“You have finally come,” Giovanna said.
“As you see, Giovanna,” the earl said.
“And your countess. Did she willingly send you to your punishment alone?”
The earl raised his eyes and smiled at her. “Actually, Giovanna, my wife would now be at my side, despite my wishes, but she had the misfortune to badly sprain her ankle. You have seen my daughter, Giovanna. Her face must give you the memory of Cassandra’s beauty.”
“She will come.” Giovanna said. “Were it not for her, you would have wed me.”
“Do you really believe that, Giovanna?” the earl asked pleasantly. “I fear, contessa, that your character now shows on your face.”
Giovanna’s hands flew to her cheeks. “My son has rutted your daughter, my lord. Rutted her as a stallion ruts a mare. She is ruined.”
The earl’s expression did not alter. Slowly he turned to face his daughter. “Are you ruined, my dear?”
“No, Papa,” Arabella said. “I am not ruined. It is true, I promise you.”
The earl’s face gave nothing away. “Giovanna,” he said slowly, turning back to her, “did you not tell your son that you and my half-brother tried to have Cassandra killed? That she was brutally raped and would have died had I not saved her in time? Did you not tell him that I had broken with you long before I brought Cassandra to Genoa, that I no longer wanted you as my mistress? Did you not tell him that Khar El-Din captured you and my half-brother for the ten-thousand-pound reward I promised for the villains?”
“It is not true,” Giovanna yelled. “You lie, my lord. You lie to save yourself and your precious daughter.”
“Why would I lie, Giovanna? You have paid for your crime, and the years have dulled my vengeance toward you.”
“No. It is my vengeance.” She flung her arm toward her son. “Kill him, Kamal. He lies as he has always lied. Kill him and his miserable daughter.”
“Mother,” Kamal said, pain dimming his eyes, “Hamil is alive.”
Giovanna stared at her son. “No,” she whispered, her eyes blank. “He cannot be. I was promised—”
“Mother,” he said, “it is true then.”
Arabella wanted to go to him, to comfort him, but she stood still as he continued in a leaden voice. “He survived your plot to kill him.” He turned slowly, like an old man, and called to Hamil, “My brother, the time for truth has come.”
Giovanna felt her throat close at the sight of Hamil, vigorous and strong, his appearance changed only by the wide white streak through his black hair. She felt numb, frozen, her eyes l
ocked on the man for whose death she had paid so dearly. A man who had never done her ill.
“No,” she said.
“Ah, Giovanna,” the earl said, “what has your hatred brought you to? You had so much in Genoa. You could have wed another, enjoyed a full and happy life.”
Arabella had listened to her father’s calm telling of the crimes Giovanna had committed. It seemed impossible that such things had happened, and to her mother. Kamal now wore a shattered look, and her heart ached for him. Slowly she walked to his side and closed her hand over his.
“Do not touch him, you slut!”
Arabella had no time to move. Giovanna’s hand struck her hard, and she felt her lip split.
Kamal gave a low feral snarl and caught Arabella against him, holding her tightly to keep himself from striking his mother.
“She has bewitched you,” Giovanna yelled at Kamal, “just as her mother did him. She is a doxy, a whore, just like her mother.”
Hamil saw the awful pain on his half-brother’s face. Allah, he should have had her killed. He should have spared Kamal. He stepped forward, but was stopped by the earl, who said in a coldly dispassionate voice, “Giovanna, can you not admit to yourself that the images you have created from the past are not true? Must you now destroy your son with your hatred for me?”
Giovanna stared at the man who had haunted her dreams for so many years, the man she had desired above all others. “I loved you. You cast me off.”
“Then it was I whom you should have tried to kill instead of Cassandra. She was innocent, Giovanna.”
“She was your slut, not your wife. She followed you from England; it was she who kept you from me. If the bravi had killed her, you would have returned to me.”