He checked the flow of rage that gusted through him to contemplate that he might have brought Dani into danger by marrying her. Hadn’t Orlando sought her out in private once already?
On his way to the royal livery, he ordered more guards posted around her, specifying that they were not to let her out of their sight for a minute.
He said nothing about his cousin, deciding not to put them on Orlando’s trail yet, for the simple reason that if his crafty cousin was indeed guilty of something, he didn’t want to give Orlando any prior warning that witless Rafe the Rake was finally on to him.
Since he did not want his visit to Don Francisco to be noted by the world at large, he took an unmarked coach to the old man’s elegant city palazzo.
Rafe sent his footman to the door while he waited in the carriage, but the servant came back reporting that the old financier was not at home, having gone out on a fishing trip, making the most of the temporary recess of the cabinet which Rafe had ordered in his foolish fit of anger, firing all of his father’s trusted advisers.
He stifled a sigh and scratched his forehead.
An inspiration came to him. He ordered the coachman to take him to the wheelwright’s large, noisy shop where his phaeton was being repaired.
They were just about to close for the day, but when he arrived, the wheelwright and his apprentices fell all over him in their efforts to serve their royal patron. The master wheelwright led him over to his phaeton, which was being given a final polish before being returned to him, the repairs complete.
When Rafe asked to see the broken axle which had been removed, the man’s cheerful countenance turned puzzled.
“Of course, Your Highness,” he said, looking at him oddly. He ordered a couple of his apprentices to bring it from the pile of broken wheels and other carriage parts in a corner of the stable yard behind the sprawling shop.
Rafe waited restlessly, glancing over his stylish vehicle. It was merely a tickle of ominous intuition, but he wanted to examine the axle, just to assure himself that no one had tampered with it.
Miraculously, he had walked away from the carriage accident without a scratch, but if he had been one jot less of a skilled driver, and if he had not leaped out of the thundering vehicle at the last minute, he could have been thrown from the twisting phaeton or pinned under its splintered halves and dragged while the team kept running.
Collecting his note for fifty thousand from the loser of the wager, he had laughed off the mishap at the time and merely steadied himself with a swallow of whiskey, but now the full knowledge of what could have happened chilled him.
He turned when the lads came back a few minutes later, then went stock-still as they reported that the broken pieces of the axle were gone. Missing. Vanished.
The carriage-maker looked flustered at this news, embarrassed in front of his royal patron, and yelled at them. “Are you blind? Excuse me, Your Highness. I’ll find it myself.”
But as sunset cooled the sweltering shop, the master wheelwright didn’t find the axle, either.
Rafe walked out of the shop amid their profuse apologies.
The evening was filled with beautiful waning pink light, but he stood on the sidewalk with knots in his stomach, staring down the street to the left then the right, dazed, struggling merely to get his bearings. He rested his hands on his hips and tried to gather his thoughts. Clearly he had come out of his sleep not a moment too soon.
He began walking to no place in particular. He waved off his coachman and ignored the constant stares of people in the street. For once, couldn’t he just walk down the street like anybody else, until he had figured out what the hell was going on?
He barely acknowledged the citizens who called to him, bowed, curtsied everywhere he went—all these people who were counting on him to take care of them when he couldn’t even adequately protect his young wife under his own roof.
He could barely think. He was too furious. Head down, hands in his trouser pockets, he walked until twilight turned the city pearl-gray, not even noticing where he was going.
When his fury smoothed out to a calmer, slow-burning anger, it left him with a kind of despair. He had failed. So soon, he had failed.
He saw he was going to have to send for Father to come back because he didn’t know what to do. God forbid he should do the wrong thing. He was not afraid of Orlando, but he was petrified of blundering. The stakes were too high to be left to someone like him, a stupid, overgrown adolescent.
Rafe the Rake, he thought, hating himself. He was nothing but a gaudy showpiece.
But damn it, even Father would have been hard-pressed to know what to do in this situation, he was sure. Well, what would Father do? he demanded of himself.
Confront him head on, he thought at once. Hit him like a battering ram.
But that wouldn’t work. If Orlando had been sitting there smiling at them for the past two years, a face-to-face confrontation would be pointless. Obviously the man was a consummate liar. So where did that leave him?
Hell, even Darius would know what to do better than he. Darius would have handled it by playing just as dirty as Orlando until he had gathered proof of his guilt, then he would…do what? Rafe wondered, racking his brain. Knowing Santiago, he would probably mete out his own justice, simply cut the man’s throat, and wipe his hands of the matter. But Rafe was not the professional government assassin that his brother-in-law had been trained to be.
Besides, his mother had raised him to use violence only as an absolute final measure. Because he would be king, she had taught him to use his strength gently, lest he turn into a tyrant and harm those whom it was his God-given duty to protect.
The lamplighter, ladder under his arm, walked past him, not even recognizing him, Rafe noted gladly. The blue-uniformed man merely went about his business, lighting the gas lamps in the fashionable neighborhood that he had wandered into.
Ambling along the sidewalks, enjoying the calm cool of night, Rafe took a peppermint out of his pocket tin and sucked it, head down, hands in pockets.
Passing in solitude beneath a lamplight’s feeble sphere of golden light, he suddenly heard a carriage jingle to a halt next to him amid tinkling laughter, while a familiar male voice called a halt to the smart black team.
“Whoa!”
“Rafe? Darling, is that you?”
With a depressed sigh, he turned and looked up slowly to find Chloe and Adriano seated side by side in a dashing cabriolet, the black leather hood raised over them.
“Well, if it isn’t the married man,” Chloe drawled.
“Rafe? What are you doing out here?” Adriano asked in puzzlement.
“Dear me, he looks lost.”
“Is everything all right?”
Rafe merely lifted his gaze heavily to his friend’s, then glanced at Chloe.
Under her frilly parasol and elaborately brimmed hat, his ex-mistress’s delicate face glowed by the lamplight, but her artificial smile faded as her gaze took in his grim expression. “My God, darling, what is wrong?”
Adriano frowned at him, too. “Has something happened?”
“Get in this carriage right now,” she ordered, sliding over on the seat to make room for him as the mockery fled her perfect face.
He didn’t move.
He had not visited Chloe since he’d met Daniela, but he knew he could have her back in a heartbeat. He was in no mood to be plagued with guilt on top of everything else. Society recognized his right as a wealthy male to keep a mistress if he chose, and if his wife’s sensibilities, insecurities, and fears were going to stop her from fulfilling his needs, why should he not seek his pleasure elsewhere?
But as he gazed up at the stunning, blue-eyed blond, he knew he shouldn’t get into that carriage, because he knew just where it would take him.
And yet there was a great comfort in the familiar escape into self-indulgence, just as there was in the welcoming darkness of night.
Without another word, he stepped up into the carri
age with them.
CHAPTER
THIRTEEN
Chloe’s eyes welcomed him with sultry knowing as their hands accidentally brushed. She slanted him a glance as he sat down next to her. There wasn’t much room.
Squeezed between them, Chloe moved partly onto Rafe’s lap and draped an arm around each of their shoulders, Adriano’s and his.
“Isn’t this cozy?” she purred. “My two favorite boys.” She kissed Adriano’s cheek, then Rafe’s, and whispered, “Whatever’s wrong, my love, you know your Chloe can always make you smile.”
He looked at her, holding her hungry stare with a surge of unfulfilled lust. A mocking smile of triumph flicked over her fine lips and he looked away. She leaned toward him and brushed a light kiss on his ear.
“Miss me?” she whispered.
He pulled away, hating himself and despising Daniela for driving him to this. She should have given in. She was his wife.
At his nape, Chloe’s long fingers tickled him as she began playing with his hair, while Adriano urged the horses into motion.
They rode for a few moments in silence, then he noticed Chloe smiling to herself like a cat over a bowl of cream. Her gloating look made him realize she had probably heard from Adriano that he had not been spending his nights in his wife’s bed, but in his old boyhood rooms in the west wing. But she was too shrewd to mention it.
She merely continued toying with his hair, lightly tickling his neck with her touch until he could not think in his haze of need. He kept his face turned away from her, watching the neat, narrow houses slide by.
The cabriolet passed through the open solid-wood gates and rolled down the dark, private alley beside Chloe’s townhouse to the quaint stone carriage house in back. The vehicle had barely stopped in the courtyard behind the house when Chloe swept her hat off and tossed it aside, pushed back slightly against the seat, and pulled Rafe toward her.
With a low, hungry groan, he went willingly, claiming her mouth in a harsh, ravaging kiss. Despair pounded in his veins, in his heart, but he ignored it. He dragged his hand down to knead her large, round breasts, her skin lily-pale in the dark. She sighed, stroking between his thighs with one gloved hand. With the other, she did the same to Adriano.
Rafe clutched her, hardening instantly under her palm. Adriano set the brake, tied off the reins, then turned to them, touching Chloe’s hair for a moment as Rafe kissed her. She pulled her mouth away, breathless, a wanton smile on her plump lips as she petted Rafe and reached out to Adriano.
“My favorite boys,” she whispered.
Rafe glanced up, panting with want, as Adriano climbed into the narrow compartment in the back. Leaning down to caress her face, Adriano began kissing Chloe’s mouth and gently taking down her pinned-up hair.
Rafe’s gaze moved over her sinuously arching body. He tugged the plunging neckline of her gown lower still, freeing her breasts to feast on them. He slid off the seat and knelt on the floorboards between her spread knees. There wasn’t much room, but he no longer cared, no more than he cared that she was unfastening di Tadzio’s black trousers, licking her lips in anticipation.
It wouldn’t be the first time they had shared a woman, but it had been a very long time and Rafe wondered if he was a bit too sober for this tonight.
“Perhaps I am intruding,” he murmured in the dark, panting. After all, he had given her to Adriano on his wedding day.
Chloe glanced down at him as she caressed Adriano’s hip. “Nonsense, darling.” She reached down to run her fingers through Rafe’s hair. “Why don’t we all go inside and have a drink?”
“No, you two go,” Rafe said, glancing uncertainly at his friend. “I’ll just borrow your carriage to get home, if you don’t mind.”
“You’re not going anywhere,” Chloe chided, lifting one dainty foot and rubbing it between his thighs.
He flinched with aching want and closed his eyes.
“Go with him, Chloe. He needs you. It’s all right,” he heard Adriano whisper. Rafe dragged his eyes open and saw him kiss her forehead. “I should leave anyway.”
“But why? My darling, stay.” She pouted. “Rafe doesn’t mind.”
Rafe looked away, scratching his eyebrow. I really ought to go, he thought.
“No, dearest. Treat him well,” Adriano whispered softly, caressing the curve of her face with one fingertip.
Rafe didn’t know what was going on between them. If Adriano was in love with her, he had merely to say the word and Rafe would bow out. But when Chloe sat up and thrust her big breasts under his face, his mouth watered and his mind was made up. If he didn’t get laid very, very soon he was going to go stark, raving mad.
She made much of wriggling past him as she got out of the coach, coquette that she was, dragging her hip against his erection. Rafe eagerly followed her down from the vehicle, throwing his friend a grin over his shoulder.
“Thanks, di Tadzio. I owe you.”
“Don’t mention it,” he said with a short, rather wistful laugh.
Adjusting himself briefly, Rafe sprang up the back steps, catching only a glance of Chloe’s skirts swishing around the corner ahead of him in the brightly lit hallway of her elegant townhouse. He ignored the startled butler, chasing her as she ran from him, giggling. He caught her halfway up the stairs, hooking his arms around her hips from behind.
Flushed and breathless, she turned in his arms and gazed up at him with an almost girlish adoration. He bent his head and watched her fingers pluck the fastenings of her dress free.
From the courtyard below, they heard wheels grinding over cobblestone as Adriano turned his team around and left. Rafe glanced briefly toward the sound.
“It was cruel of you to scare him away,” Chloe whispered.
“He’ll live.”
“He adores you, and he is so gorgeous.”
“You’re too greedy, Chloe,” he said with a darkly chiding smile. “Rest assured, I’ll wear you out tonight all by myself.”
“Well,” she whispered with a teasing smile, “you can try. Come.” She captured his hands and started to lead him the rest of the way up the steps, but when his gaze swept the staircase, suddenly he knew it was no use.
Dani filled his mind. Dani, whom he needed so much he could nigh weep with unfulfilled yearning. Dani, his wife, whom he loved with an ardor that scared the hell out of him. His fear was the only reason he was here. Adultery.
No idle game anymore.
This is wrong. Even if he was in his rights, it was wrong.
He was supposed to be setting the example for his people, not sinking to the level of whatever he could get away with. He didn’t want to hear his conscience’s feeble whisper, but it came through, loud and clear.
Go home, Rafe. You can’t do this anymore.
If ever there had been a day for drawing lines of loyalty in the sand, this was that day. And if ever he was going to grow up and be a man, the time was now.
“Hurry, darling. Don’t just stand there!” Chloe urged in an eager whisper.
Standing on the staircase, he closed his eyes and hung his head, loathing himself. In that moment, he was unable to walk away from Chloe, and equally unable to take another step toward her bedroom.
She came back down to him uncertainly. She stroked his chest. “Are you all right? Come upstairs, Rafe. I’ve got a special treat in mind for you.”
Trying to gather his wits, he shrugged off her embrace resentfully when she tried to slip her arms around him.
“What’s wrong, lover?” She was ruthless, gently caressing his throbbing rod through his clothes. “I’ll make it better.”
He grasped her wrist hard, though he barely had the strength to restrain her.
“Stop it,” he said through gritted teeth. “Let’s both just stop it. You know I shouldn’t be here. I don’t even want this.”
“But you need it,” she whispered. “Nobody can satisfy you as I do.”
You’re wrong, he thought. You leave me empty. To his de
spair, he knew that no woman would ever satisfy him again but Dani. Need for her agonized him with a longing that was more than physical. She was the only woman he dreamed of…the only one who wouldn’t have him.
The hell she wouldn’t, he thought in a sudden flood of angry decision.
He would not let her do this to him. He would not stoop to this dishonor. He had gone before God and pledged fidelity, and so be it.
He stepped back woodenly from Chloe’s embrace, his heart pounding, groin throbbing. “I’m sorry, Chloe. It’s not going to happen. You know as well as I do that it’s wrong. I won’t be back. Goodnight.”
Rage came into her eyes, but without another word he turned and walked away.
“Rafe, you blackguard! Get back here!” she yelled furiously behind him. “Don’t you dare walk out on me! Where the hell do you think you’re going?”
Walking resolutely to the door, he paused but did not look back. “Home,” he said. “To my wife.”
And she would be his wife before the dawn, more than in name only.
He was fed up with waiting, out of patience with her wrong-headed denials. He was sick of playing the gentleman.
While Chloe spewed a stream of epithets at him, Rafe raked his trembling hand through his hair and stepped out into the dark coolness of night. Relief at his narrow escape slid through his veins as he went down the few steps and set out in the direction of the Palazzo Reale.
Where is my husband?
It was past eleven and no one had seen him in hours. With a sinking suspicion of his whereabouts, Dani had been unable to sleep. To distract herself from her angry suspicions, she had begun exploring the palace.
Presently, she was walking alone in the royal portrait gallery, a long rectangular room with walls sheathed in red silk. The footmen must have thought she was mad when she ordered them to light all the candles so she could study the pictures, but she was past caring. The hem of her new light blue walking gown dusted over the highly buffed parquet floor as she strolled, hands clasped behind her back, studying her husband’s ancestors and wondering if she ought to try to memorize them in chronological order.
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