by Lynne Graham
He strolled gracefully out of the strong light into greater clarity. His lean golden features were taut with grim satisfaction as he absorbed her bewilderment. ‘You may not be dressed like one but you are about to embark on a life as constricted as that of a nun in a closed order,’ he imparted softly.
‘Have you been drinking?’ Mina whispered, that being the only explanation she could find for such an extraordinary forecast.
Cesare threw back his dark head and laughed with unashamed amusement. ‘You never did ask where you were going to live,’ he reminded her. ‘So now I’ll tell you. You will live here.’
‘Here…?’ Mina echoed uncertainly.
‘I’m not taking you back to London.’
‘But I assumed that we would be living in Lon——’
‘You assumed wrong. I can run my companies from anywhere. Technology makes that possible. I’ll have to make occasional trips but you’ll remain here keeping the home fires burning and devoting your energies to being a mother to our daughter,’ Cesare spelt out. ‘A role which will no doubt challenge you to the utmost.’
Mina gulped down champagne purely to wet her dry mouth. She gazed at him as if he had confessed to sudden madness, her amethyst eyes wide with incredulity. ‘If this place is as isolated as you said it was, it’s not suitable for Susie!’ she objected shakily, that being the first thought that came to mind.
‘It’s extremely suitable. I subsidise a very modem and well-equipped nursery and combined primary school in the village four miles from here. The younger generation were being forced to move away because of the lack of proper educational facilities for their children. The estate requires workers and the old people need their families near them. We are a mutually dependent community.’
‘Susie doesn’t even speak the language, for goodness’ sake!’ Mina gasped, taken aback by the speed and assurance with which he had answered her protest and the uncomfortable awareness that the subject was obviously something Cesare had already considered in depth.
‘And should she not learn? This is my home and therefore her home as well,’ Cesare responded. ‘Children of her age pick up another language very quickly. She will grow up bilingual.’
Belatedly, Mina understood his cracks earlier about the castello’s distance from the nightlife and fashionable boutiques. Evidently he believed that such things were highly important to her and he was determined to deprive her of any such frivolous pursuits. Actually, Mina had not been talking for effect when she’d said that she loved country life but she sensed that Cesare was threatening her with an isolation more akin to imprisonment than anything else.
She was appalled. Did the idea of marooning her here, far from her family and everything familiar, appeal to him that strongly? Was he trying to punish her for putting him in a position where he felt he had to marry her to gain proper access to his daughter? Was he so bitter that he was determined to do everything possible to make their marriage an unhappy one?
‘Dinner,’ Cesare murmured, pressing a lean hand to her taut spine and pushing her gently towards the door. ‘You’re in shock, aren’t you?’
‘I can’t think of one good reason why you should be behaving like this!’ she exclaimed helplessly. But she could think of a whole lot of bad reasons calculated to appeal to Cesare’s dark, vengeful nature.
‘If you take a lover, I’ll kill you. Try that for size,’ Cesare whispered silkily in her ear as he bent over her. ‘Much wiser simply to deny you the possibility of temptation, don’t you think? Now you won’t be tempted to stray and I won’t be tempted to commit a crime of passion.’
She stared blindly at the beautifully set candlelit dinner-table and sank down slowly into the seat pulled out for her. ‘If you take a lover, I’ll kill you.’ How on earth on their wedding-day could Cesare even be thinking of her taking a lover? It was so preposterous that he could even imagine that she might be unfaithful that she simply sat there in bemused silence, wondering which one of them was going mad.
CHAPTER SEVEN
PAOLO shook out her napkin and placed it on her lap with a flourish. He uncorked another bottle of champagne, filled their glasses and stood back to proffer a short speech in Italian.
‘In case you’re interested, Paolo was advancing the fervent good wishes and blessings of our staff and forecasting the tasteful hope that our union will be fruitful and bring children to the household again. He will no doubt be delighted when he realises we were one up in that department even before the wedding!’
Mina reddened fiercely. ‘Cesare…I don’t know where you got the idea that I might——’
‘Stray into another bed unless I chained you by force and circumstance to mine?’ Cesare drawled, scanning her pink cheeks with derision. ‘I’ve seen you in action, cara. I’ve watched you with Edwin Haland and with Clayton. It was educational. You may be little but you’re lethal! If I were an Arab, I’d lock you up in a harem and throw away the key.’
‘I have never slept with another man.’ Mina lifted her head high. ‘You don’t deserve that I should tell you that——’
Glittering golden eyes cut her off mid-speech. ‘No…I deserve the truth. Clayton was your lover.’
‘Steve has never been my lover!’ Mina argued, her voice rising sharply.
‘I turn my back on you for forty-eight hours,’ Cesare murmured in a tone that made the blood in her veins chill, ‘and what happens? I find you with Clayton, letting him touch you…’
Mina recalled the scene which Cesare had interrupted that day at the garden centre and stared back at him, shattered by how much he could conceal from her. At the time he hadn’t batted a single magnificent eyelash, hadn’t made the smallest reference to the incident and she had assumed that he had accepted that what he had seen had been entirely innocent, if indeed he even cared enough to consider the matter!
He had been so aloof that day, so utterly set on discussing only Susie…and yet all the time behind that cool front of detachment had lurked this dark, brooding rage…Mina shivered, violently disconcerted by the discovery that Cesare had contrived to hide those feelings from her.
‘But then you were childhood sweethearts and familiarity breeds…more familiarity. Obviously you’ve been playing games with him for years but he still worships the ground you walk on,’ Cesare continued with a look of raw contempt. ‘Such unquestioning adoration must be hard to live without…but live without it, and him, you shall.’
‘Who told you that Steve and I were childhood sweethearts?’ Mina prompted shakily.
‘Your twin…you will scarcely accuse her of lying?’
‘I’m not denying that Steve and I dated in our teens but there’s been nothing between us for years——’
‘He’s in love with you,’ Cesare interposed drily.
‘He is not in love with me! He was…right? But he isn’t any more!’ Mina argued tautly and with steadily growing anger and frustration. ‘As for Winona, she always wanted me to marry Steve so that we could all be one big happy family, and Winona is very persistent, but don’t you think that if I had ever wanted Steve I would have married him when he asked me?’
‘He hadn’t enough to offer. He’s never likely to be rich. But he feeds your ego, believes you innocent of every charge, and devotion of that magnitude is rare. I suppose he thinks I got you drunk and wickedly seduced you the night Susie was conceived…you would have settled for him if I hadn’t come back.’
Mina threw her napkin aside and stood up, trembling with anger. ‘I wish to heaven I had!’ she slung unsteadily. ‘Steve may never be rich but he knows me far better than you ever will!’
‘You will sit down and you will finish your meal,’ Cesare told her with flat menace.
‘I’m not sharing this table with you!’ Mina hissed. ‘Not only are you suspicious of my every motive and action, you’re unhinged, and if you think for one moment that I intend to——’
‘Sit down!’ Cesare said again.
She heard the sound o
f the door opening and settled back, frustrated by her own reluctance to make a scene in front of the staff. As the first course was removed and the second delivered, she quivered with a combustible mix of anger, bitterness and a sharp, painful sense of self-loathing that she had been foolish enough to imagine that Cesare might have been willing to set the past behind them even briefly.
‘I entered this marriage in good faith,’ she murmured tautly when they were alone again.
‘For Susie’s benefit,’ Cesare reminded her in a predatory purr. ‘And the country life is so good for young children. Fresh air, space to play, not to mention the security that will be provided by the full-time attention of her mother.’
‘No matter where we lived Susie would have been assured of that attention.’ Mina wouldn’t look at him. Pale as paper, she picked up her knife and fork. Although her appetite had vanished, she was determined not to betray the fact. ‘But it’s obvious to me that no matter what I do you won’t trust me.’
‘Trust has to be earned and if you don’t try to earn it you’ll still be sitting here this time next year as trapped as a ship inside a bottle,’ Cesare informed her with a deeply sardonic smile as she gazed back at him wide-eyed. ‘When you have freely admitted to me that you were guilty of insider trading and satisfied me as to what you did with the money——’
‘I didn’t do it!’ Mina practically screeched at him.
Cesare didn’t so much as stop to draw breath. ‘And gone at least nine months without the potent effect of another man panting like a rabid dog at your dainty little heels…then you might get one escorted trip to London and some of my money to spend——’
‘Keep your lousy money!’ Mina spat in outrage.
Cesare slung her a glittering smile of hard amusement. ‘I intend to. I’m going to be the stingiest bastard of your most terrifying nightmares. I’m not issuing you with any credit cards. I’m not giving you any jewellery you could sell. That ring on your finger may look like platinum but it’s silver…’
With a shaking hand and in a gust of tempestuous fury, Mina wrenched the ring off and flung it down the table at him. It bounced and fell on the floor, unnoticed by either of them. ‘Keep that too, you cheapskate!’ she launched at him, plunged into deep mortification by the assurance.
‘In short I don’t believe you’ll be leaving this valley under your own steam for quite some time,’ Cesare murmured with unhidden satisfaction. ‘You can devote all your many talents to being my wife and I can rejoice in the sure knowledge that when I leave you you will be exactly where I left you when I return. Believe it or not that is a sensation of security which some men actually take for granted!’
Paolo entered with the dessert course. Mina wanted to snatch it out of his reverent hands and throw it over Cesare. It took immense restraint to control the urge. The atmosphere shimmered around her as she fought to conceal her spitting fury until the older man departed again.
‘All I have to do,’ she spelt out tremulously, ‘is phone my sister——’
‘Your sister cringes behind pot plants every time I walk into a room. Dio mio…I feel terrified!’
‘Winona won’t let Susie go to anyone but me and no way is Susie coming out here!’ Mina swore wildly, desperate to find a weapon to fight back with.
‘She’ll hand Susie over to her father…your brother-in-law will see to that,’ Cesare told her.
It had been a foolish threat. Mina bent her head. She did not want to involve her family. She had her pride. Nor did she want to risk upsetting Susie. Her daughter was already very attached to Cesare. Like any young child she had responded to genuine interest and attention and the further knowledge that like her cousins she now had a man she could call Daddy had been all that was required to entrench Cesare firmly in his daughter’s affections.
‘For better or for worse,’ Cesare reminded her softly. ‘Although perhaps the line about for richer and for poorer has more relevance to your present air of anguish.’
‘What I am feeling right now is not anguish, it’s rage and a deep, overwhelming desire to push you off the edge of the nearest cliff!’ Mina launched back at him wrathfully as she plunged upright, bracing both hands on the edge of the polished table. ‘You have just made the biggest miscalculation of your life, Cesare Falcone!’
‘You thought I would be fool enough to marry you and leave you free in the heart of London to do whatever you liked? You think I’m stupid or something, cara?’ A winged ebony brow elevated in sardonic enquiry.
Her teeth clenched together. ‘You never once mentioned Steve or that wretched money in recent weeks!’
‘Of course not,’ Cesare purred, cradling his champagne. ‘I don’t mind admitting now that restraining myself was a constant challenge but it got you to the altar, didn’t it? Now I have exactly what I want. I have my daughter—a legal right to my daughter. But equally importantly I also have you——’
‘You do not have me!’ Mina snapped like a cat ready to spring, infuriated by his assurance.
Cesare let his golden eyes travel over her and linger on the swell of her heaving breasts. ‘I have you,’ he repeated. ‘Right where I always wanted you. Totally and absolutely dependent——’
‘How dare you?’ Mina was so enraged by that smouldering explicit look, she could hardly get the words out.
‘Maybe not barefoot, pregnant and in the kitchen yet,’ Cesare told her lazily, his sensual mouth slanting with raw amusement. ‘But give me time.’
Mina lifted a trembling hand and shook it at him. ‘If you try to lay one finger on me, I’ll make you sorry you were ever born!’
‘Our first argument and the ink is scarcely dry on our marriage licence.’ Cesare laughed softly and surveyed her from beneath dense black lashes. ‘A prudent man would hasten to repair the damage on his wedding night…but I’ve never been prudent. In fact the challenge lends a certain sizzle to my anticipation. I’m willing to bet you a thousand pounds that you share a bed with me tonight.’
‘Make it a million for all I care…you’ll still lose!’ Mina flung at him, and walked out of the room, passing by a rather startled Paolo carrying a tray of coffee.
Mina had never been so screamingly angry in her entire life. Another five minutes in Cesare’s company and she would have started throwing china. What had originally attracted her to Cesare Falcone now loomed as his most serious flaw! He was unpredictable. As she mounted the stairs, she found several more glaring faults to dwell on.
He was secretive. He had the tenacity of a Rottweiler, the obstinacy of a mule. He could not even imagine that he could possibly be wrong about anything. He was downright sneaky. He plotted and planned as if the blood of the Borgias ran in his rotten veins! And yet he still couldn’t see the lousy wood for the trees!
Mina was noisily engaged in hauling the drawers out of a very large chest when her maid entered uncertainly, her knock having gone unanswered. Her dark eyes wide with curiosity, Giulia stared. ‘You would like the help, signora?’
‘No, thank you.’ Scarlet at the interruption and breathless, Mina straightened and hitched her gown which had slid down while she was making a futile effort to shift the chest with the drawers still intact. ‘I don’t need any help,’ she lied.
Giulia backed out again with reluctance. Mina hefted out the last drawer and put her shoulder to the chest again, furious that there hadn’t been a key in the lock on the door. The massive piece of furniture groaned and shifted a few inches. With a strength born of raging determination, Mina kept on pushing, and when she finally got it across the door she flopped damply to the carpet until it occurred to her that it wouldn’t be much of a barrier without the drawers to weight it down again. She was gasping for oxygen by the time she had replaced the drawers and hauled the large sofa below one window over as well.
That achieved, she flopped back on the bed, totally wiped out by all that physical effort. She released the zip on her gown, shimmied it down over her hips and, after another minute or two,
peeled off the stockings and the flimsy satin suspender belt. She had never worn either before, she reflected with a kind of mortified fury. Had Cesare gone shopping on her behalf or his? Cesare would like that sort of stuff, she decided bitterly. She ripped off the cobweb-fine panties in rebellion. From now on she would put nothing on her back that she hadn’t brought to Sicily and she seriously hoped it did embarrass him!
As she lay there letting the air cool her overheated skin, the anger began to give way to the pain. Cesare had not budged one inch from his conviction that she was a confidence trickster…only he did seem surprisingly keen to hear her admit her wrongdoing out loud all of a sudden. Was it possible that he was having doubts about her guilt?
She suppressed that unlikely hope. Tonight she had dined with a man on a victory roll of sheer, primitive triumph. Control was all-important to Cesare and he now felt one hundred per cent in control of events between them. True, he had had to lure her out to a foreign country and plan to keep her in penury and isolation like some medieval tyrant set on hanging on to an unwilling bride, but there was method in his madness.
A gold-digger would have sweated blood and gone barking mad at his threats but Mina had struggled for so long simply to feed and clothe herself and Susie, she was untouched by them. What would she need money for? She had no bills to pay, and since Cesare had never had to worry about bills he could not possibly realise what a relief it was to be released from that burden.
As for what he had said about Steve…Mina groaned. Steve had avoided her like the plague from the instant he’d learnt that she was getting married to Cesare. In a weak moment, Mina had awkwardly asked her twin how Steve had taken the news.
‘How do you think?’ Winona had muttered with an air of helpless condemnation. ‘He was shattered. He thought you hated Cesare.’
And somehow the ball of guilt had been landed right back into Mina’s court. Yet what had she done? At twenty she had told Steve that she didn’t love him enough to marry him, and in recent years she had honestly believed that he had moved on from her, learned to accept her as a friend and nothing more. But the instant Cesare had physically entered the picture again Steve had gone haywire, behaving as though Cesare were some rival who had supplanted him when he was well aware that she hadn’t even met Cesare when they’d broken up. Men! Who needs them? Mina thought miserably.
