'So why did she make it condition of her will that
you must marry?'
'That was through Caterina’s interference. My
grandmother was a gentle person who thought only
good of others. Caterina seized her chance after Gino
died and managed to convince Nonna that we were
star-crossed lovers and I wanted to marry her. She is
what one might term an adventuress, to whom marriage
to my cousin Gino gave social standing. She
had hoped to raise herself even higher by trapping me
into marriage with her. Money and social position are
all that matter to her.'
Jodie frowned. Her instincts were telling her that
what he was saying was the truth, and that Caterina
had lied to her.
'Caterina knows how important the Castillo is to
me,' Lorenzo continued. 'Gino had told her of my
promise to our grandmother, and she thought she
could use that to force my hand. Fortunately for me,
my grandmother’s notary managed to conceal from
Caterina the fact that he had omitted her name from
the final signed copy of the will, so that it read merely
that I had to marry, instead of stating that I had to
marry Caterina. And, as if the situation weren’t complicated
enough already, she has been encouraging
some Russian syndicate to believe that the Castillo
will be available to buy. They wish to convert it into
a luxury hotel.'
'But why do you come here at night?'
'Because I cannot do so during the day, when
Caterina is here, and because I have a need to commune
with the past, to assure the man who gave his
life to preserve it that I will do my best to fulfil his
dream.' He gave a small shrug. 'At the same time, I
have dreams of my own. I would like to see the
Castillo turned into a rehabilitation centre for the
young victims of war — a place where they can recover
physically and emotionally. I want it to be a
centre for young artists and artisans, gifted craftspeople
who will work on the restoration that is needed
and train their young apprentices to follow in their
footsteps. I want to banish from the Castillo, and from
the lives of young victims of war, at least some of
the shadows and dark places, and to fill them instead
with light and the pleasure of living. The meetings I
have been having in Florence are connected with my
plans for the Castillo. As soon as we are married, and
the Castillo is legally mine, my first and most important
duty is to put in hand the restoration of the paintings.'
Jodie had to blink fiercely to disperse her foolish
tears, her earlier antagonistic suspicions of him swept
away by a sudden surge of admiration.
'It sounds wonderful — a truly noble enterprise,' she
told him huskily, looking up at him, her admiration
warming her eyes.
Lorenzo looked back at her and Jodie caught her
breath as he took a step towards her, quickly disentangling
her gaze from his whilst her heart raced and
thudded.
'Caterina does not think so. She would far rather
the place was sold and my money was hers to do with
as she chooses. She drove my cousin to his death, and
even if I loved her rather than loathed her I could
never forgive her for that,' Lorenzo told her harshly.
Jodie gave a small shiver.
'But you must have loved her once…'
'Why? Because I had sex with her?' Lorenzo shook
his head. 'I was eighteen and driven by the desires of
my body, that was all.' As he was being driven by
them right now, if he was honest, to take hold of Jodie
and take her back to his bed, so that he could finish
what had been started the night she had returned the
betrothal ring to him. There hadn’t been a single night
since then when he had not thought of doing so—
ached to do so. she’d got under his skin in a way that
no other woman had, mental images of her filling his
head and stealing away his thoughts whilst his body
raged and pulsed. Angrily he fought against the longing
taking hold of him.
Every bride felt nervous — it went with the territory,
Jodie assured herself as the alarmingly efficient stylist
the designer salon had insisted on sending to help her,
plus a seamstress and a dresser, bustled round her
bedroom.
Who would have thought that a small, quiet wedding
would involve so much strategic planning? A
little ruefully, Jodie suspected that it was her gown
rather than her that was the cause of the stylist's relentless
insistence on overseeing every detail of her
wedding-day appearance — right down to the spa treatments
she had arranged for Jodie the previous day.
Now, massaged plucked, waxed and tinted to within
an inch of her life, Jodie tried to imagine how she
might be feeling if this was the real thing, a real wedding,
and she was standing here nervously being laced
into her corset in anticipation of making her vows to
a man she really loved and who really loved her.
But of course that was never going to happen.
Because she was never going to love a man, was she?
