‘And if they can’t raise the money, and you sell your interest to an outsider? Will they sit quiet for that?’

‘Don’t be melodramatic, David,’ she said, laughing. ‘I’m sure they’re reasonable people, just as I am. We’ll sort it all out, somehow.’

‘Reasonable?’ Rinaldo snapped. ‘Our father charged a huge loan against this property without telling us, and the lawyers want us to be reasonable?’

Gino sighed. ‘I still can’t take it in,’ he said. ‘How could Poppa have kept such a secret for so long, especially from you?’

The light was fading, for the evening was well advanced. Standing by the window of his home, looking out over the hills and fields that stretched into the distance, earth that he had cultivated with his own hands, sometimes at terrible cost, Rinaldo knew that he must cling onto this, or go mad.

‘You and I are Poppa’s heirs and the legal owners of Belluna,’ Gino pointed out. ‘This woman can’t change that.’

‘She can if we can’t pay up. If she doesn’t get her cash she can claim one third of Belluna. Poppa never made any repayments, so now we owe the whole amount, plus interest.’

‘Well, I suppose we gained from having all that money,’ Gino mused.

‘That’s true,’ Rinaldo admitted reluctantly. ‘It paid for the new machinery, the hire of extra labourers, the best fertiliser, which has greatly improved our crops. All that cost a fortune. Poppa just said he’d won the lottery.’

‘And we believed it until the wills were read,’ Gino said heavily. ‘That’s what hurts, that he left us to find out like that.’ But then he gave a heavy sigh. ‘Still, I suppose we shouldn’t blame him. He didn’t know he was going to die suddenly. Do we know anything about this woman, apart from the fact that she’s English?’

‘According to the lawyer her name is Alexandra Dacre. She’s in her late twenties, an accountant, and lives in London.’

‘I don’t like the sound of her,’ Gino sighed.