by Penny Jordan
Maria was certainly relishing the telling of her story, Julie acknowledged ruefully, although it sounded more like a fictitious drama than any kind of reality. She smiled down at Josh, who was sucking strongly on his bottle, feeding so much better than he had been.
‘I dare say she might have borne it better if there had been many mistresses and not just the one,’ Maria continued. ‘And such a one, who refused to know her place,’ she added darkly. ‘The poor little Princess didn’t stand a chance against one such as her, experienced in the ways of keeping a man within her power. She boasted openly to anyone who would listen to her that the Prince loved her and not his wife. There were no tears shed by either of them when the Princess died, I can tell you that, and I dare say if she could Isabella would have seen her children in Princess Lucia’s grave with her.
‘But the Prince, of course, knew what was due to his blood. The Princess had given him three fine sons, but now she was dead and he was free to marry Isabella. Five years later she had her own son, and the Prince doted on him in the same way that he did on her. No other man could have got away with such shameful behaviour but the Prince answers to no higher authority. The Leopardis are born into pride—they wear it like their skin and cannot be separated from it,’ Maria informed her with obvious relish.
Julie frowned. Rocco had not made any mention of Josh having a grandmother, but maybe that was understandable in the circumstances.
‘Where is Isabella now?’ she asked Maria. Josh had finished his bottle and she lifted him against her shoulder to wind him.
‘Ha! She is where she deserves to be—in her grave. She fell on the top steps of the castle tower and broke her neck. Some say that the ghost of the Princess pushed her, and certainly no one apart from the Prince and her son mourned her death. She had no understanding of the way things are, or of what it means to be a Leopardi wife and the mother of Leopardi sons. She was not worthy.’
Maria might gossip about the Leopardi family, but she was at the same time steadfastly loyal to them, and ready to defend them against anyone who might dare to criticise them, Julie knew.
‘It must have been hard for Rocco, growing up without his mother,’ she agreed.
‘It was hard for all three of them,’ Maria told her. ‘Their father had no time for them, and Isabella made sure they knew that she held the whip hand—sometimes literally, I can tell you. I worked up at the castle then, and there was more than one occasion when someone would come down from the nursery asking for some of Cook’s special salve for Falcon’s wounds. Him being the eldest, he always took the punishment for the other two, you see.’
Poor little boys, Julie thought sympathetically. But Rocco wasn’t a boy now. He was a man. In an attempt to ignore the ache tightening her lower body, she paced the length of the kitchen, holding Josh against her shoulder.
‘I’d like to take Josh outside,’ she told Maria. ‘Perhaps go for a walk. There’s a baby buggy in the nursery.’
‘It is too cold,’ Maria told her immediately.
‘The sun’s out,’ Julie protested.
‘We have a wind here that slices into the flesh like a knife,’ she warned Julie. ‘On one side of the island even the vines and lemon trees have to be cut close to the ground to protect them from it. Here we might be on the most favoured part of the coast, where the nobility built their fine summer villas so that they could enjoy the summer breeze away from the heat of their estates, but it is still not warm enough for any walking. Besides, you would have to ask Rocco for his permission, and he is not here.’
Immediately Julie could feel herself stiffening in angry resentment at the thought of having to ask Rocco Leopardi’s permission for anything. It was bad enough that she had to accept his charity by living under his roof, eating his food, and worst of all wearing the clothes that he had paid for. She was not going to let him control her by forcing her to ask him for permission to do something as ordinary as go for a walk, Julie told herself firmly, instantly and rebelliously making up her mind that taking Josh for a walk was exactly what she was going to do.
* * *
It might not have been quite as easy as she had imagined to get the buggy—a solid affair, which was heavier than she had expected—down all the stairs, but Julie possessed an obstinacy that would not allow her to give up. Even though virtually all the good work done by the iron tablets had been undone by the time she had got the buggy down to the ground floor. Her heart was racing and thumping, and the horrible sense of needing to lie down was back, but she wasn’t going to give in. She still had to go back upstairs to get Josh after all.
Ten minutes later, as she pushed the buggy along a dirt road towards the grove of citrus trees up ahead of her, Julie admitted that the wind was colder than she had expected. Josh, though, at least was securely protected from it, carefully wrapped up in several layers of warm clothes and tucked up securely in the buggy. She was not so fortunate, having come out in one of the fine wool skirts that filled the wardrobes of her bedroom. It was off white, and worn with a beautiful grey Italian knitted top and a pair of butter-soft steel-grey leather shoes with a small heel, but she was without a coat, having been deceived by the sunshine and by the warmth generated from her exertions with the buggy into thinking it was a lot warmer than it actually was. The sun was warm, but the wind, once she had left the protection of the courtyard, cut into her like a knife—just as Maria had predicted that it would.
Only her stubborn determination not to be dictated to any more than she had to be kept her from turning back—that and the fact that Josh was smiling happily, so obviously enjoying the outing that she didn’t have the heart to take him back.
She’d only intended to go as far as the citrus grove, but what she hadn’t bargained for was the fact that the land sloped down to it, so that once she turned round to come back she had to walk uphill, buffeted by the wind that had now blown clouds up out of nowhere to fill the sky and blot out the sun.
The effort she was having to make to push the heavy buggy along the muddy track should have warmed her up, but strangely it seemed to be having the opposite effect of making her shiver.
She felt the first spot of rain at the same time as she realised she had walked a lot farther than she had thought and was still a good half an hour away from the villa, judging from her current frustratingly slow rate of progress. By the time she had pulled up the hood of the buggy and fastened on the protective waterproof cover it was raining quite hard, and the buggy, which might have travelled at speed on tarmac or proper pavements, was difficult to push on a dirt track that was rapidly turning into muddy puddles.
How could it have gone so cold in such a short space of time? The rain felt like ice, reminding her of London and the cold winter they had just endured, especially now that the storm clouds had grown so heavy that it almost seemed dark. Mount Etna, whose snow-capped summit she had admired only that morning through the windows of the villa, was now wreathed in a mist of ominously grey cloud.
It was too late now to wish that she hadn’t given in to that foolish surge of rebellious defiance.
Her head was bent into the wind as she pushed the buggy, whilst her body shivered and her heart pounded with the sick exhaustion that was draining her of energy. And Julie didn’t even know that she wasn’t alone anymore until she saw the dark male hands on the buggy’s handles next to her own.
‘Rocco!’
Did Rocco hear the relief in her voice beneath the angry guilt? If he did he wasn’t saying so. The look in his eyes as she turned her head to glance uncertainly up at him was one of incensed biting disapproval.
She was trapped between him and the buggy, but the warmth coming off his body felt so blissful that she didn’t feel inclined to object.
‘Here—put this on,’ he told her, thrusting a thick leather jacket over her shoulders. His own jacket, Julie recognized, as she caught the scent of him on it. He didn’t wait for her to obey him, but instead pulled the jacket round her and removed on
e of her hands from the buggy to push it into the sleeve, whilst holding securely on to the buggy himself with his free hand.
‘You need this yourself,’ Julie protested, realising now that he had turned her to face him that he hadn’t brought the jacket with him, but had removed it from his own body.
He shook his head, ignoring her protest. The rain was coming down so heavily now that it had already plastered the fabric of his shirt to his body, revealing the outline of the solidly muscled torso beneath it.
‘What is it with you?’ he demanded furiously, raising his voice so that it would carry above the increasing noise of the fiercely buffeting wind. ‘You claim to love your child, and yet you do something like this—bringing him out here when you were warned that the weather isn’t suitable.’
Maria had obviously told him what she had said to her, Julie realised. ‘I wanted him to have some fresh air.’
‘Did you? He could have had that in the courtyard—in safety.’
‘He is safe.’
‘No thanks to you.’
That was too much.
‘I would never put Josh at risk. He’s wrapped up and warm.’
‘And in your care. And you are suffering from a debilitating illness that doesn’t allow you enough strength to climb a flight of stairs without the risk of passing out, never mind go for a walk in these conditions.’
‘That’s not fair,’ Julie protested. ‘I’ve been a lot better since I’ve been taking the iron tablets.’
‘A lot better?’ She could hear the derision in his voice. ‘I watched you just now—you were so exhausted that you could hardly put one foot in front of the other, never mind anything else. What is it with you British that you have this need to trudge over every landscape even when common sense must tell you that it is inhospitable?’
‘I don’t know—probably the same level of gene that makes Leopardi men so bossy and arrogant,’ Julie was stung into retorting.
All the time he had been hectoring her they had been walking back towards the villa, with Rocco pushing the buggy and making much better progress than she had done as she struggled to keep up with him.
‘You claim that you are better,’ Rocco told her, ignoring her comment about his arrogance and returning instead to a subject that obviously suited him much better since it involved criticising her, Julie thought darkly as he continued, ‘Look at you now. You are struggling to cover a few yards. Don’t bother denying it. And what the hell were you about, coming out without a coat?’
‘What’s wrong?’ Julie yelled at him, her self-control snapping. ‘Are you worried that I might have ruined the expensive clothes you paid for?’
‘Don’t be ridiculous. You should know perfectly well that my concern isn’t for a few pieces of cloth. Your child is my concern—just as he should be yours. Didn’t you stop to think what might happen if you collapsed, or how long the pair of you might be out here? You’ve seen how the weather has turned. You must be able to feel the force of the wind.’
Julie could only nod her head in grudging admission of the truth of his words.
‘If this wind had caught the buggy it could quite easily have turned it over. The pair of you would have been lucky to get away with pneumonia—if fate had been less kind you could have died.’
Rocco wasn’t going to tell her just how he had felt when he had come back from a site meeting earlier than he had planned to discover that she and Josh were missing—only to learn from Maria that Julie had been talking about going out for a walk.
Rocco had no idea what had made him check the track that led to the lemon grove first, but she was damned lucky that he had.
He was furiously angry with her for putting at risk all the effort he had gone to to get her and Josh here and thus start to fulfil his part of the responsibility he and his brothers had taken on. A prize fool he would have looked if something had happened to her and the child whilst they were in his care. And if Josh did turn out to be Antonio’s child then there was no doubt that his father would have accused him—totally without any foundation or truth—of being only too glad that Josh had not survived.
Rocco could feel his heart thudding with a mixture of anger and relief. Relief that he had found them and anger because he had had to come and do so.
‘What the hell did you want to go out for anyway? No, let me guess—you were bored and missing your normal way of life. Well, you won’t find the kind of party scene that you like so much, nor the men that go with it, here.’
‘I wasn’t looking for any party scene or any man,’ Julie denied. ‘In fact a man is the last thing I want.’
They were back, and she was exhausted. Exhausted and sick with the fear instilled in her by Rocco’s far too graphic de¬ scriptions of what might have happened to Josh. Despite accepting that she was at fault, somehow she was still so angry at him that her anger was virtually all that was keeping her on her feet.
It was Rocco who now removed Josh, who had miraculously fallen fast asleep and stayed that way, from his buggy, and Rocco who carried him upstairs to the nursery—whilst Julie trailed behind him, willing herself to find the strength to make it to the bedroom. Josh looked so small clasped against Rocco’s shoulder—and so safe.
‘You’d better take this,’ Julie told Rocco ungraciously, removing his jacket and holding it out to him at arm’s length as she informed him, ‘I’ll take Josh.’
‘I may as well put him in his cot, since he’s asleep.’
He was refusing to give Josh to her? Why? What did he think she was going to do? Drop him?
‘He can’t go in his cot like that. He’s wearing an outdoor all-in-one suit.’
‘Yes, but presumably it comes off?’
Rocco wasn’t even bothering to wait for her response, or to give her demand even a second’s proper consideration. He was ignoring her, just as though she had no say at all in what was best for Josh.
Julie fumed as Rocco carried Josh through into the nursery, leaving her to drop his leather coat onto her bed and hurry after him, protesting, ‘There’s no need for you to do that. You might wake him up.’
He was still ignoring her, laying Josh on his changing table with unexpected expertise and then efficiently removing his outdoor suit. Josh slept on obliviously.
‘Perhaps you’d like to check his nappy and change him as well?’ Julie suggested sarcastically.
‘What I’d like is to feel that he’s got someone in his life who takes a responsible attitude towards his care. But right now, much as I’d like to think that, I can’t,’ Rocco told her pointedly.
Guilt and pride warred with one another inside Julie’s heart. She hated having her care of Josh questioned, but at the same time she was guiltily aware that she had allowed herself to be blinded by her own stubborn determination not to let Rocco dictate to her what she could and could not do.
‘If anything had happened to Josh I’d never have forgiven myself,’ she admitted in a low, tortured voice, her guilt and honesty winning the battle.
Rocco hid his surprise at her admission. Somehow it was out of character for the kind of woman he knew her to be—and yet, if he was honest, this wasn’t the first time in their short acquaintanceship when she had surprised him and challenged his perceptions of her. Nor the first time either that she had driven him to the point where she had tested his self-control way beyond its normal limits, he admitted—and not just the self-control that governed his temper. He was still battling to deny the extent to which she aroused him sexually—and failing, as his body was telling him very clearly right now.
How was it possible for him to want a woman he could only despise? A drowned rat of a woman who ricocheted between stubborn folly, aggressive antagonism and the kind of passionately intense sexual response to him that his head told him had to be manufactured, given her history, but that this body swore was the adult version of being a child let loose in a sweet shop.
Deftly, Rocco slid Josh into his cot and covered him up.
‘Maria said to tell you that she’s making you a special dish of liver cooked to her special recipe for dinner, along with a good helping of spinach. Or perhaps I should have said warn you,’ he told Julie dryly.
Maria had taken the doctor’s dietary suggestions for Julie to heart, with the result that iron-rich meat and greens had been served to her at every meal since the doctor’s visit apart from at breakfast, when she was served her iron in the form of eggs.
Julie managed a wan smile. ‘I was hoping to persuade Maria that cannelloni filled with spinach and ricotta cheese would be just as beneficial.’
‘You need to get out of those wet clothes.’
‘Yes.’ Rocco was walking past her and heading for the bedroom door. Julie took a deep breath and told him reluctantly, ‘Thank you for…for coming to find us.’
Her head was bowed, so she didn’t see the way his gaze rested on her before he said coolly, ‘There’s no need to thank me. After all, I have a vested interest in protecting Josh.’
He’d gone before Julie had time to raise her head and look at him—much to her relief. The last thing she needed right now was to endure the discomfort of having him realise that his pointed reminder that it was Josh who mattered to him and not her had hurt her. Hurt her? How crazy was that? How could a man she had only known four days possibly be able to hurt her emotionally?
It was possible for one heart to recognise another in the space of a single heartbeat, with all that that meant, she reminded herself. But she and Rocco didn’t have hearts that recognised each other, did they? In fact Rocco probably didn’t have a heart at all.
No heart? Then what was pumping the blood round that magnificent body?
And it was magnificent. The way in which his damp shirt had clung to his flesh had shown her that. Julie rubbed her eyes. She was cold and wet, and in need of a hot shower and probably a rest. A sudden gust of wind drove the rain against her bedroom window, making her shiver as she contemplated what might have so easily happened if Rocco hadn’t come to look for them. He might not have said it in so many words, but she knew he thought that she wasn’t fit to have charge of Josh, and perhaps he was right. She hadn’t done a very good job so far of looking after her little nephew, had she? It was only since he had been here that Josh had finally started to thrive and put on weight.