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

‘I did try to warn you a long while ago,’ his brother said gently.

‘I know.’

His own voice startled him. It had been nothing more than a whisper. The shock of Miranda’s infidelity had taken away all his strength, all his pride and confidence. Rammed them both down his throat. Sat there laughing at him for being such a fool.

Knocking back the brandy, he returned to his son, who had been yelling his head off when he’d arrived. He’d gone to him first, of course. It had taken him several minutes to calm Carlo down. Finally his son had fallen asleep, utterly exhausted. Not until then had he gone to see what state Miranda was in because she wasn’t important any more. She meant nothing.

He felt murderous that she’d abandoned their child while she partied in the next bedroom with her lover. That, he resolved, would never happen again.

Grimly he packed. Dazed, he accepted Guido’s offer to keep an eye on his wife till she recovered. Full of pain, he caught up his sleeping son in his arms. And got the hell out of Miranda’s life forever.

CHAPTER TWO

‘THAT’S it!’ Miranda announced tightly.

She was trying not to hyperventilate. Despite her shaking fingers, she managed to push the key in the lock of the Knightsbridge house and disable the alarm.

Her rasping breath tore at her lungs and she wondered how long she could hang on to the threads of apparent normality. It seemed her brain was stuck, the same thing going over and over in her mind till she wanted to scream in despair and hopelessness.

Despite all her efforts over the past two weeks she’d failed to trace her son—or her rat of a husband who’d abducted him. Her impulse was to kick something. Howl her eyes out in a darkened room. But she had something vital to do first.

Hauling her case indoors with a violence that betrayed her fractured nerves, she dropped the flight bag from her slim shoulder and strode through the hall to the phone. Her legs felt as if they belonged to someone else. She was amazed they obeyed her at all.

‘No more faffing about. I’m going to call the police!’ she muttered to her sister and snatched up the receiver, her finger poised to stab at the dial.

‘No!’ Lizzie looked appalled, then registered Miranda’s astonished glance and gabbled on incoherently. ‘I mean…well, we don’t want to go public, do we? Think of the damage we’ll do if we accuse Dante of abduction! The Severinis exist on their good name…’

Lizzie rambled on, mystifyingly defending the indefensible. Miranda fumed. ‘What do I care?’ she snapped.

She couldn’t believe her sister’s reluctance to bring the whole Severini family to book. Not one of them had an honourable bone in the whole of their aristocratic, self-serving body.

A silent rage boiled within her as her husband’s handsome, savagely cruel face swam before her eyes. Almost immediately she felt a lurch of misery and realised with helpless despair that this entirely new image of him was causing her untold grief.

Bleakly she stared at the purring phone. She wanted the old Dante Severini back. The adoring, sensual man who’d wooed and married her within a month. Not that calculating monster who’d treated her so callously and had taken her child away. She choked back a sob and realised she was too upset to speak.

Shaking, she replaced the phone in its cradle, intent on keeping up an appearance of self-control. If she let out her true feelings, she knew that she’d probably smash the entire contents of the house in frustration before sinking into a morass of self-pity.

It was sheer will-power alone that held her slender body rigid and erect. She was unbelievably tired but she couldn’t let up, wouldn’t give in to what she saw as weakness. Never had, never would, whatever the challenge.

‘I must call in the authorities. We’ve spent the past fourteen days jetting around, trying to trace Dante’s whereabouts,’ she said coldly. ‘And,’ she added, ‘I’ve had my fill of those Severini lackeys who clam up the moment his name is mentioned.’

‘It’s company policy—’ Lizzie began.

‘I said I was his wife!’ she snapped. ‘Showed them my passport!’

‘They’d had instructions from Dante about an impostor—’

‘How dare he do that to me?’ Miranda fumed. ‘I’ve never been so humiliated in all my life! Being escorted off the premises by security men…!’

Thinking of the terrible wall of silence she’d encountered from Dante’s continental staff in some of the major capitals of Europe, she jerked up her head stubbornly. This was war.

‘I want my son,’ she clipped in a curt understatement. ‘And…’ Her voice faltered before she could rally it. She swallowed. ‘He’ll be wanting me.’

In a quick movement she turned away, ostensibly to make the call, but it was a means of hiding the sudden rush of tears that blurred the steely blue of her agonised gaze.

The word ‘want’ didn’t begin to describe her need—or Carlo’s. It was more visceral than just missing him desperately. It was as if part of her had been ripped away to leave a raw and bleeding wound.

But Carlo would be suffering more deeply. He wouldn’t understand why she wasn’t there any more, why she didn’t tuck him up in bed, cuddle him and play with him…

‘Oh, dear heaven!’ she whispered under her breath.

Thinking about him, and how miserable he must be, she felt as if swords were being plunged into her body over and over again.

But tears weren’t an option. She needed to stay calm and alert. On no account could she afford to surrender to the misery and fear that churned in her stomach, which kept her awake long into the bleak and empty night.

A small, stifled moan escaped her pale lips. No child! No husband! And she’d loved them both with such an all-consuming passion…

At that moment the phone rang, its shrillness startling her so profoundly that she grabbed it and clamped it to her ear, her nerves scattered into pitiful shreds as she answered without thinking, almost spitting out her name.

‘Yes? Miranda here!’

There was a crackling sound and then silence, giving her the opportunity to regain her composure. So she took a deep breath and began again.

‘Miranda Severini. Who’s there?’ she asked, sounding several degrees cooler in tone.

‘Dante.’

Dante! The shock at hearing the caressing murmur was so great that she staggered. In desperation her elegant hand caught at the marble-topped table, the force of the movement breaking a nail. Blindly she stared at its jagged edge, her mind racing.

Contact with him at last! Suddenly her heart thundered with hope but she didn’t give her husband the satisfaction of hearing her plead for her own child. She knew she’d either scream at him hysterically or be choked into silence by her tears.

Pride prevented her from offering him either of those alternatives. With a supreme effort she schooled herself to remain silent, waiting for him to continue while her heart thudded and jerked painfully within her chest.

‘Miranda? Dica! Speak!’

Annoyingly the huskily spoken words seeped into her very veins. He’d always split her name into three lyrical syllables; Mee-rahn-dah. And to her dismay, memories of their love-filled days briefly melted the marrow of her very bones.

Then she clenched her teeth to remind herself of Guido’s revelation. On that fateful day when she’d had that terrible fever, her brother-in-law had poured coffee into her and brought blankets so that she could curl up on the sofa.

She’d known that Dante had gone off with Carlo, but didn’t understand why. Everything had been such a blur. Guido’s sympathy with her plight had caused him to spill the beans.

He’d told her that Dante had married her for the sake of his inheritance. Apparently he had fathered her son purely to curry favour with his childless uncle. The moment Dante’s uncle had died and the inheritance was safely in the bag, he’d spirited Carlo away, too cowardly to face her out.

She frowned, pieces of the jigsaw of that day still missing. It puzzled her that her bed had been in such a mess, though she supposed she must have tossed and turned in her fevered state. But she couldn’t understand what the empty champagne bottles were doing in the rubbish bin, or why two glasses were in the wrong cupboard.

‘Miranda!’

‘Yes? You have something to say to me?’ she prompted, as if Dante were a casual friend who should be apologising for a rude remark, and not the man who’d scattered her trust and love to the four winds.