THE ITALIAN DUKE’S WIFE

by Пенни Джордан

  the place was sold and my money was hers to do with

  as she chooses. She drove my cousin to his death, and

  even if I loved her rather than loathed her I could

  never forgive her for that," Lorenzo told her harshly.

  Jodie gave a small shiver.

  "But you must have loved her once…"

  "Why? Because I had sex with her?" Lorenzo shook

  his head. "I was eighteen and driven by the desires of

  my body, that was all." As he was being driven by

  them right now, if he was honest, to take hold of Jodie

  and take her back to his bed, so that he could finish

  what had been started the night she had returned the

  betrothal ring to him. There hadn’t been a single night

  since then when he had not thought of doing so—

  ached to do so. she’d got under his skin in a way that

  no other woman had, mental images of her filling his

  head and stealing away his thoughts whilst his body

  raged and pulsed. Angrily he fought against the longing

  taking hold of him.

  Every bride felt nervous — it went with the territory,

  Jodie assured herself as the alarmingly efficient stylist

  the designer salon had insisted on sending to help her,

  plus a seamstress and a dresser, bustled round her

  bedroom.

  Who would have thought that a small, quiet wedding

  would involve so much strategic planning? A

  little ruefully, Jodie suspected that it was her gown

  rather than her that was the cause of the stylist"s relentless

  insistence on overseeing every detail of her

  wedding-day appearance — right down to the spa treatments

  she had arranged for Jodie the previous day.

  Now, massaged plucked, waxed and tinted to within

  an inch of her life, Jodie tried to imagine how she

  might be feeling if this was the real thing, a real wedding,

  and she was standing here nervously being laced

  into her corset in anticipation of making her vows to

  a man she really loved and who really loved her.

  But of course that was never going to happen.

  Because she was never going to love a man, was she?

  Was she? she repeated insistently, when her question

  was met by a stubborn silence from the reassuring

  inner voice that should have acknowledged and

  agreed.

  "No, you must pull it tighter," she could hear the

  stylist instructing the dresser, and she winced as the

  breath was squeezed out of her lungs.

  Her hair had been arranged in an artless mix of

  loose plaits coiled softly into an "up do" and then

  threaded with invisible thread strung with diamonds

  to complement the pearl and diamond embroidery on

  her gown. A make-up artist had spent what felt like

  hours working on her face to make it look as though

  she wasn’t actually wearing any make-up at all,

  merely a soft glow, although her eyelids had been

  brushed with a subtle gold-green powder which made

  them look enormous as well as reflecting the green

  glitter of the emerald.

  By the time the stylist was satisfied with the narrowness

  of her waist, Jodie was afraid she might pass

  out from an inability to breathe.

  "Come and look," the stylist insisted, taking her to

  stand in front of the full-length mirror.

  The reflection gazing back at her was totally unfamiliar.

  Huge gold eyes ringed with curling black

  lashes looked at her, soft rose lips surely much fuller

  than hers parted to show pearly white teeth. The

  cream corset bodice of her gown revealed lushly

  curved breasts and an impossibly narrow waist, whilst

  silky fine cream hold-ups covered legs that seemed to

  go on for ever, thanks to the height of the heels she

  was having to wear.

  "Bene," the stylist pronounced, beckoning to the

  dresser. "Now for the skirt."

  Heaven knew how she would have managed to

  dress herself, Jodie reflected half an hour afterwards,

  when both skirt and train had finally been arranged

  to the stylist"s satisfaction, and the cream lace veil

  and bodice had been slipped on to cover her hair and

  bare skin.

  There was a knock on the door, and some flurried

  conversation out of Jodie’s earshot, and then the stylist

  was handing her flowers and telling her urgently,

  "It is time for you to leave…"

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  FINALLY it was over: the church service, the walkabout

  she hadn’t realised she would be expected to

  make, greeting the well-wishers, the friends of

  Lorenzo’s, who had included his lawyer and his

  charming wife, and the impromptu wedding lunch

  which Carlo had insisted on preparing for them whilst

  everyone else in the restaurant joined in the celebration.

  Nine hours of it in all, during which Jodie had

  not dared to attempt to eat or drink, never mind sit

  down.

  And now they were finally alone, Assunta having

  prepared and left them a cold supper before coming

  to the church to see them married. Jodie was so exhausted

  she could barely stand. The corset had become

  a form of excruciating torture from which she

  ached to be free with every muscle in her body that

  hadn’t been numbed by its pressure.

  In the hallway of the apartment, she headed for the

  stairs, picking up her long skirts.

  "You are tired?" Lorenzo guessed.

  She could barely nod her head. Tired didn’t even

  begin to describe her physical and emotional exhaustion.

  Emotional exhaustion? Because of what, exactly?

  She felt like kicking the unwanted inner voice

  for probing and prodding — it, after all, knew as well

  as she did exactly how she had felt standing next to

  Lorenzo whilst the priest spoke the words of the marriage

  ceremony. The light from the windows had illuminated

  her face, but the inner light illuminating her

  understanding of a truth she hadn’t wanted to recognise

  had been far more powerful. She had hated the

  feeling of deceit that had clung to her, the sense of

  guilt and shame at the way they were using vows that

  should have been sacred to suit their own purposes.

  "I’ll come up with you," she heard Lorenzo saying.

  How could a mere dress weigh so much? By the

  time she reached the top of the stairs her heart was

  pounding nauseatingly, and she was feeling oddly

  light-headed.

  Outside the door to her bedroom, Lorenzo touched

  her lightly on the shoulder and said coolly, "If you’ve

  got a minute…?"

  They had only just been married, and he was asking

  her if she had got a minute as though they were no

  more than acquaintances. But then, wasn’t that exactly

  what they were?

  She could see that he was waiting for her to cross

  the corridor and follow him into his room. Her leg

  was aching painfully, but she refused to let it drag.

  She stepped into his bedroom and stood as close to

  the door as she could, refusing to look at the bed.


  Lorenzo had walked over to the tallboy, where he"d

  picked up something, and now he was walking back

  towards her.

  "Knowing how you feel about the emerald, I

  thought you might prefer to wear this instead. Oh, and

  you can keep it afterwards if you wish," he told her

  with a dismissive shrug.

  Silently Jodie took the small box from him and

  opened it. Inside was a perfect pear-shaped solitaire

  diamond. Mutely, she looked at it.

  "I couldn’t possibly keep that. It must have been

  very expensive."

  Lorenzo was frowning at her as though her refusal

  displeased him. "As you wish," he agreed curtly. "It

  isn’t of any real consequence."

  "Like our marriage," Jodie heard herself saying

  shakily. "I really would have preferred not to have

  had a church ceremony. It made me feel—" She broke

  off and shook her head as she realised the impossibility

  of making Lorenzo understand how she had felt.

  The sudden action caused a wave of dizziness to

  swamp her, followed by the shocked realisation that

  she was about to faint. Instinctively she made grab

  for the nearest solid object, which just happened to

  be Lorenzo. As she swayed towards him Lorenzo

  caught hold of her.

  "It’s the dress," she managed to tell him. "It’s laced

  so very tightly…"

  The next minute he was turning her round, supporting

  her with one arm whilst he inspected the fastenings

  of her bodice and demanded grimly, "Why

  didn’t you say something? How the hell does this

  thing come off?"

  "The skirt and the train have to come off first, before

  I can remove the bodice," Jodie told him weakly.

  "They’re just hooked onto it."

  Before she could stop him he was feeling for the

  tiny fastenings, unsnapping them with ruthless speed.

  When they were all free the train and skirt sighed

  softly to the floor, leaving Jodie standing in her silk

  stockings, high heels, tiny boy-short briefs — and the

  unbearably tight bodice.

  "What on earth possessed you to wear something

  so tight?" Lorenzo demanded.

  "It wasn’t my idea. It was the stylist"s," Jodie admitted.

  "She insisted on it being so tightly laced."

  "How does it fasten?"

  "It’s laced on the inside, and then fastened with

  hooks and eyes." Just the effort of speaking was making

  her feel sick from her inability to draw enough

  air into her lungs.

  "Don’t move," Lorenzo told her, leaving her standing

  in the middle of the floor as he went over to the

  tallboy and opened a drawer. When he came back he

  was holding a pair of scissors.

  "No, you can’t—" Jodie protested weakly, but it

  was too late. He was already cutting into the fabric,

  ignoring her protests.

  She almost cried from the sheer bliss of simply

  being able to breathe naturally as the corset fell away.

  "Dio! It’s a wonder your flesh is not numbed and

  dead," Lorenzo said critically as he studied the red

  marks on her pale skin where the corset had cut into

  her. "And why did you not say before now that your

  leg is paining you?"

  "Because it isn’t," Jodie fibbed.

  "Yes, it is. Go and lie down on the bed. I will

  massage it for you."

  "there’s no need for you to do that," she protested.

  "I’ll be fine now that I’m free of the corset." She

  folded her arms over her breasts, suddenly, now that

  she didn’t have to worry about taking her next breath,

  acutely conscious her state of undress, but as she

  shifted her weight from one foot to the other a sharp

  pain shot up her injured leg, causing her to smother

  a gasp of pain.

  Lorenzo muttered something she couldn’t translate

  and then picked her up, ignoring her tired protest as

  he carried her over to the bed.

  "You are the most stubborn woman I have ever

  met," he told her grimly as he put her down. "Now,

  lie down and I will massage your leg for you."

  She wanted to refuse — out of pride if nothing

  else — but the truth was that her leg was really hurting,

  and the thought of having the pain massaged away

  was too tempting to refuse.

  Silently she lay down on her front and closed her

  eyes. She had forgotten about the stockings she was

  still wearing, and tensed as Lorenzo removed them—

  as clinically and efficiently as though she were made

  of plastic rather than female flesh and blood, she acknowledged

  wryly. But her flesh knew that he was

  male, and its response to the firm massaging movement

  of his fingers against the aching muscles in her

  thigh was most definitely not clinical.

  She had originally lain on her stomach to conceal

  from him both her naked breasts and her expression—

  not so much out of modesty, but out of fear of what

  they might reveal to him. Now, as she felt her nipples

  hardening when his fingers stroked and kneaded her

  aching flesh, she was very glad that she had done so.

  As his fingers drew the pain out of her flesh their

  touch replaced it with a very different kind of ache,

  beginning deep inside her with a small fluttering pulse

  that quickly grew stronger until the desire it generated

  was spreading outwards into every nerve-ending.

  Uncomfortably she pulled away, and moved to sit up,

  fearing that somehow Lorenzo might guess what she

  was experiencing.

  "what’s the matter?" he demanded. "Are you worried

  that I might try to seduce you?"

  He was mocking her, she knew that. "No, of course

  not. Why would I think that? After all, I already know

  that you Don’t desire me."

  She had rolled over now, and was sitting up. But

  she couldn’t get off the bed because Lorenzo was

  standing immediately in front of her.

  "And you want me to desire you?"

  "No!" she said fiercely.

  "You’re lying." Lorenzo accused her, shocking her

  as he suddenly drew her up to stand virtually body-

  to-body with him. "But then, lying is second nature

  to your sex, isn’t it?"

  Yes, she was lying, Jodie admitted. Because she

  had no other alternative, no other way to protect herself.

  Why was he behaving like this towards her?

  she’d realised from what Caterina had told her that

  his childhood experiences with his mother and her

  unfaithfulness to his father had given him a low opinion

  of her sex, and a need to protect himself from

  emotional pain, but that was no reason for him to

  punish her. Just as she had no real reason to brand all

  men as faithless, shallow cheats because of the way

  John had behaved towards her? She swallowed uncomfortably,

  unable to ignore her own inner critical

  voice.

  "You’re lying," Lorenzo repeated. "Admit it."

  "Admit what?" Jodie challenged him recklessly.

  "That I
want you? Why? What purpose or benefit is

  there in my doing that? You Don’t want me. All you

  want is for me to give you an excuse to go on telling

  yourself that all women are like your mother and

  Caterina. Well, we aren’t. You want me to lie to you

  because that way you can keep on telling yourself that

  all women are the same. Because You’re afraid of

  wanting—"

  "Enough!"

  Jodie tried to protest, but it was too late. His mouth

  was already covering hers, his hands almost bruising

  the tender flesh of her upper arms as he held her to

  him so hard that she could feel the buttons on his

  shirt pressing into her skin.

  "I am afraid of nothing," Lorenzo whispered

  fiercely against her mouth. "Least of all of wanting

  you. And to prove it…"

  Before she could evade him he was kissing her,

  deeply and intimately, whilst his hands stroked over

  her body to cup her breasts.

  She should stop him. She knew that. But her own

  desire was stronger than her will-power. The anger

  that had flared up between them had unleashed a passion

  in Lorenzo that ignited her own and overwhelmed

  her careful restraint. He lifted one hand to

  her head, sliding his fingers into her hair and exposing

  the slender vulnerability of her neck to the sensual

  assault of his lips.

  Shudders of hot, illicit pleasure that began where

  his mouth caressed her skin and ended deep inside

  the female heart of hers seized her, took her to a place

  where reality didn’t exist and all that mattered was

  following the lure of the primitive surge of her own

  desire for him.

  He had captured her nipple between the long lean

  finger and thumb of his free hand and was playing

  softly with it, then less softly when both it and its

  partner stiffened with excitement. The erotic sensation

  of him tugging sensually on it was relayed to her

  through what felt like a million tiny nerve-endings,

  magnifying the pleasure so much that she was racked

  helplessly by its domination as it took her and filled

  her, weakening her will-power along with her bones,

  and focusing all of her straining concentration not on

  the urgent warnings of her defences, but instead on

  the wet heat between her legs, and the desire-swollen

  flesh she ached for Lorenzo to touch.

  Had she actually verbally said what she wanted?

  She had communicated it to him somehow, Jodie realised