Kay Thorpe - The Italian Match

‘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.