At Her Latin Lover's Command: The Italian Count's Command / The French Count's Mistress / At the Spanish Duke's Command

‘Do that. What exactly did you tell him?’ she demanded.

‘The bare minimum. Luca drove Carlo and me from Malpensa—Milan Airport—after…after I found you that evening,’ Dante replied in a low tone. ‘He knew I was in a terrible state. Kept Carlo amused with songs and stories. Fed me coffee and brandy, bought a toy for Carlo at the service station on the Autostrada to entertain him. Somehow I let slip that you’d been unfaithful.’

‘Dante! How could you?’ she cried in dismay.

He frowned. ‘He is one of the few I trust—apart from Guido, of course—who wouldn’t dream of tarnishing the family honour with any revelations. As far as Luca is concerned, I wish I’d kept my mouth shut, but I wasn’t in full possession of my senses,’ he said tightly. ‘But he’ll say nothing, for my sake. His father worked for mine. Luca has been my European driver since he left school and is totally loyal and reliable. He won’t even have said anything to his wife. You can be sure of that.’

And she’d speak to Luca, too, she vowed. Put her side of the story.

Dante opened a massive carved door at the top of the stairs and politely stood to one side in a gesture that still made her feel cherished. Luca forgotten, Miranda smiled in anticipation, her eyes searching the darkened room within as she stepped breathlessly into the room. Dante softly closed the door behind them.

A small lamp glowed by the bed, its soft light illuminating…

She frowned, staring at the vast canopied four-poster, elaborately decorated. Rich brocade hangings.

Her senses alerted, she quickly scanned the bedroom. It was very masculine, despite the elegant eighteenth-century furniture. Seeing Dante’s honey-coloured silk robe on a chair, she stopped breathing.

No sign of Carlo. This wasn’t a child’s room at all. Almost certainly it belonged to Dante himself. And why would he bring her to his bedroom…?

In a fury she whirled around. ‘You rat! Let me out—!’

She didn’t finish the sentence. Dante had caught her arms in warning.

‘Be quiet!’ he whispered fiercely. ‘You’ll wake him!’

Before she could gather her wits, she found herself being pushed towards the bed. Her head whirled. She felt strangely dizzy. It was as if she were in a time warp; those hands holding her—though she remembered them as being more brutal—and a sense of being trapped and helpless…

‘There! Now will you believe me?’ Dante muttered.

Despite the rising terror, she blinked away the fog and focused. The fear vanished in an instant when she saw the dark head of her sleeping child.

‘Carlo!’ she whispered. Dante released her. She ran to the bed and knelt in a fever of joy. ‘Oh, my darling, I’ve missed you!’ she breathed, somehow holding back her intense longing to catch up her son and crush him in her arms. He looked utterly content, the long black lashes settling thickly on his baby cheeks, the rosebud mouth pursed in sleep. ‘Mummy’s here,’ she said, choked. Maybe in his dreams he’d hear what she was saying. ‘Mummy’s come back.’

Tentatively she reached out an alarmingly shaky hand and touched the chubby little arm clad in the dinosaur pyjamas with dinosaur buttons which she’d bought for him shortly before he’d disappeared. Carlo sighed and then he smiled his creamy smile.

Speech was beyond her. Miranda’s own face lit up with a soft radiance because she imagined that he really did know she was close by. And her heart melted completely when his mouth began making little sucking noises as if he were still at her breast.

Gently she replaced the covers, which Dante had drawn back so that she could see her son. Carlo snuggled into them, his dark head almost disappearing. From a few feet away it would be hard to know he was there.

With loving motions she smoothed the oyster silk bedspread and hungrily watched her son sleeping. She was filled with happiness, with choking emotion, with uncontainable love.

Two weeks. It had been an eternity. Days, hours, minutes, seconds of interminable misery. But they would not be parted again. Dante had promised…

Remembering him, she looked around. He was watching her, his dark eyes silvery from the reflected light of the moon. For a moment it almost seemed as though they were full of tears but she knew it was an illusion when he growled in a surly tone,

‘I think I’m owed an apology.’

Her eyes widened and she rose unsteadily to her feet.

‘Why?’

‘You thought I’d brought you to my room to seduce you. Or do you think I might have tried rape?’ he grated.

Her elation faded and she bit her lip. She pushed her hand through her tumbling curtain of hair, trying to tidy it.

‘You’re right. I’m sorry. I panicked when I realised this was your room. It never occurred to me that Carlo would be here. It only goes to show how little I trust you, doesn’t it?’ she finished sadly. ‘Why is he in your bedroom, anyway?’

He stalked to the door and motioned for her to leave. Once outside, he launched into a tightly controlled explanation.

‘Carlo wouldn’t sleep on his own. Each night he stayed up with me, constantly asking when you were coming home. He would only fall asleep if I held him in my arms. If I put him in a bed of his own he knew, even in his sleep, that he wasn’t being cuddled and he’d wake up yelling.’

Miranda flinched. ‘Poor darling! He knew something was wrong—’

‘Do you think I don’t know that?’ Dante said tightly. ‘Do you think it didn’t tear me apart? I couldn’t bear his misery. I began to take him into my own bed when I retired for the night. Now he’s happy to sleep there without me because he feels secure in it. In time I hope he’ll go to his own room. But for now, he needs love, Miranda!’ he added angrily. ‘He’s been starved of it, poor child—’

‘That’s absolute rubbish! Don’t you dare to accuse me without proof!’ she cried, close to breaking point.

And to her dismay, the world seemed to whirl around and she swayed unsteadily on her feet.

‘Che Dio mi aiuti!’ he swore, his strong hands immediately steadying her. ‘No more of this. You need to eat. It’s past ten o’clock and you have hardly eaten anything all day, I imagine.’

Miranda tried to remember. ‘I had coffee,’ she began. But could think of nothing else. She’d been too churned up to swallow a thing.

‘As I thought,’ he said with irritation. ‘No wonder you can hardly stand. Come down and eat with me.’

She shrank from the idea and the memories it aroused. Sometimes they had fed one another. And they had gone on to satisfy other, more urgent appetites.

‘It’s late. I’m tired,’ she demurred, afraid of her weakness, of the hold he had over her senses. ‘I’ll be fine when I get to bed—’

‘Do you want to be well tomorrow?’ he demanded. ‘To play with Carlo? To have some energy? D’accordo. You will eat something. I insist.’

She capitulated suddenly, realising that he was right. And discovered to her surprise that she was very hungry indeed. ‘Yes. I will. Now I’ve seen Carlo,’ she said, her face becoming soft and tender with motherly love, ‘I think I could eat for England.’

Dante said nothing but his hands dropped from her arms abruptly and he turned away from her, his expression stone-hard. Her happiness evaporated in the teeth of his hatred and she vowed again to prove her innocence—though how, she couldn’t imagine.

As they descended the stairs she felt alarmingly woozy from lack of food and too much caffeine, and grabbed the gleaming banister. She sensed an instinctive movement of Dante’s hand in her direction and then its withdrawal. He was very tense and she wondered why.

The meal was conducted in total silence apart from the scrape of silver forks on plates and the soft background music Dante liked during dinner.

Miranda concentrated on assuaging her hunger with an artistically arranged antipasto of Parma ham, pâté, pasta and diced vegetables, then prawns in raspberry vinegar followed by cheese and fruit. It was the kind of food which would once have pleased all her senses but Dante’s cold indifference ruined her enjoyment and turned it into nothing other than a necessary fuel for the body.

The vintage wine, however, gradually made her feel as if all her muscles were oozing into her melting bones. Flushed and bright-eyed, with her hair tumbling about her face, she popped the last grape into her mouth and wiped her fingers on the soft napkin.

‘I’ll turn in now,’ she said quietly, wondering how many silent dinners she’d have to endure over the coming years. Unusually emotional, she blinked and swallowed before she was able to add, ‘Perhaps you’d show me my room.’

He looked up and their eyes met. His frown smoothed out and was replaced by a longing so deep and visceral that she caught her breath, her lips parting and swelling. She had discarded her jacket and knew that the silk of her cream camisole was suddenly tight where her breasts had bloomed into new life.

She couldn’t speak, dared not move, and could only stare at him helplessly and hope that her stupid desire for him would vanish in time. Preferably during the next few seconds.