‘That’s not my problem,’ Jess replied, reaching for another glass of champagne and registering that she felt remarkably buoyant.
‘Watch out,’ Sharon said anxiously nonetheless. ‘It’s safer not to get on the wrong side of people like that.’
‘Times have changed, Mum. The Dunn-Montgomerys are not lords of the manor any more and the locals don’t have to bow and curtsy when they pass by.’
And, at that moment, Luke reappeared at her elbow and insisted on being introduced to her mother before sweeping Jess off to meet his friends. The champagne had loosened her tongue and made her more of a social animal than usual. Luke’s friends were fun and she was giggling like mad over a silly joke when Cesario approached their table, spoke to everyone with rather chilling dignity and anchored a hand that would not be denied to Jess’s elbow to raise her from her seat and walk her away.
Bristling at that high-handed intervention, Jess shot him a reproving look. ‘What was that all about?’
‘It’s time for us to bow out of the festivities.’
‘But we aren’t leaving for Italy until tomorrow morning,’ Jess protested, realising belatedly as she glanced at her watch that time had moved on without her awareness and that, at what felt like very little warning, she was about to embark on her much-agonised-over wedding night.
‘It’s after midnight and our guests are beginning to leave, a fact that seems to have passed you by while you were flirting—’
‘I’m not Cinderella.’ Jess froze, facial muscles tightening, slight shoulders stiffening as Cesario herded her out to the magnificent main staircase. ‘And I wasn’t flirting!’
‘You’ve been flirting like mad with Luke Dunn-Montgomery for the past hour! Maledizione! I could hear you laughing across the dance floor.’
On the wide first landing, Jess slung Cesario a furious look and the truth trembled on her lips, but she wouldn’t let it loose. Why should she admit that Luke was her half-brother and that she was thrilled he had sought her out and treated her like a sister? She didn’t owe Cesario any explanations. He might have married her but he wasn’t entitled to her deepest secrets, particularly not the wounding or embarrassing ones. Cesario was from an aristocratic privileged background similar to her estranged birth father’s and she cringed at the thought of admitting that she was the former squire’s unacknowledged child by one of the village girls. Even if it was the truth, it sounded hideously, mortifyingly like something out of a nineteenth-century melodrama. And when she was already struggling under the humiliation of Robert Martin having been responsible for the loss of Cesario’s valuable painting, and having had to admit to having loan-shark, jailbird relatives as well, was it really her duty to lower herself further in his estimation?
‘To be truthful it was good to have something to laugh about today!’ Jess tossed back cheekily, clutching the full skirts of her gown in impatient hands as she mounted the stairs and struggled to keep up with his long impatient stride. ‘I’ve not been in much of a laughing mood recently.’
‘Believe me, I’ve noticed!’ With that ringing indictment, which any woman would have taken as a direct criticism, Cesario thrust wide the door of a big bedroom, furnished with atmospheric pieces of antique oak and a fire flickering in the grate to ward off the chill of the late spring night air.
Jess stared wide-eyed and disorientated at the room; she had never been upstairs in the hall before. The Tudor magnificence of her surroundings was in stark contrast to the contemporary décor that embellished the ground floor reception rooms that she had seen.
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Her tone was truculent as she questioned his censorious comment, but then she was assailed by dizziness as her head began to swim. She caught at the doorknob with her hand and leant on it to steady herself on knees that momentarily had all the consistency of jelly. Perspiration broke out on her short upper lip as she straightened up, wondering in dismay if she might have been a little too free with the champagne cocktails on offer at Luke’s table. Depending on how much she narrowed her eyes, the vast oak four-poster bed that dominated the room seemed to be shifting and changing position rather like a boat on the edge of a whirlpool.
‘That, in spite of the fact that I’ve done everything possible to accommodate your needs, you have been a very sulky bride!’ Cesario condemned, still picturing her glowing face as she sparkled as brightly as a Christmas tree ornament while she talked, giggled and smiled for that toyboy, Luke Dunn-Montgomery’s, benefit.
‘So, I’m human and imperfect and you’re surprised at this discovery?’ Jess fired back, stumbling slightly in her high heels as she moved away from the door. She pushed the door shut too hard and it slammed, very loudly, closed behind her, making him frown and wince. ‘It isn’t that easy to marry a stranger and contemplate living with him…although I guess with all the one-night stands you’ve had it will be no big deal for you! ‘
Indignation lanced through Cesario at that unnecessary comeback. He was not promiscuous and, although he was willing to acknowledge that he could be arrogant and demanding, he had made a genuine effort to make the terms of their marriage more attractive for her benefit. Not only had he arranged without her knowledge to have her six moth-eaten dogs microchipped and transported out to Italy for their honeymoon, he had controlled his aggressive instinct to intervene and call every shot. And he was very far from being impressed by the response that his generosity had so far won from her. ‘You shouldn’t believe the nonsense you read about me in the newspapers. I left one-night stands behind when I was a teenager.’
‘What about Alice? When did you leave her behind?’ Jess heard herself throw at him out of the blue, not even aware that she was about to hurl those nosy questions until the driven words emerged from her lips.
His ebony brows knit in excusable surprise at that sudden change of topic. ‘Why are you asking about Alice?’
‘I heard a couple of the guests talking…I understand that you and she were an item before she married your cousin.’ Having opened the subject, Jess discovered that she could not make herself back off from it again. She wanted to know, she needed to know more.
‘That’s true.’ His lean, darkly handsome features taking on a forbidding aspect, Cesario compressed his wide sensual mouth into a hard, inflexible line, his dark golden eyes screened. ‘But it’s not a good idea to listen to malicious gossip. The truth is that I put Alice through hell and it’s a wonder that she stayed with me as long as she did. I didn’t realise I loved her until she was gone and by then she was with Stefano and it was too late. I wouldn’t have come between them. They’re very happy together.’
As she listened Jess had slowly lost colour to pale and stiffen with discomfiture. She was horribly conscious that she had asked what she should not have asked and learned what she would sooner not have known. He had loved Alice, maybe still loved her, even though he couldn’t have her. In fact, wasn’t he exactly the sort of high-achieving Alpha male who would want a woman who was out of his reach all the more? He had stepped back and done the decent thing for Alice and Stefano’s sake. It was not an explanation that pleased her or soothed her worries. But why did she have worries on that score? Why should it matter to her if Cesario was in love with a woman married to another man? That was none of her business. Their cold-blooded marriage, their project, was not based on emotional ties or expectations, she reminded herself ruefully. And if he was emotionally bonded to another woman, that could well be why he had decided that only the most practical of marriages would meet his requirements.
‘I wasn’t sulky today,’ Jess fielded belatedly, lifting her skirts to kick off her shoes and sink her bare soles gratefully flat onto the Persian rug below her feet. At least that was what she intended to do but, somewhere in the midst of removing the second shoe, which necessitated her standing on one leg like a stork, she lost her balance and lurched sideways, knocking an occasional table and the floral arrangement on top of it flying in a noisy, tumbled heap.
‘You were sulky and you’ve had too much to drink as well,’ Cesario contradicted between gritted teeth of disdain, striding forward to haul her up out of the debris of dripping flower stalks and greenery while lifting the table back up with one impatient hand.
‘Maybe I’m a little tipsy but I wasn’t sulking,’ Jess persisted in stubborn denial. ‘If you knew me better you would know that I’m quite shy and not a chatterbox at the best of times. I don’t like crowds much either and today has been a big strain.’
Cesario closed the distance between them and raked long brown impatient fingers through his cropped black hair, gazing down at her with a dark intensity that made her nerve endings pull taut with shockingly sexual awareness. ‘I thought all women loved weddings? ‘
Her tummy performed a nervous somersault while the buds of her breasts swelled and lengthened. Hot-faced, Jess viewed him with huge silvery eyes. ‘But I don’t love you and now I’m in a bedroom alone with you and you’re expecting—’ Her voice cut off abruptly as though she had bitten back dangerously unguarded words rather than cause offence. ‘Well, you’re expecting what you’ve got every right to expect as a new husband and that’s all I’ve been able to think about all day and—’
‘I too, but not, I think, for the same reasons, piccola mia,’ Cesario incised, his dark golden eyes hot and hungry on her tense oval face, his long, lean, powerful body taut as he swooped on the vase still leaking water and set it upright on the rug.
He closed a lean hand round her wrist to tug her closer. He felt the resistance in her slight frame and expelled his breath in a slow measured hiss. ‘I don’t want you when you’re intoxicated and unwilling…’