wife. Hence—’ he paused ‘—your sister.’

He paused again. ‘Now that isn’t happening, I am, quite brutally, considering an alternative. You.’

She was still staring at him. ‘Signor Bastoni,’ she said, ‘there are dozens of aristo females out there who would happily snap up your hand in marriage! Just because Tonia rejected—’ She stopped, feeling awkward now.

He ignored the awkwardness. ‘Dozens, yes—but none have what you or your sister has.’ He paused again. ‘The da Verano Palazzo.’

Eleanora was puzzled. ‘But there are dozens of palazzos in Italy, probably in much better condition, and some very probably also come with marriageable aristo females!’

He looked across at her, mouth compressed. ‘We now come to the second significant question you have failed to ask me,’ he said. ‘Why am I interested in the Palazzo Verano?’

He kept his gaze on her. Answered his own question. ‘Because my ancestors built it,’ he said.

Eleanora’s mouth opened, then closed again. Then she spoke, shaking her head slightly. ‘Your ancestors? Signor Bastoni, I can assure you, it has always belonged to our family—the land, and subsequently the Palazzo—since the fifteenth century!’

A strange expression formed on his face. It was not, she realised, a pleasant one. His mouth twisted.

‘I said, Donna Eleanora, that my ancestors built the Palazzo Verano, not that they owned it.’

She frowned, not understanding. He was going on, the same harsh look on his face now. The formidable look in spades.

‘My ancestors, Donna Eleanora—’ she wished he would stop calling her that; it sounded like a jibe, a criticism, even a taunt ‘—were once peasants who toiled the land your ancestors owned. My great-grandfather moved to Rome from the da Verano estates early in the last century, and his forebears can be traced back in the public archives—yes, even lowly families like mine appear in archives!—to the time when the Palazzo was built in the eighteenth century. There are records indicating the names of some of the workers—they are held in the ledgers for the payroll—and they include my family.’

He paused again, and looked at her, and the expression in his eyes now was not kind.

‘Your ancestors ordered the Palazzo to be built, but it was the hard work, the sweat and labour of those like my forebears who actually built it. And it is for that reason, Donna Eleanora—’ and now there was a blade in his voice ‘—that I think it fitting that the descendent of those who did the work in building it now gets to own the palazzo they built, rather than it being owned by a man whose wealth came from the toil of the peasants on his land, the wealth he himself has squandered until he is facing the same kind of penury my family always knew. And that, Donna Eleanora,’ he finished, ‘is why I want to own the Palazzo Verano, and why I would like you, the Count’s daughter, to come with it.’

He fell silent, sat back. She could read his expression now, read it all too clearly.

She reached a little shakily for her wine and took a larger mouthful than she’d intended. Then asked a question she wanted to know the answer to.

‘Did you tell my sister that?’ she asked.

He gave that laugh again. This time it had no humour in it. ‘Do you think she would have appreciated it?’ he asked.

Eleanora shook her head. ‘It would have embarrassed her. She’d have made you swear never to let anyone know.’

A dark eyebrow lifted. ‘Know that she was marrying one of her family’s former peasants?’ he said sardonically.

‘Yes,’ she answered bluntly. Tonia would have squirmed at the thought.

His eyes narrowed suddenly. ‘And you—are you embarrassed by such a disclosure?’ It was a challenge. One it was effortless for her to meet.

‘No,’ she said. Unlike her sister, it didn’t bother her at all. Not, of course, that it mattered a jot whether she was or was not embarrassed or anything else at all.

For a moment Sanzio Bastoni said nothing. Then he sat back again, reached for his wine again. Something had changed in his face again, relaxed.