The Novels of Nora Roberts, Volume 3 Read online

  The Novels of Nora Roberts, Volume 3

  The Villa

  Midnight Bayou

  Three Fates

  Birthright

  Northern Lights

  Nora Roberts

  Nora Roberts

  Hot Ice

  Sacred Sins

  Brazen Virtue

  Sweet Revenge

  Public Secrets

  Genuine Lies

  Carnal Innocence

  Divine Evil

  Honest Illusions

  Private Scandals

  Hidden Riches

  True Betrayals

  Montana Sky

  Sanctuary

  Homeport

  The Reef

  River’s End

  Carolina Moon

  The Villa

  Midnight Bayou

  Three Fates

  Birthright

  Northern Lights

  Blue Smoke

  Angels Fall

  High Noon

  Tribute

  Black Hills

  The Search

  Chasing Fire

  Series

  IRISH BORN TRILOGY

  Born in Fire

  Born in Ice

  Born in Shame

  DREAM TRILOGY

  Daring to Dream

  Holding the Dream

  Finding the Dream

  CHESAPEAKE BAY SAGA

  Sea Swept

  Rising Tides

  Inner Harbor

  Chesapeake Blue

  GALLAGHERS OF ARDMORE TRILOGY

  Jewels of the Sun

  Tears of the Moon

  Heart of the Sea

  THREE SISTERS ISLAND TRILOGY

  Dance Upon the Air

  Heaven and Earth

  Face the Fire

  KEY TRILOGY

  Key of Light

  Key of Knowledge

  Key of Valor

  IN THE GARDEN TRILOGY

  Blue Dahlia

  Black Rose

  Red Lily

  CIRCLE TRILOGY

  Morrigan’s Cross

  Dance of the Gods

  Valley of Silence

  SIGN OF SEVEN TRILOGY

  Blood Brothers

  The Hollow

  The Pagan Stone

  BRIDE QUARTET

  Vision in White

  Bed of Roses

  Savor the Moment

  Happy Ever After

  Nora Roberts & J. D. Robb

  Remember When

  J. D. Robb

  Naked in Death

  Glory in Death

  Immortal in Death

  Rapture in Death

  Ceremony in Death

  Vengeance in Death

  Holiday in Death

  Conspiracy in Death

  Loyalty in Death

  Witness in Death

  Judgment in Death

  Betrayal in Death

  Seduction in Death

  Reunion in Death

  Purity in Death

  Portrait in Death

  Imitation in Death

  Divided in Death

  Visions in Death

  Survivor in Death

  Origin in Death

  Memory in Death

  Born in Death

  Innocent in Death

  Creation in Death

  Strangers in Death

  Salvation in Death

  Promises in Death

  Kindred in Death

  Fantasy in Death

  Indulgence in Death

  Treachery in Death

  Anthologies

  From the Heart

  A Little Magic

  A Little Fate

  Moon Shadows

  (with Jill Gregory, Ruth Ryan Langan, and Marianne Willman)

  THE ONCE UPON SERIES

  (with Jill Gregory, Ruth Ryan Langan, and Marianne Willman)

  Once Upon a Castle

  Once Upon a Star

  Once Upon a Dream

  Once Upon a Rose

  Once Upon a Kiss

  Once Upon a Midnight

  Silent Night

  (with Susan Plunkett, Dee Holmes, and Claire Cross)

  Out of This World

  (with Laurell K. Hamilton, Susan Krinard, and Maggie Shayne)

  Bump in the Night

  (with Mary Blayney, Ruth Ryan Langan, and Mary Kay McComas)

  Dead of Night

  (with Mary Blayney, Ruth Ryan Langan, and Mary Kay McComas)

  Three in Death

  Suite 606

  (with Mary Blayney, Ruth Ryan Langan, and Mary Kay McComas)

  In Death

  The Lost

  (with Patricia Gaffney, Mary Blayney, and Ruth Ryan Langan)

  The Other Side

  (with Mary Blaney, Patricia Gaffney, Ruth Ryan Langan, and Mary Kay McComas)

  Also available...

  The Official Nora Roberts Companion

  (edited by Denise Little and Laura Hayden)

  Table of Contents

  The Villa

  Midnight Bayou

  Three Fates

  Birthright

  Northern Lights

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  THE VILLA

  A G. P. Putnam’s SonsBook / published by arrangement with the author

  All rights reserved.

  Copyright © 2001 by Nora Roberts

  This book may not be reproduced in whole or part, by mimeograph or any other means, without permission. Making or distributing electronic copies of this book constitutes copyright infringement and could subject the infringer to criminal and civil liability.

  For information address:

  The Berkley Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Putnam Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  The Penguin Putnam Inc. World Wide Web site address is http://us.penguingroup.com

  ISBN: 1-101-14634-6

  A G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS®

  G. P. Putnam’s Sons Books first published by The G. P. Putnam’s Sons Publishing Group, a member of Penguin Putnam Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  G. P. Putnam’s Sons and the “PUTNAM” design are trademarks belonging to Penguin Putnam Inc.

  First edition (electronic): October 2001

  To family, who form the roots.

  To friends, who make the blossoms.

  Table of Contents

  PROLOGUE

  PART ONE The Pruning

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  PART TWO The Growing

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  PART THREE The Blooming

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  PART FOUR The Fruit

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT


  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  PROLOGUE

  On the night he was murdered, Bernardo Baptista dined simply on bread and cheese and a bottle of Chianti. The wine was a bit young, and Bernardo was not. Neither would continue to age.

  Like his bread and cheese, Bernardo was a simple man. He had lived in the same little house in the gentle hills north of Venice since his marriage fifty-one years before. His five children had been raised there. His wife had died there.

  Now at seventy-three, Bernardo lived alone, with most of his family a stone’s throw away, at the edges of the grand Giambelli vineyard where he had worked since his youth.

  He had known La Signora since her girlhood, and had been taught to remove his cap whenever she passed by. Even now if Tereza Giambelli traveled from California back to the castello and vineyard, she would stop if she saw him. And they would talk of the old days when her grandfather and his had worked the vines.

  Signore Baptista, she called him. Respectfully. He had great appreciation for La Signora, and had been loyal to her and hers the whole of his life.

  For more than sixty years he had taken part in the making of Giambelli wine. There had been many changes—some good, in Bernardo’s opinion, some not so good. He had seen much.

  Some thought, too much.

  The vines, lulled into dormancy by winter, would soon be pruned. Arthritis prevented him from doing much of the hand work, as he once had, but still, he would go out every morning to watch his sons and grandsons carry on the tradition.

  A Baptista had always worked for Giambelli. And in Bernardo’s mind, always would.

  On this last night of his seventy-three years, he looked out over the vines—his vines, seeing what had been done, what needed to be done, and listened as the December wind whistled through the bones of the grape.

  From the window where that wind tried to sneak, he could see the skeletons as they made their steady climb up the rises. They would take on flesh and life with time, and not wither as a man did. Such was the miracle of the grape.

  He could see the shadows and shapes of the great castello, which ruled those vines, and ruled those who tended them.

  It was lonely now, in the night, in the winter, when only servants slept in the castello and the grapes had yet to be born.

  He wanted the spring, and the long summer that followed it, when the sun would warm his innards and ripen the young fruit. He wanted, as it seemed he always had, one more harvest.

  Bernardo ached with the cold, deep in the bones. He considered heating some of the soup his granddaughter had brought to him, but his Annamaria was not the best of cooks. With this in mind, he made do with the cheese and sipped the good, full-bodied wine by his little fire.

  He was proud of his life’s work, some of which was in the glass that caught the firelight and gleamed deep, deep red. The wine had been a gift, one of many given to him on his retirement, though everyone knew the retirement was only a technicality. Even with his aching bones and a heart that had grown weak, Bernardo would walk the vineyard, test the grapes, watch the sky and smell the air.

  He lived for wine.

  He died for it.

  He drank, nodding by the fire, with a blanket tucked around his thin legs. Through his mind ran images of sun-washed fields, of his wife laughing, of himself showing his son how to support a young vine, to prune a mature one. Of La Signora standing beside him between the rows their grandfathers had tended.

  Signore Baptista, she said to him when their faces were still young, we have been given a world. We must protect it.

  And so they had.

  The wind whistled at the windows of his little house. The fire died to embers.

  And when the pain reached out like a fist, squeezing his heart to death, his killer was six thousand miles away, surrounded by friends and associates, enjoying a perfectly poached salmon, and a fine Pinot Blanc.

  PART ONE

  The

  Pruning

  A man is a bundle of relations, a knot of roots,

  whose flower and fruitage is the world.

  —RALPH WALDO EMERSON

  CHAPTER ONE

  The bottle of Castello di Giambelli Cabernet Sauvignon, ’02, auctioned for one hundred and twenty-five thousand, five hundred dollars, American. A great deal of money, Sophia thought, for wine mixed with sentiment. The wine in that fine old bottle had been produced from grapes harvested in the year Cezare Giambelli had established the Castello di Giambelli winery on a hilly patch of land north of Venice.

  At that time the castello had been either a con or supreme optimism, depending on your point of view. Cezare’s modest house and little stone winery had been far from castlelike. But his vines had been regal, and he had built an empire from them.

  After nearly a century, even a superior Cabernet Sauvignon was likely more palatable sprinkled on a salad rather than drunk, but it wasn’t her job to argue with the man with the money. Her grandmother had been right, as always. They would pay, and richly, for the privilege of owning a piece of Giambelli history.

  Sophia made a note of the final bid and the buyer’s name, though she was unlikely to forget either, for the memo she would send to her grandmother when the auction was over.

  She was attending the event not only as the public relations executive who had designed and implemented the promotion and catalogue for the auction, but as the Giambelli family representative at this exclusive, precentennial event.

  As such, she sat quietly in the rear of the room to observe the bidding, and the presentation.

  Her legs were crossed in a long, elegant line. Her back convent-school straight. She wore a black pin-striped suit, tailored and Italian, that managed to look both businesslike and utterly feminine.

  It was exactly the way Sophia thought of herself.

  Her face was sharp, a triangle of pale gold dominated by large, deep-set brown eyes and a wide, mobile mouth. Her cheekbones were ice-pick keen, her chin a diamond point, sculpting a look that was part pixie, part warrior. She had, deliberately, ruthlessly, used her face as a weapon when it seemed most expedient.

  Tools, she believed, were meant to be used, and used well.

  A year before, she’d had her waist-length hair cut into a short black cap with a spiky fringe over her forehead.

  It suited her. Sophia knew exactly what suited her.

  She wore the single strand of antique pearls her grandmother had given her for her twenty-first birthday, and an expression of polite interest. She thought of it as her father’s boardroom look.

  Her eyes brightened, and the corners of her wide mouth curved slightly as the next item was showcased.

  It was a bottle of Barolo, ’34, from the cask Cezare had named Di Tereza in honor of her grandmother’s birth. This private reserve carried a picture of Tereza at ten on the label, the year the wine had been deemed sufficiently aged in oak, and bottled.

  Now, at sixty-seven, Tereza Giambelli was a legend, whose renown as a vintner had overshadowed even her grandfather’s.

  This was the first bottle of this label ever offered for sale, or passed outside the family. As Sophia expected, bidding was brisk and spirited.

  The man sitting beside Sophia tapped his catalogue where the photograph of the bottle was displayed. “You have the look of her.”

  Sophia shifted slightly, smiled first at him—a distinguished man hovering comfortably somewhere near sixty—then at the picture of the young girl staring seriously out from a bottle of red in his catalogue. “Thank you.”

  Marshall Evans, she recalled. Real estate, second generation Fortune 500. She made it her business to know the names and vital statistics of wine buffs and collectors with deep pockets and sterling taste.

  “I’d hoped La Signora would attend today’s auction. She’s well?”

  “Very. But otherwise occupied.”

  The beeper in her jacket pocket vibrated. Vaguely annoyed with the interruption, Sophia ignored it to w
atch the bidding. Her eyes scanned the room, noting the signals. The casual lift of a finger from the third row brought the price up another five hundred. A subtle nod from the fifth topped it.

  In the end, the Barolo outdistanced the Cabernet Sauvignon by fifteen thousand, and she turned to extend her hand to the man beside her.

  “Congratulations, Mr. Evans. Your contribution to the International Red Cross will be put to good use. On behalf of Giambelli, family and company, I hope you enjoy your prize.”

  “There’s no doubt of it.” He took her hand, lifted it to his lips. “I had the pleasure of meeting La Signora many years ago. She’s an extraordinary woman.”

  “Yes, she is.”

  “Perhaps her granddaughter would join me for dinner this evening?”

  He was old enough to be her father, but Sophia was too European to find that a deterrent. Another time, she’d have agreed, and no doubt enjoyed his company. “I’m sorry, but I have an appointment. Perhaps on my next trip east, if you’re free.”

  “I’ll make sure I am.”

  Putting some warmth into her smile, she rose. “If you’ll excuse me.”

  She slipped out of the room, plucking the beeper from her pocket to check the number. She detoured to the ladies’ lounge, glancing at her watch and pulling the phone from her bag. With the number punched in, she settled on one of the sofas and laid her notebook and her electronic organizer on her lap.

  After a long and demanding week in New York, she was still revved and, glancing through her appointments, pleased to have time to squeeze in a little shopping before she needed to change for her dinner date.

  Jeremy DeMorney, she mused. That meant an elegant, sophisticated evening. French restaurant, discussion of food, travel and theater. And, of course, of wine. As he was descended from the La Coeur winery DeMorneys, and a top account exec there, and she sprang from Giambelli stock, there would be some playful attempts to pry corporate secrets from each other.