The Italian Match

His lips curved. ‘But of course. Lucius is the most generous of men. I am Cesare Traetta. You must allow me to drive you to the villa.’

‘It’s hardly any distance,’ Gina protested. ‘I might get blood on the upholstery.’

‘If so it will be cleaned.’ He went to open the passenger door. ‘Please to get in.’

Gina wiped away the trickle of blood with her handkerchief before doing so. The soft leather seat cocooned her, its contours designed to hold the body in position. Definitely needed, she thought, as Cesare set the car into motion again with a force that caused the rear wheels to spin. She judged him around Lucius’s age, which made him Donata’s senior by fifteen years, yet the two of them appeared to be on a par when it came to road sense.

They rounded the final bend to come to a further screeching stop outside the house. Switching off the engine, Cesare got swiftly from the car to help Gina from the seat she was struggling to vacate without having her skirt ride up any further than it already had.

‘I think I can manage, thanks,’ she said drily when he made to assist her up the steps. ‘A damp flannel, and I’ll be as good as new!’

‘You are bleeding!’ exclaimed Lucius from the doorway, startling her because she hadn’t seen him arrive. ‘What happened to you?’

‘I slipped and fell on the drive.’ Gina saw no reason to go into greater detail. ‘Signor Traetta was kind enough to give me a lift.’

‘Cesare,’ urged the man at her back. ‘You must call me Cesare.’

She gave him a brief smile. ‘Cesare, then.’ To Lucius she said, ‘I’ll go and clean myself up.’

‘The necessary materials will be brought to you.’ he said. ‘We must be sure no foreign substances remain in the wound.’

‘Of course.’ Gina was fast tiring of the fuss. ‘I can cope.’

‘I am sure of it.’ His tone was dry. ‘Your self-sufficiency does you credit. You will, however, wait for assistance in this matter.’

He took her agreement for granted, indicating that she precede him into the house. Gina battened down her instincts and meekly obeyed. ‘I’m sure you know best,’ she murmured in passing, tongue tucked firmly in cheek.

The dress was not only dirty but torn at the hem, she found on reaching her room. Not beyond repair, she supposed, examining the rip, though she was no expert needle-woman. At any rate, she had plenty of other things to change into, so it could wait until she got home.

Despite instructions, she ran hot water in the bathroom basin and began cleaning off the worst of the mess. The graze was quite extensive, with tiny pieces of gravel embedded in the shredded flesh. Concentrating on extracting them, she was taken unawares when Lucius entered the room bearing a first-aid box.

‘You were to wait until I brought this!’ he exclaimed.

Seated on a padded stool, her foot raised on the bath edge to enable her to see what she was doing, Gina resisted the urge to pull down the skirt she had raised to mid thigh.

‘I hardly expected you to bring it up yourself,’ she said lamely.

Dark brows rose. ‘You think such a task beneath me?’

‘Well, no, not exactly. I just took it…’ She left the sentence unfinished, holding out her hand for the box. ‘It’s very good of you, anyway.’

Lucius made no attempt to hand it over. Placing it on the long marble surface into which the double basins were set, he seized soap from the dish and washed his hands. Gina watched in silence, reminded that she should have done the same before attempting to touch the graze at all.

His presence in the confines of the bathroom—spacious though it was—made her nervous. She found it difficult to control the quivering in her limbs when he took a pair of tweezers from the box and sat down on the bath edge to start work on the gravel.

The hand he slid about the back of her calf to hold her leg still was warm and firm against her skin, his fingers long and supple, the nails smoothly trimmed; she could imagine the way they would feel on her body—the sensual caresses. Her nipples were peaking at the very notion.

Stop it! she told herself harshly, ashamed of the sheer carnality of her thoughts. It might be a long-established fact that women were as capable as men of enjoying sex without love, but she had never followed the trend. From her mid teens she had determined not to settle for anything less than the real thing: the kind of love her mother had known for Giovanni Carandente. The possibility that Lucius could be her father’s nephew was enough on its own to prohibit any notion she might have of relaxing her ideals.

‘I am sorry if I hurt you,’ Lucius apologised as her leg jumped beneath his hands. ‘There are only a few more small pieces to come, and then we are finished but for the antiseptic.’

‘No problem,’ she assured him. ‘You’re being very gentle. It’s quite a mess, isn’t it? I didn’t realise how deep some of the bits had gone.’

‘Thankfully, there should be no lasting scars,’ he said without looking up from his task. ‘It would be a pity to mar such a lovely leg.’

‘Don’t you ever stop?’ she asked with a sharpness she hadn’t intended.

This time he did look up, expression quizzical. ‘You find my admiration irksome?’

Gina drew a steadying breath. ‘I find it a little too…practised, that’s all.’

‘Ah, I see. You think I express the same sentiments to all women.’ The dancing light was in his eyes again. ‘Not so.’

He was hardly going to admit it, Gina told herself as he turned his attention once more to her knee. Not that it made any difference.

The antiseptic stung like crazy, but Lucius made no concessions. He finished the dressing with an expertly applied bandage.

‘You may remove the dressing tomorrow to allow the healing tissue to form,’ he said, relinquishing his hold on her at last.

Gina got to her feet to try a somewhat stiff-legged step, pulling a face at her reflection in the mirrored wall. ‘I haven’t had a bandaged knee since I was eight!’

‘Long skirts, or the trousers women everywhere appear to have adopted, will cover your embarrassment.’

The dry tone drew her eyes to the olive-skinned face reflected in the mirror. ‘You disapprove of the trend?’ she asked lightly.

‘I prefer a woman to dress as a woman,’ he confirmed. ‘As most men would say if asked.’

‘Donata wears them,’ Gina felt bound to point out, stung a little by the implied criticism. ‘With that attitude, I’m surprised you allow it—to say nothing of the rest!’

‘I said preference not outright rule,’ came the steady response. ‘Assuming that by the “rest” you refer to the state of my sister’s hair, no amount of castigation can hasten the regrowth.’

Gina turned impulsively to face him, ashamed of the dig. ‘I spoke out of turn. You said yesterday that she’d recently returned from school?’

The smile was brief and lacking in humour. ‘She was despatched from her school for behaviour no reputable establishment could tolerate.’

‘Not just for a haircut, surely!’

‘A minor transgression compared with breaking out of the school in order to attend a nightclub in the nearby town. Not for the first time it appears. This time she was caught by the police when they raided the place in search of drugs.’

Gina gazed at him in dismay. ‘You’re not saying Donata was actually taking them?’

‘She assures me not.’

‘You do believe her?’

Lucius lifted his shoulders, mouth wry. ‘I hardly know what to believe. I bitterly regret allowing her to persuade me into sending her to Switzerland at all. Her education was complete enough without this “finishing” she was so anxious to acquire.’

‘She can’t have been the only one to kick over the traces,’ Gina ventured.

‘If by that you mean was she alone on the night in question, the answer is no. There were two others caught with her. One American girl, one English. They too were despatched to their respective homes.’

‘I see.’ Silly as it seemed, Gina felt like apologising for the part the English girl had played. ‘I don’t suppose it helps much.’

‘No,’ Lucius agreed. ‘I am still left with the problem of a sister turned insurgent. While she resides here at Cotone I can demand that she obeys certain rules of conduct, but there are limits to the penalties I can impose should she choose to defy me.’

‘I can appreciate that,’ Gina said carefully. ‘It isn’t as if she’s a child any more.’

‘She is eighteen years of age,’ he advised on a harder note. ‘By now she should be looking towards marriage and children of her own!’

‘Marriage isn’t the be all and end all of every woman’s ambition.’ Gina felt moved to protest, turning a deaf ear to the faint, dissenting voice at the back of her mind.

The dark eyes regarded her with a certain scepticism in their depths. ‘You intend to stay single all your life?’

‘I didn’t say that. It depends whether I meet a man I want to marry.’

‘And whom, of course, also wishes to marry you.’

‘Well, obviously.’ The mockery, mild though it was, stirred her to like response. ‘Two hearts entwined for all eternity! Worth waiting for, wouldn’t you say?’

‘The heart has only a part to play,’ he said. ‘The body and mind also have need of sustenance. The woman I myself marry must be capable of satisfying every part of me.’

‘Typical male arrogance!’ She exploded, driven beyond endurance by the sheer complacency of the statement. ‘It would serve you right if…’ She broke off, seeing the sparkle of laughter dawn and realising she’d been deliberately goaded. ‘Serve you right if you were left high and dry!’ she finished ruefully. ‘Not that it’s likely, I admit.’

The sparkle grew. ‘You acknowledge me a man difficult for any woman to resist?’

‘I acknowledge you a man with a lot more than just looks going for him, Count Carandente,’ she said with delicate emphasis.

If she had been aiming to fetch him down a peg or two, she failed dismally. His shrug made light of the dig. ‘Despite Ottavia’s claim, the woman I marry will not carry the title of Contessa because she will be no more entitled to do so in reality than anyone in the last few hundred years. As I told you this morning, it is simply a status symbol. One for which I have little use myself.

‘Which leaves me,’ he went on with a wicked gleam, ‘with just the looks you spoke of going for me. The looks that warm both your English and your Italian blood to a point where the differences no longer have bearing. Or would you still try to deny what lies between us, cara?’

The pithy response that trembled on her lips as he moved purposefully towards her was rejected as more likely to inflame than defuse the situation. What was she doing indulging in the kind of repartee scheduled to bring this very situation about to start with? she asked herself.

‘Whatever you have in mind, you can forget it!’ she said with what certainty she could muster, resisting any urge to try fighting him off physically as he drew her to him. ‘I already told you, I’m not playing!’

‘Words! Just words!’ He put a forefinger beneath her chin to lift it, bending his head to touch his lips to hers with a delicacy that robbed her of any will to resist.

She was conscious of nothing but sensation as he kissed her: the pounding of her blood in her ears, the warmth spreading from the very centre of her body, the growing weakness in her lower limbs urging her to give way to the need rising so suddenly and fiercely in her. He drew her closer, moulding her to the contours of his masculine shape—making her aware of his own arousal in a manner that inflamed her even further. The words he murmured against her lips transcended all language barriers.

This man might be a close relative, came the desperate reminder, pulling her up as nothing else could have done right then.

‘That’s enough,’ she got out, jerking away from him. ‘In fact, it’s more than enough!’

Anticipating at the very least a show of frustrated anger at her withdrawal from what must have appeared a near foregone conclusion, she was taken totally aback when Lucius simply laughed and shook his head.

‘I think not, for either of us, but there is no haste. You will find Cesare and myself on the terrace should you care to join us for refreshment. He will be anxious to know that you suffered no long-lasting injury.’

He gathered the items he had taken from the first-aid box, and departed, leaving Gina standing there feeling all kinds of an idiot. Aroused he might have been, but he was obviously more than capable of controlling it. He certainly wouldn’t demean himself by insisting on satisfaction, however encouraged to believe it forthcoming.

Telling him the truth now, and discovering that there was indeed a close blood relationship, could only prove embarrassing for them both. Probably the best thing she could do was forget the whole affair and head for home as soon as her car was repaired.

And spend the rest of her life wondering, came the thought. She was Giovanni Carandente’s daughter. Having finally started on the quest, she had to see it through to the end, no matter what. There must be some way of finding out if this really was his place of origin that didn’t involve giving herself away.

Her inclination was to spend the rest of the morning right here in her room, but that was no way for a guest to behave. With the bandage in mind, she donned a long, sarong-type skirt along with a silky vest, and slid her feet into a pair of thonged sandals. Not exactly haute couture, but it served the purpose.

Hair loose about her shoulders, face free of make-up apart from a dash of lipstick, she hid behind a pair of tortoiseshell sunglasses on going out to the terrace. Not just Lucius and Cesare to face, she saw, but Ottavia and Donata into the bargain, the former now fully and beautifully dressed.

Wearing a pair of deck trousers and a T-shirt, her hair raked through with a careless hand, Donata looked hardly less of the teenage rebel than she had in the leather outfit yesterday. She viewed Gina’s arrival with a marked lack of enthusiasm.

Not so, Cesare, who leapt to see her seated with a solicitude that went down like a lead balloon with both sisters.

‘Your leg must be supported,’ he urged, raising the chair’s built-in foot rest for her. ‘You are in much pain?’

‘None at all,’ Gina assured him, submitting to his ministrations only because it was marginally less awkward than asking him to desist.

‘I ordered fresh orange juice for you,’ said Lucius as one of the younger male staff members came from the house bearing a loaded tray. ‘It can, of course, be replaced by something stronger if you prefer.’

‘Thanks, but this is just what I need,’ Gina assured him as the tall, ice-cool glass was set before her. She seized on it gratefully, sending a good quarter of the contents down her throat in one gulp.

‘Iced drinks should be sipped so that the stomach suffers no sudden shock,’ commented Donata with a certain malice. ‘Isn’t that so, Lucius?’

‘Advisable, perhaps,’ he agreed easily. ‘If you are finding the heat overpowering we can move to a cooler part of the terrace,’ he said to Gina herself.

The only heat she found overpowering was the kind he generated, came the fleeting thought. ‘I find it no problem at all,’ she assured him. ‘I always did enjoy the sun.’

‘What little you see of it in England.’

‘Oh, we have our good days,’ she returned lightly. ‘Sometimes several together. You’ve visited my country?’

‘Never for any length of time.’

‘Tomorrow is the Palio,’ Cesare put in with an air of being left too long on the sidelines. ‘I have grandstand seats long-reserved should anyone care to share them.’

‘Si!’ declared Donata before anyone else could speak. ‘Vorrei andare!’

Lucius said something in the same language, wiping the sudden animation from her face. Pushing back her chair, she got jerkily to her feet and stalked off, mutiny in every line of her body.

‘What exactly is the Palio?’ asked Gina in the following pause, feeling a need for someone to say something.

It was Cesare who answered. ‘A horse race run twice a year between Siena’s contrade. Riders must circuit the Piazza del Campo three times without the benefit of saddles.’

‘A bareback race!’ Gina did her best to sound enthused.

‘A little more than just that,’ said Lucius. ‘The city’s seventeen districts compete for a silk banner in honour of the Virgin. A tradition begun many centuries ago. The race itself lasts no more than a minute or two, but the pageantry is day long. You might enjoy it.’

‘You were only there the one time yourself that I recall,’ said Cesare. ‘Why do we not all of us attend together?’

‘It has become a tourist spectacle,’ declared Ottavia disdainfully. ‘I have no desire to be part of it. Nor, I am sure, will Marcello.’

‘Then, perhaps the three of us,’ he suggested, undeterred. ‘Gina cannot be allowed to miss such an event.’

If Lucius refused too, it would be down to the two of them next, Gina surmised, not at all sure she would want to spend a whole day in Cesare’s company. Equal though he appeared to be in age to her host, he lacked the maturity that was an intrinsic part of Lucius’s appeal.

‘The three of us, then,’ Lucius agreed, to her relief. ‘Providing that I drive us there. I would prefer that we arrive without mishap.’

Cesare laughed, not in the least put out. ‘You have so little faith in me, amico, but I accept your offer.’

It had been an ultimatum not an offer, but Lucius obviously wasn’t about to start splitting hairs. Gina found herself wishing it was just going to be the two of them taking the trip. Safer this way though, she acknowledged ruefully. With Cesare around to act as chaperon, there would be no repeat of this morning’s assault on her senses. Whichever way things might turn out, she was in no position to risk that kind of involvement.

CHAPTER THREE

CESARE took his departure shortly afterwards, accompanied by Lucius who wished to discuss some obviously private matter with him. Left alone with Ottavia, Gina made an effort to open a conversation, but soon gave up when her overtures failed to draw more than the briefest of replies.

‘I think I’ll go and find that cooler spot Lucius mentioned,’ she said at length, getting to her feet. ‘It’s too hot to even think straight out here.’

The older woman made no reply at all to that; Gina hadn’t really expected one. She could understand Donata’s attitude regarding her presence in the house, but what axe did Ottavia have to grind?

There had been neither sight nor mention of Cornelia so far this morning. Either she was a late riser, or had gone out, Gina surmised. It still needed half an hour or so to noon. Lunch, she imagined, wouldn’t be served much before one-thirty or even two. Not that she was hungry yet, but there was a lot of day still to get through.

The coolest place at this hour was going to be indoors. She went in via the glass doors to the salotto, welcoming the immediate flow of cooler air from the overhead fans. Reaching the hall, she stood for a moment wondering in which direction to head. Of the rooms that opened off it, she had so far only seen the one she had just come through and the library where she had first run into Lucius.

Feeling a bit of an intruder still, she opened a door under the right wing of the staircase, looking in on a small room that appeared at first glance to be something of a depository for unwanted items of furniture, with little in the way of style about it.

About to close the door again, she paused as her eye caught a reflection in the mirror almost directly opposite. Eyes closed, Donata was seated in a high-backed chair that concealed her from casual observation. From the look of her, she had been crying.

It was likely that her company would be far from welcome, Gina reckoned, but she found herself stepping quietly into the room and easing the door to again regardless. What she was going to say or do she had no clear idea.

The floor in here was laid in parquetry, the design largely obscured by the heavy pieces of furniture. Donata opened her eyes at the sound of footsteps, coming jerkily to her feet as she registered the identity of the intruder.

‘Leave me alone!’ she urged. ‘You have no right to be here!’

Still not at all certain just what it was she hoped to achieve, Gina halted a short distance away. ‘I know I haven’t’ she said, ‘but, as I am, supposing we bury the hatchet?’

Distracted by the unfamiliar phrase, Donata drew her brows together. ‘Bury the hatchet?’

‘It means we forget about the accident and start again. I’d rather be your friend than your enemy.’

A variety of expressions chased across the younger girl’s face as she gazed in silence for a moment or two. When she did finally speak, the belligerence seemed almost forced. ‘Why should you wish to be my friend?’

Why indeed? Gina asked herself, answering the question in the same breath: because in all probability they shared the same genes—or some of them, at any rate.

‘I suppose I just don’t like being disliked by anyone,’ she said on a semi-jocular note. ‘Not that I’m having much success where your sister’s concerned either.’

‘Ottavia has little concern for anyone but herself,’ declared Donata with unconcealed animosity. ‘What she would most like is to be in Lucius’s place.’

Gina could imagine. As padrone, Lucius would have total control of all Carandente affairs. Playing second fiddle wouldn’t come easy to a woman of Ottavia’s temperament. She wondered fleetingly what had prompted her to marry a man who appeared to be little more than an employee of the estate. It could hardly have been for lack of any other choice.

‘You must miss your father,’ she said softly, changing tack. ‘How long is it since you lost him?’

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