THE ITALIAN DUKE’S WIFE Read online

  from her vantage point above them she could look

  down into the heart of the garden to a fish pond,

  where an ornate fountain sent sprays of water jetting

  upwards before they fell back to dimple the surface

  of the pond, disturbing the fat goldfish basking in the

  morning sunshine.

  Returning to the bedroom, Jodie poured herself a

  cup of coffee and then headed back to the balcony.

  It was wide enough to hold a small wrought-iron table

  and two chairs, and she was just about to sit down on

  one of them when her bedroom door opened a second

  time. Thinking that Maria had come back, she looked

  up with a smile that faded as she saw that it was not

  Maria who had come in but Lorenzo.

  "Bene, you are awake. Alfredo has telephoned to

  say that he is on his way and will be here within the

  hour. I trust you slept well, with no return of your

  cramp?"

  "No — I mean, yes — I did sleep well, and, no, the

  cramp didn’t come back." It hadn’t come back, but

  the faint tingle in her flesh where he had massaged it

  had kept her awake for a long time after he had gone.

  Unlike her, Lorenzo was fully dressed, making her

  feel acutely conscious of the brevity of her nightshirt.

  Not that he was looking at her. Instead he was frowning

  as he stared at something on the floor beside her

  bed, next to the case she had been too tired to unpack

  last night.

  Striding over to it, he leaned down and retrieved

  the basque she had forgotten to put back in the case,

  holding it up between his thumb and forefingers and

  looking at her with a query in his scowl.

  "What is this?"

  "What does it look like?" Jodie challenged him

  crossly

  "It looks like something a certain type of showgirl

  might wear."

  "It…it was part of my trousseau," Jodie told him

  reluctantly. She certainly didn’t want him thinking it

  was something she had brought with her to wear on

  holiday. "It got into my case by…by mistake."

  "Your trousseau? You mean you were going to

  wear this as a means of enticing your husband to

  make love to you? What was he? Some kind of bondage

  fetishist?"

  It took several seconds for his meaning to hit her

  defences.

  "It’s a chainstore basque, that’s all," she told him

  furiously. "If you want to give it some kind of sleazy,

  sordid interpretation, then that’s up to you." She was

  perilously close to angry tears of humiliation as she

  remembered the shy uncertainty with which she had

  purchased the boned and lace-tied item of underwear,

  hoping that it might tempt John to behave more passionately

  towards her. "Right now They’re a fashion

  item. Some women even wear them as outerwear."

  "Yes, I have seen them. They display their breasts

  as crudely as whores, offering up their wares for any

  man who feels like examining them."

  Whores? Was he suggesting…? "I suppose the way

  you like your women dressed is—" Jodie began angrily,

  only to have Lorenzo interrupt her.

  "The way I like to see a woman dressed is in something

  that hints subtly at her sexuality instead of

  flaunting it, and in fabrics as sensual as her skin. Not

  clothes that make her look like either a child or a

  whore," he told her and he dropped her basque onto

  the bed.

  A child? Was he referring to her nightshirt?

  "How is your leg this morning?" he added calmly,

  as he helped himself to a cup of coffee and walked

  over to the balcony to join her.

  Suddenly what had seemed like a pleasant spot to

  enjoy the morning air had become an intensely intimate

  and very small space. Had he deliberately referred

  to her leg now because he guessed how sensitively

  aware she was that its weakness made her less

  desirable as a woman? If she hadn’t already sworn

  off men and love for ever, Jodie decided bitterly, then

  surely Lorenzo would have been enough to make her

  do so.

  "It’s fine. Anyone can get cramp, you know," she

  told him defensively. "Even someone with two perfectly

  normal legs."

  "Which you think yours are not? There are many

  places in the world where people, often children, subjected

  to the injustice of wars they Don’t understand,

  have been left with injuries, including the loss of

  limbs, that make a mere weakness such as yours

  something they would welcome."

  Jodie listened to him in disbelieving fury. Was he

  actually daring to preach at her? When he lived the

  kind of privileged life isolated from reality he obviously

  did?

  "What would you know about other people"s suffering?"

  she demanded scornfully. "I bet the closest

  you have ever been to witnessing the ravages of war

  is in a newspaper or on a television screen."

  She put her cup down on the small table with a

  small angry movement and made to walk past him

  back into the bedroom. But Lorenzo, who had become

  engrossed in looking down into the garden, put his

  hand on her arm to stop her.

  "Caterina is watching us from the garden," he told

  Jodie quietly.

  "So?"

  Putting down his own cup, he turned towards her,

  saying softly, "So this…"

  He was closing the distance between them and

  there was nowhere for her to go. His arms locked

  round her, imprisoning her, their warmth pressing

  through the thin fabric of her nightshirt. His hands

  spread against her back, curving her into his own

  body as though she were completely formless and

  malleable, his to do with as he chose. One hand remained

  flat against the small of her back, arching her

  against him — draping her against him, she recognised

  dizzily — whilst the other slid up to her neck, his fingers

  burrowing into the soft thickness of her hair, tangling

  in it so that he could draw her head back and

  lift her face towards his own.

  Trembling from head to foot with furious outrage,

  Jodie glared up at him.

  His head blotted out the sunlight as he lowered it

  so that his mouth could take possession of hers. Jodi

  stiffened defensively, not daring to move. His lips felt

  cool and firm against her own. She could smell the

  fresh scent of soap and clean linen. Stubbornly she

  refused to return his kiss. The pad of his thumb

  stroked caressingly behind her ear and against the vulnerable

  flesh of her neck, and a small betraying shudder

  of reaction galvanised her whole body.

  His lips brushed hers, the silver-grey eyes glinting

  with a knowledge that made her whole body burn as

  he demanded silkily, "Don’t you even know how to

  kiss properly? And you were betrothed! Open your

  mouth."

  Faced with a choice of being branded as a woman

  so sexually inept that she couldn’t even ki
ss, or giving

  in to his arrogant demand, Jodie chose female pride

  over anger. Her lips softened and parted, the golden

  shimmer of her gaze meshing recklessly with the hypnotic

  silver of Lorenzo’s as though it were a lodestone

  luring her to a destiny she couldn’t escape. Her mouth

  clung to his and her arms lifted to wrap around his

  neck. She could feel the warmth of the sun on her

  back, but it was the heat of Lorenzo’s touch that her

  flesh was responding to, the sensation of his hand

  spread flat against the bare skin of her back beneath

  her nightshirt, whilst she stood on tiptoe, arched

  against him, kissing him with a sensual intimacy that

  would normally have shocked her.

  She could feel his hand shaping her waist and then

  moving upwards to cup her bare breast beneath the

  nightshirt, his thumb-pad brushing with deliberate

  emphasis against her suddenly tight nipple, making it

  and her quiver as readily as a bow drawn by an expert

  archer. His other hand was massaging the base of her

  spine and then moving lower, pushing aside her briefs

  so that he could stroke the naked rounded curve of

  her bottom.

  The sudden fierce sexual thrust of Lorenzo’s

  tongue against her own brought her up intimately

  against him, her breath escaping on a soft, shivered

  rush of pleasure. "What is it?" Lorenzo whispered.

  "Do you want me to stroke your breasts? To kiss them

  and caress them? Do you want me to take your nipple

  into my mouth and bring it and you to the highest

  pinnacle of pleasure? Is that what you are asking me

  for with that wanton thrust of your hips against

  mine?" As he was whispering to her Lorenzo’s hand

  moved round to caress the soft swell of her sex.

  This was what she had longed for so much from

  John — desire, intimacy, sensuality — and she absorbed

  it into herself with each and every one of her senses,

  lost in a private world of erotic pleasure.

  It was the sound of angry footsteps crunching

  across the gravel beneath the balcony that brought her

  back to reality, her body stiffening in outraged rebuttal

  as she wrenched her mouth from beneath

  Lorenzo’s.

  "You had no right to do that," she told him angrily.

  "So why didn’t you stop me?" Lorenzo shrugged,

  infuriatingly matter-of-fact.

  She hadn’t stopped him because she had been enjoying

  what was happening too much to want to,

  Jodie realised guiltily. "You said there would be

  no…no intimacy between us," she retorted, sidestepping

  Lorenzo’s charge.

  "That wasn’t intimacy," Lorenzo informed her. "If

  I’d wanted intimacy with you, I’d have taken you

  somewhere where we couldn’t be overheard, and right

  now, instead of standing here glowering at me, you’d

  be lying under me, and the only words you’d be uttering

  would be your eager pleas for my possession.

  As I warned you, I was simply demonstrating for

  Caterina’s benefit the fact that you and I are to marry.

  Or is that glower you are giving me because you are

  not lying beneath me right now, while I show that

  virginal body of yours what sex is all about?"

  "I am not—"

  "You are not a virgin? Is that what you were going

  to tell me?"

  "I wasn’t going to say that. I was going to say that

  I’m not interested in having sex with you."

  "So you are a virgin?"

  "What if I am? Is it a crime?"

  "In law, no. Against nature, yes. Where is the plea-

  sure in a closed book that has never been read? A

  song that that never been sung? A scent that has never

  filled the air with its fragrance or a woman who has

  never cried out her fulfilment to the lover who has

  taken her to it?"

  Beneath them the golden silence of the morning

  was suddenly broken by the sound of a car arriving

  in the adjacent courtyard.

  "That will be Alfredo," Lorenzo told her, suddenly

  businesslike. "Come through into my office as soon

  as you are dressed. Alfredo will want to go through

  all the necessary paperwork for our marriage."

  As she watched him leave, Jodie wanted very badly

  to tell him that she had changed her mind; to break

  through his arrogance and to pierce his pride the way

  he had pierced hers. How could she possibly have

  reacted to him as she had? How could she have let

  her guard down so far that she had actually physically

  responded to him? Now he obviously thought that he

  could use her own vulnerability against her to make

  her do anything he wanted her to do. Anything. Every

  word he had just said to her, every look he had given

  her, had said quite plainly that he now believed she

  was his for the taking.

  But she wasn’t, and she never, ever would be. She

  knew that, and she was going to make sure that he

  knew it as well. And if she couldn’t? How much did

  she really want to bolster her pride and appear at John

  and Louise’s wedding with her own brand-new husband?

  Enough to take that risk?

  More than enough, Jodie decided with renewed determination

  as she gathered up some clean clothes and

  headed for the shower. Especially since she already

  knew that, no matter what Lorenzo said or did, or

  even fleetingly made her feel, nothing could alter the

  fact that she simply did not want an intimate one-toone

  emotional or physical relationship with a man

  ever again. John had shown her that she could not

  trust his sex, and if John could not be trusted to mean

  it when he said that he loved her and wanted to marry

  her, then she certainly wasn’t going to risk trusting a

  man like Lorenzo!

  Fifteen minutes later, showered and dressed, and with

  her still damp hair caught back off her face, Jodie

  hesitated outside the door to the study-cum-office

  Lorenzo had shown her the previous night.

  She could have sworn she hadn’t betrayed her presence

  by the smallest sound, much less even raised her

  hand to knock politely on the door, but somehow

  Lorenzo must have divined it, because before she

  could do so he was opening the door and taking her

  by the arm to draw her into the room. Taking her by

  the arm or imprisoning her? Certainly to any onlooker

  the way the strong, lean fingers were curling round

  her wrist might look both protective and possessive—

  the hold of a lover wanting to establish the exclusivity

  of a relationship — but she, of course, knew better.

  "I was just beginning to wonder what was keeping

  you," he told her.

  "I’ve only been half an hour," Jodie protested defensively.

  "A lifetime for us to be apart," he told her softly,

  giving her a look of such sexually explicit hunger that

  her own eyes widened and darkened before she could

  stop herself from reacting to it. She was awed by the


  impact of a look that somehow managed to convey a

  desire to strip every item of clothing from her body

  and explore and pleasure it in the most intimate way

  possible, but at the same time made it fiercely clear

  that he also wanted to wrap that same body in the

  protection of his love and adoration, to keep it and

  her for himself alone. What on earth must it be like

  to be truly loved and desired by a man who looked

  at one like that? A man who was not either afraid of

  or embarrassed to show his feelings? But Lorenzo had

  no feelings for her, she reminded herself, and nor did

  she want him to.

  "Alfredo, come and let me introduce you to my

  wife-to-be."

  Lorenzo’s lawyer was about the same age as

  Lorenzo himself, but nothing like so tall or so awesomely

  good-looking, Jodie thought. He did, though,

  have very nice, warm brown twinkling eyes, and a

  kind smile.

  "Lorenzo has just been telling me about you. I

  thought he must be exaggerating, in that deranged

  way that lovers have, but now I see that he was not

  doing you justice," Alfredo complimented Jodie

  warmly.

  Lorenzo’s lawyer was just being courteous, that

  was clear, albeit in a flattering, slightly over-the-top

  way. Jodie knew that, but she still couldn’t help dimpling

  him a laughing smile, immediately feeling at

  ease with him.

  "No wonder you are so anxious to rush her to the

  altar, Lorenzo," Alfredo continued. "In your shoes—"

  "But you are not in my shoes, are you?" Lorenzo

  pointed out, with what Jodie thought was almost insufferable

  arrogance.

  The lawyer, though, did not seem to be offended.

  Instead he laughed and said, "There is no need to be

  jealous, my friend. I can see that Jodie only has eyes

  for you." Whilst Jodie was still digesting this untruth,

  he continued, "I was just asking Lorenzo where you

  met. I assume it must have been when he was out of

  the country, in the aftermath of that dreadful earthquake.

  I know that Lorenzo was there in his capacity

  of adviser to those government officials who run our

  own aid programmes. Which reminds me, Lorenzo—

  I have, as you instructed, ensured that sufficient

  money has been put aside to cover the medical fees

  of the children who are to join the prosthetic limb

  replacement programme." Alfredo turned to Jodie and

  gave her a charming smile accompanied by a small

  rueful shrug. "You will already know that your husband-