The Italian Duke's Virgin Mistress

by Penny Jordan

  He was challenging her—setting her targets that could not be achieved because he wanted to get rid of her.

  Well, she would show him.

  ‘Very well,’ she told him. ‘But it will be expensive.’ Now she was the one challenging him—to pay up or back down.

  ‘Half as much again as you have already allowed for the cost of bringing in the extra manpower, but worth it for what it will save in time,’ Raphael agreed with a dismissive shrug, before adding warningly, ‘However, what is in question is not whether or not I am prepared to incur additional costs where I think it necessary but whether—or not—you are up to the task of managing this project.’

  Charley had had enough. What had happened to their earlier harmony and the belief she had had then that he was prepared to give her a chance? They shared a recognition of just what the garden must once have been. Or had she just imagined it? Because she had wanted to connect emotionally with him? Charley’s heart thudded into her ribs. That was nonsense. He meant nothing to her. It was the job that was important. Nothing else.

  Was it? So why was she feeling so hurt and rejected, so sharply reminded of the way she had so often felt as a child, when her parents had compared her looks unfavourably to those of her sisters, making her aware that she was not good enough and that they wished that she was different—just as Raphael obviously didn’t feel that she was good enough, and wished that the project was being managed by someone else.

  It was such a blow after the intimacy and understanding she felt they had shared that Charley couldn’t stop herself from bursting out, ‘You want to get rid of me, don’t you? You want me to fail. You want to bully me into saying I can’t cope, just as my boss wants to bully me into handing in my resignation so that he can give my job to his daughter. Well, much as I’d love to oblige you both, and set myself free from the necessity of having to put up with you, I can’t and I won’t. I need this job, and I need it because, as I have already told you, without the money I earn from it my sisters and I could lose our home. Because of that I will manage this project successfully—no matter how hard you try to push me into leaving.’

  Raphael turned away from her again. He was loath to admit it, but there was an element of truth in her accusation that he wanted to get rid of her. And not just because he doubted her ability to handle the project successfully. No, it was the effect she was having on him physically as a man that was the prime cause of his desire to get her out of his life. Raphael wasn’t used to his body, his senses, challenging the rules he had made for the way he lived his life. The reality was that they had never done so before, and certainly not to the extent they were now—invading his thoughts and his judgement with their increasingly intense demands.

  ‘There are other jobs,’ he told Charley unsympathetically.

  Charley looked at him in disbelief, and then shook her head.

  ‘I don’t know what world you live in,’ she told him scornfully, ‘but it isn’t the real world. There’s a recession on—but of course that won’t affect people like you. Thousands of people are out of work, and thousands more—of which I am one—are living in fear of losing their job. If that wasn’t the case do you think I would stay in this one?’

  Now she had done it, Charley thought miserably, her anger giving way to anxiety as she recognised how outspoken she had been.

  ‘I can manage this project successfully,’ she told Raphael. ‘And I will manage it successfully.’

  The earlier harmony she had felt they shared had been nothing more than an illusion, Charley told herself bitterly—a trick and a trap into which she had fallen by allowing Raphael to get under her guard. Too late to regret now the information she had given him about herself; too late to tell herself that she should never have listened to her senses and her body instead of her head, when they had whispered excitedly to her of their reaction to Raphael. Her head knew perfectly well that there could be no intimacy—of any kind—between her and Raphael, no matter what her foolish senses might have wanted to believe. All she could do was make sure that she didn’t make the same mistake again.

  The garden covered several acres, and there were parts of it—like the part they were in now—that Charley hadn’t seen on her earlier visit because access to them was so overgrown.

  Striding ahead of her, Raphael had come to a halt outside the ruins of what had once been a pretty garden temple.

  ‘Down here there is something I particularly want to discuss with you,’ he told her, indicating a set of steps that led downwards to a heavy wooden door. ‘But take care on the steps—they are damaged and slippery.’

  Charley hesitated. She didn’t like underground places—never had done since she had been accidentally locked in the vicarage’s cellar as a child. But she knew she couldn’t refuse without making a fool of herself and showing a vulnerability she did not want Raphael to see, so she followed Raphael down the stone steps, trying to control her reluctance and anxiety as he unlocked the door.

  Just the sound of it creaking back on its hinges when Raphael pushed it open was enough to increase Charley’s apprehension.

  ‘Down here is the chamber containing the mechanism for the fountains. I’ve had someone looking at it, and it’s still working, although the fountains and sprinklers themselves need repairing and restoring. Once they are in working order again they should prove a tremendous draw for visitors. One of the things I want to do—the only modernisation of the gardens I will permit—is the addition of lighting. The cabling for that will need to be put in at an early stage, and you will need to make arrangements for that.’

  Charley nodded her head. He was quite right that specially designed lighting would enhance the garden.

  ‘It is my intention that the money brought in via future visitors to the garden will go directly to the town, for the benefit of its people—especially the young people, to provide them with the opportunity to learn new skills. There is no industry here, no work for the young, and without them the town will eventually die.’

  His altruistic plans surprised Charley. They seemed at odds with her own judgement of him—or was it just her he felt didn’t deserve to earn a living?

  Charley was just about to respond when she saw a small shadow flit past her out of the corner of her eye, followed by another.

  ‘What…?’ she began anxiously, but Raphael anticipated her.

  ‘It is nothing to worry about,’ he told her casually. ‘It is only bats. They have made a home here. If you come down here and look closely you can see them hanging up in the roof. We’ve obviously disturbed them.’

  Look closely? Charley shook her head, and then whirled round as another bat flew past her, losing her balance on the crumbling stone as she did so.

  Raphael must have moved quickly, because he had been several feet away from her when she had slipped and now he was holding her.

  The bats were forgotten. All Charley could think about was her proximity to Raphael. Her heart was thudding into her ribs with a mixture of forbidden excitement and longing. She must not feel like this, she warned herself. She must not raise her head and look at him. She must not let her gaze rest yearningly on his mouth. She must not let her heart thud with anticipation and longing whilst she looked up into his eyes, her own eyes telling him what she most wanted.

  She must not, but she was.

  This was not what he should be doing, Raphael knew, but his hard grip on Charley’s upper arms still softened into a hold that was more a caress, the pads of his fingertips smoothing the soft leather against her skin. He could see the pulse beating frantically in her throat, inciting him to capture it with his lips and then trace his way up to her mouth. He’d already lifted his hand, preparatory to cupping her face so that he could hold her still beneath his kiss. What harm would one kiss do? At least then he would know.

  Know what? That he wanted her? He didn’t need to kiss her to discover that.

  Raphael was going to kiss her! Charley leaned helplessly towards him, an
d then stopped when he released her abruptly, almost thrusting her away from him.

  ‘I thought you said that your leg was fine,’ he said angrily. ‘If you are still having a problem with it you should have said so. The last thing I want is to have—’

  ‘To carry me out of here?’ Charley stopped him. She was shamefully close to tears, foolishly hurt by his anger and his lack of understanding. ‘Well, you needn’t worry. There’s nothing wrong with my leg. The bats made me stumble, that’s all.’

  Carry her? The savage surge of physical reaction hardening his body at the thought of holding her in his arms increased Raphael’s fury—not against Charley but against himself. He could feel it burning through him, beating at the defences of his self-control: anger against himself for not recognising that she might be in pain; anger against himself for wanting her; anger against the strictures placed upon him because of what and who he was, forbidding him from living as other men did. Anger, but not rage. Not that feeling he had sworn he would never allow to possess him ever again—that wall of savagery that had once risen up inside him, sweeping over him like a red mist, obliterating reason and humanity, possessing him with its violence, forcing him to accept the cursed reality of what he had inherited, the reality of what he was.

  That feeling, experienced once and never forgotten by him, was his dark shadow—always with him, always reminding him, a warning of what might lie ahead of him in his future if it wasn’t controlled. And who could say that it always would be? Who could say that it wouldn’t grow and take over like some progressive disease? Like the form of madness that it was? So that he ended up not only risking passing on his own tainted inheritance to a future generation but also, in the grip of his own madness, destroying those he should most protect.

  Images he had kept locked away burst past the doors he had closed against them. His mother’s pretty sitting room, its air carrying her scent, the sunlight falling on the petit point that was her favourite hobby laid down on a small table, the chair on which she always sat whilst doing it beside the table.

  Like a film inside his head Raphael could see himself reaching for that chair in a fit of anger—of madness—and then hurling it against the marble fireplace with such force that it had lain broken and splintered, its red silk seat covering resembling a pool of blood against the white marble.

  No! The denial, silent and agonising, was wrung from deep inside of him, but Raphael knew that no amount of regret could take back what he had done in the savagery of his rage against his mother—the person who had loved him so very much and who had least deserved that rage. For the rest of his life he must be on his guard against that rage—against that madness ever possessing him again—and that meant controlling his emotions, not allowing himself to get close emotionally to anyone—for their own sake and protection.

  CHAPTER SIX

  IT WAS no use. She could mentally castigate herself as much as she liked for being too vulnerable to her emotions when she should have been listening to her head. Raphael was not someone she could afford to let her guard down around, Charley warned herself as she paused in front of the portraits of Raphael’s parents—painted just after their marriage, so Anna had told her when she had asked about them.

  She looked up at the portrait of Raphael’s mother, dark-haired like her son, and dark-eyed like the husband whose portrait she was turning towards. What had struck Charley the first time she had seen the portraits was the shining happiness in Raphael’s mother’s eyes as she looked towards her husband, and the tenderness with which he looked back at her.

  They had been very much in love, Anna had told her, the young Duchess having fallen in love with the twenty-two-year-old Duke at her own fourteenth birthday party, swearing that she would marry no one else. Witnessing now that look of shining love, and knowing of the grief that had driven her to take her own life after her husband’s death, touched Charley’s own emotions. Poor lady. And poor Raphael too? After all, he had lost his parents as she had lost hers, and at a much younger and more vulnerable age. She shrugged the thought away. She did not want to feel sorry for Raphael. She did not want to feel anything for him at all. Charley’s heart started to beat unsteadily as she tried to deny what her body was telling her—that it was already too late for her to tell herself that.

  She had spent the morning exchanging e-mails with the contractors who were to clear the site. It had taken some hard bargaining on her part to secure their agreement to do the extra work in the timescale Raphael had stipulated, and at a cost that was not excessive. She had also sourced three contenders for the lighting Raphael wanted installed, sending them copies of the original plans and asking for their suggestions for effective lighting and projected costs.

  Raphael had sent for her, and no doubt he would want to know exactly how much progress she had made. Apprehensively and reluctantly, Charley knocked on the door to Raphael’s office and then pushed it open.

  ‘You wanted to see me?’

  ‘Yes,’ Raphael confirmed. ‘I’ve been in touch with someone I know in Florence—a member of a committee responsible for the maintenance of some of the city’s most historic buildings. He has supplied me with the contact details for both a landscape architect and the head of Florence’s most prestigious academy for craftsmen. Men and women who study there learn the skills of traditional arts. My contact tells me that this is where we will find the very best sculptors to recreate the garden’s ornaments. First, though, we shall need to convince Niccolo Volpari, who runs the school, that our project is worthy of his students.’

  ‘That sounds excellent. If you give me his e-mail address I’ll get in touch with him and arrange for him to come out and see the garden.’

  Raphael shook his head.

  ‘This is a very important and a very busy man. We will have to go to Florence to see him, not the other way around. The decision as to whether or not he will accept us onto his list of clients will be his and not ours,’ he repeated. ‘It is from the academy that the city of Florence finds sculptors and painters, gilders and carvers, stonemasons and master builders when any restoration work needs to be undertaken. It is Niccolo’s teachers who will examine what is left of the garden’s ornaments and then recommend the pupil who will replicate the damaged pieces.’

  Raphael got up from behind his desk and walked towards the window. Charley watched him, her glance clinging to the broad span of his shoulders and the way his body tapered down to his hips. His shirt, which was no doubt handmade and expensive, somehow delineated the male shape of his body without in any way clinging to it as her avid gaze was doing. Why was it that Italian men, or at least this Italian man, seemed able to wear a pair of chinos in a way that focused female attention on the powerful muscles in his thighs? The way his muscles moved when he moved filled her female mind with mental images of hard-muscled flesh, and the power it contained, its maleness emphasised by the dark silkiness of body hair.

  Charley dragged her gaze away, panicking when it wanted to linger, as she heard Raphael speaking.

  ‘Niccolo Volpari is insisting on seeing both of us. He is known for his eccentricity, apparently, where the projects he takes on are concerned, and I am told by those with whom he works that it would not do to refuse.’

  And he had wanted to refuse, Raphael acknowledged—all the more so when he had discovered that members of a convention of Michelangelo admirers from all over the world were currently filling virtually every hotel bedroom in Florence.

  ‘Unfortunately the only time he can see us is for dinner tomorrow evening, which means that we shall have to stay in Florence overnight—Italians do not eat until late in the evening.’

  Unfortunately? Charley couldn’t think of anything she’d rather do than have the chance to spend time in Florence. She might even be able to snatch enough time to visit its famous market and buy herself an inexpensive change of clothes to supplement the jeans and jacket Raphael had given her and her two tee shirts.

  ‘We shall stay overnigh
t in my Florence apartment.’

  Now her excitement had become a complex mix of emotions, some of which were far too dangerous for her to want to question.

  ‘We will leave first thing tomorrow morning. I warn you that my contact tells me that Niccolo Volpari does not suffer fools gladly, and he will have many questions he wants to ask, many tests the project will have to pass before he is satisfied and prepared to recommend that his artistes work on it. Their work is the best of the best, and he boasts that Michelangelo himself would not be able to tell the difference between his own David and a copy made by Volpari students. Now, what progress have you made with regard to the restoration of the lake?’

  ‘I’ve been in touch with English Heritage and the National Trust, and they have given me the names of three Italian-based organisations that have the know-how to take on the project. I’ve e-mailed all three of them, but as yet I have not received a response. I’ve also informed the company clearing the site that you now want the work done in two months, and they have agreed to supply an extra team to ensure that that target is met. It will mean floodlighting the whole area, which will add to the cost, and paying overtime. I’ve got the figures here. I wanted to get your approval of them before I give them the go-ahead.’

  Raphael reached the desk just as Charley was placing the papers on it. One of the papers slipped, and as she retrieved it somehow her knuckles inadvertently brushed against the soft fabric stretched against Raphael’s thigh. The shock of sensation that burned through her was such that Charley immediately released the papers and withdrew her hand, not daring to look at Raphael, her whole body burning up with discomfort. Why on earth was she behaving like such a gauche fool? Her touch had been accidental, probably not even felt by Raphael, and yet here she was, behaving like a virgin who had found her hand resting unexpectedly on a full-on male erection, instead of an adult woman whose hand had merely brushed accidentally against a piece of fabric.