told her you were afraid my passion would overwhelm
me and that I would marry you anyway and
thus bring disgrace upon myself, didnt you?" he accused
her. "You knew how na..ve my grandmother
was, how ignorant of modern mores. You tricked her
into believing you were confiding in her out of concern
for me. You told her you didnt know what to
do or how you could protect me. Then you ""helped""
her to come up with the solution of changing her will,
so that instead of inheriting the Castillo from her as
her previous will had stated I would only inherit it
if I was married within six weeks of her death. As
you told her, everyone knows how important to me
the Castillo is. And then, as though that were not
enough, you conceived the added inducement of persuading
her to add that if I did not marry within those
six weeks, you would inherit the Castillo. You led her
to believe that in making those changes she was enabling
me to marry you, because I could say I was
fulfilling the terms of her will rather than following
the dictates of my heart."
"You cant prove any of that." She shrugged contemptuously.
Lorenzo knew that what she had said was true.
"As Ive already told you, Nonna confided her
thoughts to her notary," he continued acidly. "Unfortunately,
by the time he managed to alert me to what
was going on, it was too late."
"Much too late for you." Caterina smirked at him.
"So you admit it?"
"So what if I do? You cant prove it," Caterina repeated.
"And even if you could, what good would it
do?"
"Let me make this clear to you, Caterina. No matter
what my grandmother has written in her will, you will
never become my wife. You are the last woman I
would want to give my name to."
Caterina laughed. "You have no choice."
Lorenzo had a reputation for being a formidable
and ruthless adversary. He was the kind of man other
men both respected and feared the kind of man
women dreamed excitedly of enticing into their beds.
He was also a superb male animal, strikingly handsome,
with a hormone-unleashing combination of arrogance
and a predatory, very dangerous male sexuality
a sexuality that he wore as easily as a panther
wore its coat. He was not just a prize, but perhaps the
most coveted prize amongst the very best of Italys
most eligible and wealthy men. All through his twenties
gossip columns had seethed with excited interest,
trying to guess which high-born young woman he
would make his duchess. It certainly wasnt from any
lack of willing partners to share his wealth and his
title, along with enjoying the sexual pleasure of mating
title, along with enjoying the sexual pleasure of mating
with such a vigorously sensual man, that he had
escaped into his thirties without making any kind of
formal commitment to the women who had pursued
him.
Lorenzo looked at his late cousins wife. He despised
and loathed her. But then, he despised most
women. From what he had experienced of them they
were all willing to give him whatever he wanted because
of what he had, what was outside the inner him:
wealth, a title, and a handsome male body. What he
actually was was of no interest to them. His thoughts,
his beliefs, all that went to make up the man who was
Lorenzo dEste didnt matter to them anywhere near
so much as his money and his social position.
"You have no choice, Lorenzo," Caterina repeated
softly. "If you want the Castillo you have to marry
me."
Lorenzo permitted his mouth to curl in sardonic
disdain.
"I have to marry, yes," he agreed softly. "But nowhere
does it say that I have to marry you. You have
obviously not read my grandmothers will thoroughly."
Her face blanched, her narrowed eyes betraying her
confusion and distrust.
"What do you mean? Of course I have read it. I
dictated it! I"
"I repeat, you did not read the will my grandmother
signed thoroughly enough," Lorenzo told her. "You
see, it stipulates only that I must marry within six
weeks of her death if I want to inherit the Castillo
from her. It does not specify who I should marry."
Caterina stared at him, unable to conceal her anger.
It stripped from her the good looks which had in her
youth made her a sought-after model, and left in their
place the ugliness of her true nature.
"No, that cannot be true. You have altered it,
changed it you and that sneering notary. You
have Where does it say? Let me see!"
She virtually flung herself at him and Lorenzo retrieved
the will he had thrown down onto the table
earlier. Seizing it, she read it, her face white with
rage.
"You have changed it. Somehow you have She
wanted you to marry me!" She was almost hysterical
with fury.
"No." Lorenzo shook his head, his face impassive
as he watched her. "Nonna wanted to give me what
she believed I wanted. And that, most assuredly, is
not you."
As Lorenzo stood beneath the flickering light of the
old-fashioned flambeaux, the small abrupt movement
of his head was reflected and repeated in the shadows
from the flames.
The Castillo had been designed as a fortress rather
than a home, long before the Montesavro Dukes of
the Renaissance had captured it from their foes and
then clothed and softened its sheer stone walls with
the artistic richness of their age. It still possessed an
aura of forbidding and forbidden darkness.
Like Lorenzo himself.
Dark shadows carved hollows beneath the sculptured
bone structure he had inherited from the warrior
prince who had been the first of their line, and his
height and the breadth of his shoulders emphasised
the predatory sleekness of his body. His mouth was
thin-lipped"cruel", women liked to call it, as they
begged for its hardness against their own and tried to
soften it into hunger for them. It was his eyes, though,
that were his most arresting feature. Curiously light
for an Italian, they were more silver than grey, and
piercingly determined to strip away his enemies" defences.
His well-groomed hair was thick and dark, his
suit hand-made and expensive. But then, he did not
need to depend on any inheritance from his late maternal
grandmother to make him a wealthy man. He
was already that in his own right.
There were those who said, foolishly and theatrically,
that for a man to accumulate so much money
there had to be some trickery involved some sleight
of hand or hidden use of certain dark powers. But
Lorenzo had no time for such stupidity. He had made
his money simply by using his intelligence, by making
the right investments at the right time, and thus
building the respectable sum he had been left by his
parents into a fortune that ran into many, many millions.
Unlike his late cousin, Gino, who had allowed his
greedy wife to ruin him financially. His greedy widow
now, Lorenzo reminded himself savagely. Not that
Caterina had ever behaved like a widow, or indeed
like a wife.
Poor Gino, who had loved her so much. Lorenzo
lifted his hand to his forehead. It felt damp with perspiration.
Caused by guilt? It had after all been by
claiming friendship with him that Caterina had first
brought herself to Ginos attention.
Lorenzo had been eighteen to Caterinas twenty-
two when he had first met her, and was easily seduced
by her determination. It hadnt taken him long,
though, to recognise her for the adventuress that she
was. No longer, in fact, than her first hint to him that
she expected him to repay her sexual favours with
expensive gifts. As a result of that, he had ended his
brief fling with her immediately.
He had been at university when she had inveigled
herself into his kinder cousin Ginos heart and life,
and the next time he had seen her Caterina had been
wearing Ginos engagement ring whilst his cousin
wore a besotted expression of adoration. He had tried
to warn his cousin then, of just what she was, but
Gino had been in too deeply ever to listen, and had
even accused him of jealousy. For the first time that
Lorenzo could remember they had quarrelled, with
Gino accusing Lorenzo of wanting Caterina for himself,
and she had cleverly played on that to keep them
apart until after her and Ginos marriage.
Later, Lorenzo and his cousin had been reconciled,
but Gino had never stopped worshipping his wife,
even though she had been blatantly unfaithful to him
with a string of lovers.
"Where are you going?" Caterina demanded shrilly
as Lorenzo turned on his heel and walked away
from her.
From the other side of the hall Lorenzo looked
back at her.
"I am going," he told her evenly, "to find myself a
wife any wife. Just so long as she is not you. You
could have seen to it that I was warned that my grandmother
was near to death, so that I could have been
here with her, but you chose not to. And we both
know why."
"You cannot marry someone else. I will not let
you."
"You cannot stop me."
She shook her head. "You will not find another
wife, Lorenzo. Or at least not the kind of wife you
would be willing to accept not in such a sort space
of time. You are far too proud to marry some little
village girl of no social standing, and besides" She
paused, then gave him a taunting look and said softly,
"If necessary I shall tell everyone about the child I
was to have had, whom you made me destroy."
"Your lovers child," he reminded her. "Not Ginos
child. You told me that yourself."
"But I shall tell others that it was your child. After
all, many people know that Gino believed you loved
me."
"I should have told him that I loathed you."
"He would not have believed you," Caterina told
him smugly. "Just as he would not have believed the
child was not his. How does it feel to know that you
are responsible for the taking of an unborn child"s
life, Lorenzo?"
He took a step towards her, a look of such blazing
fury in his eyes that she ran for the door, pulling it
open and sliding through it.
Lorenzo cursed savagely under his breath and then
went back to the table where he had dropped his
grandmothers will.
He had been filled with fury and disbelief when his
grandmothers notary had finally managed to make
contact with him to tell him of his fears, and how he
had managed to prevent Caterina from having all her
own way by deliberately removing her name from the
will so that it merely required Lorenzo to marry in
order to inherit, rather than specifically having to
marry Caterina.
The notary, almost as elderly as his grandmother
had been, had apologised to Lorenzo if he had done