she abandoned any pretence of innocence.
'You can make as many accusations as you wish,
Lorenzo, but you cannot prove any of them,' she
taunted him.
'Perhaps not in a court of law, but that does not
alter their veracity. My grandmother’s notary has told
me that when she summoned him to her bedside in
order to alter her will, she confided to him the reason
that she was doing so.'
Lorenzo saw the look of unashamed triumph in
Caterina’s eyes.
'Admit it, Lorenzo. I have bested you. If you want
the Castillo — and we both know that you do — then
you will have to marry me. You have no other
choice.' She laughed, throwing back her head to expose
the olive length of her throat, and Lorenzo had
a savage impulse to close his hands around it and
squeeze the laughter from her it. He did want the
Castillo. He wanted it very badly. And he was determined
to have it. And he was equally determined that
he was not going to be trapped into marrying
Caterina.
'You told my grandmother I loved you and wanted
to make you my wife. You told her that the fact that
you were so newly widowed, and that your husband
Gino was my cousin, meant that society would frown
upon an immediate marriage between us. And you
told her you were afraid my passion would overwhelm
me and that I would marry you anyway and
thus bring disgrace upon myself, didn’t you?' he accused
her. 'You knew how na..ve my grandmother
was, how ignorant of modern mores. You tricked her
into believing you were confiding in her out of concern
for me. You told her you didn’t know what to
do or how you could protect me. Then you ''helped''
her to come up with the solution of changing her will,
so that instead of inheriting the Castillo from her — as
her previous will had stated — I would only inherit it
if I was married within six weeks of her death. As
you told her, everyone knows how important to me
the Castillo is. And then, as though that were not
enough, you conceived the added inducement of persuading
her to add that if I did not marry within those
six weeks, you would inherit the Castillo. You led her
to believe that in making those changes she was enabling
me to marry you, because I could say I was
fulfilling the terms of her will rather than following
the dictates of my heart.'
'You can’t prove any of that.' She shrugged contemptuously.
Lorenzo knew that what she had said was true.
'As I’ve already told you, Nonna confided her
thoughts to her notary,' he continued acidly. 'Unfortunately,
by the time he managed to alert me to what
was going on, it was too late.'
'Much too late — for you.' Caterina smirked at him.
'So you admit it?'
'So what if I do? You can’t prove it,' Caterina repeated.
'And even if you could, what good would it
do?'
'Let me make this clear to you, Caterina. No matter
what my grandmother has written in her will, you will
never become my wife. You are the last woman I
would want to give my name to.'
Caterina laughed. 'You have no choice.'
Lorenzo had a reputation for being a formidable
and ruthless adversary. He was the kind of man other
men both respected and feared — the kind of man
women dreamed excitedly of enticing into their beds.
He was also a superb male animal, strikingly handsome,
with a hormone-unleashing combination of arrogance
and a predatory, very dangerous male sexuality—
a sexuality that he wore as easily as a panther
wore its coat. He was not just a prize, but perhaps the
most coveted prize amongst the very best of Italy’s
most eligible and wealthy men. All through his twenties
gossip columns had seethed with excited interest,
trying to guess which high-born young woman he
would make his duchess. It certainly wasn’t from any
lack of willing partners to share his wealth and his
title, along with enjoying the sexual pleasure of mating
with such a vigorously sensual man, that he had
escaped into his thirties without making any kind of
formal commitment to the women who had pursued
him.
Lorenzo looked at his late cousin’s wife. He despised
and loathed her. But then, he despised most
women. From what he had experienced of them they
were all willing to give him whatever he wanted because
of what he had, what was outside the inner him:
wealth, a title, and a handsome male body. What he
actually was was of no interest to them. His thoughts,
his beliefs, all that went to make up the man who was
Lorenzo d’Este didn’t matter to them anywhere near
so much as his money and his social position.
'You have no choice, Lorenzo,' Caterina repeated
softly. 'If you want the Castillo you have to marry
me.'
Lorenzo permitted his mouth to curl in sardonic
disdain.
