The Italian Duke's Virgin Mistress

‘Tomorrow? But I was only supposed to be here for the day. I haven’t got anywhere to stay, or…’

‘That will not be a problem. You will stay at the palazzo,

so that I can monitor your work and ensure that the garden is restored exactly as I wish. That is where we are going now—unless, of course, it is your wish that I ask your employer to send someone else to take over from you?’

Was that secretly what he was hoping? Well, he was going to be disappointed, Charley decided proudly. She was as equally capable of managing a high-budget project as she was of managing a low-budget one, and in truth there was nothing she would have enjoyed more than seeing the garden come to life as it had once been, if only he was not involved. More important than any of that, though, was her need to keep on earning the money they all so desperately needed right now. She could not afford the luxury of pride, no matter how much it irked her.

The road began to climb up ahead of them, and on the hilltop, caught in the full beam of the rising moon, Charley could see the vast bulk of an imposing building dominating the landscape.

‘That is the Palazzo Raverno up ahead,’ Raphael informed her.

The façade of the building was illuminated by floodlights, and when they had finally came to a halt outside it Charley could see it was Baroque in style, with curved pediments and intricate mouldings displaying the deliberate interplay between curvaceous forms and straight lines that was so much a part of the Baroque style of architecture.

Despite her determination not to betray what she was feeling, when Raphael got out of the car and then came round to the passenger door to open it for her she was totally unable to stop herself from saying in disbelief, as she followed him up the marble steps, ‘You live here? In this?’

Her awed gaze took in the magnificence of the building in front of her. It looked like something that should have belonged to the National Trust, or whatever the Italian equivalent of that organisation was.

‘Since it is the main residence of the Duke of Raverno, and has been since it was first remodelled and designated as such in the seventeenth century, yes, I do live here—although sometimes I find it more convenient to stay in my apartments in Rome or Florence, depending on what business I am conducting.’ He shrugged dismissively, making Charley even more aware of the vast gulf that lay between their ways of life.

‘My nephews would envy you having somewhere so large to play in,’ was all she could manage to say. ‘They complain that there isn’t enough room in the house we all share for them to play properly with their toys.’

‘You all share? Does that mean that you live with your sister and her husband?’

Raphael didn’t know why he was bothering to ask her such a question, nor why the thought that she might share her day-to-day life with a man, even if he was her own sister’s husband, should fill him with such immediate and illogical hostility. What did it matter to him who she lived with?

‘Ruby isn’t married. The three of us—my eldest sister Lizzie, Ruby and I and the twins—all live together. It was Lizzie’s idea. She wanted to keep the family together after our parents died, so she gave up her career in London to come back to Cheshire.’

‘And what did you give up?’

The question had Charley looking at him in shock. She hadn’t expected it, and had no defences against it.

‘Nothing,’ she lied, and quickly changed the subject to ask uncertainly, ‘Will your wife not mind you bringing me here into her home like this?’

‘My wife?’

Raphael had been moving up the marble steps ahead of her, but now he stopped and turned to look at her.

‘I do not have a wife,’ he informed her, ‘and nor do I ever intend to have one.’

Charley was too surprised to stop herself from saying, ‘But you’re a duke—you must want to have a son, an heir… I mean that’s what being someone like a duke is all about, isn’t it?’

Something—not merely anger, nor even pride, but something that went beyond both of those things and was darker and scarred with bitterness—was fleetingly visible in his expression before he controlled it. She had seen it, though, and it aroused Charley’s curiosity, making her wonder what had been responsible for it.

‘You think my whole purpose, the whole focus of my life, my very existence, is to ensure the continuation of my genes?’ The grey eyes were burning as hot as molten mercury now. ‘Well, I dare say there are plenty of others who share your view, but I certainly do not. I have no intention of marrying—ever—and even less of producing a son or any child, for that matter.’

Charley was too astonished to say anything. It seemed so out of character for the kind of man she had assumed he must be that he should not consider marriage and the production of an heir as the prime reason for his own being. That, surely, was how the aristocracy thought? It was the mindset that had made them what they were—the need, the determination to continue their male line in order to secure and continue their right to enjoy the status and the wealth that had been built up by previous generations. To hear one of their number state otherwise so unequivocally seemed so strange that it immediately made Charley wonder why Raphael felt the way he did. Not, of course, that she was ever likely to get the opportunity to ask him. That would require a degree of intimacy and trust between them that could never exist. He was obviously very angry with her—again—and as he took a step towards her Charley took one step back, forgetting that she was standing on a step and immediately losing her balance.

Raphael’s reaction was swift, his hands gripping hold of her upper arms punishingly. Not to protect her from any hurt or harm, Charley recognised, but to protect himself from coming into unwanted contact with her. That knowledge burned her pride and her heart, reminding her of all those other times when men had dismissed her as being unworthy of their interest.

‘You should take more care, Charlotte Wareham.’

‘It’s not Charlotte, it’s Charley,’ she corrected him, tilting her chin defiantly as she did so.

He was still holding her, and once again out of nowhere she was having to fight against the shock of suddenly experiencing an awareness of him that was totally alien to her nature. How could it have happened? she wondered dizzily. She just didn’t feel like this ever—going hot and then cold, trembling with awareness, burning with the heat of sensation surging through her body as it reacted to his maleness.

She had taught herself years ago not to be interested in men, because she had always known that they were not interested in her.

She wasn’t sure when she had first realised that in her parents’ eyes she wasn’t as pretty as either of her siblings. Once she had realised it, though, she had quickly learned to play up to the role of tomboy that they had given her, pretending not to mind when her mother bought pretty dresses for her sisters and jeans for her, pretending that being the family tomboy was what she actually wanted, telling herself that it would be silly for her to try to mimic her sisters when she was so much plainer than they were. It had been her father who had first started calling her ‘Charley’—a name that suited a tomboy far better than Charlotte.