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With a sudden impulse, impelling her way below the level of conscious decision, she felt her muscles move as if of their own volition. She got into the car, slamming the door shut.
Instantly, as if preventing her from rescinding her decision as much as avoiding the attentions of the parking official, Cesare opened the throttle, pulled the car away from the kerb—and Carla reached for her seat belt, consciousness rushing back upon her in all its impact.
Oh, dear God, what the hell had she just done?
I got into his damn car just to save his damn aristocratic pride! So he wouldn’t have to endure the ignominy of getting a parking ticket! How insane is that?
Completely insane. As insane as letting Cesare di Mondave drive off with her like this—the lordly signor scooping up the peasant girl.
Her chin lifted. Well, she was no peasant girl! She was no poor, hapless female like the one in the portrait, trapped within the punishing limitations of her time in history. No, if she went along with what this impossible, arrogant man had in mind for her—if, she emphasised mentally to herself—then it would be what she wanted too! Her free and deliberate choice to enjoy the enticing interlude he clearly had planned.
But would she make that choice? That was the only question that mattered now. Whether to do what every ounce of her good sense was telling her she should not do—and what every heat-flushed cell in her body was urging her to do. To resist it—or yield to it. She turned her head towards him, drawn by that same impetuous urge to let her eyes feast on him. He was focussing only on the appalling evening traffic in Rome, which, she allowed, did need total focus. She let him concentrate, let herself enjoy the rush that came simply from looking at his profile.
Sweet heaven, but it was impossible not to gaze at him! A modern version of that Luciezo portrait, updated for the twenty-first century. Indelibly graced with features that made her eyes cling to him, from the strong blade of his nose to the chiselled line of his jaw, the sensual curve of his mouth. She felt her hands clench over her bag. Weakness drenched her body. What she was doing was insane—and yet she was doing it.
She felt her pulse leap, and a heady sense of excitement filled her. A searing knowledge of her own commitment. Far too late now to change her mind.
And she did not want to—that was the crux of it. Oh, the lordly Count might have scooped her up just as arrogantly as his ancestor had scooped up the peasant girl who would become his mistress, but it had been her choice to let herself be so scooped.
Rebelliousness soared within her—a sense of recklessness and adventure.
I don’t care if this is folly! All I know is that from the moment he looked at me I wanted him more than I have ever wanted any man—and I will not deny that desire. I will fulfil it...
Fulfil it with all the ardour in her body, every tremor in her limbs. It was folly—reckless folly—but she would ignite that passion and burn it to the core.
* * *
‘Take the next left here,’ Carla said, indicating the narrow road in the Centro Storico that led down to her apartment, part of an eighteenth-century house. It was a quiet haven for her to write in, and to be well away not just from the buzz of the city but also from the tensions running across the Viscari clan.
Her mother, she knew, would have preferred her to stay on in Guido Viscari’s opulent villa, but thanks to her stepfather’s generosity in his will Carla had been able to buy her own small but beautiful apartment, taking intense pleasure in decorating it and furnishing it in an elegant but comfortable and very personal style.
However, her thoughts now were neither on the ongoing tensions in the Viscari clan nor on her apartment. There was only one dominating, all-encompassing consciousness in her head...
Cesare.
Cesare—with whom she had just dined, with whom she had conducted, she knew, a conversation that had taken place at two levels. One had seen him being the perfect escort, the perfect dinner companion, conversing with her about her job, about the arts, about the Italian landscape—of which he owned a significant proportion—and about any other such topics that two people making each other’s acquaintance might choose to converse about.
He’d asked her a little about herself—neither too little to be indifferent, nor too much to be intrusive. He’d known who she was, but she was not surprised—she’d known who he was, though they’d never chanced to meet before.
But there’d been another conversation taking place as they’d sat there over a lingering dinner in the small, ferociously exclusive restaurant Cesare had taken her to—where he had immediately been given the best table in the house, and where they had been waited on attentively, discreetly, unobtrusively but with absolute expertise.
He had nodded at one or two other patrons, and her presence had caused the lift of an eyebrow from one group of women, and a penetrating glance, but no more than that. She had been acquainted with no one there, and was glad of it. Glad there had been no one she knew to witness the second level of the conversation taking place between herself and Cesare di Mondave, Conte di Mantegna.
The conversation that had taken place powerfully, silently and seductively—oh-so-seductively—between him and her, with every exchange of glances, every half-smile, every sensual curve of his mouth, every lift of his hand with those long, aristocratic fingers.
The light had refl
ected off the gold of his signet ring, impressed with his family crest—the same lion couchant that his ancestor had displayed on his own ring in the Luciezo portrait—and Carla had found herself wondering if it could be the very same ring.
Eventually Cesare’s hand had crushed the white damask napkin and dropped it on the table to signal the end of their meal, and they’d got to their feet and made their way towards the exit.
Nothing so crude as a bill had been offered by the maître d’—nothing more than a respectful inclination of the head at their departure, a gracious murmur of appreciation from the Count, a smile of thanks from herself as they left, stepping out onto the pavement, where his car had been waiting for them.
Now, as they drew up at the kerb by her apartment, he cut the engine and turned and looked at her, an enigmatic expression visible in the dim street light.
Her consciousness of his raw physical presence seared in her again. She smiled at him. ‘Thank you,’ she said, ‘for a lovely evening.’ Her voice was bright, and oh-so-civil.
She realised she’d spoken in English. They’d gone in and out of Italian and English all evening, for the Count’s English was as fluent as her Italian had become in the ten years she’d lived in Rome, though surely no Englishman could make his native language as seductive, as sensual as an Italian male could make it sound?
