All Chapters of Married to the devil of valtieri: Chapter 151 - Chapter 160

She arrived on Sunday, in a black Rolls-Royce, at twenty to eleven.The whole of Valtieri was coming out of Mass. They stood on the steps of the Duomo, in their good coats, blinking in the thin autumn light, and a hush fell over the piazza as the long black car purred round the fountain and drew up at the foot of the cathedral. A chauffeur got out. He opened the rear door. And a woman stepped onto the cobbles, slowly, with the grace of a queen.She was sixty, and looked forty. She was tall and straight, in a plain black suit and a black veil pinned to a small black hat. Her hair was silver, brushed back in a smooth wave. Her skin was the color of old ivory. Her mouth was a thin red line. A single strand of pearls lay at her throat, and on her gloved right hand, flashing under the veil, was a gold ring with an emerald eye.She tilted her head back and looked up at the cathedral.The scaffolding was still up. A long dark scar of soot ran from the west door to the dome. Workmen's ladders

The convent of the Sisters of the Visitation stood at the end of a cypress lane, in the cold gray light of dawn.It was a low brick house with a tiled roof, a walled garden, and a bell that hung in a wooden frame. A thin white mist lay in the hollows of the lawn. A single nun in a gray habit was sweeping the path. She looked up as the car came crunching up the gravel, and her hands went still on the broom."We're expected," said Isla."By whom?""Nobody." She was already out of the door. "Nobody knows we're coming."It was past six. The whole house was awake. A line of nuns in gray walked in silence across the cloister to the chapel, with their hands tucked in their sleeves. A smell of hot milk drifted from the kitchen. The Mother Superior, a tall angular woman in a black veil, met them at the porch. She listened. She asked two quiet questions. And then, without a word, she took them through the cloister, down a long flagged passage, to a small white door at the end."She is in the ga

Greta fell out of the witness chair.She did not climb down. She simply let go, like a stone dropping off a wall, and hit the floor running. The court officer lunged and missed. The social worker shrieked. And a small girl in a blue dress and white socks sprinted the whole length of the Genoese ballroom, between rows of astonished benches, under the painted nymphs and the glittering chandelier, with her plaits flying behind her and a single word tearing out of her throat."MAMMA!"Lucia caught her.She went down on her knees in the aisle and opened her arms, and the child hit her like a cannonball. They rolled. They clung. The thin gray figure in the habit was sobbing without sound, rocking her daughter, kissing her hair, her eyes, her hands, while a hundred and fifty people stood motionless and Judge Bellini, high on her bench, slowly took off her half-glasses and laid them on the blotter."I knew you would come," said Greta, hiccuping into her mother's neck. "I knew it. I told them.

The villa at Portofino was the color of cream.It stood on the headland above the harbor, in a garden of cypress and bougainvillea, behind a pair of tall iron gates. A butler in white gloves opened the door. He did not ask her name. He bowed, and took her coat, and led her through a hall of cool white marble and a long gallery of shuttered windows, to a loggia that looked out over the bay.A table had been laid for two.It was a small round table, under a canopy of jasmine, with a lace cloth and a silver tea service. A plate of tiny sandwiches sat in the center. A bowl of white roses stood beside it. And in a wicker chair, in a gray silk dress, with her silver hair brushed smooth and her hands folded in her lap, sat Isabella Duarte."Mrs. Moretti," she said. "How kind of you.""You invited me.""I did not think you would come.""Everybody says that.""Do they?" A faint, dry smile. "How very tiresome for you. Sit down. Do you take milk?"They drank tea. It was a grotesquely civilized a

The cradle was empty again.She stood in the doorway of the nursery with her hand pressed over her mouth. The yellow curtains lay in a heap on the floor. The painted rabbits on the wall had been splashed with something wet. A small wooden chair was overturned. And the blue blanket, her daughter's blanket, the one that had been Dante's, lay crumpled on the rug in a pool of lamplight."No," she said. It was hardly a sound."Isla."It was Dante.He was on his knees beside the wall. His face was gray and bloody. A great purple bruise had swollen shut one eye. His shirt was torn from collar to waist, and he was holding his side with one hand, and he was trying, with the other, to push himself up.She was across the room in two strides."Where is she? Where's the baby?""They took her.""Who?""Four men." His voice was a rasp. "I never heard them. Mirelle was in the kitchen with the boy. Serafina had gone to the garage. I was at the desk." He coughed. "They came through the cellar. Through