THE ITALIAN DUKE’S WIFE

by Пенни Джордан

  place the ugliness of her true nature.

  "No, that cannot be true. You have altered it,

  changed it — you and that sneering notary. You

  have— Where does it say? Let me see!"

  She virtually flung herself at him and Lorenzo retrieved

  the will he had thrown down onto the table

  earlier. Seizing it, she read it, her face white with

  rage.

  "You have changed it. Somehow you have— She

  wanted you to marry me!" She was almost hysterical

  with fury.

  "No." Lorenzo shook his head, his face impassive

  as he watched her. "Nonna wanted to give me what

  she believed I wanted. And that, most assuredly, is

  not you."

  As Lorenzo stood beneath the flickering light of the

  old-fashioned flambeaux, the small abrupt movement

  of his head was reflected and repeated in the shadows

  from the flames.

  The Castillo had been designed as a fortress rather

  than a home, long before the Montesavro Dukes of

  the Renaissance had captured it from their foes and

  then clothed and softened its sheer stone walls with

  the artistic richness of their age. It still possessed an

  aura of forbidding and forbidden darkness.

  Like Lorenzo himself.

  Dark shadows carved hollows beneath the sculptured

  bone structure he had inherited from the warrior

  prince who had been the first of their line, and his

  height and the breadth of his shoulders emphasised

  the predatory sleekness of his body. His mouth was

  thin-lipped—"cruel", women liked to call it, as they

  begged for its hardness against their own and tried to

  soften it into hunger for them. It was his eyes, though,

  that were his most arresting feature. Curiously light

  for an Italian, they were more silver than grey, and

  piercingly determined to strip away his enemies" defences.

  His well-groomed hair was thick and dark, his

  suit hand-made and expensive. But then, he did not

  need to depend on any inheritance from his late maternal

  grandmother to make him a wealthy man. He

  was already that in his own right.

  There were those who said, foolishly and theatrically,

  that for a man to accumulate so much money

  there had to be some trickery involved — some sleight

  of hand or hidden use of certain dark powers. But

  Lorenzo had no time for such stupidity. He had made

  his money simply by using his intelligence, by making

  the right investments at the right time, and thus

  building the respectable sum he had been left by his

  parents into a fortune that ran into many, many millions.

  Unlike his late cousin, Gino, who had allowed his

  greedy wife to ruin him financially. His greedy widow

  now, Lorenzo reminded himself savagely. Not that

  Caterina had ever behaved like a widow, or indeed

  like a wife.

  Poor Gino, who had loved her so much. Lorenzo

  lifted his hand to his forehead. It felt damp with perspiration.

  Caused by guilt? It had after all been by

  claiming friendship with him that Caterina had first

  brought herself to Gino’s attention.

  Lorenzo had been eighteen to Caterina’s twenty-

  two when he had first met her, and was easily seduced

  by her determination. It hadn’t taken him long,

  though, to recognise her for the adventuress that she

  was. No longer, in fact, than her first hint to him that

  she expected him to repay her sexual favours with

  expensive gifts. As a result of that, he had ended his

  brief fling with her immediately.

  He had been at university when she had inveigled

  herself into his kinder cousin Gino’s heart and life,

  and the next time he had seen her Caterina had been

  wearing Gino’s engagement ring whilst his cousin

  wore a besotted expression of adoration. He had tried

  to warn his cousin then, of just what she was, but

  Gino had been in too deeply ever to listen, and had

  even accused him of jealousy. For the first time that

  Lorenzo could remember they had quarrelled, with

  Gino accusing Lorenzo of wanting Caterina for himself,

  and she had cleverly played on that to keep them

  apart until after her and Gino’s marriage.

  Later, Lorenzo and his cousin had been reconciled,

  but Gino had never stopped worshipping his wife,

  even though she had been blatantly unfaithful to him

  with a string of lovers.

  "Where are you going?" Caterina demanded shrilly

  as Lorenzo turned on his heel and walked away

  from her.

  From the other side of the hall Lorenzo looked

  back at her.

  "I am going," he told her evenly, "to find myself a

  wife — any wife. Just so long as she is not you. You

  could have seen to it that I was warned that my grandmother

  was near to death, so that I could have been

  here with her, but you chose not to. And we both

  know why."

  "You cannot marry someone else. I will not let

  you."

  "You cannot stop me."

  She shook her head. "You will not find another

  wife, Lorenzo. Or at least not the kind of wife you

  would be willing to accept — not in such a sort space

  of time. You are far too proud to marry some little

  village girl of no social standing, and besides…" She

  paused, then gave him a taunting look and said softly,

  "If necessary I shall tell everyone about the child I

  was to have had, whom you made me destroy."

  "Your lover’s child," he reminded her. "Not Gino’s

  child. You told me that yourself."

  "But I shall tell others that it was your child. After

  all, many people know that Gino believed you loved

  me."

  "I should have told him that I loathed you."

  "He would not have believed you," Caterina told

  him smugly. "Just as he would not have believed the

  child was not his. How does it feel to know that you

  are responsible for the taking of an unborn child"s

  life, Lorenzo?"

  He took a step towards her, a look of such blazing

  fury in his eyes that she ran for the door, pulling it

  open and sliding through it.

  Lorenzo cursed savagely under his breath and then

  went back to the table where he had dropped his

  grandmother’s will.

  He had been filled with fury and disbelief when his

  grandmother’s notary had finally managed to make

  contact with him to tell him of his fears, and how he

  had managed to prevent Caterina from having all her

  own way by deliberately removing her name from the

  will so that it merely required Lorenzo to marry in

  order to inherit, rather than specifically having to

  marry Caterina.

  The notary, almost as elderly as his grandmother

  had been, had apologised to Lorenzo if he had done

  the wrong thing, but Lorenzo had quickly reassured

  him that he had not. Without the notary"s interference

  Caterina would have trapped him very cleverly. She

  was right about one thing. He di
d want the Castillo.

  And he intended to have it.

  Right now, though, he had to get away from it before

  he did something he would regret, he reflected

  as he strode out into the courtyard and breathed in

  the clean tang of the evening air, mercifully devoid

  of Caterina’s heavy, smothering perfume.

  CHAPTER TWO

  SHE was going to have to give in and do that U-turn

  she had sworn she would not make, Jodie admitted

  unhappily to herself. She hadn’t a clue where she was,

  and the bright moonlight was illuminating a landscape

  so barren and hostile that she was actually beginning

  to feel quite unnerved. To one side of her the ground

  dropped away with dramatic sharpness, and on the

  other it was broken by various jagged outcroppings

  of rock.

  Up ahead of her she could see where the narrow

  track widened out to provide a passing place.

  Determinedly she headed for it, and started to manoeuvre

  the vehicle so that she could turn round.

  Suddenly there was a loud noise, and the back

  wheels of the hire car began to spin whilst the car

  itself lurched horribly to one side. Thoroughly

  alarmed, Jodie put the car in neutral and climbed out,

  her alarm turning to despair as she saw that one of

  the rear wheels was stuck fast in a deep rut and looked

  as though it had a flat tyre.

  Now what was she going to do? She certainly

  couldn’t drive anywhere in it.

  She went back to the car, massaging her aching leg

  as she did so. She was tired, and hungry, and thoroughly

  miserable. Opening her bag, she reached for

  her mobile phone, and the wallet in which she had

  placed all the details of her travel arrangements and

  car hire.

  As she picked up the phone her eyes widened in

  dismay. Her phone was already on, and by the looks

  of it there was no signal. Not only that, but when she

  attempted to dial a number anyway the phone gave

  an ominous bleep and the display light died. She must

  have left it on, and now the battery was flat. How

  could she have been so stupid? She needed help, but

  what was she going to do? Stay here and wait for

  someone to drive past? She hadn’t seen another sign

  of life, never mind another vehicle, for miles. Walk?

  To where? Back down the hundreds of kilometres to

  the last village she had passed through what felt like

  hours ago? The pain in her leg was gnawing at her

  now. Should she walk on up into the mountains? She

  gave a small shiver.

  She hadn’t seen another driver in the whole of the

  time she had been on this road, but someone must use

  it because she could see tyre tracks in the dust. She

  looked up towards the mountains, and, as though

  somehow her own despair had conjured it up, she saw

  the distant lights of another vehicle racing towards

  her.

  The relief made her feel almost giddily weak.

  Savagely Lorenzo depressed the accelerator of the

  black Ferrari, letting the powerful car take his anger

  and turn it into a speed that demanded every ounce

  of his driving skill as he negotiated the twisting road

  in front of him.

  Caterina had been very clever, working on his

  grandmother in the way that she had. Had he been

  here… But he had not. He had been abroad, visiting

  the scene of the latest world disaster, helping to find

  ways of alleviating the misery of those who had been

  caught in it via his unofficial and voluntary role

  within the government, unifying different charities

  and providing hands-on administrative practical help

  and expertise.

  The severity of this particular crisis had meant that

  he had not even been able to return to Italy for his

  grandmother’s funeral, although he had managed to

  find time within his meeting-packed day to go into a

  local place of worship and add his prayers to those

  of her other mourners.

  A gentle, unsophisticated woman, who had once

  told him she had hoped as a young girl to become a

  nun, she had died peacefully in her sleep.

  The Castillo had come to her through her first husband

  who, in the way of things in aristocratic circles,

  had also been the second cousin of her second husband,

  Lorenzo’s own father, which was why the

  Castillo had been hers to leave as she wished.

  He had always been her favourite out of her two

  grandsons, Lorenzo knew. He had spent his holidays

  with her after the divorce of his parents, and it had

  been his grandmother he had turned to when his

  mother had announced that she was marrying her

  lover — a man Lorenzo detested.

  He had never been able to bring himself to forgive

  his mother for that. Not even now when she, like his

  father, was dead. Her actions had opened his eyes to

  the deceitful, self-serving ways of the female sex, and

  their determination to put themselves first whilst laying

  claim to a sanctity they did not possess. His

  mother had always insisted that her decision to divorce

  his father had been taken to spare him the pain

  of growing up in an unhappy home. She had lied, of

  course. His feelings had been the last thing on her

  mind when she had lain in the arms of her lover and

  chosen him above her husband and her son.

  The Ferrari snarled and bucked at the bad condition

  of the road. Lorenzo ignored its complaints and

  changed gear, hurling it into a sharp corner, and then

  cursed beneath his breath as, right in front of him, he

  saw a car blocking the road and a young woman

  standing beside it.

  Jodie winced as she heard the screech of brakes,

  choking on the dust raised by the Ferrari’s tyres as it

  skidded to a halt only inches away from the side of

  the hire car. Automatically she had made herself stand

  upright, instead of leaning on her vehicle for support,

  the moment she had seen the other car.

  What kind of madman drove like that down a road

  like this — and in the dark, too? she wondered shakily,

  holding on to the door of the car for support as she

  watched him uncoil himself from the driver’s seat and

  come towards her.

  "Disgraziata!" A stream of Italian followed the

  snarlingly contemptuous word he had already hurled

  at her. But Jodie was not going to let herself be cowed

  by him — or by any man — ever again.

  "When you’ve quite finished…" Jodie interrupted

  him, her own voice every bit as hostile as his. "For a

  start, I’m not Italian. I’m English. And—"

  "English?" He made it sound as though he had

  never heard the word before. "What are you doing

  here? Why are you on this road? It is a private road

  and leads only to the Castillo." The questions were

  thrown at her like so many deadly sharp stiletto

  knives.

  "I took a wrong turning," Jodie defended herself. "I
/>
  was trying to turn round, but a wheel got stuck, and

  now the tyre is flat."

  She was pale and thin, her eyes huge in the exhausted

  triangle of her small face, her fair hair

  scraped back. She looked about sixteen, and an underfed

  sixteen at that, Lorenzo decided unflatteringly,

  as he swept her from head to toe with an experienced

  male glance that took in the droop of her shoulders,

  the hardly discernible shape of her breasts, the narrowness

  of her waist and her hips, and the unexpected

  length of the denim-clad legs attached to such a small

  frame. Was she wearing heels, or were they really as

  long as they looked?

  "How old are you?" he demanded.

  How old was she? Why on earth was he asking her

  that?

  "I’m twenty-six," Jodie responded stiffly, tilting her

  chin as she looked up at him, determined not to be

  intimidated by him despite the fact that she was already

  aware that he was so spectacularly good-

  looking she wanted to run away and hide before he

  realised how pathetically inferior as a woman she was

  to him as a man. Automatically, her hand went to her

  bad leg. It was really hurting her now.

  Twenty-six! Lorenzo frowned as he looked down

  at her hands. No rings. "Why are you here on your

  own?"

  Jodie was beginning to feel she had had enough.

  "Because I am on my own. Not that it is any business

  of yours," she informed him.

  "On the contrary, it is very much my business—

  since you have seen fit to trespass on my land."

  His land? Of course it would be his land; it possessed

  exactly the same harsh, arrogant inhospitality as

  he did.

  "And what do you mean, you are on your own?"

  she heard him demanding. "Surely you have a…a

  husband, or a lover. A man, a partner, in your life."

  Jodie winced, and then laughed bitterly. He didn’t

  know about the still tender nerves he was brutalising.

  "I thought I did," she agreed angrily, "but unfortunately

  for me he decided he wanted to marry someone

  else. This—" she gestured towards the landscape and

  the car "—was supposed to be our honeymoon. But

  now…" Just saying the words still hurt, but strangely

  there was also a savage sense of relief in being able

  to vent her emotions instead of having to keep them

  locked inside her for the sake of others, as she had

  had to do at home.

  "Now what?" Lorenzo challenged her. "Now you