The Di Medici Bride

by Heather Graham

He waved down a motor launch and rather roughly helped her aboard. When they were seated Chris slipped her fingers around his arm and rested her head against his chest, not daring to check his eyes for his reaction. He tensed for a moment, then eased, running his fingers lightly through her hair with a tenderness she had not expected. “Marcus,” she murmured, “I’m so frightened.”

  “Don’t be,” he told her a little huskily. “I mean to protect you.”

  Protect her. Protect her. She had been called to St. Mark’s. He had appeared. He was always appearing….

  She shivered. Not Marcus, not Marcus…

  Too soon, the launch reached the di Medici palazzo. Marcus helped her out and she continued to cling to him. “I don’t understand what we’re doing,” she whispered to him, trustingly, she hoped.

  He smiled down at her. Again she felt that there was tenderness in his eyes, in his touch.

  “Is it truly so horrible to find yourself married to me, cara?”

  Chris pressed her cheek against his chest. “No, Marcus.” God help her, it was the truth.

  His fingers moved gently over the top of her head. “Let’s get back upstairs. Perhaps no one will realize that we’ve been gone.”

  Chris smiled. What was she going to do? Charm him? Disarm him? But they were slipping quietly back into the palazzo, quietly back up the stairs….

  Quietly back into his room.

  Marcus closed the door and leaned against it, staring at her. His eyes fell over her, touched hers. He grinned slowly, then started walking toward her. Chris tried not to tremble when he took her into his arms. The sensation of fire lapping all along her flesh washed over her. There was a roaring in her ears, and she felt a sweet, sweet dizziness. An ache inside her…

  His lips touched hers gently, moist and warm. His tongue probed her teeth, delved beyond them. Chris held on to him, feeling engulfed. She closed her eyes and fought for strength.

  She teased his nape with her fingers, returning his kiss. And then she drew away, smiling shyly.

  “Marcus, will you give me a few minutes? I—I’d like to slip back to my room, to shower and change…and come back to you,” she added huskily.

  He watched her, neither smiling nor frowning. She couldn’t read a thing in his indigo eyes, in his tense stance or rigid features.

  “I’ll wait for you,” he said simply.

  Chris nodded and turned to the terrace. Not until she was certain she was past his vision did she hurry.

  And then she did so on tiptoe, rushing to the French doors from her room to the terrace, waiting as her heart pounded away and then biting down hard on her lower lip as she tried to silently open her door.

  She slipped off her shoes and padded onto the balcony. His door was still closed. She tiptoed down the stairs, praying that no one would make an appearance in the entryway. Again she opened the main door slowly, barely breathing.

  When she had closed it behind her she raced down the steps to the canal, waving frantically for a boat. One came to her, and as soon as she was seated she told the gondolier, “Pronto! Polizia, per favore!”

  The gondolier looked at her as if she were a crazy foreigner, then shrugged and started down the canal. Way too slowly, Chris thought nervously. She should have held out for a motor launch. At this rate she was never going to reach a police station.

  Finally the gondola pulled up to a square. Chris realized with dismay that she didn’t even know where she was. She paid the man, asking him, “Dove polizia, per favore?”

  He pointed around a corner. Chris thanked him, then started up the square to a narrow via, staring at the buildings carefully. She saw a sign and sighed. The man really had brought her to a police station.

  Chris opened the door and walked in. The outside of the building had appeared ancient. Inside there were modern desks with typewriters, glass partitions and shrilling telephones. There was a man at the front desk in a uniform, and she went up to him.

  “Per favore, parla inglese?”

  The man set down his pencil and looked at her. He shook his head, smiled and asked her in Italian to wait a minute.

  Chris nodded gratefully. She walked nervously around the small outer chamber. A second later a door opened and another man in uniform, an older man with a kindly smile, started out. Chris smiled with even greater relief and started hurrying toward him. But then she gasped, stopping dead in her tracks as Marcus stepped out from behind him.

  “No!” she cried, stunned.

  Marcus smiled. “Cara!” he cried in apparent relief. She didn’t know exactly what he said to the fatherly police officer, except that it had to do with how horribly worried he had been and how relieved he was to see her, especially since her mind was still so fogged after the accident on the staircase, which had seemed to steal away all her reason.

  The middle-aged policeman clucked in sympathy.

  “No, no! You don’t understand at all,” Chris began, backing away from the pair. Marcus was still smiling, still calling her his beloved and sounding truly like a grieved husband; Chris could see his eyes, and there was an expression that she was coming to recognize all too easily.

  He was furious with her. He also knew that he had her cornered, and he was very much enjoying the situation.

  “Wait, sir, listen to me!” Chris pleaded to the officer; he shook his head blankly, and she realized that he didn’t speak any English. She tried desperately to come up with some Italian; instead, she started babbling in interspersed French and English, convincing the officer if Marcus hadn’t already, that she was definitely suffering from delusions.

  Chris stared at them both in growing frustration, fury and fear. “Oh, never mind!” she cried, backing toward the door, then turning blindly to run. She reached for the door, then gasped as firm fingers grabbed her arm, jerking her back. She spun and found herself encircled by Marcus’s arms, crushed tightly to him. He was still smiling, his touch upon her gentle; his voice was soft, the tone very solicitous.

  But his words—spoken in English—quite bluntly belied his tone. “You’ve had it, Chris. You’re caught, tied, cornered. I’ve given him our marriage certificate and the doctor’s report on your concussion. Now, shape up, amore mio. Smile at me sweetly, or by all the saints, you will be able to charge me with abuse before the night is over.”

  He was serious. But she did feel cornered—too cornered to behave rationally.

  She kicked him as hard as she could in the shin. He grunted slightly; she heard his teeth grate. His eyes narrowed to glittering ice but he didn’t relax his hold one iota.

  He turned to the police officer and said something in Italian. The man shook his head, then waved, glad that she was the di Medicis’ business and not his. Marcus gripped her arm with no mercy, and half pushed, half dragged her back out into the waning sunshine and along the via.

  He was walking so quickly and so angrily that she could barely keep up. To her dismay, she felt herself shivering. She had no idea where he was leading her or just how far his fury would take him.

  And it was getting dark.

  Chris tripped over a break in the tile of the walkway. “Marcus!” she gasped breathlessly. He didn’t hesitate in his stride at all; he just gripped her more tightly, dragging her along.

  “Marcus…” There was a plea in her voice. He stopped, but not out of courtesy. His features were so tightly drawn that she would gladly have sunk into the ground.

  “Sorry, Christina,” he snapped coldly. “No more tricks. If you have any sense whatsoever you’ll just shut up.”

  He started walking again. She had no choice but to follow him, her anxiety growing by the minute. Her heart kept insisting that he could never hurt her, but her head kept saying that he was ready to wind powerful fingers around her throat and strangle her.

  They soon reached the square. She saw that he had brought the motor launch. Seconds later she was being rather roughly lifted down to the rear seat. She started to rise, but he pressed her back. “I’m warnin
g you, Christina. Don’t push me.”

  The motor roared to life. Marcus obeyed the speed and traffic restrictions, but just barely. He didn’t touch her; he kept his hand on the tiller, his profile implacable as he stared straight ahead.

  Chris swallowed uneasily as she noted they weren’t following canals that were even remotely familiar to her. She was even more horrified to realize after several speedy swerves and turns that they were on some kind of an open waterway.

  “We’re not going back to the palazzo,” she observed, moistening her lips.

  “No, we’re not,” he replied bluntly.

  He increased his speed. They were slicing through the water, and the color of the sky was beginning to match that of the water. Chris felt a little ill, suddenly seized by panic.

  “Marcus…?” she murmured.

  He faced her again, his countenance as dark as the water by night. “Don’t even talk to me right now, Chris. I mean it. Do us both a favor and don’t talk to me!”

  She closed her eyes and miserably shut up. She opened her eyes again when she realized that the wretched speed of the launch was slowing.

  They were coming to a dock, a regular boat dock. Chris realized that they had left Venice and reached the mainland. The motor idled while Marcus steered the boat into a berth. Then he jumped to the wood planking and reached a hand down to her. Chris hesitated, until he snapped out her name. She took his hand and allowed herself to be pulled up. He kept her hand and started walking, his strides uncomfortably long as he started down the dock to a parking lot. He knew where he was going; he led her straight to a bright-red Ferrari, pulled a set of keys from his pocket, opened the passenger door and practically shoved her in.

  Chris considered bolting as he walked around the car, but he was too quick. She saw his face as he opened the driver’s door and reconsidered immediately. If there was any sense of mercy left in him at all, any further aggravation from her would strip it away entirely.

  The Ferrari roared into action with a fury that seemed to match that of its driver.

  Chris buckled her seat belt, leaned back and closed her eyes again. They were on the road for several minutes before she found the nerve to open them. They had traveled at high speed for at least fifteen minutes before she dared to ask him where they were going.

  “Adazzi,” he answered briefly. He glanced her way, but his eyes were in shadow, and she didn’t know if his temper was beginning to ease or not. “To the villa.”

  To the villa…Chris couldn’t see anything at all. They had gone through one town, but now all she could see in the darkness was shadowed landscape.

  Then Marcus cut his speed, and they took a sharp turn to the right. They were on a rutted road that ran past scattered buildings. They took a sharp left then, and the car began to climb. She saw light suddenly, and the car jerked to a stop before a walled whitewashed villa.

  Marcus got out of the car. There was a wrought-iron gate in front, up a short pathway from the car. He opened the gate with a key, then turned back to Chris. “This is it, Chris. And there isn’t anywhere to go. Believe me, this isn’t a tourist town. You won’t find a soul who speaks English. Get out!” he finished.

  Chris took a deep breath and crossed her arms over her chest. “You must think I’m insane if you expect me to go anywhere with you when you treat me the way you do.”

  “I’m going to think that you’re insane if you don’t get out of that car now and quit making my life an absolute misery within the next few seconds,” he snapped, his words carefully enunciated.

  Her voice, to her absolute horror, was barely a whisper. “Marcus, I’m afraid.”

  “At the moment you have no reason to be. But if you’re not out of that car…”

  She slammed the door and walked with a rigid spine to the gate.

  She followed him through a small but beautifully flowering garden to a porch, where he unlocked the front door of the small two-story building.

  Taking a breath and hoping that her show of bravado was real, Chris followed him.

  She was startled by the up-to-date flavor of the villa; modular sofas and chairs were grouped before a contemporary fireplace in a sunken pit. She could see that past a small dining room area, only a counter separated a bright white-and-yellow kitchen from the main room.

  There was also a staircase leading to darkness above.

  Chris stayed near the door, her back to it. Marcus strode into the room, throwing his keys down on the nearest sofa. He stripped off his tweed jacket, tossed it on top of the keys, pulled off his tie, threw it down, too, then walked around to sink down, leaning his head back and closing his eyes—totally ignoring Chris.

  Chris stayed where she was. After a minute he rubbed his temple, then opened his eyes, turning around to stare at her with an uplifted brow.

  Chris shook her head in exasperation. “All right, I give up. What are we doing here? Come to think of it, I give up entirely on the past twenty-four hours. What the hell are you doing?”

  “What am I doing?” he repeated. He shook his head. “Damned if I know,” he muttered, as if it were all her fault. Then she saw his lashes lower, his eyes narrowing once again, as if her question had rekindled his anger. “There is one thing I can tell you, Chris, and that’s that we’re going to be here until you choose to tell me what the hell is going on!”

  “Me! You’re the one who—”

  “Sneaks around galleries with rope and grappling hooks? Disappears the morning after her marriage, then runs to the police station after very sweetly declaring that she needs a shower?” he taunted. Then he smiled. “There’s a shower upstairs.”

  “I don’t want a shower anymore.”

  “Oh, yes, you do.”

  “No, I—”

  He stood up, still smiling. Chris moved away from the door, circling him to reach the stairs. “I haven’t got anything with me,” she muttered. “You chose to take off like this without warning—”

  “You’ll find everything you could need.”

  “Whose everything?” Chris heard herself query, feeling an absurd tug of jealousy. To her horror, he noted it.

  “I’m thirty-three years old, Christina. And not a monk.”

  “If you think I’m going to—”

  “Yes, I think you are.” He smiled again. “My shin is still killing me.”

  “It should have been more than your shin,” Chris muttered. Then she was suddenly furious. “You bastard! What you’ve done is totally illegal! You purposely fed me wine, you coerced me…you’re crazy!”

  “Yes, and tired and hungry. So—”

  “Don’t think you’re going to touch me, Marcus,” she said, praying it would come out as a warning, not a desperate plea.

  “Quite frankly, I believe I’ve lost the desire,” he stated disinterestedly. “But you are going to tell me exactly what you’ve been up to!”

  The argument could go in circles forever. Chris realized that she felt gritty, exhausted and famished. Marcus had obviously sent someone up to the villa to prepare it for occupation; the light had been on. Hopefully there would be food here. And if she meekly melted into the woodwork, he might just leave her alone for the night, and by morning she could think of something.

  Chris straightened her shoulders and started up the stairs.

  “Light’s to your right on the wall,” he drawled to her.

  “Thank you,” she said briskly.

  Chris found the hall light, then the bathroom. It was very modern, with a huge shower and sunken tub, and a wall-length closet. She opened the closet door and found soap, towels, toothbrushes, toothpaste and a feminine floor-length, terry-cloth robe.

  “And I wonder who the hell it belongs to!” she muttered angrily, throwing it to the floor. She stepped into the shower and turned the water on hard—and started shivering again.

  She still wasn’t sure that she wasn’t in the clutches of a maniac, and here she was worrying about his previous companions!

  She cl
osed her eyes, allowing the water to run over her face. She was in love with the maniac. No matter what he had done to her, she had to cling to the belief that it was because he cared….

  Fool, she berated herself in silence. Then she hurried to scrub herself and get out of the shower, worried suddenly that he was going to burst through the door and either strangle her—or seduce her.

  She was forgetting something very important. However ludicrous it seemed, she was legally married to him. He would never have staged such an elaborate scenario if he hadn’t been certain of what he was doing.

  Chris turned off the shower. She stepped out and dried herself, then picked up the robe that she had tossed on the floor. It wasn’t a bad fit, but there were no buttons, only a sash. She hugged the robe around herself tightly, then belted it, took a long breath and walked back downstairs.

  Marcus was in the kitchen. He didn’t look up as she approached the counter, compelled to do so by the aroma of something cooking. There was a frying pan on the stove; oil was simmering there, with a touch of garlic and herbs. There was a bottle of unlabeled wine on the counter; Chris poured herself a glass, noticing a little uneasily that Marcus was chopping chicken pieces with a massive cleaver.

  “Want to tell me what you were doing at the church?” he asked without looking up.

  “Why? You won’t believe me. Or you’ll pretend not to.”

  He glanced up at her. “Humor me,” he suggested. “And while you’re at it, get a pan under the sink for the spinach.”

  Chris walked around the counter to get the pan. She didn’t like being as close to him as she was. The kitchen was modern and convenient; it was also very small.

  “Start talking, Chris. And now that you’ve got the pan, you might want to wash the spinach.”

  She turned on the water, thinking that if he hadn’t been doing the majority of the cooking, and if she hadn’t been starving from not having eaten all day, she would definitely have resented his tone.

  “I was called,” she said.

  “Called?”

  “Yes, I was called. I assume it was by the same person who was blackmailing Alfred. He told me to come to the church, that my father didn’t murder yours, but that he knew who did.”