Claiming His Wedding Night Consequence

And here he was, finally on the verge of fulfilling that promise—except much to Nico’s frustration he wasn’t feeling exactly satisfied. He was distracted by the realisation that Chiara Caruso’s eyes were a very light green. And that she wasn’t perhaps as plain as he’d first thought. She was...intriguingly fresh-faced. Untouched. He was used to women covered in so many layers of artifice, or filled with so many chemicals, it was hard to know what they looked like underneath it all.

She shook her head now, frowning. ‘What are you talking about? This castello can’t belong to you. It’s belonged to my family for hundreds of years.’

Anger made Nico’s voice tight. ‘Are you sure about that?’

Suddenly she seemed hesitant. ‘Well, of course...’

‘Perhaps you’re an expert denier of history, like your father was. Are you really expecting me to believe that you aren’t aware of what happened?’

She went pale. ‘Leave my father out of this. How dare you appear on my doorstep with some fantastical tale?’ She stood back and extended her arm towards the door. ‘I’d like you to leave now. You are not welcome here.’

For a moment Nico’s conscience pricked again, he thought that perhaps he should leave and at least allow her a period of private mourning before returning in a couple of days. But then he registered her words: you are not welcome here. Exactly the same words her father had said to his father when he’d tried to gain access to the family burial plot.

Nico planted his legs wide. He wasn’t going anywhere.

The dog standing beside her emitted another pathetic growl.

He said, ‘I’m afraid that it’s you who is not welcome here. Not for much longer anyway. It’s merely a matter of time before the bank moves to take possession.’

* * *

Chiara stared at this man who looked as immovable as a stone statue. Against every instinct, her curiosity was aroused. Maybe he wasn’t mad—maybe he believed what he was saying.

‘What gives you the right to say such things...that the castello belongs to you?’

‘Because it’s true. My family built it in the seventeenth century.’

Chiara wanted to shake her head, as if that might make order out of what he was saying. She’d known the castello was old—especially some parts of it—but not that old.

He went on. ‘At that time the Santo Domenicos owned this estate and all the land and villages from here to Syracuse.’

What he was talking about was a huge swathe of land, and if it were true—Chiara shook her head. It couldn’t be. ‘My family have been the sole owners of this castello for as long as I know—our name is above the door, etched in stone.’

He dismissed that with a curl of his lip. ‘Anyone can carve words into a slab of stone. Your family took ownership of this castello before the Second World War. The Carusos were the Santo Domenico family’s accountants. When we were in financial difficulty they agreed to bail us out, using the castello as collateral, the agreement being that as soon as we had the money again we would buy the castello back at an agreed price. Then came the war.

‘After the war, your family made the most of the chaos at that time. They claimed to have no knowledge of the agreement and destroyed all the paperwork, saying our claims were bogus. So many people were trying to reclaim ownership of land and possessions after the war that the authorities chose to believe that we were being opportunistic. We were a powerful family, and some were only too happy to see us brought down and destroyed.’

He continued.

‘The war decimated our savings—we lost everything. We became destitute. Your family refused to negotiate or to give us a chance to regain our property. Our very proud Sicilian family was scattered. Most emigrated to the United States. We ended up in Naples. My grandfather refused to leave Italy, always hoping he’d see our lands returned before he died. As did my father. Both were thwarted.’

Chiara struggled to take this in. ‘You can’t have proof of this. I’ve never heard mention of the Santo Domenicos in my life.’

He cast her a jaundiced look. ‘I don’t believe that. Our story is part of local legend around here.’

Chiara flushed when she thought of her very sheltered upbringing. Their housekeeper—before she’d been let go in recent years—had done all the shopping, and her father had gone into the village for supplies since then. Whenever Chiara had ventured out she had noticed the way people looked at her, and she’d burned with self-consciousness because she’d assumed they were judging her less than fashionable clothes and figure.

However, if there was any grain of truth to this man’s claims, perhaps they’d been judging more than her appearance.

Feeling very exposed, and more vulnerable than ever, she repeated, ‘You have no proof of this.’

He arched a brow. ‘Come with me.’

He strode out of the room, and Chiara just looked after him stupidly before she kicked into gear. The sensation that he somehow belonged here struck her again and it wasn’t welcome.

He walked out of the main door and Chiara had the urge to slam and lock it behind him. But something told her that this man wouldn’t be so easily locked out.

He stopped in the main courtyard of the castello and looked left and right, as if trying to figure something out, and then strode confidently to the left, towards where the family church and graveyard were situated. The graveyard she’d only walked away from a couple of days ago, after seeing her parents interred.

When she realised where he was headed she hurried to catch up and called out, ‘This is ridiculous—you must stop this!’

But he didn’t stop. It was as if he couldn’t hear her. He got closer and closer to the graveyard, but at the last moment veered away from it and walked to another gate nearby, overgrown with foliage.

She arrived behind him, slightly out of breath. ‘What are you looking for? That is the old family plot.’

A place she’d never been into herself, because the housekeeper had used to tell her that it was haunted. A shiver went down Chiara’s spine now. Had the housekeeper known something of this man’s fantastic claims?

He thrust aside the foliage and located the latch on the gate. At this moment he barely resembled a civilised man. She could see his muscles moving under the material of his suit and felt another disconcerting pulse of awareness in her lower body. Totally inappropriate and unwelcome.

He pushed open the gate and said in a grim tone, ‘Come on.’

Chiara had no choice but to follow him into the shadowed and dormant graveyard. Sunlight barely penetrated through the gnarled branches of the trees overhead and it was very still. She picked her way gingerly over the uneven ground, not even sure what she was walking on, hoping it wasn’t graves.

He had reached the far corner and was pulling leaves and branches away from something. When she got closer she saw that it was a headstone. He turned to face her with an intense look on his face, and for a moment she was almost blinded by his sheer raw beauty.

Then he took her arm and said impatiently, ‘Look.’

Chiara stood beside him, very aware of his hand on her arm and the disparity in their sizes. It took her eyes a moment to adjust, but when they did she could make out faint writing, her heart stuttered and stopped as a dawning dread moved through her.

There, etched in the stone, was the following:

Tomasso Santo Domenico, born and died at Castello Santo Domenico, 1830-1897

She couldn’t believe it. Castello Santo Domenico. Not Castello Caruso.

‘He was my great-great-grandfather.’

Chiara looked around, and now she could see the unmistakable shapes of headstones underneath foliage all around her. They seemed to loom at her accusingly in the gloom. The space closed in on her and claustrophobia rose swiftly. She pulled free of Nicolo Santo Domenico’s grip and turned and made her way out, her skin clammy with panic.

She almost tripped over a mound, and a small sob came out of her mouth, but then finally reached the gate and stepped into bright comforting sunshine, her head reeling.

* * *

Nico stood in the overgrown graveyard, only vaguely aware that Chiara had all but run out of the graveyard. This proof of his family’s legacy was almost too much to take in.

Standing in that grand room just a few moments ago, facing a stricken-looking Chiara Caruso, he’d actually felt a sliver of doubt. Could this grand, crumbling estatereally have belonged to his family? Had they truly once been the most powerful family in southern Sicily? It had seemed almost too much to believe when all he could think of was his grandfather’s bitter countenance and then his father’s. Maybe they’d dreamed it up, frustrated by the struggles they’d faced. Their fall from grace.

But, no. This graveyard was cold, hard evidence that that they had existed in this place. That they had once lived, loved and died here. His ancestors had built it, stone by stone.