All Chapters of Married to the devil of valtieri: Chapter 81 - Chapter 90

Chapter 81: Four Pounds Eleven Ounces Clara Rose Moretti spent her first eleven days in a glass box. It was not a bad box, as boxes went. It stood in a quiet, sunlit room on the third floor of a small private clinic on the coast, a good forty miles from Valtieri and from St. Brennan's, with a name that Dante had insisted on checking against four separate registers. It was warm, and dimly lit, and ringed with soft machines that breathed and blinked and murmured to themselves in the night. Inside it, on a folded white sheet, in a diaper the size of a handkerchief, lay a creature who weighed four pounds and eleven ounces and had opinions about everything. "She's not eating," said Isla. "She's eating," said the nurse. "She's only eating slowly." "She won't latch." "She will." "She's too small." Isla's voice cracked. She stood beside the incubator in a hospital gown, with her hair in a tangle and shadows under her eyes, gripping the edge of the plastic as if it were the rail of a sh

Chapter 83: The Prefect's BallThe invitation arrived on thick cream card, with a gold crest and a wax seal, three days after the vault was opened.Isla read it twice over the breakfast table, with Clara asleep in a sling against her chest and a cup of tea cooling at her elbow. It was, on its face, a perfectly pleasant document. The Prefect of Valtieri, Aurelio Conti, requested the honor of the company of Mr. and Mrs. Dante Moretti at the Prefecture's annual charity ball, in aid of the new Rosa Delmare Foundation, which Mrs. Moretti had so generously established. Dinner at eight. Black tie. A string orchestra."He knows about the Foundation," she said."Everyone knows about the Foundation." Dante did not look up from the report in front of him. He had read it four times. "You announced it in the papers.""I announced it to get the hospital out of Carlo's hands. I didn't announce it so that a man whose name is at the top of a list in a dead man's vault could send me a gilt-edged card."

Chapter 85: Dawn at San Brennan"We don't move the documents," said Isla.It was half past two in the morning, and the Moretti library had become a command post. The big table was covered in maps. Serafina stood at one end, with a telephone in each hand and a headset round her neck. Luca stood at the other, gray and silent, marking positions on a sketch of the monastery with a stub of red pencil. Étienne was making coffee. Marco, in his dressing gown, was cleaning a rifle and trying to look as though he had always done this."You don't want to move them?" said Serafina, covering the mouthpiece."If we move them, we lose the case." Isla stood at the head of the table, in a plain gray dress, with her hair tied back and a cup of tea in her hand. She had changed out of the ball gown the moment they came through the door. She had fed Clara, and kissed her, and given her to Anna. She was, as far as Dante could tell, entirely calm. "The Prefect has twenty men and a plan to bury the vault at

Chapter 87: What Rosa Left in the GroundLuca sat on the stone bench under the rose arbor with the rusted tin open in his lap, and for a very long time he did not move.Isla watched him from the terrace. She had not meant to. She had come out to hang a basket of baby clothes on the line, with Clara slung against her shoulder, and had stopped, with a pair of tiny socks in her hand, at the sight of that thin, gray, stooped figure in the morning light. His hat lay beside him on the bench. His hands, folded in his lap, were holding something small and bright."Should I go to him?" she murmured."Give him a minute," said Anna, at her elbow. She had come out with a cup of tea and a plate of toast. She stood very still, looking across the garden with her head a little on one side. "He has been waiting thirty years to open that tin. Let him have the first moment alone."So they waited. The sun rose higher. A blackbird sang. The roses nodded in the breeze, and a thin gold light slid through th

Chapter 89: The House by the SeaThe first morning in the little house, Dante Moretti was woken by a seagull.It stood on the sill outside the bedroom window, an enormous, pearl-gray, hook-beaked bird, and it screamed. Not a polite scream. A long, rasping, outraged, hysterical scream, like a rusty hinge being torn from a door. He sat bolt upright in bed with his hand reaching instinctively for the nightstand where, for thirty-six years, a pistol had lain.There was no pistol. There was a lamp, a glass of water, and a small battered storybook about a rabbit."It's a gull," said Isla, sleepily, into her pillow."It's a monster.""It's a gull." She rolled over, eyes shut. "There are about four hundred of them. They live on the roof.""On the roof.""They like the chimney. Mrs. Pagano next door says they've been there since the war." A pause. "You said you wanted a house with no walls.""I said no guards. I did not say no gulls."The bird screamed again. Down the hall, in a small white cr