Unmasking Elena Montella

• Unmasking Elena Montella
  
• Prologue
  
• Chapter 1
  
• Chapter 2
  
• Chapter 3
  
• Chapter 4
  
• Chapter 5
  
• Chapter 6
  
• Chapter 7
  
• Chapter 8
  
• Chapter 9
  
• Chapter 10
  
• Chapter 11
  
• Chapter 12
  
• Chapter 13
  
• Chapter 14
  
• Chapter 15
  
• Chapter 16
  
• Chapter 17
  
• Chapter 18
  
• Chapter 19
  
• Chapter 20
  
• Chapter 21
  
• Chapter 22
  
• Chapter 23
  
• Chapter 24
  
• Chapter 25
  
• Chapter 26
  
• Chapter 27
  
• Chapter 28
  
• Chapter 29
  
• Chapter 30
  
• Chapter 31
  
• Chapter 32
  
• Chapter 33
  
• Chapter 34
  
• Chapter 35
  
• Chapter 36
  
• Chapter 37
  
• Chapter 38
  
• Chapter 39
  
• Chapter 40
  
• Chapter 41
  
• Chapter 42
  
• Chapter 43
  
• Chapter 44
  
• Chapter 45
  
• Chapter 46
  
• Acknowledgements
  
• About the Author
  
• Other Books by Victoria Connelly
  

Victoria Connelly

Copyright 2003 Victoria Connelly

Cover image copyright Roy Connelly

The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Victoria Connelly asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

Published by Cuthland Press

in association with Notting Hill Press

To my dear friend Bridget

***

There’s magic in the heart of Venice but not everyone can find it.

In Dorsoduro, there is a little mask shop called
Viviana’s
. It’s like many of the mask shops in Venice with its pretty window display of bejewelled faces; its scarlet walls are covered in the same jolly jesters and sparkling sunbeams, and a little bell tinkles merrily as you open the door. But the masks in this shop are different. It isn’t anything you can see or touch; it’s something that you feel - the curious connection between a mask and its wearer that cannot be explained.

Rows of alabaster faces await their fate - a date with colour. And what colour! Rubies, sapphires, silvers and golds, cerises, amethysts and jades – richer than a jeweller’s window and far more precious.

There are beautifully feminine feline masks decorated in rich damasks and studded with sequins and pearls, and sombre, tubular-nosed plague doctors who stare down eerily from their home below the great black beam. Each mask seems to have a life of its own - a life first born in the imagination of its creator.

Stefano Cazzaro.

He’s working in the shop now. What else would he be doing? For him, there is no life outside Venice, and Venice, for him, is
Viviana’s
.

‘
Viviana?’ he calls, and his wife soon appears, holding an espresso for her husband. ‘It’s from Cassandra,’ Stefano announces, waving a letter that has just arrived.

‘
Oh!’ Viviana says, ‘I liked her. How is she?’

‘
Married.’

‘
Wonderful!’

‘
And pregnant.’

Viviana claps her hands to her mouth. ‘It worked, then?’

‘
Of course it worked!’ Stefano says with a little chuckle.

‘
And who is this one for?’ Viviana asks as she watches her husband’s paintbrush glide gently over the fresh golden skin of a new mask.

‘
Elena,’ he says.

‘
Is she coming soon?’

‘
She’ll be arriving next week.’

Viviana looks anxious for a moment. ‘Will it be ready?’

‘
Will it be ready, she asks me!
Of course
it will be ready! Since when have I not been ready for a visitor?’

Viviana laughs and leaves him to it.

Once again, Stefano focuses on the little mask before him, his bright eyes narrowing in concentration as he holds his paintbrush like a magic wand. He loves this moment best of all. He could take his brush anywhere and create all kinds of wonders. There are such possibilities!

For a moment, he thinks about Elena.

‘
She’s in a terrible muddle, isn’t she?’ he says.

The mask stares back up at him, its hollow eyes seeming to understand.

‘
I think she’s going to like you,’ he tells it, holding it up to the light for inspection. ‘Yes. You’ll be ready for Elena,’ he says. ‘But will Elena be ready for you?’

Elena Montella woke up with her heart racing. She’d dreamt it again - the same dream that had been tracking her down and haunting her for days now. She shook her head, trying to free her mind of the image of herself stood in the church in a wedding dress. It always started so beautifully with music and flowers and smiling faces but, somewhere amongst the vows, it started to turn ugly.

‘
Elena. Do you take
this
man to be your lawful wedded husband?’ the vicar would ask.

‘
I do,’ Elena would say, her voice low and reverential.

‘
And do you take this man to be your lawful wedded husband?’

‘
I d-’ she’d pause. ‘Pardon?’

‘
And do you take
THIS
man to be your lawful wedded husband?’

‘
What?’

The vicar’s eyes seemed to spear her with their intensity. ‘Well?’ he’d say impatiently. ‘Who’s it to be?’

Elena would turn around and see three grooms lined up behind each other.

‘
Come on, Elena!’ one of them would shout.

‘
Yeah! Make up your mind!’ the second would yell.

‘
Are you sure it’s me you want?’ the third would say.

‘
What’s going on?’ Elena would scream.

‘
You
tell
us!
’ one of the grooms would bellow, and it was at this point that things really started to get out of hand. Fists flew across faces, bouquets bashed heads, bibles were stuffed into bemused mouths and it would all end in a huge food fight - the congregation chucking wedding cake around in lieu of confetti. Elena could never quite explain that part. But she had a pretty good idea what the rest of it meant.

Swinging her legs out of bed, she got up and showered, hoping that the warm needles of water would wash away the remnants of her trio of bridegrooms. Some women collected shoes, she thought. Others preferred lipsticks, earrings or miniature teapots. But she had to go and be different. Her own particular collection was fiancés and, at that moment, she had three.

Men had always been a little weakness of hers; she just loved them but three at once could prove problematical from time to time. Her answerphone was usually chock-a-block with messages, and she had to think of all sorts of excuses to avoid treble-booking herself. Her diary was always a mass of colour because she used a different pen for each fiancé: Mark was blue, Reuben was red and Prof was purple. It should have been a simple enough system but she had been known to turn up at the wrong house at the wrong time and then have to explain herself to the fiancé she’d stood up. But, believe it or not, she hadn’t deliberately got herself into this situation; it all happened quite by accident.

Prof had been the first to propose, Elena remembered as she lathered her hair in apple shampoo, and she’d been so surprised that she didn’t really say anything at all as he’d pushed a ring onto her finger. And then Mark had proposed on the very night she was going to break up with him and, shortly after that, Reuben had gone down on one knee and done the same thing. Words had completely failed her. She loved each one of them and didn’t want to hurt their feelings and so, to avoid any kind of confrontation, she’d accepted. She knew it was weak-willed of her and that she wouldn’t be quite so popular if the truth ever came out, but it also felt overwhelmingly wonderful to be loved by three gorgeous men.

Nevertheless, things had got to change and she knew she was going to have to choose just one man if she was ever going to banish her nightmares and lead a normal life.

‘
Elena, my babe,’ Mark had said to her at the beginning of the week, ‘we really should start thinking about fixing a date.’ He’d stroked her dark hair in that annoyingly sensuous way of his and she’d tried to push him away. They were, after all, in open view of the students on the way to class and she really didn’t want to encourage the teasing that was already going on.

‘
I think the end of July would be perfect,’ he’d continued, his fingers stroking the oh-so-sensitive place behind her ear. ‘What do you think?’

Elena had looked at him in quiet bewilderment. ‘I - er - I have to get these worksheets photocopied,’ she’d said, ducking underneath his imprisoning arm and running into the office before he could stop her.

Mark, Elena felt, was the best friend a girl could wish for. He was sweet, attentive, boyishly handsome with bright mischievous eyes, and he didn’t get all huffy when she was in a bad mood like some men did. But, on the negative side, he had the bank balance of a Benedictine monk. She really had tried to look passed this unfortunate obstacle but one look around his flat had sent a shiver of horror down her spine.

A couple of weeks ago, after he’d presented her with dinner in his dingy kitchen and they’d sat snuggling on the sofa of a thousand stains, she’d tried to break it off with him. Was this what she really wanted out of life? she kept asking herself. But, just as she was going to tell him things weren’t really working out, he’d presented her with the ring. How could she have disappointed him? His eyes were so warm and full of love that she didn’t have the heart to say no.

But it wasn’t just Mark who’d been putting pressure on her, she thought, stepping out of the shower and drying herself with a fluffy pink towel. Her evening class professor had also been dropping very heavy hints in between lectures on nineteenth-century heroines.

‘
Mother’s been asking again, you know,’ Prof told her last week. Elena knew she shouldn’t have asked him for an extension on her Emily Bronte paper. He always made conditions with such things.

Prof was Elena’s older man. She called him Prof because she just couldn’t cope with his ribbon of names: Sigmund Algernon Mortimer. They were far too posh and pretentious for her to use without bursting into hysterical laughter every time she did so. He was forty-nine years old, had a mind like Einstein and a mouth like a hungry porn star. He was handsome and self-assured; old-fashioned in the best possible way, dashing with threads of silver in his mahogany locks; and he was deeply protective - constantly checking up on her which could sometimes prove just a little bit exhausting. She was twenty-nine; she could look after herself. But he was the sweetest, tenderest man she’d ever met, and he always looked so cute in his little round glasses and paisley bow tie.