Behind the Castello Doors (12 page)

Beth’s stomach dipped at his words which were a stark reminder that the length of her stay at the castle was determined by when the DNA test could be done. If Mel had been wrong and Cesario wasn’t Sophie’s father she would take the baby back to England. But if Sophie was his—what would happen then? she wondered fearfully.

Desperate for something to say, she glanced around the room at the many paintings that lined the walls. One portrait in particular, of a stern-faced man dressed in modern-day clothes, caught her attention.

‘My father,’ Cesario told her, following her gaze.

‘He looks …’ Beth hesitated, wishing she had not started the conversation. ‘Very aristocratic.’

‘He was a cold, remote man.’ Cesario stared at the portrait. ‘I was terrified of him when I was a child. He was never physically violent towards me,’ he explained, when Beth looked horrified, ‘but there are other forms of cruelty. He believed that Piras men should never feel emotions and certainly never reveal them.’

He gave a sardonic laugh. ‘You see the pennant hanging on the wall, decorated with the family crest of two swords? The translation of my family motto is “Victory and Power are All”. For my father the Piras name and the pursuit of power were all he cared about, and he was determined to instil those values into me.’

‘What about your mother?’ Beth asked, trying to hide her shock at Cesario’s revelations about his upbringing by the man whose austere features were staring down at her from above the fireplace. Teodoro had told her that Cesario’s father had died several years ago, but the butler had not mentioned his mother. ‘Her portrait isn’t in here,’ she noted, realising that the only paintings of women hanging in the dining room were probably a few hundred years old.

‘No, my father had every trace of her removed from the castle when she ended their marriage. When I was seven years old I came home from boarding school, excited at the prospect of seeing her. But she had gone without even saying goodbye and I never saw her again.’

‘Didn’t she ever visit you, or invite you to her new home?’

He shook his head. ‘My father paid her a large sum of money in return for her agreement to sign sole custody of me over to him. When I asked my father if I could see her
he told me what he had done, and I swear he took pleasure in explaining that my mother had preferred money to her only child.’ His mouth curled into a mirthless smile. ‘It was a salutary life lesson,’ he said harshly.

Beneath his sardonic tone Beth glimpsed the hurt young boy he had once been. She glanced at the portrait of his grim-faced father and her heart softened towards Cesario. Rejection by a parent was something she had experienced too, and she wondered if, like her, Cesario found it hard to trust. Some parents, like her mother, were wonderful role models, she mused. But others, like her father and both of Cesario’s parents, could cause untold harm to a child’s emotional stability.

‘Not all women are like that,’ she said quietly. ‘Not all women think money is more important than a loving relationship.’

‘Is that so?’ Cesario drawled cynically, casting his mind over past affairs he’d had with women who had regarded his wealth as his main attraction. Yet he knew there was some truth in Beth’s words. He had never considered offering to pay Raffaella off, as his father had done his mother. Raffaella had loved Nicolo, but her desperate bid to snatch him from the castle had resulted in tragedy.

The peal of the castle’s internal phone shattered the tense silence that had fallen in the dining room. Cesario stood up and strode across the room to answer it. ‘Sophie is awake,’ he relayed a few moments later. ‘Carlotta can’t settle her.’

‘She’s due a feed.’ Beth glanced at her watch and was shocked to see how late it was. The hours she’d spent with Cesario had flown by, and even more startling was the realisation that she had enjoyed his company. She felt guilty
that she had forgotten about Sophie’s 11:00 p.m. feed and jumped up from the table.

Cesario opened the door and followed her out of the dining room. ‘I’ll escort you up to the nursery. I doubt you can remember the way yet through the rabbit warren of corridors.’

Sophie’s cries could be heard as they walked along the first-floor landing. As soon as they reached the nursery Beth hurried over to the cot and lifted the red-faced, sobbing baby into her arms.

‘It’s all right, sweetheart, I’m here now,’ she soothed, her guilt that she had left Sophie again for a few hours increasing when she discovered that the baby’s sleepsuit was wet. She deftly stripped off the wet suit, changed Sophie’s nappy and popped her into clean nightwear, working quickly while the baby yelled indignantly at having to wait for her milk.

‘Is her formula ready?’ Cesario queried.

‘No.’ Beth groaned. ‘I need to make up a couple of feeds for the night.’

‘Let me take her while you prepare her bottle.’

As he cradled Sophie against his chest Cesario felt a strange sensation inside him, as if tight bindings around his heart were slowly unravelling. He did not know if she was his child but it did not seem important. All that mattered was that he comforted her, and he murmured to her in Italian the lullaby
‘Stella Stellina’
—Star, Little Star—that he had often sung to his son.

Sophie stopped crying and focused her big brown eyes on him. If she was his daughter he would love her as he had loved Nicolo, Cesario vowed fiercely. But what would he do about Sophie’s guardian? Beth had convinced him with her utter devotion to the baby that she loved Sophie
as much as if she were her own child. It would not be fair to send her away.

Perhaps he could employ her as Sophie’s nanny? he brooded. That way they could both be part of the baby’s life. But he did not relish the idea of Beth living at the castle while he was plagued by this damnable fascination with her. She had only been here for two days and he was racked with an unprecedented hunger to possess her slender body.

In many ways it would be easier if Sophie was not his. That way he could send Beth back to England with a clear conscience and get on with his life. No doubt he would soon forget her once she could no longer cast her siren spell over him with her slanting green eyes, he thought self-derisively.

The sound of her voice dragged him from his thoughts. ‘I knew you had a magic touch,’ she said as she emerged from the small kitchen area adjoining the nursery, holding a bottle of baby formula. ‘Nothing normally pacifies Sophie when she’s due a feed.’

The way Sophie responded to Cesario was uncanny, Beth thought when he carefully transferred the baby into her arms and she settled down in a chair to feed her. Was it possible that she somehow sensed Cesario was her father? Was it blood calling to blood? And if that was true then surely Sophie belonged here at the Castello del Falco.

Sophie was almost asleep by the time she had finished her milk, and after laying her in the cot Beth walked over to the window where Cesario was standing, looking out at the impenetrable darkness that cloaked the castle and the surrounding mountains.

‘I think she’ll settle now—until she wakes for her early-morning feed,’ she murmured, feeling her heart give a
little flip when she glanced at him and found that he had turned his head and he was watching her with an indefinable expression in his grey eyes.

‘You should get to bed too, after your eventful day. I hear you’ve sweet-talked Filomena into allowing your dog to sleep in her kitchen?’

She flushed and gave him an anxious look, relieved to see amusement in his eyes rather than annoyance. ‘Harry was lonely on his own in the stables.’

Dark brows winged upwards. ‘Harry?’

‘I had to call him something,’ Beth said defensively. ‘When I was a little girl we had a dog called Harry who I loved to bits. But my father said he had enough to do looking after my mother and he sold him.’ She sighed. ‘Filomena says her sister might give Harry a home. I won’t be able to take him back to England with me, and it wouldn’t be fair to keep a dog in a one-bedroom flat on the fifth floor.’

‘It doesn’t sound an ideal place to bring up a child, either.’

She bit her lip. ‘No, it isn’t. If it turns out that Sophie is not your child, I’ll apply to the local council to see if we can be rehoused. Somewhere with a garden for her to play in would be nice.’ She thought of the beautiful castle gardens and imagined Sophie as a toddler, running across the grass. ‘But there’s a long waiting list for housing in London.’

‘Agreeing to be the guardian of your friend’s baby was a huge undertaking,’ Cesario said brusquely. ‘You are young and you have your whole life ahead of you—a career, relationships. You have sacrificed the independent life you could have had to bring up another woman’s child.’

‘My life is different, certainly, but I don’t regard having
Sophie a sacrifice. I love her more than anything, and I intend to do everything I can to give her a happy childhood.’

Beth gave a faintly wistful smile. ‘When I was a little girl I dreamed of being a ballerina. I was desperate to go to ballet classes like the other girls at school, but Mum couldn’t afford it—especially after my father left us. When Sophie is older I want her to have the opportunity to do everything she wants to do.’

Cesario dragged his gaze from Beth’s earnest face and resumed his contemplation of the night sky, where silver stars were now pinpricking the velvet blackness.

‘You have a ridiculously soft heart, Beth Granger,’ he said roughly. He paused. ‘So who planted Alicia Devington’s diamond earrings in your room?’

Beth gave him a startled look. In the darkened nursery his profile seemed all angles and planes, and the glimmering moonlight flickering over his scar made him look as harsh and unyielding as his ancestors who had once strode along the battlements of the Castello del Falco.

She swallowed, before replying shakily, ‘Hugo Devington.’

His head swivelled round and he pierced her with an intent stare. ‘Why would Hugo Devington have wanted you to appear to be a thief?’

‘Because he needed a reason to sack me after I’d threatened to—’ She broke off and stared down at her fingers as she twisted them together, sickened by unpleasant memories that she had spent the past six months trying to forget. She sensed Cesario’s impatience and forced herself to continue. ‘After I threatened to tell Mrs Devington that her husband had tried to. assault me.’

‘What do you mean by assault?’

Colour flared on her cheeks. ‘Sexually,’ she muttered.

‘
Santa Madre!
You mean he raped you?’ Cesario felt a violent urge to find Hugo Devington and tear him limb from limb.

‘No—it didn’t get that far. At first he just used to make comments about my body, and if I ever happened to be alone in a room with him he would stand too close and.’ her blush deepened ‘.pat me on the bottom, but then make a joke of it.’

She sighed. ‘I didn’t know what to do, so I just tried to keep out of his way. But then one evening, when Mrs Devington was out, he called me into his study, saying he wanted to discuss one of his sons.’ She unconsciously twisted her fingers tighter together, unaware that Cesario had noted the betraying sign of her distress. ‘Well, to cut a long story short, he tried to kiss me. I pushed him away, of course, and then he got angry and grabbed me. He put his hand up my skirt and tried to … touch me. I managed to fight him off, but he came after me, and so I threatened that I would tell his wife what he had done. I hoped that would be the end of it—that he wouldn’t try anything again—but the next day Mrs Devington’s earrings went missing, and when she searched the house she found them in my room. She wanted to call the police and have me arrested, but Hugo stopped her and said it would be better if I was sacked and left Devington Hall immediately.’

‘Why didn’t
you
insist that the police were called?’ Cesario demanded. ‘You hadn’t stolen the earrings, so why didn’t you try to defend yourself? Why didn’t you report to the police that Devington had sexually assaulted you?’

‘I had no proof. No one would have believed my word over that of a famous barrister.
You
didn’t believe me,’ she reminded him.

‘Last night I wasn’t aware of all the facts.’ He looked uncomfortable. ‘I owe you an apology. I’d just received a report from my private investigator and I had no reason not to believe that what he’d heard about you was true.’

Beth bit her lip. ‘Why do you believe me now? I could be lying.’

Cesario studied her elfin features. Her pale, almost translucent skin was bare of make-up and her silky brown hair was beautifully natural. There was no artifice about her, and he wondered with a jolt if her virginal air could also be real.

‘You wear your honesty like a badge,’ he said roughly. ‘Your emotions are transparent—your love for Sophie, your kindness to an injured animal. I don’t think you are capable of lying either by word or action.’

His voice deepened, and the seductive huskiness in his tone sent a quiver through Beth. He was watching her through half-closed lids and the searing intensity of his gaze made her catch her breath.

‘Your body did not lie when I kissed you. I felt the sweet urgency of your response.’ He framed her face with his hands and gently stroked her hair behind her ears before he traced the fragile line of her jaw. ‘You are as much a prisoner of this damnable desire that burns between us as I am,
mia bella.
’

She could not deny it—not when his mouth was so close to hers that his warm breath whispered across her lips. She wanted him to kiss her so desperately that her whole body trembled, and when he closed the few inches that separated his mouth from hers a soft sigh escaped her and she parted her lips with an innocent eagerness that caused Cesario’s gut to clench.

It was different from when he had kissed her in the rain.
He
was different … gentler; his hands shook a little as he slid them from her face to her throat and then traced the delicate line of her collarbone. He brushed his mouth over hers in a sensual tasting with an underlying tenderness that she found utterly beguiling. Slowly, like a flower unfurling in response to sunlight, she began to kiss him back, tentatively at first. But at his low groan of approval she grew bolder and parted her mouth so that he could explore her with his tongue.