Bride By Choice. Lucy Gordon

goods?’ Lorenzo confirmed. ‘I’ve already been in touch with Renato about them. Their goods are borderline. They’ve been told to improve the quality and try again, but instead of doing something they just wail about the injustice.

      ‘There’s no excuse for poor produce,’ he went on. ‘Sicily is the most fertile land in the world. Everything grows there, and grows well if it’s properly tended.’

      Something seemed to come over him as he began to talk about his country. He spoke in a new way, with a feeling she could only call love. This light playboy with his silk shirts and easy manners had a passionate attachment to the land that breathed through every word. She watched him, fascinated, and at last he noticed, and smiled.

      ‘The Martellis have to know about the land,’ he said. ‘It’s how we earn our bread.’

      ‘It’s more than knowing about it,’ she said gently.

      ‘Well—yes. It’s part of me and I’m part of it. I can’t help it. I go away but I always go back, and I always will. It’s part of being Sicilian. You never quite escape.’

      She smiled sympathetically, but inwardly she was thinking how right she’d been to reject him at the start. Lorenzo was a man who would always win love easily. His charm, his looks, his kind heart, were made to be loved, and a woman would have to be armoured in advance—as she was—to avoid the danger.