a real human being, Rafael thought dryly, then had to laugh privately at that when he lifted his eyes to the ancient silver-haired pole-faced butler, who’d come with the house and all of its other soulless fixtures and fittings.
‘Good afternoon, Parsons,’ he returned, and felt himself grimace at the very English sound of his own voice.
But then, this house was English—a small piece of England placed upon Sicilian soil like a defiance. Nina’s father had had it built as a summer home for his wife and daughter to use when they visited. When Richard St James had died, leaving his wife and daughter virtually penniless, they’d been forced to sell up their fourteen-thousand-acre family estate in Hampshire and come to live here, bringing their faithful butler with them. The house belonged to Nina now, left to her in her father’s will, along with a trust fund aimed to ensure that she completed her education in England.
And if all of that did not add up to a man with an axe to grind on his beautiful Sicilian wife’s faithless hide, then he could not read character as well as he’d thought.
‘There are several telephone messages for you.’ Parsons’ smooth voice intruded. ‘I placed them in your study. One, from a—lady, sounded particularly urgent…’
Ignoring the slight hesitation before the word lady, Rafael offered a nod of his head in acknowledgment to the rest, but made no move towards his study. Instead he turned and headed for the stairs. Urgent messages or not, he had a chore to do that must take precedence.
Knowing and respecting this small ritual, Parsons melted away as silently as he had arrived, leaving Rafael to make the journey up the curving staircase to the upper landing, and from there through an archway which would take him to the bedroom apartments of a house he had agreed to live in only to please his wife.
A mistake? Yes, it had been a mistake, one of many he had made with the beautiful Nina, and all of which he intended to rectify—soon.
On that grim thought he arrived outside the bedroom suite, paused for a moment to brace his shoulders inside the smooth cut of his dark silk jacket, then gripped the handle and opened the door.
He never knocked. He found it beneath his dignity to knock before entering what he still considered to be their bedroom, even though they had not shared it for months.
Serenity prevailed—that was his first observation as he stepped into the room, closing the door behind him. She was wearing a blue satin wrap that covered her from throat to ankle and she was sitting at her dressing table, quietly filing her nails. Her hair was up, scraped back into an unflattering ponytail, and her face looked paler than usual—though that could be a trick of the fading light.
When she turned her head to look at him he met with a wall of blue glass.
‘Ciao,’ he murmured, keeping his voice pleasant, even though pleasure was not what he was feeling inside.
‘Oh, hello,’ she returned, ‘I wasn’t expecting to see you today.’ With that excruciatingly indifferent comment, the blue glass dropped away again.
Irritation snapping at the back of his clenched teeth, Rafael let the hit to his ego pass. He crossed the room to an antique writing desk on which sat a silver tray complete with crystal decanter and glasses. The ever-discreet Parsons had begun this small piece of thoughtfulness at the beginning of their marriage, when they’d used to spend more time in the bedroom than out of it, and had determinedly continued the habit though he must know that their marriage was now in tatters.
The decanter held his favourite cognac. Lifting off the smooth crystal stopper, he placed it aside, then turned to look at Nina.
‘You?’ he invited.
She gave a shake of her lowered head. ‘No, thanks.’
It was like talking to a dead person. Turning back to the tray, he poured himself a small measure, took it with him over to the window, then unclenched his jaw and drank.
Ritual rules, he mused as he stared out at the deepening sunset. Give her a minute or two and she was going to find an excuse to get up and leave the room.
Only this time he was going to stop her. This time he was going to stop the rot taking place in this room by bringing her—screaming and kicking if necessary—out of hiding and into reality.
His stomach warmed as the cognac reached it, and somewhere else inside him a different sensation gathered pace. The call to battle. He had wrecked this beautiful creature once, and now it was time to put her back together again.
With a bit of luck she would give him a chance to fortify himself with brandy before battle commenced, he mused wryly, unaware that the subject of his thoughts was already struggling to stay where she was.
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