THE ITALIAN DUKE’S WIFE Read online

  it would be a cruelty to send them away now — or to

  imply that they are not able to be of any use," he

  added warningly. "Once I have spoken with my lawyer,

  and put in hand the arrangements for our marriage,

  I shall address the matter of making this place

  more habitable."

  They were going to be living here? There were so

  many questions she knew she ought to be asking, but

  right now she was too exhausted to care about anything

  other than getting some sleep.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  AT LEAST the bath water was hot, and the towels

  Maria had brought for her, bustling importantly into

  the bedroom on a stream of incomprehensible Italian

  whilst she inspected Jodie with her sharp gaze, were

  deliciously soft and thick.

  As in the bedroom, the decor in her en suite bathroom

  was very plain, but there was no mistaking the

  quality of the sanitaryware or the cool smartness of

  the marble covering the floor and walls.

  Wrapped in one of the towels, Jodie padded barefoot

  back to her bedroom and opened her case,

  quickly searching through it for the nightshirt she

  knew she had packed. But when she lifted her neatly

  packed tops out of the case she started to frown. Her

  nightshirt was there, all right, but so also was the

  deliciously frivolous new underwear she had bought

  for her honeymoon: bras and short knickers in floral

  patterns; silk thongs that fastened with satin bows; a

  sheer floral mini-slip that was so pretty she hadn’t

  been able to resist it; even the cream lace and satin

  basque she had bought on a sudden impulse one

  lunchtime after yet another evening spent with John

  refusing to do anything more than indulge in gentle

  "petting".

  She hadn’t known then, of course, that the reason

  he had not taken their intimacy to its logical conclusion

  had not been because he had loved her so much,

  but because he had loved her so little. Now, thanks

  to Louise, she knew that all the time she had been

  aching for him and admiring his restraint he had secretly

  been turned off by her.

  What on earth was this stuff doing in her case? She

  found the answer in a small note from her cousin-inlaw,

  tucked in between the folds of her nightshirt.

  It seemed such a pity not to take these with you.

  You never know, you might meet someone who will

  appreciate them — and you.

  Jodie almost laughed out loud. Andrea had had

  more of a presentiment than even she could have

  guessed! As a bride-to-be, she ought to be able to find

  a use for such frivolous items, but she knew that

  Lorenzo would be even less appreciative of both them

  and her than John had been.

  She pulled on her nightgown and closed the case,

  placing it on the floor before crawling into the middle

  of the huge bed and switching off the light.

  By rights she ought to be thinking about the situation

  she had put herself into and working out how

  best to extricate herself from it, but she was far, far

  too tired.

  Lorenzo shut down his computer and got up from the

  desk where he had been working. He had e-mailed

  several people: his lawyer, explaining to him his

  plans — or at least as much of them as he wanted him

  to know; a certain very highly placed diplomat who

  owed him several favours, requesting his help in cutting

  through the normal procedures so that he could

  marry his British fiance.e as quickly as possible; and

  the Cardinal, who was his second cousin once re-

  moved. Fortuitously he already had in his possession

  Jodie’s passport, having found it in the wallet of

  travel documents she had left on the passenger seat

  of her car, and he had faxed its details to all three

  men. His instructions to his lawyer were that he

  should draw up a marriage agreement with the utmost

  haste, and at the same time to make arrangements for

  the sole ownership of the Castillo to be transferred to

  Lorenzo, in accordance with the terms of his grandmother’s

  will.

  He then left his apartments and headed downstairs,

  striding through the warren of unused rooms with

  their old-fashioned furnishings and musty air until he

  reached the door he wanted. Already the tension was

  building inside him, and along with it the excitement;

  already his senses were anticipating the pleasure that

  lay ahead of him. He would marry a dozen pale-faced,

  too-thin English women if necessary, in order to satisfy

  the desire that had driven him for so long.

  The cramping pain seizing her leg muscles was savage

  and unrelenting, wrenching Jodie out of her deep

  sleep with a sharp cry of pain.

  Lorenzo heard it as he walked out of his bathroom,

  his forehead pleating into a frown when it was repeated.

  Securing his towel round his hips, he strode

  towards the guest room, thrusting open the door and

  switching on the light.

  Jodie was lying in the middle of the bed, desperately

  trying to massage the pain out of her locked

  muscles.

  Lorenzo recognised immediately what was happening.

  Going over to the bed, he took hold of her by

  her shoulders, demanding curtly, "What is it? Cramp?"

  Jodie nodded her head, and managed to gasp painfully,

  "Yes. In my leg…"

  The intensity of the pain had turned her face bonegrey,

  and Lorenzo could see the small beads of perspiration

  forming on her forehead.

  "Do you suffer like this often?"

  Why was he asking her that? Was he afraid of saddling

  himself with a wife who would be a liability

  even if she was only a twelve-month wife?

  "No, only when I get overtired — oh!" Jodie winced

  and cried out as his strong fingers found the exact

  spot on her leg where the pain was bunched.

  "Lie still," Lorenzo instructed her. "It’s all right."

  He added, when she looked warily at him, "I do know

  what I’m doing."

  Jodie would have continued to resist if a second

  bout of cramp hadn’t seized her, leaving her with no

  energy to do anything other than focus on coping with

  the searing pain. Lorenzo cursed out loud and then

  lifted her up, ignoring her protests as he turned her

  over and placed her back on the bed.

  Now, with her legs exposed by the ridiculously infantile

  elongated tee shirt she was wearing, he could

  see that he had been right about their length, and that

  she had not been wearing heels. He could also see

  that one of her legs was slightly more slender than

  the other, and that on the inside of its knee there was

  a delicate silver tracery of scars.

  With the cramp continuing its brutal assault on her,

  Jodie wasn’t even aware that she was digging her fingers

  into Lorenzo’s arm as she willed herself not to

  cry out. This was the worst she could ever remember
>
  it being.

  Lorenzo waited until her grip had started to relax

  before releasing himself and going quickly to work,

  his long, lean fingers probing the knot of locked muscle

  until Jodie wanted to scream in agony. She tried

  to drag her leg free of his fingers, but then slowly,

  blissfully, they started to take away the pain, kneading

  and stroking until the muscle began to relax. A tiny

  quiver jerked through her muscle and automatically

  she clenched it, waiting for a fresh onslaught, her

  whole body shaking.

  "Relax…" Lorenzo was still massaging her leg, but

  now the long, firm strokes of his hands were moving

  upwards, and the tension that was gripping her as she

  felt his fingers brushing against the hem of her nightshirt

  was caused by the cramping sensation in her

  stomach, not her leg. And it had nothing whatsoever

  to do with over-tiredness.

  "To judge from these scars you must have had several

  operations?"

  Jodie tensed again. She wanted to pull her leg

  away, but she was afraid to move in case in doing so

  she caused the hem of her nightshirt to ride even

  higher. It was too late now to wish she had put on

  some underwear as well as the nightshirt.

  "Yes," she said briefly.

  "How many?"

  She exhaled. "Does it matter? It isn’t as if You’re

  going to be left having to look after me if I end up

  in a wheelchair or anything, is it?"

  "Is that a possibility?" He was still massaging her

  leg, but now his fingers were slowly stroking over the

  tight scar tissue itself. For some odd reason Jodie discovered

  that she badly wanted to cry. No one had ever

  touched her scars with anything other than clinical

  detachment. The long months in hospital had inured

  her to physical examinations, to doctors discussing

  her as though she were a piece of broken equipment

  they were trying to piece together again and put in

  working order. Which, of course, to them, was exactly

  what she had been. She was grateful to them for everything

  they had done for her — how could she not

  be? — but at the same time…

  At the same time what? Secretly, she had craved a

  more personal touch, a comforting, knowing touch

  that neither flinched from her scars nor made a dramatic

  fuss about them.

  But not a touch that made her feel the way

  Lorenzo’s touch was making her feel!

  "No. My leg is always going to be weak, but it has

  healed properly now," she blurted out, then bit her lip,

  not wanting to remember those horrifying days when

  the doctors had feared they might have to amputate.

  "Thank you. You can stop now. The cramp has gone,"

  she told him as she forced herself to concentrate on

  something — anything — other than on the smooth gliding

  stroke of his fingers against her skin. No lover

  could have… No lover? Now what was she thinking?

  She rolled over so that she could face him, all too

  conscious of the warm weight of his hand where it

  still lay across her bare thigh, her eyes widening as

  she took in what she hadn’t realised before: namely

  that all he was wearing was a towel, wrapped low on

  his hips, and that the body it revealed was enough to

  make any right-thinking woman go weak with female

  appreciation. But from now on she was not going to

  allow herself to want any man, she reminded herself

  fiercely, and certainly not a man like this one. Every

  instinct she possessed told her he was far too dangerous.

  He was an autocratic alpha male who was

  determined to get what he wanted, no matter who he

  had to use in order to do so, and it was that she ought

  to be concentrating her attention on — not the taut

  muscles of his flat belly, or the distracting maleness

  of the body hair that arrowed downwards to where

  his towel had slipped slightly to reveal where it began

  thickening out. Jodie touched her tongue-tip to her

  lips and sucked in a shaky gulp of air.

  Lorenzo removed his hand from her thigh and

  straightened, pausing in the act of resecuring his towel

  to watch as Jodie focused on the movement of his

  hands, her breathing accelerating.

  "If you keep on looking at me like that," he began

  in a warning tone, "I’m going to think—"

  "What do you mean?" Jodie protested, her face

  burning.

  "You were looking at me like a girl looking at her

  first man," Lorenzo said mockingly. "Which leads me

  to wonder what kind of woman you are that you look

  at me like that — and what kind of man this ex-fiance.

  of yours was to give you that need."

  "I wasn’t looking at you like anything," Jodie argued

  frantically. "You’re imagining it. No modern

  woman needs to wonder what a man"s body looks

  like."

  "So it wouldn’t bother you, then, if I weren’t wearing

  this?" Lorenzo suggested, his fingers resting

  against the top of his towel.

  Jodie made a valiant attempt at a small nonchalant

  shrug. "No — why should it? One naked male body is

  much like any other."

  "Was your ex-fiance. circumcised?"

  Jodie opened her mouth and then closed it again,

  her face slowly turning a deep shade of pink whilst

  her heart skidded and bounced around inside her chest

  cavity as though seeking the same invisible escape

  route as her thoughts. Was he asking her that because

  he had guessed that she simply didn’t know? Because

  he wanted to humiliate her by making her admit how

  limited her sexual experience really was?

  "Er…why do you ask?"

  "Why Don’t you answer?"

  "I’m not questioning you about your past sex life.

  And if we"re going to get married—"

  "If? There is no if about it. I’ve already contacted

  my lawyer. He"ll be here in the morning."

  "It will take quite a long time to go through all the

  legal formalities, I expect."

  "Not for us. Once we have seen Alfredo we shall

  be leaving for Florence."

  "Florence?"

  "I have some business to attend to there, and you

  will want to buy a wedding outfit."

  "A wedding outfit?"

  The dark eyebrows lifted. "I take it that you didn’t

  bring your bridal gown with you when you ran

  away?"

  Jodie looked away from him. "No, I didn’t," she

  agreed quietly. Her wedding dress was still hanging

  up in the shop where she had bought it, paid for but

  never collected.

  Lorenzo watched her impassively. "There are any

  number of designer shops in Florence. You are bound

  to find something in one of them."

  Designer shops? Finding something would be the

  easy bit, Jodie reflected; paying for it at designer shop

  prices with her limited budget would be the hard part.

  She moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue.

  "What if…? Wh
at if I’ve changed my mind?"

  "I shan’t let you."

  "But you can’t stop me."

  The way he was looking at her brought it home to

  her that she was trapped here in this ancient stronghold,

  where no doubt his ancestors had once held their

  prisoners captive in the depths of its dank dungeons.

  "What is it exactly that you are so afraid of?" he

  asked.

  "I’m not afraid of anything — or anyone," Jodie lied.

  "So there is no reason why we should not be married,

  then, is there? It is an arrangement from which

  we both stand to gain something of importance to us.

  When is this ex-fiance. of yours to marry?"

  "The middle of next month."

  "Bene. We will be married ourselves by then, so

  you will have the pleasure of introducing me to him

  as your husband. Now, it is late, and tomorrow there

  is much to be done."

  "Why Don’t you want to marry Caterina?"

  Immediately his face hardened. "That is no concern

  of yours," he told her dauntingly. "I shall leave you

  now to sleep. With any luck the cramp will not return."

  In other words, mind your own business, Jodie reflected

  ruefully as she watched him leave.

  CHAPTER SIX

  THE sound of her bedroom door opening and the rattle

  of crockery brought Jodie out of a complicated dream

  in which she had been forced to watch as John walked

  down the aisle towards his waiting bride. But when

  he reached her it wasn’t John who was marrying

  someone else but Lorenzo. Bizarrely, instead of feeling

  relieved, she had actually felt searingly jealous.

  "Buongiorno," Maria greeted her cheerfully as she

  put down the tray she was carrying and then walked

  over to the windows to draw back the heavy curtains.

  Sunshine immediately flooded the room, followed by

  deliciously soft warm air as Maria opened the windows

  to reveal a small balcony.

  The smell of fresh coffee and the sight of rolls and

  fruit made Jodie salivate with hunger.

  "Grazie, Maria." She thanked the elderly maid with

  a warm smile, pushing back the bedclothes as Maria

  turned to leave the room.

  She hadn’t realised her room had a balcony, and

  when she hurried over to investigate it she discovered

  that it looked out onto an enclosed courtyard garden

  that was almost Moorish in style. Fretted archways

  were swathed with tumbling masses of pink roses, and