Carrying His Scandalous Heir

Impossible...

CHAPTER ELEVEN

WITH SURE, SWIFT STEPS, Cesare headed down the winding pathway through the ornamental gardens below the elegant south-facing frontage of the castello, down into the deep valley where the narrow river rushed noisily over the boulders and rocks in its bed.

His stride was purposeful. He knew he should be contacting Francesca, but he could not face it—not yet. Instead he was doing what he had so often done as a boy, when he’d been seeking distance from the father he’d never been able to get on with.

By the river’s edge he settled himself against an outcrop of rock in the late-afternoon sun, overlooking the tumbling water, fresh and cold and clean. Here, so often in his boyhood, he had found refuge from his father’s admonitions and reproofs in watching the wading birds darting, in lying back on sun-warmed stone, hearing the wind soughing in the forest trees. Feeling the deep, eternal bond he had with this domain—the land that was in his blood, in his bones.

How many other Mondave sons had done likewise over the centuries? Waiting to step into their father’s shoes, to take over the birthright to which they had been born?

And now, already, another son might be preparing to be born.

Out of nowhere the realisation hit him. Stilling every muscle in his body.

She carries my child! Perhaps my son—my heir!

The arc of the sky seemed to wheel about him and he took a shuddering breath. She was not the woman he had thought he would marry. In a single night, with a single act of tumultuous consummation, he had changed his own destiny. He felt emotion convulse in him. Carla—Carla would be his wife. Not Francesca. Carla carried his child. Carla would become his contessa.

He could feel the blood beating in his veins. Memory flashed through him—memory after memory. All the nights, all the days he’d spent with her. The sensual intensity of her body in his arms. The casual companionship of their times together.

I did not wish to part with her when I did.

He had told her that truthfully. Admitted it to her—to himself.

Yet into his head came her bitter words to him. ‘You’d be marrying your mistress.’

His expression stilled, becoming masklike. Distant.

Is this what I want?

But what did it matter? His own desires were irrelevant. They always had been.

He had changed his own destiny. And now he had no choice but to marry Carla and set aside the woman whom he had always cast in the role of contessa. In his inner vision, the portraits in the triptych imposed themselves. The two women—the mistress and the wife—flanking his ancestor. The ancestor who had never had to change his own destiny.

He had them both—the mistress and the wife.

His eyes, as he gazed back towards at the castello, were suddenly grave. His destiny was to continue the ancient lineage of this house.

Always I’ve had to follow the path set out for me—first my duties to my inheritance, then my duty to marry Francesca, and now I am set by my honour to marry Carla, who carries my child. Choice has never been a possibility.

Slowly, his expression still grave, he got to his feet, made his way back to the castello, let himself into the drawing room. Walking through it, he moved out beyond into the state apartments, up the great staircase to the galleria above. Knowing just where he was going—and why.

The triptych at the far end was waiting for him. He walked up to it, looked into the face of his ancestor. Proud, Carla had called him, and he had taken her to task for it. She had not liked him, his ancestor, had seen only self-satisfaction, an overweening consciousness of his own sense of superiority as a man above others, taking whatever he wanted from life and paying no price for it.

Cesare’s eyes went to the pale blonde woman to his ancestor’s right. The woman he had married. Chosen to marry. Fingering her rosary, she had her prayer book on her lap, a poignant air and an expression of otherworldliness. As if she longed to be elsewhere. As if the sorrows of her life were too great to bear.

His eyes slid away to the other portrait—the other woman, his mistress. Chosen to be his mistress. The rich satin gown, the heavy jewels draped over her, the roses in her lap, a symbol of passion, and the ripe swell of her belly. The expression in her eyes showed her consciousness of her illicit relationship with his ancestor.

His ancestor had been free to choose them both. To pay no price for either.

Again Cesare’s eyes slid away, back to the portrait of his ancestor. Saw the long-fingered hand, so like his own, closed over the pommel of his sword. His eyes went upwards to the face that Luciezo had preserved for all posterity. For him, his descendant, to look upon and contemplate.

For the first time, as he stood there, so sombrely regarding his ancestor’s face, he saw something in those dark, brooding eyes—a shadow around the sculpted mouth...a tightness. A tension. As if his gilded, privileged life had not been entirely to his pleasure. Not entirely what he’d wanted...

Across the centuries that divided them Cesare’s eyes held those of his ancestor. As if he would divine his innermost thoughts. Drill across the centuries to see inside the man whose blood ran in his veins.

A tightness shaped itself around his own mouth—a tension.