Now I’m getting fanciful, she thought.

But the danger was there, in the fury-filled eyes of Rinaldo Farnese, still watching her.

Isidoro, her elderly Italian lawyer, had pointed out the two Farnese brothers, but even without that she would have known them. The family likeness was clear. Both men were tall, with lean, fine-featured faces and dark, brilliant eyes.

Gino, clearly the younger, looked as though he had a softer side. There was a touch of curl in his hair, and a curve to his mouth that suggested humour, flirtation, delight.

But there was nothing soft about Rinaldo. His face might have been carved from granite. He seemed to be in his late thirties, with a high forehead and a nose that only just escaped being hooked. It was the most powerful feature in a powerful face.

Even at this distance Alex could detect a tension so fierce that it threatened to tear him apart. He was holding it back with a supreme effort. His grim, taut mouth revealed that, and the set of his chin.

There would be no yielding from him, Alex thought. No relenting. No forgiveness.

But why should she think she needed forgiveness from Rinaldo Farnese? She’d done him no wrong.

But he had been wronged, not by her, but by the father who had mortgaged a third of the family property, and left his sons to find out, brutally, after his death.

‘Vincente Farnese was a delightful fellow,’ Isidoro had told her. ‘But he had this terrible habit of putting off awkward moments and hoping for a miracle. Rinaldo took charge as much as possible, but the old boy still left him a nasty surprise at the end. Can’t blame him for being a bit put out.’

But the man facing her over the grave wasn’t ‘a bit put out.’ He was ready to do murder.

‘I guess I shouldn’t have come to their father’s funeral,’ she murmured to Isidoro.

‘No, they probably think you’re gloating.’