“That isn’t why I’m here,” she said thickly, staring up at his eyes. “I’m here with you … I slept with you … because I wanted to.”
“Yes.” He lowered his mouth and kissed her gently. “And you’ll come with me because you want to as well.”
She swallowed, wanting to challenge him but knowing he was right. “This is completely crazy.”
Her eyes were enormous and terrified. He stared into them but he was seeing the past; he was seeing the eyes of her father, as they’d looked at him with blatant cruelty. The memory was as acute as if it were happening in that moment. It played out before him like a film; he was helpless to resist its tug.
“You know he did not do this.” Benedetto weighed his words with care. He was not used to asking for favours. Nor was he used to being refused.
The older man stared across the bar, his expression belligerent. “If I thought he were innocent, I would not have found him guilty.” His eyes were a vivid shade of blue. They made Benedetto long to throw him into an equally blue ocean.
Benedetto lifted his scotch, cradling it thoughtfully in his hands. When he spoke it was with the kind of quiet determination that struck fear into his boardroom rivals’ hearts. “I think you were paid to find him guilty.”
Augustine Beauchamp’s distinguished head jerked upwards. Those enormous eyes shuttered swiftly. “Careful, son. Accusations like that will get you in a lot of trouble.”
Benedetto laughed. “I’m not afraid of you, Beauchamp.”
“A mistake, surely, on your part.”
“The mistake is all yours.” He leaned forward, his expression unknowingly menacing. “How much did it take? I imagine a man like you doesn’t come cheap.”
Augustine sipped his red wine; a dribble escaped the corner of his mouth and rolled down his pale, fleshy chin like blood running across a snow field. “What you imagine isn’t my concern.”
“Do you think not?” Benedetto’s calm tone belied the surge of panic that was spiraling through him. “I don’t care what it takes. I will prove to the world that you’re the epitome of unethical.”
“I doubt that.”
Benedetto narrowed his eyes. “I am trying to decide if you speak with the confidence of a man who has covered his tracks so neatly he need never fear exposure; or if it’s that you’ve paid off so many others that no one will dare reveal the truth.”
“You may try to decide that all night, for all I care. Nothing you or I say here is going to get your father’s verdict vacated.” His smile was smug. “Your dad’s a murderer. Plain and simple. So far as everyone else knows, he killed that girl, and I’ve seen to it he’ll spend the rest of his life in the worst prison we’ve got.” The smugness became unbearable. Beneath the bar, Benedetto’s hands formed fists of iron. “Make any trouble for me, and he’ll be the one that pays the price.”
“You’d actually threaten to make his life worse - an innocent man serving a life sentence - because of this conversation?”
“You think your family’s untouchable because you’re as rich as a prince?”
“I don’t think any such thing,” Benedetto denied, straightening to a standing position. At full height, he towered over the diminutive figure of Lord Beauchamp.
“Because he isn’t untouchable. And he isn’t innocent.”
Benedetto shook his head. Frustration was a flood in his system. “He stole a car thirty years ago. He robbed a store. He ran with the wrong crowd. These were stupid crimes of a mis-spent youth. He is not a murderer.”
“I am not interested in debating the case with you. I heard the facts. I heard the arguments. And I found him guilty.”
“You found him guilty before you even arrived at court.”
It was the sneering smile that answered the question. “It’s done.”
Her eyes blinked up at him, her expression confused. He’d been very quiet for several moments, his expression impossible to comprehend. “I really think I should …”
He shook his head; the memories gradually began to clear. Beauchamp had ruined his father’s life. And now? He was simply repaying the favour. “I have a villa in Tuscany. You will love it.”
* * *
She slept the whole way there, with her legs curled up beneath her and her head pressed against his balled up tuxedo jacket. In sleep, she was silent, but for the gentle sound of her rhythmic breathing.
As they crested over one of the many hills that served to guide his way to the villa, he blinked his eyes down to her hands. They were resting on her lap, pale, with long fingers, and matching pink bands around her wrists.
It was symbolic.
He hadn’t thought of it, at the time. He’d wanted simply to enjoy her body. But now he looked at the visible marks of her imprisonment and felt an answering rush of emotion. Shame? Pleasure? He couldn’t have said. He knew only that he’d imprisoned Beauchamp’s daughter and taken what he’d wanted in the same way Beauchamp had imprisoned Carlo Arnaud. Only he’d taken Carlo’s life.
Not personally, but that wrongful judgement had been the beginning of the end for Carlo.
He turned his gaze back to the road and saw Beauchamp’s eyes staring back at him. Bloodshot, angry, dismissive, as they’d been the final time they’d met.
“You killed him.”
“Another of your accusations?” The older man had grunted, flicking his pen clear across the desk in a visible sign of anger.
“A statement of fact. You knew he was innocent of that crime. You know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that he did not murder that child. And yet you had him locked in a prison where other inmates made his every day a living hell. You did this to him. You drove him to it.” And his voice cracked with emotion. “He was a good man.”
“He was a murderer.”
“Bullshit.” Benedetto’s voice rang through the empty offices. At midnight, his tone took on a menace that perhaps it mightn’t have held in the daylight hours. “He was a good man.”
“He was …”
“A good man,” Benedetto slammed his hands down on the desk. When Beauchamp flinched, Benedetto felt a rush of power. He could punch this man. He could punch him again and again. But Benedetto had never had a violent streak. He had lived with his father’s teachings and he exercised a strong control on his impulses at all times. “He was a better man than you will ever be.”
“He was gutter-trash and he is dead.” The smile was an exultation.
Benedetto stared at those eyes, bloodshot from too much alcohol, face pale and pudgy, and he stood up. He paced away from the desk and wrenched the door open. “You will pay for this. I will make your life as unbearable as you did his.”
“Good luck!” Beauchamp cackled to Benedetto’s retreating back.
Benedetto turned the sleek car off the road into the driveway of the villa. He hadn’t been back in years. Not since his father had been put in prison. The memories then had become too painful.
There was a sort of neatness to bringing her with him now. The woman who was his instrument of paining that bastard Augustine.
His eyes flicked to her again and as if she sensed his interest, she shifted a little, a smile curving her lips. Her eyes blinked open and settled on his face. “Am I dreaming?” Her throat was husky from sleep.
He smothered the emotions that were coursing through him; unpleasant emotions filled with sadness and regret. “Hard to say from where I’m sitting.”
Her smile was nothing like His. In fact, it was only their eyes that were similar. “I dreamed I met this tall, dark, handsome stranger and he was seriously kinky but also seriously amazing and that he insisted on whisking me away to his Tuscan love-nest for two days of … well …”
His smile felt heavy on his face. “Two days of?” He prompted, turning the car a final time and pointing it through the gates. The vines on either side had grown rampant and it scratched the driver side as he steered through.
“We’ll see,” she finished, winking over at him. She sat
up straighter and peered through the front window. It was a dark night, and the headlights only showed what was directly in front of the car. So she didn’t see the peach grove to one side and the old lake to the other; nor did she see the rose garden that had, at one time, been manicured in the style of the Boboli Giardiniera but now grew wild and untamed, groaning under the weight of the sweetly full blossoms that Summer had gifted them. Those delights would await her when morning came.
It was only the farm house that Kate could make out, slightly dilapidated but with an eerie charm that instantly captivated her. It sat at the crest of a hill; square in shape but three stories high with arched windows and several chimneys. The roof looked to be a dark tile — she guessed red, going from the style of the house. The door was timber, with iron detail, and there were pots at the front of the house that might have, at one time, been neat little entry markers. Now, the citrus trees planted in them had grown far too large for the pots, and looked to be in danger of toppling out. There were geraniums chasing hungrily over the ground and when she pushed the door of the car open in rapt wonder, she was assailed by the scent of night-flowering jasmine and honey suckles. A bird made a high pitched evening-whistle and she let out a low, soft laugh at the beauty of it all.
“I must be dreaming,” she said, spinning around to look at him. Her smile was dazzling. Bright and enormous, it erased any hint of coldness from her face. The moon emerged from behind a cloud for a moment and she saw that the far wall of the house was covered completely in bougainvillea.
“This is like something from a fairy tale,” she said, walking across the crunchy gravel to stand beside him.
Or a nightmare, he thought with a frown. This place had been like that for him once; a joyous destination that, as a boy, he’d loved to visit. He’d spent more summers than he could count running through these gardens and swimming in the stream. But it was Carlo’s home. And Carlo was dead.
“Come.” He stalked to the house, as though he might be able to outrun the ghosts of his past.
The key was an old-fashioned brass style; he inserted it into the lock and turned it. The door didn't budge. He kicked it with his foot and then nudged it with his shoulder and it finally gave, making a creaking noise of complaint at the intrusion as it shuddered inwards.
He reached across and flicked the lights; they too blinked to life reluctantly. Two of the four bulbs in the entrance were broken.
“It looks like no one’s been here in forever,” she marvelled, stepping into the home with no idea that he was looking at the house in a state of heartbroken contemplation.
“No,” he said quietly, taking in the spider webs along the ceiling and the cracks that had formed in the plaster work. “Not for years.”
“Lights still work though,” she pointed out, flicking another switch further down and illuminating the farm kitchen. She made a sound of pleasure as her eyes took in the perfectly rustic and original space. It had the original stonework exposed and instead of modern appliances there was an old brick fireplace with a stone grill across the top.
“I had the bills paid,” he said, following behind her.
Where had he last seen Carlo? When had been the last time they’d been here together?
Kate though had always been good at reading other people’s emotions; it was a trait that had been essential with her father. She’d been able to tell, eventually, what kind of mood he was in by the way he closed the door to his car.
“You don’t like it here,” she said quietly, putting a hand on his arm as a gesture of comfort.
It surprised him. He shook his head and pulled his hand away on instinct. Though they had made love, it was hard for him to forget who she was; it was hard for him to look at her with anything other than white-hot hatred and contempt for the family she came from.
“I have mixed feelings about it,” he said stiffly.
“Why?” She walked into the kitchen and turned the tap on. The water spluttered several times, splashing the front of her dress, then gave way to a full stream. She switched it off and began to open the cupboard doors.
“I used to come here often as a child.”
“But not recently?” She pushed, taking a tea towel from a drawer and dampening it at the edge.
“No. Not for about four years.”
She nodded, though she knew there was far more to it than she understood. “I haven’t been home in a long time either,” she said, her head bent away from his assessing gaze as she wiped the bench top clean. Plumes of dust lifted into the room. He studied her, but her face — what he could see of it, anyway — gave little away.
“This isn’t my home.” He reached across the bench and put his hand on hers. Big blue eyes startled up to him. “Why haven’t you been home?”
She swallowed and her gaze darted past him. Curiosity flared inside him. “Oh. I … because I…” She shrugged. “Lots of reasons.” Her smile was cool. She was pulling that shield about herself again; the one that she’d evidently perfected that transformed her into some kind of untouchable ice-maiden.
“Yes?”
She nodded. “We should open all the windows. This place is really dusty.”
He stroked a finger across her wrist. “I want to know about you. Everything about you.”
Her laugh was shaky. “That’s not possible. Not in two days.” She flushed. That had sounded as though she were begging him for time. She covered it with a laugh. “And that’s definitely all you’re getting, buster. That’s all you’ve paid for.”
He wasn’t fooled by the attempt at lightness. “Where is your home?” Though he knew, of course. He had photos of the mansion in Buckinghamshire she’d grown up in as well as the Knightsbridge townhouse Augustine called home, and the Chelsea flat Katherine Beauchamp had lived in when she’d moved to London.
“England.” She wiped her hands on the dry edges of the tea towel. “If you haven’t been here in four years, the bed linen is going to need changing. Are there any sheets?”
He compressed his lips, frustration gnawing at his gut. “In the laundry.” He moved across the kitchen and pushed a timber door inwards. He turned the light on and crouched down, pulling a set of crisp white sheets from a drawer.
She was standing behind him when he stood up. When her hands extended to take the sheets, he gave them to her but didn’t relinquish his own hold. “What are you hiding from?”
She made a gasping sound and he knew he was onto something. Did she have information? Having lived with Augustine, perhaps she’d witnessed her father’s crimes and could cast light on the details. “Nothing,” she promised. Her smile was a valiant effort. “Where’s the bedroom?”
He let it go; in that moment, at least. “This way.” He pulled the sheets back and moved ahead of her through the house. The stairs creaked as he moved up them, though they were as sturdy as the day they’d been built.
“How old is this place?” She asked as if reading his thoughts, her hand on the intricately carved oak bannister.
“It was built in the seventeenth century,” he said factually, though pride was rich in his tone.
“Woah.”
“It has been in my mother’s side of the family since then.”
“Amazing. She doesn’t come here either?”
“No. She’s dead. Both of my parents are dead.”
Kate stopped walking and Benedetto, at the top of the stairs, turned to look back at her. Tears glistened on her eyes. “I’m so sorry.”
“You have no need to be sorry,” he lied, thinking that her father had been the reason his had died.
“My mum is dead too,” she said, moving up the stairs once more. She caught up to him at the top. He studied her carefully.
“Yes?”
“Mmm.” Kate took the sheets once more and nodded down the hallway. “This way?”
“Yes. When did she die?” Though he knew that too.
“When I was a baby,” she said stiffly. “A car accident.”
&nb
sp; A drunk on a motorbike, he added mentally. He reached around a corner and flicked a final switch on. It didn’t have any effect so he pulled his cell-phone from his pocket and used it as a torch to cross the bedroom. He reached for the lamp and it bathed the room in a warm glow.
“Oh, shoot,” she murmured. “I left my phone at the auction. It’s in one of the rooms near the ballroom. Do you mind if I use yours to text Saphire, my colleague? I just need to let her know to grab it for me.”
“Of course,” he nodded, handing it over. He stripped the bed while she messaged her friend, and by the time he’d replaced the pillows, she had finished tapping out her message. The bed lay between them, enormous and smelling like lemons and lavender.
Nerves jostled inside Kate, suddenly.
Despite their earlier intimacy, everything was different here. “I think the champagne’s worn off,” she joked awkwardly, fidgeting her fingers in front of her. She caught herself after a minute and straightened. “Sorry. Bad habit.”
He narrowed his eyes. “What is a bad habit?”
She turned away from him on the guise of pushing the windows open. The stars sparkled in the blanket of the black sky. “Fidgeting,” she said simply, spinning back to him. He was right behind her, his broad frame illuminated by the stars and the moon.
“Who says?”
Something flashed in her eyes. “Everyone.” She lifted her fingers to his shirt; they were shaking. Slowly, she undid his top button. Her eyes were huge in her pretty face. “I want to see you,” she said simply, moving to the next button.
He watched as she painstakingly undid each and every button. By the time she had reached the final one he wanted to rip his shirt off. Talk about agonising foreplay! He was desperate now to feel her touch on his bare chest. His breathing was ragged as she tentatively lifted her fingers and brushed them across his hair-roughened flesh.
She made a noise of surprise as her fingers grazed his abdominal muscles, tapering down to the waistband of his pants.
“I want …” She toyed with the buckle and pulled at it, sliding it slowly from his pants. To his surprise, she held it out to him. He took it in his hands, and before he could cast it aside, she lay her wrists across it. Her eyes glowed with something like confusion as she bit down on her lower lip and waited for him to say or do something.
Seasons of Sin: Misbehaving in summer and autumn... (Series of Sin) Page 18
