The Count's Blackmail Bargain (24 page)

He began, ‘Vittoria—’ but she interrupted.

‘Caro, I have good news. A friend of mine has an apartment not far from the Via Veneto, only she has been sent to Paris on business.

‘And I have the key. We can meet there, without danger, whenever we wish.’

She smiled up at him, showing him the tip of her tongue between her lips. ‘And you do wish it, don’t you, carissimo? Because you are not seeing anyone else. I know that. Since you came back from Umbria over a month ago, you have been living like a recluse.

Everyone says so.’

‘Then, I am obliged to everyone for their concern,’ he said icily.

‘Unlike most of them, I have work to do.’

‘But you cannot work all the time, mi amore.’ Her low voice was insinuating. ‘Your body needs exercise as well as your mind. And you cannot have forgotten how good we were together, Alessio mio. I shall never forget, and your Vittoria needs you—so badly.’

He met her gleaming, greedy gaze, and, with a sudden jolt of renewed pain, found himself remembering other eyes. Grey eyes that had smiled up at him in trust, then turned smoky with desire, before shining with astonished rapture as her body had yielded up its last sweet secrets. And all for him alone.

All that warmth and joy—and the small wicked giggle that had entranced him—and which it almost broke his heart to remember.

Laura, he thought with yearning, and sudden passion. Ah, Dio, my Laura—my beloved.

And suddenly Alessio knew what he had to do, just as surely as he’d done when he’d driven back to the villa on that last morning, only to find his plans—his entire future—wrecked by the disaster that had been waiting for him.

He took the hand that was still clutching his sleeve, and kissed it briefly and formally.

‘You flatter me,’ he said with cold civility. ‘But I fear it is impossible to accept your charming invitation. You see, I have fallen deeply in love, and I hope very soon to be married. I am sure you understand. Feel free to tell—everyone. So, goodnight, Vittoria—and goodbye.’

And he strode away, leaving her staring after him, with two ugly spots of colour burning in her face.

It had been raining all day, and the air felt cool, promising a hint of autumn to come as Laura arrived back at the house and went slowly upstairs to her room.

She had been suffering from stomach cramps for most of the evening, and, as the wine bar was quiet, Hattie, the owner, had dosed her with paracetamol and sent her home early.

She didn’t usually have painful periods, but supposed wearily that her symptoms could be caused by stress. Because she still hadn’t found another agency to take her on. Carl had given her a good reference, but prospective employers always wanted to know why she’d left Harman Grace after only three months. And they did not like the answer they were given.

So she was fortunate that Hattie could offer her full-time waitressing. But the money wasn’t good, and there was little to spare once the rent was paid.

Her room felt damp and cheerless as she let herself in, and she shivered a little. She decided a shower might be comforting, but soon discovered that the water was only lukewarm in the small chilly bathroom. She sighed to herself. It seemed she would have to settle for the comfort of a hot-water bottle instead. She put on her elderly flowered cotton pyjamas and her dressing gown, and trailed off to the kitchen, carrying the rubber bag with its Winnie the Pooh cover.

She found Gaynor there ahead of her, taking the coffee jar from the cupboard, the kettle already heating on the stove. She swung round, starting violently, as Laura came in.

‘My God, what are you doing here?’

‘I live here.’ Laura stared at her. ‘Is something wrong?’

‘No, no. But you’re usually so much later than this. I wondered.’

‘It’s that time of the month again.’ Laura grimaced. ‘Hattie let me finish the shift early.’ She held up the hot-water bottle. ‘I just came to fill this.’

‘Oh, hell.’ Gaynor looked dismayed. ‘I mean—what—what a

shame. Poor you.’ She gave Laura a smile that on anyone else would have looked shifty. ‘Well, you go ahead. Your need is greater than mine, so the coffee can wait,’ she added, backing to the door. ‘I mean it—really. I—I’ll check on you later.’

Laura turned to the stove with a mental shrug. There were two beakers on the small counter, she noticed, so clearly her friend had company. But what was there in that to make her so jumpy?

She carefully filled her bottle, and carried it back to her room, pausing first to tap at Gaynor’s closed door and call, ‘The kitchen’s all yours.’

She’d taken two steps into the room before she realised that she was not alone. Or saw who was waiting for her, tall in his elegant charcoal suit, his dark face watchful and unsmiling as he looked at her.

He said quietly, ‘Buonasera.’

She clutched her bottle in front of her as if it were a defensive weapon. ‘Good evening be damned,’ she said raggedly. ‘How did you get in here?’

‘Your friend, who took pity on me when she heard me knocking, told me you had returned, and the door was open. So I came in.’

He paused. ‘It is good to see you again.’

She ignored that. ‘What—what the hell are you doing here?’ she demanded shakily. ‘How did you find me?’

‘The postcards you wrote that day in Besavoro, and I mailed for you. They had addresses on them.’

‘Of all the devious…’ Laura began furiously, then stopped, and took a deep breath. ‘What do you want?’

‘I want you, Laura.’ His voice was quiet. ‘I wish you to return with me to Italy.’

She took a step backwards, glaring at him. ‘Is that why you had me fired—to offer me alternative work as your mistress?’ She lifted her chin. ‘I don’t regard sharing your bed as a good career move, signore. So I suggest you get out of here—and I mean now.’

Alessio’s brows lifted. ‘Is that what you mean?’ he asked with a kind of polite interest. ‘Or what you think you should say?’

‘Don’t play word games,’ she hit back fiercely. ‘And before you ask, by the way, there’s no baby.’

‘So I gather.’ His tone was rueful. ‘Your friend has already informed me I have chosen the wrong time of the month to visit you.’

The hot-water bottle fell to the floor as Laura said hoarsely,

‘Gaynor—said that—and to you?’ She shook her head. ‘Oh, God, I don’t believe it. I—I’ll kill her.’

For the first time, he smiled faintly. ‘Ah, no, I was grateful for the warning, believe me. My friends who are already husbands tell me that sometimes a back rub can help. Would you like me to try?’

She stared at him in outrage, then marched to the door and flung it open. ‘I’d like you to go to hell.’ Her voice shook. ‘Just—leave.’

‘Not without you, carissima.’ Alessio took off his jacket, and tossed it over the back of her armchair, then began to unbutton his waistcoat.

‘Stop,’ Laura said furiously. ‘Stop right there. What do you think you’re doing?’

He smiled at her. ‘It has been a long and interesting day, and it is not over yet. I thought I would make myself comfortable, cara mia.’

‘Not,’ she said, ‘in my flat. And don’t call me that.’

‘Then what shall I say?’ he asked softly. ‘My angel, my beautiful one? Mi adorata? For you are all these things, Laura mia, and more.’

‘No.’ She wanted to stamp in vexation, but remembered just in time that she was barefoot. ‘I hate you. I want you out of my life. I told you so.’

‘Sì,’ he agreed. ‘I am not likely to forget.’

‘Nor did you,’ she threw at him. ‘In fact you wrote a stinking letter to Harman Grace, telling them to sack me as a result.’

‘A letter was certainly written,’ he said. ‘I saw it today. But it did not come from me.’

Her jaw dropped. ‘You—went to the agency.’

‘It was during working hours,’ he explained. ‘I expected you to be there. I hoped you might be more welcoming when others were present. Instead I spoke to your former boss, who eventually showed me this ridiculous forgery.’

‘It was on your notepaper,’ Laura said. ‘Signed by you. He told me.’

‘I replaced my letterheads a few months ago. Those at the villa, I only use as scrap now. Paolo of course would not know this. And his imitation of my signature was a poor one, also.’

She blinked. ‘Paolo? Why should he do such a thing?’

‘He was angry and wished to revenge himself on me—on us both.

And, to an extent, he succeeded.’

‘But—he didn’t care about me—about what had happened.’

‘Ah,’ Alessio said softly. ‘But he cared very much when I knocked him down.’

She gasped. ‘You did that? Why?’

‘It is not important,’ he said in swift dismissal. ‘And his own troubles are mounting rapidly. He now works for Signor Manzone, and I am told his wedding is imminent.’

He paused. ‘And you would have had to give up your job in any case, mi amore,’ he added almost casually. ‘You cannot live in Italy and work in London. The commuting would be too difficult.’

She lifted her chin. ‘I think you must have lost your mind, Count Ramontella. I have no intention of living in Italy.’

He sighed. ‘That makes things difficult. I have already had the statue of Diana removed from the garden, and had drawings commissioned so that we can choose a replacement. Also work has begun on the swimming pool to provide a shallower end until you get more confidence.

‘And Caio is inconsolable without you. He howls regularly outside your room. At times, I have considered joining him.’

‘Caio?’ Laura lifted a dazed hand to her forehead. ‘How does he feature in all this? He’s your aunt’s dog. Is she still at the villa?’

‘No,’ he said with sudden grimness. ‘She is not. She left shortly after you, and I have no wish ever to see her again.

‘But Caio did not wish to go in the car when she departed, and bit Paolo, who tried to make him. Then my aunt unwisely intervened, and he bit her too. She announced she was going to have him put down immediately, so Emilia quite rightly rescued him and brought him to me.’

He smiled at her. ‘But we all know the one he truly loves.’

She said passionately, ‘Stop this—stop it, please. I don’t understand. I don’t know what’s happening. Why you’re talking like this.’

He said gently, ‘If you closed the door, and sat down, I could explain more easily, I think.’

‘I don’t want you to explain.’ Her voice rose almost to a wail. ‘I want you to go. To leave me in peace. It’s cruel of you to come here like this. Saying these things.’

‘Cruel of me to love you, carissima? To wish to make you my wife?’

‘Why should you wish to do that, signore?’ She didn’t look at him.

‘To make it easier for you to go on with your secret affair with that—that woman?’

He came across to her, detached her unresisting fingers from the handle, and closed the door firmly, leaning against it as he looked down at her.

He said quietly, ‘Laura, I did a bad thing, and I cannot defend myself. Nor do I wish to hurt you more than I have done, but I must be honest with you if there is to be any hope for us.

‘I am not having an affair with Vittoria Montecorvo. I never was.

But we had met several times, and she had let me see she was available. After that our paths seemed to cross many times. I think someone must have hinted to my aunt that this was so, and she decided to have me watched.’

Laura stared up at him. ‘Your own aunt would do that?’

He said grimly, ‘You have met her. My father told me once that since childhood she had enjoyed observing other people’s misdemeanours, and discovering their secrets, so that she could use them to gain unpleasant advantages, like a spider keeping dead flies in a web to enjoy later. Oddly, I never thought she would do it to me.

‘Unfortunately, her need for a favour coincided with Vittoria’s brief incursion into my life, and as I did not wish to cause the breakdown of Vittoria’s marriage, or even see her again after my one indiscretion, it seemed I had no choice but to do as I was required, however distasteful.’

He sighed. ‘And then I saw you, Laura, and in that moment everything changed.’ He tried to smile. ‘Do you remember how Petrarch spoke of his Laura? Because you too went from my eyes straight to my heart, mi adorata, and I was lost for ever. Although I did not realise that immediately,’ he added candidly. ‘Which is why my original intentions were not strictly honourable.’

‘No,’ she said in a low voice. ‘I—realised that.’ Lost for ever, she thought. I felt that too.

He took her hand. Held it.

‘You see—I am trying to be truthful,’ he said quietly. ‘I thought that once you belonged to me that everything would be simple.

That I would take you away where my aunt could not reach us, and you would never need to know about that devil’s bargain I had made with her. I even told myself it no longer mattered, because I wanted you for myself—and myself alone. And that justified everything. Only, I soon found it did not.

‘When I realised—that first time—that you were a virgin, it almost destroyed me. Because I knew that you did not deserve to surrender your innocence for such a reason. That I could not—

would not do what my aunt demanded, and to hell with the consequences.’

‘Yet you did—eventually.’ Her voice was small and strained.

‘Mi amore, as I told you, I took you only because I could not live without you any longer. And I thought you felt the same.’ He looked deeply—questioningly—into her eyes. ‘Was I so wrong?’

‘No,’ she admitted, with reluctance. ‘You were—right.’

‘I was also certain that news of the landslide would keep my aunt at bay for another twenty-four hours, at least,’ he went on. ‘And that would give me time.’

‘Time for what?’

‘To tell you everything, mia bella, as I knew I must, if there was to be complete honesty between us. So, I drove back from Besavoro to make my confession, and beg absolution before I asked you to become my wife. But, again, it was too late. Once more, I had underestimated my aunt.

‘And when you looked at me—spoke to me as you did—I thought I had placed myself beyond your forgiveness for ever. That, hurting you as I had done, I could hope for nothing. That I had ruined both our lives.’

He took her other hand. Drew her gently towards him. ‘Is it true, Laura mia? Is all hope gone? Or can you try to forgive me, and let me teach you to love me as I think you were beginning to? As I love you?’ His voice sank to a whisper. ‘Don’t send me away, carissima, and make us both wretched. Try to forgive—and let me stay with you tonight.’