good enough for Lorenzo. He wanted his mother to
come back…he even pleaded with her to come back.
Gino told me. He adored her. They both did—
Lorenzo and his father. She could do no wrong. To
them she was a madonna. I have told Lorenzo many
times that it is crazy for him to still brood now on
what happened when he was a child. Women leave
their husbands and their children all the time, and
Lorenzo will leave your bed for mine if you are fool
enough to marry him,' she warned Jodie. 'I shall
make sure of it. And I promise you, when I do, he
will not be able to resist me.'
Just as John had not been able to resist Louise.
What was it about women like Louise and Caterina
that made men so vulnerable to them and so impervious
to their selfishness?
For a woman who professed to love Lorenzo as
much as Caterina was doing, Jodie reflected, she
didn’t seem to have very much sympathy with him.
For a seven-year-old boy to lose the mother he loved
as intensely as Caterina had said Lorenzo did must
have had a deeply psychological effect on him. And
if he had actually loved Caterina, her marriage to his
cousin must surely have intensified his belief that
women were not to be trusted, and that they were
amoral, shallow and selfish cheats.
What am I doing? Jodie asked herself wryly. Surely
she wasn’t actually feeling sympathy for Lorenzo?
As she watched Caterina walk away, Jodie told herself
that it was a good job she was not marrying
Lorenzo for love.
Jodie turned to look at the granite hulk of the Castillo
walls. She was alone in the garden now, Caterina apparently
having grown tired of issuing her dark warnings.
She would not have entered an unwanted marriage
in order to possess such a place, Jodie thought
wryly, but she was not Lorenzo. It must be a matter
of family pride to him that he was its master.
She tensed as she heard footsteps on the gravel,
recognising them immediately as Lorenzo’s. A tiny
feathering of sensation started to uncurl slowly inside
her: a potent blend of danger, excitement, and challenge
pumped intoxicatingly throughout her whole
body by the jerky, speeded-up bursts of her heartbeat.
It was reassuring to compare what she was feeling
now with the emotions and sensations she had felt
when she had first met John. The two reactions had
nothing in common, and therefore this feeling she had
now was not a sign that she was in any way attracted
to Lorenzo.
'I saw Caterina speaking with you earlier. Tell me
what she was saying.'
It was typical of him, of course, that he should not
only make such a demand but actually expect it to be
met — as though he had the right to question her, and
also to be answered.
Jodie answered him as bluntly. 'She told me that
you were lovers.'
'And what else?' he demanded, refusing to react.
Jodie shrugged her shoulders. 'Only that you would
do anything to gain possession of the Castillo — but
then I already knew that. And that your mother deserted
you and your father when you were a small
child — which of course I did not.'
Now she had the reaction she had not had before.
Immediately Lorenzo’s expression hardened. 'My
childhood is in the past and has no bearing on either
the present or the future.'
He was wrong about that, Jodie decided. It was
obvious from the way he was reacting that his childhood
held painful issues which had never been resolved.
'How is your leg? I noticed that you were rubbing
it earlier, when Alfredo was here.'
What had motivated that comment? Concern for
her? Or a deliberate attempt to change the subject?
Jodie knew which she believed was the more likely
reason, but that wasn’t enough to stop her answering
him.
'that’s just a…a habit I have. It doesn’t mean…
My leg’s fine.' She was behaving in as flustered a
manner as though he had paid her some kind of unexpected
compliment, she realised angrily. John’s rejection
might have battered her self-esteem, but it certainly
hadn’t reduced her to the pathetic state where
she was grateful to a man for asking after her health!
But Lorenzo’s comment had reminded her of something
she knew she had to do.
And now was probably a good time to do it, she
thought, since the fading light meant that Lorenzo
wouldn’t be able to see her red face.
'I–I owe you an apology,' she told him abruptly.
'I realise from what Alfredo said that I was wrong to
suggest that you knew nothing about the horrors
of war.'
'You are apologising to me for an error of judgement?'
Jodie risked a quick glance up at him through the
indigo-tinted evening air, and discovered that the
downward curve of his mouth was revealing the same
cynical disbelief she could hear in his voice.
