THE ITALIAN DUKE’S WIFE

by Пенни Джордан

  THE ITALIAN DUKE’S WIFE

  Пенни Джордан

  In Penny Jordan"s latest book, The Italian Duke"s Wife,

  an Italian aristocrat chooses a young English woman

  as his convenient wife. When he unleashes within

  her a desire she never knew she possessed, he is soon

  regretting his no-consummation rule….

  CHAPTER ONE

  SHE was not going to do the girly thing and burst into

  tears, Jodie told herself, gritting her teeth. It might be

  growing dark; she might be feeling sick with that familiar

  stomach-churning fear that she had made a big

  mistake — and about more than just the direction she

  had taken in that last village she had passed through

  what seemed like for ever ago; tonight might be the

  night she and John should have been spending at their

  romantic honeymoon hotel — their first night as husband

  and wife…but she was not going to cry. Not

  now, and in fact not ever, ever again over any man.

  Not ever. Love was out of her life and out of her

  vocabulary and it was going to stay out.

  She winced as her small hire car lurched into a

  deep rut in the road — a road which was definitely

  climbing towards the mountains when it should have

  been dropping down towards the sea.

  Her cousin and his wife, her only close family since

  her parents" death in a car accident when Jodie was

  nineteen, had tried to dissuade her from coming to

  Italy.

  "But everything’s paid for," she had reminded

  them. "And besides…"

  Besides, she wanted to be out of the country, and

  she wanted to stay out of it for the next few weeks

  during the build-up to John’s marriage to his new

  fiance.e, Louise, who had taken Jodie’s place in his

  heart, in his life, and in his future.

  Not that she’d told her cousin David or Andrea, his

  wife, about that part of her decision as yet. She knew

  they would have tried to persuade her to stay at home.

  But when home was a very small Cotswold market

  town, where everyone knew you and knew that you

  had been dumped by your fiance. less than a month

  before your wedding because he had fallen in love

  with someone else, it was not somewhere anyone with

  any pride could possibly want to be. And Jodie had

  as much pride as the next woman, if not more. So

  much more that she longed to be able to prove to

  everyone, but most especially to John and Louise

  themselves, how little John’s treachery mattered to

  her. Of course the most effective way to do that would

  be to turn up at their wedding with another man — a

  man who was better-looking and richer than John, and

  who adored her. Oh, if only…

  In your dreams, she scoffed mentally at herself.

  There was no way that that scenario was likely to

  happen.

  "Jodie, you can’t possibly go to Italy on your own,"

  David had protested, whilst he and Andrea had exchanged

  meaningful looks she hadn’t been supposed

  to see. It was probably just as well they were now in

  Australia on an extended visit to Andrea’s parents.

  "Why not?" she had demanded with brittle emphasis.

  "After all, that’s the way I’m going to be spending

  the rest of my life."

  "Jodie, we both understand how hurt and shocked

  you are," Andrea had added gently. "Don’t think that

  David and I Don’t feel for you, but behaving like this

  isn’t going to help."

  "It will help me," Jodie had answered stubbornly.

  ***

  It had been John’s idea that they spend their honeymoon

  exploring Italy’s beautiful Amalfi coast.

  Jodie winced as the hire car hit another pothole in

  the road, which was so badly maintained that it was

  becoming increasingly uncomfortable to drive.

  Her leg was aching badly, and she was beginning

  to regret not having chosen to spend her first night

  closer to Naples. Where on earth was she? Nowhere

  near where she was supposed to be, she suspected.

  The directions for the small village set back from the

  coast had been almost impossible to follow, detailing

  roads she had not been able to find on her tourist map.

  If John had been here with her none of this would

  have happened. But John was not with her, and he

  was never going to be with her again.

  She must not think of her now ex-fiance., or the fact

  that he had fallen out of love with her and in love

  with someone else, or that he had been seeing that

  someone else behind her back, or that virtually everyone

  in her home village had apparently known about

  it apart from Jodie herself. Louise, so Jodie’s friends

  had now told her, had made it obvious that she

  wanted and intended to have John from the moment

  they had been introduced, following her parents"

  move to the area. And Jodie, fool that she was, had

  been oblivious to all of this, simply thinking that

  Louise, as a newcomer, an outsider, was eager to

  make friends. Now she was the outsider, Jodie reflected

  bitterly. She should have realised how shallow

  John was when he had told her that he loved her "in

  spite of her leg". She winced as the pain in it intensified.

  She was never going to make the kind of mistake

  she had made with John again. From now on her heart

  was going to be impervious to "love"—yes, even

  though that meant at twenty-six she would be facing

  the rest of her life alone. What made it worse was

  that John had seemed so trustworthy, so honest and

  so kind. She had let him into her life and, even more

  humiliatingly painful to acknowledge now, into her

  fears and her dreams. No way was she going to risk

  having another man treat her as John had done — one

  minute swearing eternal love, the next…

  And as for John himself, he was welcome to

  Louise, and they were obviously suited to one another,

  too, since they were both deceitful cheats and

  liars. But she, coward that she was, could not face

  going home until the wedding was over, until all the

  fuss had died down and until she was not going to be

  the recipient of pitying looks, the subject of hushed

  gossip.

  "Well, let’s look on the bright side," Andrea had

  said lightly when she had realised Jodie was not going

  to be persuaded to abandon her plans. "You never

  know — you might meet someone in Italy and fall

  head over heels in love. Italian men are so gorgeously

  sexy and passionate."

  Italian men — or any kind of men — were off the life

  menu for her from now on, Jodie told herself furiously.

  Men, marriage, love — she no longer wanted

  anything to do with
any of them.

  Angrily Jodie depressed the accelerator. She had

  no idea where this appallingly bumpy road was going

  to take her, but she wasn’t going to turn back. From

  now on there would be no U-turns in her life, no

  looking back in misery or despair, no regrets about

  what might have been. She was going to face firmly

  forward.

  David and Andrea had been wonderfully kind to

  her, offering her their spare room when she had sold

  her cottage so that she could put the sale proceeds

  towards the house she and John were buying — which

  had not, with hindsight, been the most sensible of

  things to do — but she couldn’t live with her cousin

  and his wife for ever.

  Luckily John had at least given her her money

  back, but the break-up of their engagement had still

  cost her her job, since she had worked for his father

  in the family business. John was due to take over

  when his father retired.

  So now she had neither home nor job, and she was

  going to be—

  She yelped as the offside front wheel hit something

  hard, the impact causing her to lurch forward painfully

  against the constraint of her seat belt. How much

  further was she going to have to drive before she

  found some form of life? She was booked into a hotel

  tonight, and according to her calculations she should

  have reached her destination by now. Where on earth

  was she? The road was climbing so steeply…

  "You, I take it, are responsible for this? It has your

  manipulative, destructive touch all over it, Caterina,"

  Lorenzo Niccolo d’Este, Duce di Montesavro, accused

  his cousin-in-law with savage contempt as he

  threw his grandmother’s will onto the table between

  them.

  "If your grandmother took my feelings into account

  when she made her will, then that was because—"

  "Your feelings!" Lorenzo interrupted her bitingly.

  "And what feelings exactly would those be? The same

  feelings that led to you bullying my cousin to his

  death?" He was making no attempt whatsoever to conceal

  his contempt for her.

  Two ugly red patches of angry colour burned betrayingly

  on Caterina’s immaculately made-up face.

  "I did not drive Gino to his death. He had a heart

  attack."

  "Yes, brought on by your behaviour."

  "You had better be careful what you accuse me of,

  Lorenzo, otherwise…"

  "You dare to threaten me?" Lorenzo demanded.

  "You may have managed to deceive my grandmother,

  but you cannot deceive me."

  He turned his back on her to pace the stone-flagged

  floor of the Castillo’s Great Hall, his pent-up fury

  rendering him as savagely dangerous as a caged animal

  of prey.

  "Admit it," he challenged as he swung round again

  to confront her. "You came here deliberately intending

  to manipulate and deceive an elderly dying

  woman for your own ends."

  "You know that I have no desire to quarrel with

  you, Lorenzo," Caterina protested. "All I want—"

  "I already know what you want," Lorenzo reminded

  her coldly. "You want the privilege, the position, and

  the wealth that becoming my wife would give you—

  and it is for that reason that you harried a confused

  elderly woman you knew to be dying into changing

  her will. If you had any compassion, any—" He broke

  off in disgust. "But of course you do not, as I already

  know."

  His furious contempt had caused the smile to fade

  from her lips and her body to stiffen into hostility as

  she abandoned any pretence of innocence.

  "You can make as many accusations as you wish,

  Lorenzo, but you cannot prove any of them," she

  taunted him.

  "Perhaps not in a court of law, but that does not

  alter their veracity. My grandmother’s notary has told

  me that when she summoned him to her bedside in

  order to alter her will, she confided to him the reason

  that she was doing so."

  Lorenzo saw the look of unashamed triumph in

  Caterina’s eyes.

  "Admit it, Lorenzo. I have bested you. If you want

  the Castillo — and we both know that you do — then

  you will have to marry me. You have no other

  choice." She laughed, throwing back her head to expose

  the olive length of her throat, and Lorenzo had

  a savage impulse to close his hands around it and

  squeeze the laughter from her it. He did want the

  Castillo. He wanted it very badly. And he was determined

  to have it. And he was equally determined that

  he was not going to be trapped into marrying

  Caterina.

  "You told my grandmother I loved you and wanted

  to make you my wife. You told her that the fact that

  you were so newly widowed, and that your husband

  Gino was my cousin, meant that society would frown

  upon an immediate marriage between us. And you

  told her you were afraid my passion would overwhelm

  me and that I would marry you anyway and

  thus bring disgrace upon myself, didn’t you?" he accused

  her. "You knew how na..ve my grandmother

  was, how ignorant of modern mores. You tricked her

  into believing you were confiding in her out of concern

  for me. You told her you didn’t know what to

  do or how you could protect me. Then you ""helped""

  her to come up with the solution of changing her will,

  so that instead of inheriting the Castillo from her — as

  her previous will had stated — I would only inherit it

  if I was married within six weeks of her death. As

  you told her, everyone knows how important to me

  the Castillo is. And then, as though that were not

  enough, you conceived the added inducement of persuading

  her to add that if I did not marry within those

  six weeks, you would inherit the Castillo. You led her

  to believe that in making those changes she was enabling

  me to marry you, because I could say I was

  fulfilling the terms of her will rather than following

  the dictates of my heart."

  "You can’t prove any of that." She shrugged contemptuously.

  Lorenzo knew that what she had said was true.

  "As I’ve already told you, Nonna confided her

  thoughts to her notary," he continued acidly. "Unfortunately,

  by the time he managed to alert me to what

  was going on, it was too late."

  "Much too late — for you." Caterina smirked at him.

  "So you admit it?"

  "So what if I do? You can’t prove it," Caterina repeated.

  "And even if you could, what good would it

  do?"

  "Let me make this clear to you, Caterina. No matter

  what my grandmother has written in her will, you will

  never become my wife. You are the last woman I

  would want to give my name to."

  Caterina laughed. "You have no choice."

  Lorenzo had a reputation for being a formidable

  and ruthless adversary. He was the kind of man other

  m
en both respected and feared — the kind of man

  women dreamed excitedly of enticing into their beds.

  He was also a superb male animal, strikingly handsome,

  with a hormone-unleashing combination of arrogance

  and a predatory, very dangerous male sexuality—

  a sexuality that he wore as easily as a panther

  wore its coat. He was not just a prize, but perhaps the

  most coveted prize amongst the very best of Italy’s

  most eligible and wealthy men. All through his twenties

  gossip columns had seethed with excited interest,

  trying to guess which high-born young woman he

  would make his duchess. It certainly wasn’t from any

  lack of willing partners to share his wealth and his

  title, along with enjoying the sexual pleasure of mating

  with such a vigorously sensual man, that he had

  escaped into his thirties without making any kind of

  formal commitment to the women who had pursued

  him.

  Lorenzo looked at his late cousin’s wife. He despised

  and loathed her. But then, he despised most

  women. From what he had experienced of them they

  were all willing to give him whatever he wanted because

  of what he had, what was outside the inner him:

  wealth, a title, and a handsome male body. What he

  actually was was of no interest to them. His thoughts,

  his beliefs, all that went to make up the man who was

  Lorenzo d’Este didn’t matter to them anywhere near

  so much as his money and his social position.

  "You have no choice, Lorenzo," Caterina repeated

  softly. "If you want the Castillo you have to marry

  me."

  Lorenzo permitted his mouth to curl in sardonic

  disdain.

  "I have to marry, yes," he agreed softly. "But nowhere

  does it say that I have to marry you. You have

  obviously not read my grandmother’s will thoroughly."

  Her face blanched, her narrowed eyes betraying her

  confusion and distrust.

  "What do you mean? Of course I have read it. I

  dictated it! I—"

  "I repeat, you did not read the will my grandmother

  signed thoroughly enough," Lorenzo told her. "You

  see, it stipulates only that I must marry within six

  weeks of her death if I want to inherit the Castillo

  from her. It does not specify who I should marry."

  Caterina stared at him, unable to conceal her anger.

  It stripped from her the good looks which had in her

  youth made her a sought-after model, and left in their