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“And what was the earl’s reaction to that news?” Her voice was light and unconcerned.
Caesare shrugged negligently. “It is hard to know. I remember that he grinned.”
Giovanna restrained her impatience. “You agree with me, do you not, Caesare, that the earl should not discover that we are lovers? I am certain that his fierce pride would drive him to withhold even more of your birthright from you.”
Caesare stiffened. “My brilliant half-brother must soon learn that I can be trusted with his precious business dealings.”
For the moment, she sought to soothe him. “Of a certainty he will. You are young yet, only twenty-five.” Young for a man, she thought, grimacing, but not for a woman. “And what of this English girl? How did the earl treat her?”
“I found her behavior curious, if you would know the truth. She is beautiful, if one happens to admire the pink-and-white English fairness.”
“Pink and white tells me precisely nothing, Caesare.”
Piqued at her insistence, he stripped Cassandra naked in his mind. “She is taller than most Italian ladies and slender as a reed, except, of course, in those places where it is to a woman’s advantage not to be. Her eyes are dark blue, the color of the Mediterranean after a storm. And her hair, ah—like spun gold, Giovanna, thick and long; hair that entices a man to bury his face in its softness.” He paused a moment and studied Giovanna’s perfect oval face, pale now in the dim afternoon light of the salon. “You will of course meet her. My brother mentioned a dinner party. Undoubtedly you will be invited.”
She said nothing for a long moment. “I find it odd that the earl, a most fastidious gentleman as you well know, would install this slut at the villa. Does he wish to mock Genoese society?”
“As I told you, Giovanna, I found her behavior unusual. She did not treat the earl with the deference one would expect from a mistress, dependent upon her protector for the clothes on her back. Indeed, she sometimes reverted to English, and her voice was sharp. A slut? I think not. No, she appears to be an English lady of high birth.”
“But she is naught but his mistress. No lady of high birth as you describe her would leave her country only to be a nobleman’s whore. What you say makes no sense, Caesare.”
“I suppose you must be correct, but—”
She whirled about to face him, her raven hair swirling over her shoulders. “But what?”
Caesare shook his head, perplexed lines pulling down the corners of his mouth.
“Perhaps her display of ill-humor was prompted by a simple disagreement. Perhaps she was punishing the earl in front of you, his brother, because he had refused her jewels or gowns or marriage.” She paused a moment, her thoughts weaving toward a conclusion that pleased her. “The earl would not long suffer such tantrums. He is proud, quite autocratic, and not used to having his word gainsaid, particularly by a woman. If this English girl is too stupid to realize that, and does not mind her tongue, then the earl will—nay must—soon grow tired of her. Then, all will be as it was.”
Caesare merely nodded, his dark eyes straying down Giovanna’s body. “Enough of the earl,” he said thickly, and reached for her.
Cassie walked quickly around the east side of the villa from under the thick shade of magnolia and acacia trees toward the large iron gates of the entranceway. The young boy, Sordello, who usually attended the entrance to the Villa Parese, had but moments before been in the gardens in conversation with his father, Marco. Although she did not expect simply to walk away from the villa and from the earl, she wanted to test the bounds of her confinement, to discover if she was being watched and by whom. Her sandals were soundless in the grass alongside the narrow graveled drive, and her senses revealed nothing to her but the disconcerting sweet fragrance of the blooming roses.
She quickened her pace when she sighted the gates, and turned her head briefly to look back at the villa. There was still no sign of pursuit. Perhaps, she thought sourly, the earl in his sublime arrogance no longer concerned himself that she would try to escape him. He had not an hour before closeted himself in his library, leaving her to herself.
Her hand closed about the iron latch and she gave it a mighty tug. For a moment, the gate hinges only groaned. She pulled again and her heart beat faster as the gate inched open. Why had she not had the sense to take money and pack a small bandbox? She looked up and down the dry rutted road, parched and dusted by the relentless sun. She was on the point of slipping through the gate when she heard a familiar voice behind her. She froze in her tracks and whipped about, the look on her face ludicrous in its dismay.
“You should have told me, Cassandra, that you wished to explore.”
“Oh, hellfire. I had thought you well occupied, my lord, in the library.”
He walked toward her, a self-assured smile on his lips. She swallowed a curse, turned, and slithered through the opening in the gate.
Even as her sandals whipped up the dust about her skirts, his hand closed over her arm.
“Really, Cassandra, those shoes are hardly suitable for a stroll down the road. Come along to the villa with me, I have a surprise for you.”
“It is simply a matter of time, my lord,” she said in a low voice. “And you are a fool if you believe otherwise.”
The earl smiled down at her flushed face, and his hand moved down her arm until his fingers laced themselves through hers. “I am many things, cara, but I do not think that ‘fool’ numbers among them.”
She fell into stiff step beside him. “Since you are a merchant, my lord,” she sneered with a fine display of the English aristocrat’s scorn of trade, “and must attend to your shopkeeping, I will have many opportunities to escape you. That is, unless you intend to keep me locked up.”
Her words appeared to have no effect on him, indeed, she wished she could see his face, rather than his profile, for she suspected there was a twinkle in his eyes. She found it galling that he did not even have the grace to respond to her insults.
“Since I lock you in my arms each night, Cassandra, it would appear that my problem is what to do with you during the day. Thus, my dear, the surprise I promised you. I beg you not to be overbearing and rude to him, for poor Joseph really has no choice in the matter. He is fond of you, you know, and I am certain that you would not wish to make him feel uncomfortable.”
“Joseph.” She remained silent for several moments, but when he gazed down at her, his expression serene, she could not help herself. “He is to be my keeper. My guard.”
