in the servant’s quarters. Oh, Gran, why didn’t I listen to you? Belle was thinking with feverish regret and an intense sense of self-loathing.
She had married a man who clearly despised her. And worst of all, she had slept with him, which just then felt like the biggest self-betrayal of all. Tears dripped silently down Belle’s quivering cheeks because she had never felt so alone and out of her depth in her life, at least not since the teenaged years when she had been horrendously bullied. Now she felt trapped, trapped by the marriage, trapped by the promises she had made to her siblings about the wonderful new life ahead of them all. She couldn’t just walk away; it wasn’t that simple. Telling him she wanted a divorce had been sheer bravado and he had probably recognised it as such.
Cristo Ravelli. He got to her as no other man ever had, rousing feelings and thoughts and reactions she couldn’t control. She had become infatuated with him, she decided, mentally and physically infatuated and, as a result, she had acted every bit as foolishly with him as her late mother had once behaved with Gaetano, unable to keep her distance and failing to count the costs of the relationship. How was she supposed to handle Cristo? He was streets ahead of her in the sophistication stakes. He was a Ravelli, taught from birth that he was a superior being. She hugged her knees, rocking her hips against the hard stone beneath her in an unconscious self-soothing motion, her fingers clenching convulsively together as she fiercely blinked back tears.
Well, the infatuation was dead now. He had killed it stone dead. She hated him, absolutely hated him for what he had said within moments of using her body for his pleasure. All right, she reasoned guiltily with herself, it had been her pleasure as well. She couldn’t pretend to have been an unwilling partner in what had transpired, but then she had not been prepared for that level of passion or pleasure. She had dimly imagined that something much less exciting awaited them in the bedroom.
Mercifully it was a clear night, Cristo conceded grudgingly, tramping down the multitude of steps that featured in the gardens. He was in a filthy mood. Telling Umberto, who ran the palazzo, that his bride was missing had embarrassed him and very little, if anything, embarrassed Cristo. But if he couldn’t find Belle, he knew that calling the police in would be considerably more embarrassing. He didn’t know what he was going to say to her if he did find her either. Was he supposed to lie and pretend he hadn’t meant his indictment? Apologise for speaking the truth? He was damned if he was going to apologise when she was forcing him to tramp all over his extensive property in search of her in the middle of the night. Dio mio! Obviously he was worried about her. Suppose she had come down here in the dark and she had fallen? Hitched a lift out on the country road from some cruising rapist or pervert? Her temper might make her do something self-destructive or dangerous, he reasoned grimly. Cristo’s imagination was suddenly travelling in colourful directions it had never gone in before.
And then he heard a noise, the human noise of feet shifting across gravel. ‘Belle?’ he called.
Dismay gripping her at the sound of Cristo’s voice, Belle returned to her stone bench, having stretched and glued her lips together, but he kept on calling and her silence began to feel childish and selfish and eventually she parted her lips to shout back. ‘Go away!’
Relief assailed Cristo. She was safe, would no doubt live to fight many another day with him, a reflection that sent a wash of something oddly like satisfaction through his tall, well-built frame. He followed the voice to its most likely source: the garden pavilion at the very foot of the garden, sited beside a craggy seventeenth-century-built rushing stream and waterfall. Rounding a corner on one of the many paths, he saw her there sitting in darkness, long legs extended in front of her along a stone bench, eyes reflecting the moonlight.
‘I was worried about you,’ Cristo declared, coming to a halt a couple of feet from the pavilion steps, intimidatingly tall, outrageously assured. ‘You didn’t answer your cell phone.’
‘I don’t have it with me and I’m sure you weren’t that worried about my welfare,’ Belle remarked curtly while quietly noting that he looked more amazing than ever when clad in faded jeans and a casual tee, bare brown feet thrust into leather sandals. ‘Not after the way you spoke to me.’
‘It was the wrong place, wrong time,’ Cristo admitted, mounting the steps to lift the lighter from its hook on the wall and ignite the fat pillar candle in the centre of the stone table.
Not even slightly soothed by that comeback, Belle tilted her chin as the candle flame illuminated his darkly handsome features while he looked down at her from the opposite side of the table. ‘But it was obviously what you thought...blackmail?’
‘I did tell you that other people could be seriously embarrassed by you taking such a story to court on your siblings’ behalf,’ Cristo reminded her stubbornly. ‘You told me you didn’t care.’
Your siblings, not his as well, she noted in exasperation, since he was clearly still set on denying that blood tie. ‘Why should I have? Neither you nor your brothers care about them.’
‘Neither Nik nor Zarif even know of your siblings’ existence as yet,’ Cristo pointed out. ‘Nik’s not into children though. For Zarif, however, the news that throughout the whole of his parents’ marriage Gaetano was sleeping with another woman and having a tribe of children with her would be deeply destructive and damaging. He’s the new King of Vashir.’
Belle rolled her eyes, unimpressed or, at least, trying to seem unimpressed. ‘I know that.’
‘Vashir is a very devout and conservative society and Gaetano’s behaviour would cause a huge scandal there, which would engulf Zarif’s image in Gaetano’s sleaze. Every ruler has opponents and it would be used against him to remind people that his father was a foreigner with a sordid irreligious lifestyle. He doesn’t deserve that. Like all of us, he paid the price of having Gaetano as a father while he was still a child,’ Cristo informed her grimly. ‘I offered to marry you and adopt those children to prevent that from happening.’
‘But you didn’t tell me that, so you can hardly expect me to be sympathetic now,’ Belle told him roundly. ‘It’s not only a little late in the day to start calling me a blackmailer, it’s also darned unfair when you never gave me those facts in the first place!’
At that spirited retort, Cristo gritted his teeth again in smouldering silence.
‘I did not blackmail you!’ Belle exclaimed, sliding off the bench to stand up and walk down the steps before turning back to face him while his attention lingered on her slender leggy proportions in the denim shorts and camisole she wore. ‘Evidently my plans to go to court on the children’s behalf put you between a rock and a hard place but you made the decision to propose marriage!’
Lean, strong features set in forbidding lines in the shadowy candlelight, Cristo stared broodingly back at her. ‘I did but even now I know that your plans to have your day in court would have damaged those children more than you can possibly appreciate.’
‘You don’t know what you’re talking about!’
‘I know exactly what I’m talking about—in fact nobody knows better!’ Cristo parried with unexpected rawness, his dark eyes glittering like stars. ‘Gaetano trailed my mother through court in a supposed attempt to gain custody of me when I was a child. Of course what he really wanted was a bigger payoff from the divorce. He didn’t want me; he never wanted me. All the dirty secrets of my parents’ marriage were trailed out in court and made headlines across Europe and you can still read about it online if you know where to look. Do you really think those children would thank you either now or years from now for seeing their parents’ less than stellar private life splashed across the tabloids and the net?’
That
