by Lynne Graham
‘He did what?’ Winona looked stricken, the way you looked when the enemy did something entirely unpredictable.
‘For Susie’s sake.’
‘Considering that he can’t keep his hands off you in a public place, it has to be for his own sake too!’ Winona told her witheringly but with something less than her usual venom.
But Mina genuinely did not think that. Cesare did not want to marry her. He would not even have mentioned marriage had it not been for Susie’s existence. He might lust after Mina but on every other level he despised and distrusted her. And what sort of a marriage could you have on that basis?
‘I didn’t think he would want to marry you,’ Winona confided abstractedly, and Mina knew that Cesare’s stock had suddenly gone up a hundredfold in her sister’s eyes. To give her twin her due, Winona had never once voiced the embarrassment she experienced over her sister’s unmarried motherhood, but the prospect of a wedding-ring tidying up that unfortunate fact of life quite clearly had immense appeal.
Mina didn’t bother to mention Cesare’s references to lawyers, courts and custody battles. In her opinion that had merely been Cesare putting on the pressure and testing the water. As soon as he had established that there was no question of her being prepared to give Susie up voluntarily, he had proffered the marriage solution. Everything else had been an intimidating lead-in to a proposition he fully expected her to accept. Working for Cesare had been an education. In a tight corner he never put his cards on the table.
His methods outraged her. She did not appreciate being approached like a hostile take-over bid. Yet Cesare had reacted to the discovery that he was a father in a far more responsible and positive way than she had expected and she could not think that there was an alternative to marrying him, not when she took her own feelings into consideration and added them to the undoubted benefits for Susie. Her daughter needed a father, a home of her own and security. Mina felt guilty that she hadn’t been able to supply those things.
And she was equally well aware that, no matter how angry Cesare made her, she would rather be with him than without him, but a marriage made only on the basis of a child’s needs was a tall order. In recent days she hadn’t had time to dwell on her own emotions but just as she knew the sun would rise in the morning she knew she loved Cesare, and it was that fact which more than anything else would prompt her to accept his proposition.
Surely within the closer relationship of marriage Cesare would begin to realise that he had misjudged her? She would ask for the evidence which he insisted he had. No, she would not ask, she would demand that evidence. Somehow she had to clear her name. She refused to contemplate the idea that that ambition might not be satisfied.
‘Mina?’ The strained quality to Winona’s call made Mina glance up from the toys she was tidying in the sittingroom. ‘Cesare’s here.’
‘Again?’ she gasped in astonishment.
He appeared in the doorway. Instant wish-fulfilment, she reflected dazedly, running her amethyst eyes from the crown of his dark head, down over the rest of his long, lean body, the most inescapable sense of possessiveness powering through her. He took her breath away, even though he looked uncharacteristically frazzled round the edges. His black hair was slightly tousled, his jawline blue-shadowed and he wasn’t wearing his jacket.
‘I was wondering,’ Cesare breathed tautly, faint lines of strain indented between his nose and his set mouth, ‘if you would like to dine out this evening?’
It was already after six. Thrown by his unexpected arrival for the second time in the same day, Mina didn’t say anything; she simply stared and nodded. She got up off her knees, suddenly understanding his presence. He wanted to know her decision, evidently had not been able to wait even a reasonable interval to give her time to make up her mind. As the children clattered in a clump through the hall behind him, his head jerked round in obvious search for Susie. He heard the teddy bear first. Their daughter skipped in and grinned up at him.
Cesare couldn’t take his eyes off her. Something mean and envious twisted briefly inside Mina and she was instantly ashamed but at that moment she would have given anything to have the power to extract the same answering smile from Cesare on her own behalf. In addition there was a bonding beginning to take place which had nothing to do with her.
Susie was not accustomed to much in the way of male attention. Visitors and relatives made more of her cousins. Susie was well aware that she was a bit of an outsider in this household. She had spent the entire day brandishing that bear, painfully proud that for once she had got a present exclusively for her.
‘You’re a very pretty girl.’ Cesare hunkered down on a level with his daughter.
Susie beamed. ‘Not bite again,’ she said in reward.
‘I’ll get changed,’ Mina murmured, deciding to leave them alone instead of hovering like a gatecrasher, uncertain of her welcome.
At the door, she paused without looking back. ‘I’ve decided.’
‘What?’ Growling tension accented the question.
‘The marriage solution would be the best for you-know-who.’
There was a long silence. Why did she get the idea that it was smouldering? But she wouldn’t have turned her head and shown her face for a thousand pounds. ‘Cesare?’
‘I’ll make the arrangements,’ he murmured without any expression at all.
Winona cornered her on the upper landing. ‘There’s a limo with a chauffeur out there!’ she stage-whispered, impressed to death. ‘Do you want to borrow something to wear?’
‘No, thanks.’
By the time she came downstairs again, dressed in a casual floral skirt and blouse, Cesare had already told her family that they were getting married. Roger had opened a bottle of wine to celebrate, patently determined to make up for the deficiencies of Cesare’s welcome on his previous visit, and Winona had for some reason changed Susie into a white broderie anglaise dress which had once belonged to Lizzy. Her sister’s motivation soon became clear.
‘I thought that Susie should dine out with us,’ Cesare drawled, skimming Mina with flat, unreadable dark eyes.
And if there had been any prospect of Mina thinking that Cesare felt that they had anything personal to celebrate, it simply died there. She had wanted and expected to be alone with him and even admitting that to herself in the face of his cool indifference cut her to the bone.
* * *
Mina flicked a glance at her shiny new wedding-ring, her soft mouth tightening before she went back to surveying the Sicilian countryside through the window of the limousine. They appeared to be travelling right into the very heart of the island.
Cesare had said they would be staying at his home. Since he had offered no further details, Mina had chosen not to ask for them. But the landscape of rolling agricultural land had changed. The climbing road was now passing through thick forests of pine and eucalyptus trees, dappled sunlight and then shade playing through the silent car.
The silence was like a razor rasping against tender flesh. No doubt it was her nervous tension which translated the atmosphere as one of menace. Her imagination was playing tricks on her, she told herself. The worst Cesare could do was continue to ignore her. In fact she marvelled that, feeling as he so evidently did about her, he had decided to make such a trip.
They had married in the local church early that morning. The deed had been done very quietly. Cesare had not invited a single relative or friend to attend and although Mina had not been sorry to miss out on Sandro, whose reaction to their marriage would surely not have been a joy to behold, she had felt that that omission said a lot about how Cesare viewed their marriage.
Not that she should have required that further education after the past three weeks, she thought painfully. Cesare had driven down to Thwaite Manor several times but all his attention had been reserved for his daughter. Mina had been consistently sidelined and held at a distance. When she had agreed to marry Cesare, she had not expected to be treated like some sort of
hanger-on, only to be tolerated in Susie’s presence!
‘He really is desperately fond of her already, isn’t he?’ Winona had said with rather forced cheer, doing everything but heave an open sigh of relief on Mina’s behalf when Cesare had actually accepted her twin’s offer to hang on to their daughter for the duration of their trip to Sicily.
Evidently Cesare could not forgive her for keeping Susie’s existence a secret. And, though he had decided that marriage was the only acceptable solution to Susie’s needs, the necessity of doing so had outraged him. Only six weeks ago, Cesare had exploded back into Mina’s life, determined to punish her for what he saw as her betrayal four years ago. But Susie had come between Cesare and the revenge he desired.
He had been forced to put his daughter first. The concept of revenge had been thrust willy-nilly into the bounds of impossibility. And, even more infuriatingly, he had then found himself marrying a woman he saw as greedy and dishonest. As Mina sat there it slowly sank in that unwittingly or otherwise she had turned the tables on Cesare with a vengeance. The biter had been bit, not only denied retaliation but forced to make sacrifices and concessions of his own.
‘We’re here.’
Something in Cesare’s voice made Mina look at him first. It was a note of raw energy that she hadn’t picked up in his vicinity for three long weeks. She was even more staggered when the formerly grim line of his mouth suddenly curved into a wolfish smile. He had been so cool, so controlled for so long, it was like watching a very bland actor step down off the stage and instantaneously switch back to his own vibrant personality.
Thrown by the strange imagery assailing her, Mina might have kept on staring had not something of what lay before them stolen her attention. The limo was crawling up a steep, wooded hill to what looked like a vast stone fortress.
‘Your home is a…castle?’ Mina queried in a faint voice.
‘For three centuries Castello del Falcone has guarded this valley from all intruders. I usually fly in and out by helicopter but I believed you would find the long car journey on these sadly poor roads…shall I say…educational?’
Bemused by his sudden loquacity, Mina opened dry lips, keen to respond to the smallest olive-branch. ‘The scenery was beautiful.’
‘But this is a most isolated valley. In winter the road out is frequently impassable. You will have noticed that it is some hours since you saw a town. The nearest village is several miles away. Our staff live in.’
Amazed by the amount of information being freely showered upon her, Mina suddenly believed that she understood what had achieved his radical change in mood. Cesare was coming home, and if coming home could warm him up to this extent she was delighted! Obviously he was very proud of the castello and his family’s long association with its history. So she did not remark that those gaunt grey walls rising from their craggy heights were distinctly intimidating.
The limo passed beneath a giant gateway and into a cobbled courtyard charmingly embellished with urns of flowers. ‘How lovely,’ Mina sighed with appreciation, climbing out of the car into the lengthening shadows of evening.
‘A shame it is so far from the nightlife and the shop-till-you-drop streets of Paris and London.’
‘Yes, but as somewhere you can come to relax and unwind…’ Mina scanned her surroundings with fascination ‘…it’s wonderful!’
‘I hope that feeling has staying power.’
Mina was so relieved that he was talking to her again, she glowed. Pride told her that she ought to be cool but she loved him too much to hold spite and was painfully aware that there was some excuse for his animosity. Cesare had every right to feel bitterly angry that he had been denied knowledge of his daughter but she prayed that he was now coming to terms with what after all was an unalterable fact. Mina was more than willing to meet him halfway in the hope that a few days alone together might result in the building of a firm foundation for their future.
‘I love country life,’ she told him cheerfully.
Cesare smiled sardonically. ‘Even in winter?’
But she wouldn’t be here in winter, she almost said, and then a plump little woman in black came out to greet them and be introduced as his housekeeper, Maria. She didn’t have a word of English but her beaming smiles were sufficient welcome.
‘I’ll have to learn Italian,’ Mina laughed, feeling ridiculously bubbly but her relief at Cesare’s improved spirits was so immense, she couldn’t help it.
‘You’ll be able to learn at your leisure.’
Why did she keep on getting the impression that Cesare was talking tongue-in-cheek? She thrust the suspicion away again, telling herself not to be silly. Cesare was her husband now and for once he was being remarkably civilised in not giving way to the more volatile strains of his temperament. After all, Susie would not be happy if she sensed the dissension between her parents and presumably he had finally reached that conclusion.
‘Let Maria take you upstairs. We’ll dine at nine,’ Cesare drawled.
From the great hall wound a magnificent marble and wrought-iron staircase. Everywhere Mina looked she saw the evidence that the castello had been gently and sympathetically modernised by succeeding generations of Cesare’s family. She followed Maria up the grand stairs but then they traversed a stone passageway which was frankly medieval in its simplicity. A door was cast wide on a large oak-panelled bedroom rejoicing in the baroque splendour of a massive and extravagantly carved bed and it was like leaping forward again into the eighteenth century.
A door in one corner led into a charming bathroom cunningly contrived out of a turret room. Alone, Mina explored her surroundings, a faint frown-line etched between her brows as she registered that Cesare evidently did not intend to share this room with her. Her cheeks colouring, she reminded herself that an hour ago it would not even have occurred to her to think that he had the smallest intention of making love to her ever again. He hadn’t even kissed her since the day he found out about Susie.
On more than one occasion she had told herself that his indifference mattered to her not at all. But the truth was…the truth was that never in their entire relationship had she felt more painfully rejected or less able to defend herself. Mina had had time to search out her own failings in recent weeks and she was unhappily conscious that four years ago she had put her own pride ahead of what might have been best for her daughter. It was blatantly obvious to her now that no matter what Cesare might think of her he would always have put Susie’s needs first.
A long bath relaxed her. She emerged from the bathroom and was disconcerted to find a youthful maid laying out clothes for her on the bed.
‘But these aren’t mine.’ Mina touched a filmy piece of silk and lace lingerie with uncertain fingers and frowned at the shimmering luxury of the exquisitely fashioned black evening gown. ‘Where are my clothes?’
The younger woman looked anxious. ‘You no like, signora?’ She hurried over to one of the vast wardrobes and cast the door wide, revealing a sea of multi-coloured garments.
Startled, Mina opened another door and met a similar sight. Drawers were packed with lingerie, shelves with sweaters and on the floor were neat rows of shoes, every item clearly brand-new. Comprehension assailed her. Cesare had bought her a new wardrobe. She was astonished. Here and there she saw a glimpse of her own clothing, plain and inexpensive items which must have been carefully unpacked and hung while she had been in the bath. There was no comparison between those garments and the designer apparel which Cesare had purchased.
The black dress which would leave her shoulders bare was seductively gorgeous. After gently dismissing the maid, Mina dressed herself and swept her hair up in her favourite soft Edwardian knot. She pirouetted in front of a full-length bevelled mirror and ran an admiring hand over the rich fabric which rustled softly with her every movement. Her slim shoulders looked very white rising from the fitted bodice.
She felt like a million dollars wearing silk against her skin. She loved beautiful things but
she had never had the wherewithal to indulge herself. She was really touched that Cesare had made such a gesture and without fanfare, without even mentioning it…taking her quite by surprise. She reminded herself that she had entered a different world, one where people dressed for dinner every night, not just when they had guests, and thought that it had been very thoughtful of Cesare to foresee that reality and quietly take care of it for her.
As soon as she was ready, she hurried breathlessly downstairs, her high heels ringing across the tiled floor of the entrance hall. All of a sudden she couldn’t wait to see Cesare. A manservant followed her and as she hesitated, not knowing where to go, he pushed open a door.
The sun was setting in a magnificent blaze beyond the tall, narrow casemented windows at the far end of the room. Cesare was standing there, the light glinting off his ebony hair, a white dinner-jacket accentuating his stunning dark good looks. He took her breath away when what she had childishly wanted to do was steal his but she couldn’t read his gaze in that light.
‘You look every bit as pleased with yourself as I thought you would,’ he murmured softly.
Her skin flushed, her eyes brilliant, she took the comment at face value. ‘The clothes were a wonderful surprise,’ she told him in a rush. ‘Thank you.’
‘Don’t mention it. If my wife were poorly dressed, it would reflect on me,’ Cesare told her drily. ‘And undoubtedly there will be times when I entertain here. It would be embarrassing if someone mistook you for one of the servants.’
Mina recoiled as if he had slapped her in the face. She heard him speak to the manservant whom he addressed as Paolo. A brimming glass of champagne was offered to her on a silver salver. She grasped it with an unsteady hand.
‘What shall we drink to? The institution of marriage?’ Cesare said with a sardonic smile. ‘Or your withdrawal from the world you love so much?’
‘I beg your pardon?’ Mina couldn’t help the tremor that interfered with her voice. In the space of a few sentences, Cesare had ripped away her illusion that he was softening towards her.