The Colorado Countess

‘I met this woman who’s here on holiday and—would you believe it?—she lives just two blocks away from me in Queen’s! Can you imagine? What a coincidence! Anyway, we got talking, and—Hey, Carrie, are you all right?’ Louise paused and peered into the face of her friend who hadn’t heard a single word she’d been saying. ‘You look a bit strange. Has something happened?’

‘I’m not sure what’s happened. I think I’m going mad.’ Carrie gave herself a shake and smiled a wry smile at her friend. ‘I’ve just had a most fascinating encounter myself. And I’m afraid I’ve really put my foot in it.

‘I thought I was speaking to just any old Prince Charming. But I wasn’t. For once, I was speaking to the real thing: She sighed and turned to the open door through which the dark stranger had disappeared. ‘I’m afraid I’ve just made a terrible faux pas. I’ve just insulted Count Leone, the heir to the throne.’

‘Here you are, sir. These are the papers I mentioned. The Duke would be grateful if you would sign them at your earliest convenience.’

‘Just leave them on the table, Pierre.’ Leone turned to glance at his private secretary who had appeared with the usual daily batch of papers to be dealt with. ‘I’ll take a look at them while I’m having breakfast,’ he told him. ‘You can pick them up in about half an hour.’

‘Certainly, sir.’ Pierre nodded deferentially. ‘Will there be anything else for the moment?’

‘Not for the moment, thanks.’ Then, as the other man started to go, he called after him, ‘Oh, by the way, congratulations. I hear you’ve finally fixed the big day. Well, it’s about time the lovely Margherita made an honest man of you, I’d say.’

Pierre smiled a pleased smile. ‘Thank you, sir,’ he responded. ‘We both hope you’ll honour us with your presence at the wedding.’

‘Wouldn’t miss it for the world. You know how I love weddings.’ Leone laughed. ‘Just as long as they’re not mine, of course.’

It was just after seven-thirty at the Palazzo Verde, and Count Leone Alberto Cosimo George di Montecrespi, brother of the ruling Duke and heir to the throne of San Rinaldo, currently dressed in a red silk dressing gown, was in his private apartments getting ready for the day.

And it would be a full day as usual, he was thinking as he drank his coffee. Thank heavens he could rely on Pierre to organise everything.

At that moment his valet appeared from the adjoining dressing room where he’d been laying out Leone’s clothes for the day.

Leone glanced at him. ‘Thanks, Silvestro,’ he told him. Then he enquired good-humouredly, ‘I suppose you’ve heard Pierre’s news? You know about the imminent betrothal?’

‘Yes, sir. I heard about it. And very pleased I was too.’

Leone smiled at the young man. ‘Another romantic, I see. No doubt you’ll shortly be following in his footsteps?’

‘I sincerely hope so, sir. As soon as Anna’s twenty-one—and that’s only eighteen months away.’

Leone shook his head at him. ‘You’re all mad, if you ask me. With so many beautiful, available women in the world, why any man under forty would want to get married is an absolute, total mystery to me.’ And, with a smile, he turned his attention back to the pile of papers.

Not that his attention was entirely on what he was doing as he flicked his way rapidly through the papers, scanning a few lines here and there, scribbling his signature where it was required. For there was a niggling little diversion that had been occupying his thoughts with a fair degree of frequency since yesterday evening. He’d tried to dismiss it from his mind, but it refused to be dismissed, and he was rapidly coming to the conclusion that he’d have to do something about it.

Well, why not? he decided. And he smiled at the prospect. A beautiful girl is a beautiful girl, no matter how stroppy she is!

When Pierre returned, he had finished signing the papers. He handed them over. ‘These all seem to be in order.’ Then, sitting back in his seat and draining his coffee-cup, he added, ‘I want you to track down someone for me. A girl. An American. I don’t know her name, but she’s blonde, mid-twenties and extremely beautiful and she’s putting together a book, apparently, on Castello porcelain. Find out who she is and where she’s staying and anything else you can about her.’

‘Is this an urgent matter, sir?’ His secretary’s expression had never altered, though a look of fond amusement had briefly crossed his face. This wasn’t the first time he’d been given such a task.

‘Yes, it is urgent, Pierre.’ Leone laid down his coffee-cup and there was a distinctly determined look in his eyes. ‘This young lady and I have unfinished business.’

CHAPTER TWO

THE house Carrie had rented for her stay in San Rinaldo was about five miles out of Rino, the capital of the little dukedom, up a sun-dappled, twisting, tree-lined road with a spectacular view out over the city.

To be more accurate, she’d rented only part of the house—a marvellous red-tiled eighteenth-century villa. She’d taken the top floor, which was bright and spacious, with its own front door and huge balconies at the front and back. And she was out on the front balcony now, basking in the July sunshine, with a bowl of peaches at her elbow and a notepad on her knee as she sat in one of the comfy cane chairs and worked out her itinerary for the coming week. And it promised to be a busy one, with lots of meetings and appointments. To her enormous satisfaction, though she’d been here less than a week, work was already getting under way.

But that was Carrie’s way. When it came to matters of work, she liked to dive straight in and get on with the job. And that was why, in the space of just three years, she’d gained a reputation for being a top-rank professional.

It was hard to believe, but it really was just three years ago that she had arrived in New York fresh from college with no experience at all of the publishing world, just a lot of ambition and a fistful of good ideas. Plus an infinite supply of determination, of course. For she’d quickly lost count of the publishing-house doors she’d had to knock on before one finally took her on to do a book on Colorado gold—for her native state was once prospector country—and since the success of that book her career had never looked back.

There had followed a book on Amerindian art, then one on New York’s Guggenheim Museum, as well as the steady stream of magazine articles she wrote. But this latest project, the book on Castello porcelain that she had come to San Rinaldo to work on, promised to be the most ambitious so far. This one was going to be really special.

She sat back in her chair now with a smile on her face and gazed for a moment at the peaceful panorama of cypress-clad hills and green-shuttered villas. What a wonderful place. She was going to adore the next three months here. With a sigh of contentment, she reached for a peach.

At that moment there was the sound of a car down below, turning into the gravel driveway of the villa. Carrie munched on her peach, which was sweet and delicious, and turned her attention back to her scribblings. It must be someone for her landlady, a widow who lived below. Signora Rossi frequently had visitors.

She heard a car door slam, then male footsteps crossing the driveway, past the stone steps that led to her balcony. Though she was barely paying attention. She was carefully studying her itinerary, wondering if she hadn’t maybe over-committed herself tomorrow. And she didn’t bother to glance up when, a moment or two later, there was the sound of voices down below her balcony—Signora Rossi and her visitor talking in Italian. So she was totally taken by surprise when suddenly her landlady called out, ‘Signorina Carrie! There’s someone to see you!’

How odd. Frowning a little, Carrie laid down her notepad, got to her feet and stepped to the edge of the balcony. Who on earth could it possibly be? She didn’t know anyone who was likely to come visiting.

She leaned over the balcony. ‘Thank you, Signora Rossi.’

But then she paused. Where was her visitor? And what manner of lightning bolt had apparently struck her landlady? For the poor woman’s eyes were fixed, saucer-sized in their amazement, on the narrow stone stairway that led to Carrie’s veranda.

Curious, Carrie turned to follow the stupefied gaze. Then she blinked, her own eyes transforming into saucers of amazement. For ascending the stone stairway was no less a personage than Count Leone Alberto Cosimo George di Montecrespi, the heir to the throne of San Rinaldo, whom she had so grievously insulted just two days ago.

She felt herself turn pale. Oh, dear heavens! she was thinking. He’s come personally to throw me out of the country!

He had reached the top of the stairs, where he paused now to address her. ‘Miss Carrie Dunn from Colorado, we meet again,’ he smiled. Then he paused and regarded her pale, fixed face. ‘I hope I haven’t caught you at an inconvenient moment?’

‘Not at all. Of course not.’

Carrie hadn’t a clue what to say or do. So she just stood there, utterly immobile, feeling totally foolish in her skimpy pink shorts and strappy T-shirt, wishing that, at least, she were more soberly dressed. Though he was pretty informally attired too, in a pair of cream cotton trousers, an open-neck blue shirt and light canvas shoes. Nevertheless, he was still a count, the brother of the ruler of San Rinaldo and a member of one of the oldest noble families in Europe. Her brain was churning in confusion. Ought she to curtsy to him, or what?

Leone, for his part, was feeling a touch bemused too. She was even lovelier than he had remembered. Slender and graceful, with a natural, unadorned beauty, and a perfectly spectacular pair of legs. He looked into her face with its wide hazel eyes, gentle mouth and tip-tilted nose and was suddenly struck by the strong resemblance she bore to one of the angels in the painted frieze of the family chapel.

That surprising thought made him smile. That angel had always been his favourite.

But his task at the moment was to put this poor angel at her ease. She was standing there, quite rigid, clutching a half-eaten peach and looking as though she believed he was about to devour her.

He glanced around him. ‘What a lovely place. That’s a pretty spectacular view you’ve got.’

‘Yes, it is pretty spectacular.’

Carrie managed to answer him, though her voice sounded strange, as though it belonged to someone else. What was he doing here? she kept asking herself frantically, over and over. It was bizarre. She couldn’t begin to imagine what he might want of her. Though one part of her, in spite of her quite genuine anxiety, felt like laughing out loud at the situation. If only her family, or friend Louise, could see her now, standing here hobnobbing with the heir to the San Rinaldo throne!

Well, not exactly hobnobbing! That thought brought her up sharply. If her family could see her now, they’d think she was a proper wimp! She straightened her spine carefully and lifted up her chin and, suddenly realising she was still clutching her half-eaten peach, laid it carefully on the little table behind her. Then, taking a deep breath and feeling much more in control now, she forced herself to look her visitor straight in the eye.

‘Forgive me,’ she said in a polite but firm tone, ‘but actually I’m wondering what you’re doing here.’ Then, a little amazed but thoroughly pleased with herself for taking this initiative, she held her breath and waited for his answer.

Leone looked at her and smiled. Good for her, he was thinking. He knew from their last confrontation that she didn’t lack spirit, but last time she hadn’t been aware of who he was. This time she clearly was and he’d wondered if her attitude might alter. That little demonstration that it hadn’t made her even more interesting.

‘Actually, it’s you who should forgive me.’ He held out his hand to her. ‘Here I am in your home and I haven’t even introduced myself. I’m Leone,’ he told her. ‘Leone Montecrespi.’

Carrie continued to look at him with steady hazel eyes. ‘Yes, I know who you are.’ Reluctantly, she took his hand, for she remembered all too vividly the effect of his handshake at the restaurant.

And it happened again, that jolt of sensation, that sense that suddenly her flesh was burning. Though she managed to control her reaction this time as she added, ‘Last time we met, I confess, I didn’t recognise you.’ She dropped her hand away, ignoring the fierce tingling. ‘The light in the restaurant wasn’t very good.’

Carrie wondered as she said it if that confession was good enough. Perhaps he would expect her to apologise more profusely, possibly even grovel a bit? But grovelling was out. She just wasn’t a groveller. And anyway, she reflected, she’d been perfectly entitled to make the comments she’d made the other night at the restaurant. He and his friends had behaved in a thoroughly arrogant manner.

‘Yes, the light was rather poor.’ Leone’s reaction was simply to smile. Then he let his eyes drift over her for a moment. ‘Now that I can see you properly I realise you’re twice as beautiful as I’d thought.’

‘Really?’ Carrie’s tone was flat and dismissive. Flattery will get you nowhere, it candidly told him. Whatever he’d come for, he wouldn’t butter her up that way—though privately she had to confess that she’d been having similar thoughts about him!

In the warm light of day he looked even more gorgeous, and he was immeasurably more attractive, though she would hardly have thought this possible, than in the photographs she had seen of him in various glossy magazines.

There was a wonderful raw vitality to him that, along with the wild black hair and the eyes that she could see now were the pefect blue of lapis lazuli, projected an aura of shimmering excitement. She felt a rush inside her and quickly suppressed it.

She said, turning away, waving at the group of cane chairs behind her, ‘Would you care to take a seat?’

Beware, she was thinking as a bell rang in her head. It had struck her in the restaurant that he was clearly a bit of a Romeo, but now that she knew who he was she knew also that she’d been right.

In those photographs one saw of him in the glossy magazines he was invariably accompanied by some pouting bimbette—always head-turningly beautiful and never the same one twice. And, though it seemed unlikely—what would he see in a girl like her who, after all, was definitely no bimbette, a very far cry from the type he went for?—it was possible that he had come here with seduction on his mind.

She darted a glance into the smoky blue eyes. Who could tell? Maybe His Highness felt like a change. Maybe he had grown a little bored with his habitual diet and fancied a working American girl instead. Perhaps he had come here to invite her to share the royal bed.

At that thought, to Carrie’s dismay, she felt another rush inside her, as though all her insides had turned to liquid honey. Shame on you, she told herself, and quickly suppressed it. No matter how gorgeous he was, he would have no luck with her. She wasn’t here to provide entertainment for any playboy count!

He was accepting her invitation and crossing the veranda to seat himself in the cane chair where she had been sitting earlier, the one next to the little table with the bowl of peaches. He stretched out his long legs. ‘You asked what I’m doing here.’ Then he held her eyes and smiled. ‘We have unfinished business.’

‘Unfinished business?’

What on earth did he mean by that? Carrie crossed to seat herself on one of the chairs opposite him, careful to arrange her legs at a safe distance from his, her feet crossed neatly at the ankles.

She looked him straight in the eye and raised one questioning eyebrow. ‘I wasn’t aware that you and I had any business to finish.’

‘Perhaps not, strictly speaking, business.’ He simply smiled at her reaction. I’m going to enjoy this, he was thinking. This one’s definitely no pushover. It would make a pleasant change from the easy victories he was used to.

He stretched his legs a little further and leaned back in his seat and watched her. ‘The other evening, you may remember, as I was leaving the restaurant, you came running after me, rather anxious to tell me something. I couldn’t stop at the time, but perhaps you’d like to tell me about it now?’

‘Is that why you’ve come here?’ Carrie frowned as she looked back at him. ‘Just to find out why I came running after you?’

She wasn’t sure if she believed him. At the time, she’d been quite certain that he’d heard perfectly well her angry protests about the bill.

But perhaps not, after all, and perhaps that really was why he’d come—to find out what she’d been saying and, possibly, to chastise her for her rudeness. Perhaps she’d been totally wrong about the seduction bit. Oh, well, she thought, thank heavens for that.

Another thought struck her. He must have gone to a fair bit of trouble in order to track her down like this. She delivered him a dry look. ‘How extraordinarily fastidious of you.’

‘I’m an extraordinarily fastidious chap.’ He smiled a lazy smile and cast a glance at the bowl of peaches at his elbow. ‘What lovely-looking peaches. Do you mind if I have one?’

Then, as she nodded and said, ‘Help yourself,’ he reached out and took one.

Carrie found herself watching his every move with fascination. He had the most beautiful tanned hands, with shapely, sensuous fingers, and there was something about the way he took hold of the peach and held it in the palm of his hand for a moment that made the hairs stand up on the back of her neck. Somehow, it was all too easy to imagine how it would feel to have those sensuous fingers caressing your naked flesh.

With a flash of horror at herself—what the devil was coming over her?—she pushed that thought away as he returned to their interrupted discourse and elaborated, ‘I like conclusions. I hate to leave things hanging in the air.’

Carrie took a deep breath. ‘Then I’ll tell you why I came running after you.’ Suddenly, she too was rather keen to reach a conclusion, and preferably one that involved him exiting with some rapidity. His presence was doing the most peculiar things to her brain!

Squaring her shoulders, she told him, ‘I was objecting to you paying my bill. There was no need for that. I’m capable of paying my own bills.’

Leone narrowed his eyes. ‘I thought that’s what you were saying. But you seemed so het up I wondered if I was mistaken.’

‘Of course I was het up. You had no business paying my bill for me.’

‘It was a gesture of reparation. Because you lost your table.’

‘Well, it was a gesture I didn’t appreciate. It simply added insult to injury.’ Carrie flushed in remembrance as she said it. For it really was true. She really had felt insulted. ‘I came after you to complain and to insist on paying you back.’

As she spoke she sat forward, intending to stand up. ‘In fact, I’ll take the opportunity to pay you back now.’ Over the past couple of days, the incident had continued to trouble her. How did you pay back a debt to the heir to the throne? Did you just stick some money in an envelope and send it off to the palace? How could you be certain he’d actually received it? She’d been planning on asking someone at the bank what she should do, but now the problem could be easily resolved.

She told him, ‘I’ll go and get the money right this minute.’

But Leone was waving to her to sit down. ‘You can give it to me before I leave.’ He took a bite of his peach. ‘That is, if you insist, which I’d rather you didn’t.’

‘Well, I’m afraid I definitely do.’

Carrie was half out of her chair and half in it. It went against the grain to obey that imperious little wave, for he was clearly far too used to people obeying him, but she had suddenly realised that to go indoors for her purse she would have to step over his outstretched legs. Unless, of course, he moved them, but she couldn’t bank on that.

Feeling a little cowardly, she sat back stiffly in her seat again. ‘Very well,’ she said. ‘I’ll pay you before you leave.’ That surely shouldn’t be long now, she was silently praying. And there was definitely no danger that she might forget.

There was silence for a moment as Leone sat back and looked at her. The more he discovered about this girl, the more intriguing she became to him. She was different, a type he came across rarely.

‘You’re the independent sort, I see.’ His tone was light as he challenged her. ‘Is this how they teach you to be over in Colorado?’

‘I suppose it must be. It’s certainly how I was taught.’

Carrie wondered if he was laughing at her and decided he probably was. The sort of personal integrity her parents had instilled in her ever since she was very little was something he would find petty and bourgeois and boring. People of his social rank operated differently. They were the sort of people, after all, who went through life thinking nothing of commandeering other people’s restaurant tables!

She tilted her chin at him. ‘I was brought up to respect people, to respect their rights, not to take advantage.’ And as she looked into his eyes she could see quite clearly that he had understood the unspoken message. ‘I was also taught to pay my way and to honour my debts. In short, not to take anything that wasn’t my due.’

Leone regarded her with interest. ‘So, what do you consider to be your due?’

‘What I work for. What I earn by my own efforts.’

She paused and dropped her eyes to her lap for a moment. Was she overdoing it just a little? she wondered, suddenly guilty. She was talking, after all, to one of the idle aristocracy and she had also been taught never to give gratuitous offence.

But Leone did not appear to be offended in the slightest. Instead, he took another bite of his peach and commented, ‘An extremely worthy philosophy of life.’

Not that he meant it, of course, and he could afford to smile indulgently and not care a damn what people like her thought of him. This thought went through Carrie’s head as she looked into the blue eyes, observing to herself what different worlds they came from. Surely neither could ever truly understand the other?

She said, ‘It’s what I was taught and it’s what I believe.’

Leone continued to watch her, the blue eyes oddly unsettling. They had this quality of seeming to pierce beneath her skin. At times he seemed to be laughing at her, at others studying her closely, and somehow the two just didn’t add up.

What was going on in his head and why had he come? For she still wasn’t convinced by the reason he’d given her. But the thing that was making her most uncomfortable of all was the fact that there seemed to be no sign of him leaving!

He crossed his feet at the ankles and tilted his head as he looked at her. ‘So, what are you doing here in decadent old Europe rubbing shoulders with the sort of people I’d have thought you’d run a mile from?’

He was definitely laughing at her now. The blue eyes sparked with devilment. ‘Wouldn’t you have been better off choosing a different subject for your book? Something that kept you safe among the high principles of Colorado?’

Arrogant pig. Carrie looked back at him levelly. ‘Actually, I don’t live in Colorado any more.’

That was just for the record. He didn’t know everything, after all!

‘For the past three years,’ she continued, ‘I’ve lived in New York. So, you see, I have actually ventured out of the safe haven of my home state.’

‘That must have been quite a jolt.’ Leone was still smiling at her amusedly. ‘How on earth do you manage to survive among the sharks of New York?’

‘I just basically put my head down and get on with my job, just as millions of other New Yorkers do. I’ve never had any trouble surviving, as you put it.’ And it was true—she’d made the shift to the Big Apple with no problem. ‘Most New Yorkers, like me, believe in the ethos of hard work.’

‘Back to that old subject again.’ Leone lifted one dark eyebrow. ‘I get the feeling that with you everything comes back to work.’