Page 177 of Modern Romance September 2026 Books 5-8

Making his decision, he turned his attention to the Marquis. ‘When do you go back to France?’ he asked conversationally.

‘In a day or two,’ Tonia’s husband replied in his careful Italian. ‘We have been away quite some time now. I am keen, I admit, to get home.’

‘I might stay on a while,’ Tonia remarked carelessly, taking another mouthful of her cocktail. ‘There could be more to keep me here.’ She cast another lingeringly suggestive smile at Sanzio, her words and her languished look making it clear she wanted her husband to leave her to what she was after.

Did the poor guy realise? Sanzio wondered. Well, he soon would.

A sudden scrape of a chair against stone sounded.

‘I’ll just start on lunch,’ Eleanora said, getting to her feet. She walked away. Leaving him, Sanzio was all too aware, to face Tonia’s obvious attentions.

Attentions he might take advantage of.

For purposes that might suit him very well.

His eyes followed Eleanora as she strode away, shoulders visibly rigid with tension.

* * *

Lunch was a hideous ordeal. Tonia’s attentions to Sanzio became ever more blatant, her eyes constantly on him, lingering and provocative, her reminiscences of the time she had been with him uttered purringly, accompanied by throaty laughs. If she’d put a sign over her head she couldn’t have been more obvious. Even placid Edouard had started to look uncomfortable. Pity for him meant that Eleanora manfully kept a neutral conversation going, while Tonia quite shamelessly flirted with Sanzio. That, Eleanora could have endured. It was just Tonia trying to wind her up. For herself she didn’t care—Tonia meant nothing to her.

But Sanzio—

As the meal progressed, Eleanora realised with growing, disbelieving dismay that the flirtation Tonia was pursuing with Sanzio was not being repulsed. Confusion filled her initially—then it changed. She could not tell herself Sanzio was only trying to deflect Tonia—he was doing the very opposite.

Encouraging her—

She felt her insides constrict. Why, why was Sanzio being like this? Why was he capping one outrageous recollection of times he had once spent with her sister with yet another one? Why had he refreshed her cocktail, and then poured her a full glass of wine as well? Why was he giving every sign that being made the focus of her sister’s increasingly uninhibited attentions was something he actually enjoyed…welcomed? Why?

He was leading her on—she could see him doing it, but it made no sense. How could it?

Then, into her head came Tonia’s vicious taunts from that ugly meeting in Rome, that she could get Sanzio back any time she wanted.

‘All I have to do is snap my fingers for him!’

Cold pooled inside Eleanora. She had called Tonia’s claim garbage, fuelled by vanity and spleen, dismissing it out of hand. Any lures thrown out by Tonia, Sanzio would find only repellent.

But right now, he wasn’t, was he? He was letting Tonia make up to him, smiling as she did so.

More of Tonia’s vicious, mocking taunts crowded her head—that Sanzio’s whole purpose in confronting her with Eleanora looking so beautiful at the charity gala was simply to challenge Tonia to want to get him back, to pique her interest again.

And that Sanzio would spin me a line so I didn’t realise that was what he was after.

Now, as she watched Sanzio laugh at some salacious comment Tonia had just made to him, her sister’s sneer hit home.

Is that what he has done? Were all his protestations that she is toxic simply to blind me to him being set on getting his own back on Tonia for rejecting him, by challenging her to want him again?

Right now, in front of her very eyes—and her own husband’s—Tonia was hitting on Sanzio, impervious to her husband’s clear embarrassment, and certainly, from the taunting looks she was increasingly throwing at Eleanora, wanting to slam home her triumph in captivating Sanzio.

Who seemed perfectly happy to be captivated.

Going along with it openly.

But then the cold pooling inside Eleanora turned to ice—after all, why shouldn’t he? That very morning she’d made clear to him that she was expecting them to end their marriage shortly.

He’ll be free soon—I’ll be off his hands.

And then—