The Di Medici Bride

by Heather Graham

  The question was very smooth, and painstakingly polite. His voice, like his eyes, could touch her with husky velvet—and with fire.

  Chris forced herself to smile. “It’s quite hard to tell these days, isn’t it?”

  He laughed and she felt the sudden warmth of it, for it was honest laughter.

  “So you intend to leave me in wonder,” he said, musing.

  “I haven’t left you in anything, Mr. di Medici. Whatever you choose to think will be your affair, won’t it?”

  He smiled and lifted a hand for the check. He signed it with a pen from his inner pocket, and Chris again caught herself thinking about him. He was made for a three-piece suit; he was lean, sleek and dark, like a panther. Negligent, and yet vibrant.

  Dangerous.

  Not really. She intended to be dangerous—if he crossed her.

  “Are you ready, Miss Tarleton?”

  She nodded uneasily, again noticing in his polite tone and sweeping gaze a sense of his hostility. Leashed, as his tension was leashed. Very, very controlled.

  “Then come. The palazzo awaits.”

  He helped her from her chair. His hand was against her spine as he escorted her from the restaurant, and she felt as if she had been seared through the silk of her blouse. But then, it felt as if his eyes had already stripped her to the soul, as if he could bare both her heart and flesh at will.

  “We’ll hail a gondola,” he murmured, “since Genovese and Alfred have taken our launch.”

  Soon they were seated in the small boat, moving along the Grand Canal. As had happened earlier, it seemed to Chris that they moved too quickly from light to shadow, back into light, then into shadow once again. Sitting beside the man, Chris again felt the tension in him, the vibrancy, and against her will she felt fear and excitement. He didn’t speak, but she watched his face and when he turned to her, she was startled once again by the hostility in his eyes.

  “Mr. di Medici,” she said, refusing to flinch from his stare. “I cannot imagine what I might have done to you at the age of four. And yet I’m certain that you really don’t wish to ‘welcome’ me into your home at all. Why?”

  He shrugged, then leaned away from her, crossing his arms over his chest. She couldn’t see his face or his eyes for a minute, only a formidable, very male shape. His voice came from the darkness.

  “It’s rather hard to welcome the daughter of a murderer,” he said casually.

  “What?” Chris gasped.

  “Surely you knew.” His voice grated harshly. “Your father was accused of murdering mine.”

  CHAPTER 2

  “What?” Chris gasped again, and this time she leaped to her feet to confront him, causing the gondola to sway precariously and the gondolier to gasp something himself.

  “Sit down!” Marcus commanded, reaching out for her and sweeping an arm about her waist to bring her crashing gracelessly back down beside him. “Do you wish to swim at night? I promise you, the water can be quite cool!”

  “Let go of me!” Chris seethed, tearing herself away from his touch but being careful not to rise again. The gondolier said something in rapid Italian and Marcus answered him with a laugh, but when he turned to look at Chris, the laughter faded and his eyes looked like cobalt fire in the night.

  “Can you please behave rationally?” he asked, his words low and crisp with irritation. “He’s asking me if we would care to be put ashore to finish this lovers’ quarrel.”

  “Lovers’ quarrel! Tell the man that you just accused my father of murder and ask him how he would feel!”

  He didn’t respond to her anger. He stared off to the left bank of the Grand Canal and said with a sigh, “I am not the first to accuse him, Miss Tarleton.”

  “Then—” Chris swallowed and lowered her tone to match his, despite an inner turmoil that seemed to make her motions those of a puppet, jerked on a string, and her speech rapid. “If my father were guilty of murder, he could not have returned to the States!”

  “I said that he was accused, not convicted.”

  “Then what—why—”

  He spun toward her sharply. She felt the sweep of his cobalt eyes and shivered involuntarily. “Miss Tarleton, it is not a subject that I care to discuss. If you want more information, you’ll have to speak with Alfred.”

  “Wait a minute!” Chris declared hotly. “You can’t say something like that and refuse to explain yourself.”

  “I can, and I intend to,” he said briefly. “Where is the pensione?” he asked her.

  “Off the Via Pietà,” Chris murmured distractedly. “You’re wrong!” she insisted. “I knew my father, and I don’t know what you think, or why, but he couldn’t possibly have committed a murder! I’m telling you—”

  He wasn’t listening to her; he was giving the gondolier directions.

  “Marcus di Medici!” Chris insisted. “You are not listening to me! I’m telling you—”

  “You can’t tell me anything,” he told her with a tired sigh. “You were a child of four when all this happened, hardly equal to the task of sorting the facts. The matter is best left alone. James was dismissed for lack of evidence; there was no trial. He was not forced to leave Italy. He chose to do so. Let’s leave it at that. The past is best buried.”

  “No! Not when—”

  “I believe we are here, Miss Tarleton,” he interrupted quietly, and Chris realized that the gondola was indeed standing still at the piazza by the pensione. Marcus stood to help her from the boat. He spoke to their gondolier; she assumed he was asking the man to wait for them. The boatman chuckled, and Chris was further infuriated to realize that he assumed that they were indeed in the middle of a lovers’ quarrel, which Marcus—the male, the rational member of their duo—would quickly solve, putting her—the female, the irrational one—in her place.

  “You needn’t tell him to wait,” Chris said, fighting for control over her temper and to achieve a cool tone. “I don’t care to go back with you, Mr. di Medici. Perhaps you do not care to welcome the daughter of a man you saw fit to condemn when a court of law did not do so. And I do not care to enter the household of the man who condemned him!”

  He stared at her for several seconds in a way that made Chris wish she could back away from him. He had one foot on the seat of the gondola, one foot on dry land, and though the canal rippled below him, he was perfectly comfortable, perfectly balanced. He was so agile, shrouded in darkness, only his eyes alight with that blaze that subtly invaded her being, causing her to shiver, to remember that her first impression of him had told her that he could be a dangerous man.

  He moved suddenly, taking a single springing step with no sound that brought him next to her, staring down at her again, and leaving her feeling decidedly at a disadvantage. But she tightened her jaw and tilted her chin in challenge, determined not to back away from him.

  “Do you wish me to give a message to Alfred?” he inquired softly.

  She was somewhat stunned, having assumed that he would fight her decision. But why should he? she wondered. He had said he didn’t want her at the palazzo.

  “Yes. Tell Mr. Contini that I’m very sorry. Tell him that I found you to be intolerable, rude, insolent and arrogant and that I have no wish to ‘vacation’ beneath your roof.”

  She thought she saw a smile briefly curve his lips, and his lashes fell momentarily over his eyes. She hadn’t insulted him, she had amused him.

  “Do I frighten you, Miss Tarleton?”

  “Certainly not! You offend me.”

  “There is no reason for you to refuse to come because of me. The Palazzo di Medici is large, very large. I spend a great deal of time working.” He lowered his eyes for a second, and his tone changed; she sensed a sudden warmth and caring in it. “And Alfred Contini is an old man, Miss Tarleton. He wishes to have you there.”

  “Perhaps he does not believe my father to have been a murderer!” Chris snapped.

  “Perhaps not,” Marcus agreed coolly. “But that is not the point, Miss
Tarleton. Alfred is old and ill; if he wishes to have you at the palazzo, then I do, too.”

  “No matter what your own feelings, I take it,” Chris said dryly.

  “I apologize. I never should have spoken.”

  “But you did!” Chris cried passionately. “Your apology does not change your feelings—”

  “Then,” he interrupted smoothly, “perhaps you have to come, Miss Tarleton. Since you are your father’s passionate defender, perhaps you can change my feelings.”

  “I really don’t give a damn about your feelings,” Chris muttered.

  He arched a brow, and she realized he was still amused by the entire encounter. “If I were you, Miss Tarleton, I would be very interested in discovering the truth.”

  His voice seemed to rake over her soul, rough and intimate velvet. She longed to push him backward, right into the canal. But she realized with sinking dismay that he was right; she had to go to the palazzo. It was no longer a matter of curiosity; she was her father’s “passionate defender.”

  He was still watching her; she didn’t know if it was with tolerance and scant interest or a great intensity. All she knew was that she felt his strange power once again; there was something primal and raw beneath the immaculate tailoring of his suit. She shivered, all too aware that his sexuality was a part of the danger he represented. He didn’t need to touch a woman to make her tremble; all she needed to do was see him, inhale his subtle scent, feel the brush of his words or his eyes….

  She smiled, like a tiger released from a cage herself. He was ready to condemn her father, but she was not. She was suddenly determined to discover the truth and then rub his nose in it. And she’d use him—and any member of his family—in any way she had to in order to discover that truth.

  “If you’ll wait here, Mr. di Medici, I’ll get my things,” she murmured coolly.

  “If you wish some assistance—”

  “I do not.” Chris smiled grimly, then left him.

  In her room, Chris hurriedly assembled her things, then paused to write a note to the others, explaining that she was going to the Palazzo di Medici to stay with old family friends. She added cheerfully that she hoped they all enjoyed their vacations, and that she would see them in the fall.

  Chris was about to hurry back downstairs when she paused and walked down the hallway to the single window that overlooked the small canal. She could see Marcus by the poles of the piazza, talking with the gondolier. He laughed at something the other man said, shrugged, then paced across the piazza, obviously impatient and curious as to what could be taking her so long. Moonlight cast a cold glow over the piazza. She realized then that he really didn’t walk at all; he stalked. Fluidly, smoothly, like a shadow through the night, or a sleek beast through the jungle. He lifted his head suddenly, staring up toward the window as if he knew she was there. Chris ducked back quickly, but she kept her eyes on him, studying him, trying to determine what it was that made him so compelling. Perhaps it was the lean form that touched chords of both primal excitement and fear; perhaps it was his face, the angles and lean planes so masculine, strong and striking.

  She didn’t know. She gave herself a little shake and reminded herself that she was going to beguile Marcus di Medici into doing her will—and make him swallow his own words like muddy canal water.

  She forced her eyes from him and hurried downstairs. He saw her as soon as she stepped outside, and he moved toward her, silently taking her suitcase. “It’s very late,” he muttered. “I hope Alfred asked that a room be prepared for you.”

  “I’m sure I can prepare my own room,” Chris replied dryly. They were at the gondola, and she tried to step ahead; she felt his arm at her elbow, steadying her anyway. She sat as far from him as possible. The gondolier was grinning again. Chris sat in silence until she lost her cool.

  “Oh, good heavens! Will you tell the man that this is no lovers’ quarrel—and not at all amusing!”

  Marcus laughed. “Why spoil his evening?”

  Chris fell silent and once again watched the magnificence of the buildings they passed in the moonlight. Baroque palaces, Gothic palaces, one after another. And then they were passing St. Mark’s Square again, and Chris could have sworn that the winged lion, high on its granite column, was laughing down at her. They passed beneath the Bridge of Sighs, then turned and traveled beneath a number of small bridges, the pedestrian highways of Venice.

  Suddenly she swallowed and caught her breath. She would have sworn she never would have recognized it, but she knew the Palazzo di Medici as soon as the gondola swung along the canal. It was huge, rising several stories out of the water and, unlike the majority of its neighbors, it did not sit wall-to-wall with the next building. Venice was a city created of islands; the Palazzo di Medici was an island in itself. An expanse of marble steps led to it from the water; it was set back, separated from the canal by those white gleaming steps and a garden enclosed by a wrought-iron fence. There were four graceful columns on the landing of the stairs, and the overhang formed an inverted V, with the family crest of the di Medici—St. Mark’s winged lion in the center, Neptune rising to the left and a thorned rose to the right—fixed on a huge bronze shield in the center of the V. Chris allowed her gaze to sweep southward; she knew that she would see a bridge leading from the second story of the piazza across a slender waterway to the back of another building, similarly fenced, and of the same baroque design. The second building was where the galleries were housed.

  “You do remember it,” Marcus observed.

  “No, I don’t,” Chris replied curtly.

  She felt Marcus shrug. She wasn’t on the right side of the gondola to escape unassisted to the landing, so she silently accepted Marcus’s touch once again as he helped her out. He paid the gondolier—tipping him well, Chris assumed from the man’s fervent thanks.

  “Prego, prego!” Marcus murmured, her suitcase in one hand, the other coming resolutely to her waist once again to usher her up the steps.

  Despite Marcus and her own stalwart determination, Chris felt a twinge of unease as they started up the stairs. Alfred Contini wanted her here but did anyone else? If the general consensus was that James Tarleton had murdered Mario di Medici, it was unlikely that his widow would be glad to see Chris. Or that Tony, Marcus’s younger brother, would be thrilled to pieces, either.

  She heard her own footsteps on the marble stairs. They seemed to echo loudly. How many steps were there? Fifteen, sixteen, seventeen…

  She was still three steps from the landing when the intricately carved wooden entrance door swung open. From inside a massive chandelier cast a glow over the entryway.

  There was a woman standing there, tall, dark and slim, and very proud, judging from her posture. For a moment Chris thought that she was young, and she wondered if either Marcus or Tony had married and Alfred had neglected to tell her so. But Marcus kept ushering her along, and she saw the woman’s features. She was very beautiful, with a slim heart-shaped face and huge deep-set dark eyes. But she was not young; she was, Chris thought, either in her late forties or early fifties.

  “Sophia,” Marcus murmured, and Chris frowned fleetingly. The name had touched a chord in her memory.

  “Ah, Marcus, Miss Tarleton, you have arrived,” the woman said, and Chris could discern nothing from her voice. There was no warm note of welcome, but neither was there anything hostile in the words.

  “Come in, come in. Genovese will take the bag.”

  They stepped into the grand entryway of the palazzo. The short slim man of indeterminate age whom Chris had seen helping Alfred Contini earlier was quickly at their side, taking the suitcase from Marcus.

  “Grazie, Genovese,” Marcus murmured.

  “Prego,” was the muffled response. Genovese left them, striding across the marble-tiled entryway to a curving staircase that led to the second landing. Chris gazed up at the chandelier. It hung from a majestic cathedral ceiling adorned with frescoes.

  “So, you are Chris Tarleton
. You’ve grown a great deal since I saw you last.”

  Chris started, then stared at the woman. She smiled sweetly. “I left twenty-one years ago. I certainly hope I’ve changed.”

  “You are a performer, Alfred tells me.”

  Chris lowered her lashes quickly. It was obvious that Sophia—whoever she was—thought that performers were of a lower class than average citizens.

  “I am a mime,” she replied.

  “A very talented one, Sophia,” Marcus said from behind her, startling Chris again. She spun around to look into his enigmatic cobalt eyes.

  “You were at the show?” she asked him.

  “Yes,” he said, and for some reason she shivered again, knowing that he had watched her when she hadn’t been aware of him.

  “Ah, there you are at last!”

  The cry came from a male voice at the top of the stairs. Chris gazed upward to see a handsome young man with a dazzling white smile staring down at her. “It’s about time, Marc! I’ve been dying of curiosity to see our mystery guest—our prodigal daughter!”

  Marcus laughed. Chris glanced his way and felt suddenly warm. There was open amusement in his eyes, and his smile was as full and inviting as his brother’s. His teeth were white against the copper of his features, and when he met her gaze with a teasing light in his eyes, she knew that he was definitely capable of being charming.

  “Come down, Tony. Miss Tarleton, my brother, Antonio. Tony, Miss Christina Tarleton.”

  Tony quickly came to them, offering Chris his hand. His touch was warm, his smile genuine, and she almost felt like crying. At least someone besides Alfred was glad to see her.

  “Hello, Tony,” she murmured.

  “Hello yourself, gorgeous!” Tony laughed. He was in jeans and a blue denim shirt; his eyes were blue, but a lighter shade than his brother’s. He was very handsome, and he seemed… fun. Not at all like Marcus, with his underlying elemental streak of danger.

  He kept her hand and swung around to Sophia. “She did turn out just beautiful, but then, you’re the one who always said she would!”