by Sara Craven
Lucy sighed her acquiescence against his lips. Almost at once, she was caught, and drowning in a golden net of pleasure so acute that she wanted to laugh, to weep, to cry out all at the same moment.
But the scream that rang out was a very different one. It was a child’s voice, shouting in fear.
The delight shattered in an instant.
‘Oh, God.’ Lucy tore herself, dry-mouthed, from his arms, pulling her clothing into place with frantic hands. ‘Emilia! What’s Marco doing to her?’
She flew into the casetta, taking the stairs two at a time, aware that Giulio was just behind her.
Emilia was sitting up in bed, her hands clasped over her ears, her face contorted, her mouth opening for another scream.
‘Hush, darling.’ Lucy knelt on the bed, drawing the child into her arms. ‘What’s the matter?’
She was engulfed in a flood of sobbing Italian.
But, whatever the problem, Marco could not be blamed, she noted thankfully. One glance at the other bed revealed him to be asleep and oblivious.
‘She had a bad dream,’ Giulio translated, sitting down on the opposite side of the bed. ‘She was in a car that crashed, and she could not get out.’
‘But that didn’t happen, Emilia.’ Gently, Lucy stroked the silky hair. ‘You’re here and perfectly safe.’
‘Zio Giulio.’ The child turned to him, still hiccuping with sobs.
‘Lucia is right, cara.’ Giulio took the damp bundle into his arms, and began to mop her face with his handkerchief. ‘All is well.’
‘Not Alison,’ Emilia objected. ‘She was hurt.’
‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘But even Alison will be well again soon. And to prove it I will take you to visit her. She has her leg in a big plaster cast, and she will let you draw a picture on it.’
‘Really and truly?’ The sobs died away as Emilia considered this new and entrancing prospect.
‘Really and truly,’ he confirmed, dropping a kiss on the top of her head. ‘And now you must lie down and go to sleep again.’
‘I want a drink,’ Emilia decided fretfully. ‘And for you to stay with me, Zio Giulio.’
‘I’ll heat some milk,’ Lucy said quietly, and went downstairs.
Emilia’s nightmare, she realised as she busied herself at the stove, had been her own salvation. Because she had been on the verge of giving herself, body and soul, to a man who belonged to someone else. A man who could only see her as a source of casual pleasure. And she would have been left to survive alone the pain and emotional battering of such a surrender.
Will I ever learn? she lashed herself mentally. Or am I simply stark raving mad?
But, thankfully, circumstances had restored her sanity without too much harm being done, except perhaps to her self-respect, she thought, recalling her enthralled, mindless response to Giulio’s lovemaking.
She sank her teeth into her bottom lip as she poured the milk into a beaker, and carried it upstairs.
Emilia was calm enough, and even giggling a little at whatever Giulio was murmuring to her. She drank the milk without fuss, then settled back on her pillows, holding firmly onto her uncle’s hand.
‘And Lucia must stay too,’ she decreed. ‘Alison used to tell me stories. I like best the one about Cinderella.’
‘So Cinderella it must be.’ Giulio’s eyes met Lucy’s across the narrow bed. ‘You know that story, columbina?’
I feel as if I’m living it, she thought, hurriedly looking away. Except that midnight has struck, I’ve changed back into my rags, and there’s going to be no happy ending.
She felt absurdly self-conscious too, starkly aware of Giulio’s presence, within touching distance of her. Indeed, the whole intimate scenario of the bedroom, the drowsy child, the two of them united in comforting her was almost too painful to be borne, encompassing, as it did, so many might-have-beens.
But there was still a kind of peace to be enjoyed in retelling the age-old story of love, loss and rediscovery, she found wonderingly. She kept her voice deliberately soft and even, and long before Cinderella had fled, leaving her glass slipper on the Prince’s stairway, Emilia was asleep.
‘She should be all right now.’ Lucy got up gingerly. ‘But I’ll sleep with my door open, just in case.’
Giulio rose too, detaching his hand from the small fingers with infinite care.
‘I think you are wasted on the advertising industry, mia bella.’ The amber eyes studied her ironically as she paused on her way to the door to remove Marco’s thumb from his mouth. ‘You seem to have a gift with children.’
‘Not particularly.’ Lucy went out of the room and downstairs to the kitchen, head held rigidly high, aware that he was following. ‘A story and a glass of milk doesn’t turn me into Mary Poppins.’
His voice reached her quietly. ‘Are you so certain you wish to leave?’
‘More than ever.’ Her reply was curt, and she kept her back turned as she rinsed the empty glass.
He said, ‘You think if you stay, then I shall try to make love to you again.’ He paused. ‘I shall not. My behaviour tonight was a grave mistake. As things are, I had no right to touch you.’
‘At least we agree on something,’ she muttered.
‘I have no excuse to offer,’ he went on as if she hadn’t spoken. ‘Except that you were very lovely.’
And very willing. He didn’t actually say the words aloud, but then, Lucy thought bitterly, he didn’t have to. They were there just the same, quivering in the air between them.
Her tone was biting. ‘And what excuse can I make? That you’re clearly an expert in seduction, that I lost touch with reality for a few moments?’
‘If that is what you wish to believe.’ He sounded weary. ‘At any rate, there will be no repetition. Is that the assurance you seek?’
She said raggedly, ‘I don’t want assurances, just my freedom.’ She drew a harsh breath. ‘And as soon as it can be arranged.’
‘Then you shall have it,’ he said almost savagely. ‘And I hope for your sake, carissima, that it does not cost you too dear.’
She heard him go out. Heard the door close behind him. Realised she had been gripping the edge of the sink so tightly that her knuckles had turned white.
Slowly, painfully she unclenched her hands.
She thought, So this is where it ends. And I should be glad. But I’m not. Oh, dear God, I’m not.
And she felt one terrible dry, aching sob force its way from the tautness in her chest and explode, at last, in the relief of tears.
CHAPTER NINE
IT WAS a wretched, interminable night which Lucy spent tossing restlessly on her hard mattress.
She felt as if she was trapped in some terrible limbo. The thought of leaving—of never seeing Giulio again—was well-nigh unbearable. And yet she dared not stay either, because she knew that if she did she would be utterly destroyed.
Nor could she come to terms with how quickly this emotional devastation had invaded her life. How could all her expectations—her values—have been turned on their heads in little more than a matter of hours? And when, by rights, she should still have been grieving for Philip, too.
I must be terminally shallow, she thought in savage self-derision. But I don’t even know who I am any more—or what’s happened to me.
She’d viewed love as a stable commitment growing from mutual liking and shared interests, not as a tempest force of anguish, desire and jealousy, fuelled by an uncontrollable physical attraction, sweeping into her life, wrecking all her safe preconceptions.
That’s not love, she argued silently. That’s lust.
And perhaps it would die as swiftly and unpredictably as it had roared into life, overwhelming her almost before she was aware.
That, anyway, was all she could pray.
But her sleepless turmoil was not solely due to her troublous thoughts. Some of it at least was down to sheer sexual frustration, although it galled her to admit it. She had been aroused almost to the brink of ful
filment, lifted to the heights, and then hurled into some dark abyss of pain and longing. She had been given a hint—a promise of passion’s ecstasy. Now she needed the surcease of completion, of consummation.
But it was never going to happen, she told herself, biting her lip until she tasted fresh blood.
Her hands strayed down her feverish body, retracing the path his lips and fingers had taken. Her skin burned against the rasp of the thin sheet which covered her. She was molten with her need for him. Sick with shame at the temptations which racked her.
She turned over, burying her flushed face in the thin pillow. A temporary physical release wasn’t what she needed. Only in Giulio’s arms could the promise of love be satisfied. And nothing less would do.
It was nearly dawn before she finally drifted into a troubled sleep, and surely only five minutes later when a feeling that she was being bounced like a ball and a shrill ‘Wake up, Lucia, I am hungry’ from Marco dragged her back to full consciousness again.
He was kneeling on the end of her bed, testing its resilience with a series of energetic springs.
Lucy said wearily, ‘Marco, this is not a trampoline. Go and get dressed, and I’ll be right with you.’
‘Have we been good? Has the twenty-four hours happened yet?’
She said crisply, ‘No, you still have to do exactly what you’re told.’
He was struggling into shorts and a T-shirt when she went into the children’s room a few minutes later. Emilia, already dressed, was sitting on her bed reading. She sent Lucy a wary but not unfriendly look.
Which, Lucy thought, was a step in the right direction—or would be, perhaps, if she was staying...
Breakfast at the villa was a buffet affair. A selection of cold meats, cheeses, fruit, preserves and warm rolls was set out on the sideboard, with coffee and a tall frosted jug of freshly squeezed orange juice.
Lucy served the children, then helped herself to bread, cherry jam, and a pear.
She had barely sat down, when Angela arrived. She treated them all to an indifferent nod and walked to the sideboard. Without looking round, she said, ‘My aunt wishes to have breakfast in her room. Will you see to her tray—er—Lucy, isn’t it?’
For one dazed moment, Lucy surveyed the other girl’s back, immaculately clad in white shorts and top, and wondered how it would look struck amidships by a torpedo loaded with cherry jam. Encountering a gleeful smile from Emilia, she realised that her feelings must be inscribed in capitals across her face, and hastily composed herself.
‘Of course.’ She paused. ‘Miss—er—?’
‘Brockhurst,’ Angela supplied coldly as she came to the table. She gave Marco a look of distaste. ‘Does he have to cram his mouth like that?’
Lucy, who’d been about to reprove Marco for the selfsame thing, shrugged instead. ‘I like to see a child with a healthy appetite,’ she tossed over her shoulder as she left the room.
Teresa supplied a tray laid with a snowy cloth, some special china decorated with a florid gold design, and a gleaming silver coffee service, and accompanied it with shrugs, grimaces and a commiserating pat on Lucy’s shoulder.
As Lucy carried the tray towards the stairs, she was halted by Giulio’s voice.
‘What are you doing?’
Heart thudding, Lucy turned slowly. He was standing at the open front door, a dark silhouette against the morning sun.
Fighting to control her voice, she said, ‘I’m taking the contessa’s breakfast to her room.’
‘On whose instructions?’ He came a few steps closer. For the first time in their brief acquaintance, he looked less than his usual impeccable self. He needed a shave, Lucy noted with a pang, and he seemed to have thrown on the clothes he was wearing the night before.
‘Aunt Claudia’s, darling.’ Angela appeared from the dining room. ‘Please don’t hang around—er—Lucy. The contessa doesn’t appreciate tepid coffee.’
‘Nor does Miss Winters appreciate being treated like a servant.’ There was ice in Giulio’s voice. ‘Your aunt has a maid to wait on her already. Where is she?’
‘Probably pressing Aunt Claudia’s clothes for the day.’ Angela’s eyes narrowed rather unattractively. ‘Anyway, , what’s the big deal? It’s only a breakfast tray.’
‘Of course it is.’ Giulio took the tray from Lucy’s unresisting hands. ‘And as I am going upstairs I will take it to her myself. At the same time, I can clear up any misconceptions she may have about Lucia’s role in this house.’
There was a jarring note in Angela’s gurgle of laughter. ‘Oh, I think we’ve all figured that out, my sweet.’ She shrugged. ‘But then, who am I to object to your little—escapades? I’m not immune myself.’
Lucy, stiffening with distaste, turned and went back to the dining room and her own tepid coffee.
But not before she heard Angela’s stage whisper. ‘However, if you’re trying to make me jealous, darling, you’ll have to do better than that pallid little stick.’
Which, Lucy thought forlornly, she supposed she deserved.
Clearly, it was going to be a very hot day. Lucy spent the first part of the morning trying to beguile the children into making a get-well card for Alison, but all they did was squabble over the design, so eventually she cut her losses and took them down to the pool for a swim.
Emilia was obviously nervous of the water, but trying not to show it, and Marco, from the safety of armbands, was inclined to crow over her, so Lucy found a ball in the small cabin where the loungers and mattresses were kept, and they splashed about happily in the shallow end, playing catch and piggy in the middle. Until...
‘What a hideous noise,’ Angela said acidly. She was standing on the edge of the pool, with Phiip hovering behind her looking ill at ease. She was wearing a black and gold swimsuit, with a matching silk jacket, and her feet were thrust into gold wedge-heeled sandals.
The wasp look, Lucy thought uncharitably.
‘I’ve come here to relax,’ Angela went on fretfully. ‘Can’t you take the brats somewhere else to play?’
Lucy said quietly. ‘We’ve only just got here, Miss Brockhurst.’
‘What difference does that make?’ Angela adjusted the angle of her elegant straw hat. ‘I’m telling you to go. I’d like some peace—and some privacy.’ She flashed Philip a swift smile, loaded with meaning, then gave Lucy’s chain-store bikini a contemptuous glance, without even changing gear.
‘And I’m sure Zia Claudia doesn’t allow the hired help to use the pool at the same time as her guests, anyway,’ she added.
Controlling her anger, Lucy lifted the protesting children out of the water and wrapped them in towels.
She said, ‘I’ll try to remember that.’
‘I should,’ Angela said curtly. ‘All my friends in England have nannies, and you wouldn’t hold down a place for five minutes with your attitude.’ She added in an undertone, ‘And don’t give yourself airs, my dear, just because Giulio may have made a pass at you. With him it’s instinctive—a reflex action—and that’s all.’
Lucy fastened her sarong around her with some deliberation. In spite of her glamour and grooming, Angela, she decided with satisfaction, had heavy thighs.
‘And which of us do you feel you need to convince, Miss Brockhurst?’ she asked coolly, and, with a curt nod to the increasingly embarrassed Philip, marched the children away before the other girl could reply.
Both children were whingeing at full throttle by the time they reached the casetta, and Lucy could not blame them. She felt like whingeing herself when she saw who was waiting for them, tapping her foot in autocratic impatience.
‘So here you are at last,’ the contessa said with a snap. ‘I wondered how much longer I would be kept here.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Lucy said woodenly. ‘I didn’t know you wanted to see me.’
‘It is usual to present yourself to the mistress of the house for instructions each morning.’ The hard eyes studied her. ‘Are those intended to be working cloth
es?’
Lucy sighed inwardly. ‘No, contessa, I was just going to change.’
‘I am pleased to hear it.’ The contessa paused. She herself was elegant in a mulberry dress and jacket, the Falcone ruby gleaming ostentatiously on her hand. ‘I am going to lunch with some friends near Siena and I shall take Marco with me. Kindly see that he is properly and tidily dressed.’
‘But Nonna—’ Emilia’s voice was woeful ‘—Zio Giulio said he would take us to see Alison in the clinic’
‘Your uncle has better things to do than attend to the wishes of a small girl,’ the contessa said crushingly. She addressed Lucy. ‘You will bring Marco to the villa as soon as he is ready. I wish to leave at once.’
Lucy said carefully, ‘Only Marco?’
‘You heard me, I think.’ The contessa examined the enamel on her nails. ‘My friends possess many valuable things, and Emilia, unfortunately, cannot be trusted. She had better remain here.’
‘I do not want to go anyway.’ Emilia’s face was stormy. Lucy, placing a soothing hand on her small shoulder, found that it was trembling. ‘I hate you—hate you...’ Her voice broke down in sobs.
‘What an outburst.’ The contessa’s voice was like drops of cold water. ‘And how dare you speak to me in such a way? Are you sure you are equipped, signorina, to deal with the problems of such a child?’
Lucy stood her ground, holding the weeping Emilia. ‘Those of her own making, certainly,’ she returned with equal ice. ‘As few of them are.’
‘You are insolent.’
‘No, just truthful.’ She put a hand on Marco’s shoulder. ‘Go indoors, caro, and wait for me,’ she directed gently.
‘I want to stay here.’ He gave an excited jump, his eyes going past her. ‘Zio Giulio, come and see Lucia and Nonna having a fight.’
‘What is going on here?’ Giulio came striding into the courtyard, his amber eyes sweeping over them all. ‘Why is Emilia crying?’
‘A storm in a teacup,’ the contessa proclaimed dismissively. ‘But I have to tell you, caro Giulio, that Signorina Winters is not sufficiently mature to have the care of these children. The example she sets is a poor one. I demand you dismiss her instantly.’