families, and although she had shared a certain amount of intimacy with her employers’ lives she had never forgotten that she was a member of the household staff—and she’d certainly never had a maid wait on her before.
Maybe a shower would take her mind off her hunger pangs? And there was still that half-eaten cheese sandwich she had bought on the plane in her handbag, she remembered. She would make do with that.
The heartrending cries of a baby drifted along the corridor. Pausing at the top of the stairs, Cesario felt his mind fly back to the first months after Nicolo had been born, when he and Raffaella had taken it in turns to pace the nursery, trying to soothe their restless son.
He had once read that becoming parents for the first time often put a strain on a marriage. But the birth of their son had resulted in an unexpected closeness between him and Raffaella, he brooded. Their devotion to Nicolo had created a bond between them. But their harmonious relationship had been short-lived, and by the time of Nicolo’s second birthday Raffaella had started an affair with an artist who had been employed to carry out restoration work on the Castello del Falco’s antique paintings.
‘You cannot blame me for falling in love with another man,’ she had told Cesario when he had confronted her. ‘Our marriage was a business arrangement and there has never been any love between us. I’m not sure you are even capable of loving someone. Your heart is made of the same impenetrable stone as the walls of this castle.’
‘I love my son,’ Cesario had replied fiercely. ‘Go to your lover if that’s what you want, but you will not take Nicolo. I will never give him up.’
Unable to bear the thought of being separated from Nicolo, of the little boy growing up with a stepfather, he had immediately applied to the courts for custody of his son. He had agreed that Raffaella should have access visits. Remembering how devastated he had been when his own mother had left, it had never been his desire to prevent Nicolo from seeing his mother.
But he had underestimated the power of love, Cesario thought bitterly. Raffaella had been torn between her lover and her son. Her plan to snatch Nicolo from the castle would have been successful but for the fact that Cesario had returned home from a business trip a day earlier than expected. The ensuing row had been acrimonious—a furious exchange between two people who had never loved each other but who both loved their child.
If only he had not lost his temper. If only he had tried to reach an amicable agreement with Raffaella instead of angrily threatening to stop her visiting Nicolo. Regret burned like poison in Cesario’s gut.
In an attempt to calm the situation between them he had left her alone to say goodbye to Nicolo, but while he had been in his study she had bundled the little boy into her car and driven away.
The screech of tyres on the twisting, wet mountain road still haunted his dreams. The terrifying silence that had followed still tortured his soul. He had run. Dio, he had run as he had never run before—like a man fleeing from the devil. But he had been too late.
Cesario dragged his mind back to the present, his nostrils flaring as he drew a harsh breath and sought to bring his emotions under control. The cries were growing louder. Tonight another child was in the nursery—a child who, astoundingly, might be his.
His jaw tightened and he strode along the corridor, intent on finding out why Sophie’s guardian was apparently not taking care of her.
‘Come on, sweetheart, let’s see if holding you over my shoulder helps,’ Beth murmured as she lifted Sophie up from the change mat. The baby had been crying for nearly an hour, and although she was regularly unsettled at this time of night Beth felt a rising sense of despair. After four months of disturbed nights she was utterly exhausted. But there was no chance she could go to bed until she had managed to settle Sophie.
Patting the baby gently on the back, she wandered over to the window and looked down at the courtyard below. It was dark now, but a little while ago car headlights had blazed as the party guests had departed from the castle.
Watching them, Beth had been tempted to slip downstairs with Sophie and plead for someone to take them to Oliena. The discovery that Cesario had a wife and son had complicated an already difficult situation. Part of her felt it would be better for everyone if she disappeared from the castle and had no further contact with Cesario Piras. She would manage to bring Sophie up on her own, she assured herself. Money would be tight, but she’d get by somehow.
But would that be fair on Sophie? her conscience demanded. What right did she have to prevent the truth about the baby’s parentage from being known? And if Cesario was her father surely it would be better for Sophie if he played a role in her life as he had stated he would want to do.
So all the guests had driven away, and now the courtyard was deserted except for the hideous stone gargoyles whose evil faces were illuminated by the moonlight. Once again the thought that she was trapped in Cesario’s forbidding fortress sent a shiver through Beth. She had no reason to fear him, she reminded herself. But the image of his scarred face seemed to have been burned onto her retinas, and the memory of his hard grey eyes had a strangely unsettling effect on her.
Sophie had quietened for a few minutes when she had been picked up, but now she started to cry again and would not be pacified. Singing to her sometimes helped, and Beth was on the second verse of ‘Golden Slumbers’ when a deep, gravelly voice from the doorway made her spin round.
‘What’s wrong with her?’
For some reason Cesario seemed even taller and more commanding here in the nursery than he had downstairs in the library. Beth’s eyes flew to his face and she caught her breath, her heart suddenly racing.
His sharp gaze noted her reaction and he gave a grim smile. ‘It’s not pretty, is it?’ he said, touching his scar. ‘I apologise if you find my appearance disturbing.’
‘I don’t—of course I don’t.’ Colour flared on her cheeks. She was mortified that he thought she had been staring at him. The truth was she did find him disturbing, she acknowledged ruefully, but not in the way he meant. She could not seem to prevent her eyes from focusing on his mouth, and once again she imagined him slanting his lips over hers and kissing her with the kind of searing passion she had read about in books but never experienced personally.
‘Nothing is wrong with Sophie, exactly,’ she explained hurriedly. ‘She’s always unsettled at this time of night. The health visitor said that lots of babies suffer from colic in the first few months, and that she’ll grow out of it. But I hate seeing her like this,’ she admitted as she cradled the inconsolable baby in her arms. ‘I wish I could help her. I’ve tried walking up and down and rocking her but nothing’s working tonight.’
There was no hint of impatience in Beth’s voice even though she was clearly dead on her feet from tiredness, Cesario noted. She looked even paler than when she had first arrived at the castle, and the purple shadows beneath her eyes added to her air of fragility.
She had changed out of her shabby clothes into an equally shabby dressing gown, which had probably once been pale pink but through age and washing was now an unbecoming shade of sludge. The belt tied tightly around her waist emphasised her extreme slenderness. She looked as though she would snap in half in a strong wind, Cesario thought impatiently. She was not the type of woman he was usually attracted to, yet something about her kept drawing his gaze back to her face.
Her skin was bare of make-up and as smooth as porcelain, and her almond-shaped green eyes were captivating. There was an intriguing air of innocence about her, he mused, and although when he had
