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‘How old were you?’
Lara glanced at Ciro warily. ‘Thirteen.’
‘You were close as a family?’
Lara nodded, her hand clasping the glass. ‘The closest. My parents loved each other and they loved me and Alex. We were a very happy family.’
Ciro surprised her by saying, ‘You were lucky to have had that, even if only for a short while. My father loved my mother, but it was a suffocating love and she wasn’t happy to be adored by just one man. After he died she remarried within a month. She’s now on husband number three—or four. I’ve lost count.’
The careless tone in Ciro’s voice didn’t fool Lara. He couldn’t be immune to the fact that his mother had failed to be the kind of mother every child deserved. No wonder he was so cynical.
Ciro sat back against his desk, and folded his arms. The reprieve was over. ‘So. Are you going to explain to me how you were married but still a virgin?’
Lara took another fortifying sip of whisky and sat down on a chair behind her. Her legs didn’t feel steady all of a sudden. She looked up at Ciro and then away. She didn’t want to see his expression.
‘On our wedding night Henry came into my bedroom expecting to—’ She stopped.
‘Go on.’
Lara felt sick. She looked at him. ‘Do we really have to discuss this now?’
Ciro nodded. Grim.
He stood up and pulled over a chair so that he was opposite Lara, sat down. She knew he wouldn’t budge until she’d told him the ugly truth.
‘On our wedding night he came into my bedroom... He...we’d agreed that we wouldn’t share a room. I somehow...obviously naively...assumed that would mean he wouldn’t try to...’ She faltered and stopped.
‘Try to...what? Sleep with his new wife? A natural expectation, I would have thought.’
Lara hated Ciro’s faintly scathing tone. It scraped along all the raw edges of the memories crowding her head. She stood up and went over to where he’d been standing, at the window. She could see dark clouds massing over the sea and the white edges of rough waves. There was a storm approaching.
It was easier to talk when Ciro wasn’t looking at her. ‘He came into the bedroom. He’d been drinking all day so he was very drunk. He grabbed my nightdress and ripped it. Before I could stop him he’d pushed me backwards onto the bed. I was in shock... I couldn’t move for a moment... He was so heavy and I couldn’t breathe...’
Lara didn’t even hear Ciro move. He caught her arm and turned her around to face him. She’d never seen that expression on his face before—disgust mixed with pure anger.
‘He tried to rape you?’
Lara nodded. ‘I thought we had an agreement...that he was just marrying me for appearances. He was old... I didn’t think...’ She trailed off, humiliated by her naivety all over again.
Ciro was grim. ‘Old men’s libidos can be voracious.’ Then he shook his head. ‘Did you really think he wouldn’t demand sex from you?’
Lara pulled her arm free and moved away. Some liquid slopped out of her glass and she looked at the carpet in dismay.
‘Leave it—it’s nothing.’
Ciro took the glass and put it down. Lara flinched minutely at the clatter against the silver tray.
‘But he didn’t rape you?’
Lara looked at Ciro, remembering how thinking of him had given her the strength to deal with Henry Winterborne. ‘No. I managed to kick him off me...somehow. He was unsteady from the drink. He fell backwards. He injured himself badly in the fall...and he was in a wheelchair for the rest of our marriage. Eventually he had a stroke—that’s how he died.’
Lara couldn’t excise the memory of Henry Winterborne’s bitter words from her head. ‘You little bitch—you’ll pay for this. Your only currency is your beauty and innocence. Why the hell do you think I paid so much for you?’
Fresh humiliation washed over her in a sickening wave. She hadn’t even known until
then the full extent of her uncle’s machinations—that he’d actually sold her like a slave girl. Ciro didn’t know the half of it.
Ciro was reeling. All he could see in his mind’s eye was that paunchy old man shoving Lara down onto a bed and then climbing on top of her like a rutting bull. Anger bubbled in his blood. No, worse—a ferocious fury that she had put herself in harm’s way like that.
