“Thank you for your concern,” she said stiffly as she shifted away from his reach. “And for delivering the news in person, though it seems hardly worth the effort on your part. If I choose to see him, it will be on my own terms. I’m sure you have a long journey back to wherever it is you live now. On your way out, be sure to tell my housekeeper you were mistaken in coming here. You—you must have thought I was someone else.”

There was a slight catch in her voice. A chink in her armor. And Alec wouldn’t let it slip by.

“That might be difficult,” he began, “seeing as I already told her I was your husband.”

Lottie abruptly faced him, her green eyes round and wide. “You what?”

Alec gave her a lopsided smile. “Well, I had to get inside somehow. And I didn’t think she would believe I was your brother.” He gestured to the thick russet braid that snaked down her chest. Lottie’s hair had always been her most prized possession, and for good reason. It was glorious. Here, with those golden Tuscan hills as a backdrop, it gave her the otherworldly glow of a Titian goddess.

“But I told Marta I was a widow!” Lottie hissed and clapped a hand to her forehead. “Oh, what must she think now?”

Alec’s lips quirked. “She seemed rather delighted by your subterfuge, actually. I believe she imagines you came here to punish me.” A corner of her mouth lifted. Apparently that was an appealing idea. “I was properly scolded for not arriving sooner,” he went on. “According to her, you are much too lonely up here all by yourself.”

The housekeeper had also sworn that the only man who had been inside the house was an elderly chap from the village who gave Lottie painting lessons, which blessedly spared him from the ugly task of forcing some wayward suitor’s hand. Mrs. Wetherby was convinced Lottie had run away with a man, though the evidence hadn’t amounted to more than a single dried rose and a pathetic note that read amore mio. Alec had roundly dismissed the notion that such piddling trinkets would have swayed her. But now he was questioning everything.

Though Lottie claimed she had deliberately tried to ruin her reputation, that might not have been her original plan. She could have been abandoned en route, or perhaps her suitor had failed to materialize at the agreed-upon meeting place. It was understandable why she would not admit such a thing to Alec. Less understandable, though, was why she hadn’t returned to Florence immediately.

Unless she is still hoping for his return.

“Marta doesn’t know anything,” she snapped. “We can barely understand one another.”

“Loneliness is a universal language, Lottie,” he murmured. One he had mastered long ago. “And it’s better for you this way. If she thinks we’re married, there won’t be any talk when we leave the village together.”

She snorted at his caution. “That wouldn’t matter.”