The Italian Duke's Virgin Mistress

It wasn’t even as though she could blame Raphael for the way she felt, or claim that he was the one who had deliberately made her feel the way she did. The truth was the opposite. Charley had grown up being honest with herself—especially when it came to her own shortcomings and failures. She couldn’t blame Raphael for the fact that she was so acutely and intensely susceptible to him. The responsibility for that lay with her, and within her. But it wasn’t too late for her to change things. She could draw a line under her vulnerability to him and set herself some new conditions and rules for the way she would permit herself to react to him. First and foremost amongst those rules would be at all times observing a proper professional attitude towards him, maintaining a proper professional distance between them. She could do it. She must do it, Charley told herself as she made her way downstairs. After all she had texted her sisters now, to tell them that she would be staying on in Italy to begin immediate work on the garden restoration, so it was too late to change her mind.

There was no sign of Raphael in the hallway, so whilst she waited for him Charley was free to study the frescoes in more detail, marvelling at the skill of the artist who had painted them. Every expression told its own story about the character who wore it, but it was the expressions on the faces of the three children grouped together that drew Charley. The tallest of them, a boy obviously meant to represent the young heir, had all of Raphael’s arrogance and pride in his expression as he stood slightly in front of his mother and brother and sister, his clothes richer than theirs, his gaze fixed on the distant landscape, as though aware that one day those lands would belong to him. To his side, his sister, in her ermine-trimmed gown, was looking to her mother for approval as an envoy dressed in livery kneeled before her, offering her a roll of parchment on a shield—perhaps meant to signify a marriage agreement? Charley wondered. The youngest child, another boy, was seated on his mother’s lap, reaching for the gold cross she was wearing. As a second son he might well have been destined for high office in the church, Charlotte recognised.

‘The third Duchess with her children.’

The sound of Raphael’s voice sent a frisson of forbidden pleasure curling down Charley’s spine. Not trusting herself to turn round, she told him, ‘The eldest son looks a little like you.’

‘He was killed when the castle came under attack from enemy forces. He died defending his mother and his sister.’

Charley shivered. Raphael’s words showed her that despite the air of arrogance and superiority the boy carried with him, underneath it he had still been vulnerable. Unlike Raphael, who she was sure would never be vulnerable to anything or anyone.

‘You are ready to leave?’

Charley nodded her head, wondering as she followed him out to the waiting Ferrari what had caused the swift frowning look Raphael had given her.

It had rained in the night, and the morning sunshine was filling the air with the rich scent of damp earth and growing things—of life returning to the world after the darkness of winter.

At least now there was no need for her to feel deprived because her stay in Italy would be too brief for her to see all those things she longed to see, Charley told herself. There would be ample time for her to visit its cities and its art galleries, to breathe in its magic and fill her senses with its beauty.

The Ferrari made nothing of the kilometres, each signpost promising that they were getting closer to Florence.

‘We shall go first to my apartment,’ Raphael announced, ‘since we shall be staying there.’

Charley’s heart rolled over inside her chest. She didn’t trust herself to say anything, but then what could she say? I don’t want to stay in your apartment because I want you and I’m afraid of betraying that to you? Hardly.

The sound of Raphael’s voice cut across her uncomfortable thoughts, giving her a welcome excuse not to dwell on them.

‘This evening, as you know, we shall be dining with Niccolo Volpari, Antonio Riccardi, the landscape architect, and their wives.’ Another frowningly assessing look, just like the one he had given her earlier when they had left the palazzo, raked her from head to toe, leaving her feeling vulnerable but reluctant to demand an explanation.

They had reached the outskirts of the city and were turning off the autostrada, heading for the River Arno.

‘The Ponte Vecchio is to your left, beyond the Ponte alle Grazia,’ Raphael informed her, as though guessing what was on her mind as they reached the river.

It made Charley feel dizzy to think of the history that lay before her, like a precious jewel waiting to be admired. Now Raphael was driving through a maze of narrow streets with names straight from history, bordered by buildings that had Charley silent with awe. In a small square she saw a sign for the Piazza della Signoria and the Uffizi, and her heart leapt with excitement. People,

many of them tourists, Charley suspected, spilled from the pavements into the narrow streets. Car horns sounded, impatient Italian drivers gesturing from open windows, and a crocodile of uniformed schoolchildren caught her eye as the crowds and the traffic spilled out into another square dominated by an ancient church. To their left was the river, but Raphael turned right.

‘This is the Via de’ Tornabuoni,’ he told Charley. ‘At the next intersection you will see the Palazzo Strozzi, belonging to the family who once plotted against the Medicis and paid for their crime with banishment.’

The street was lined with imposing buildings, many of them housing designer shops, and the pavement was busy with elegantly clothed women who held themselves with that confidence that Charley thought uniquely continental. Charley was so busy watching one of them stepping out of a store that it took her by surprise when Raphael suddenly turned into a narrow opening between the buildings, guarded by a pair of heavily studded wooden doors. The doors opened automatically, allowing Raphael to drive in, then down a ramp into an underground car park.

‘This building was rebuilt in the eighteenth century and originally came into the family via marriage,’ he explained to Charley once they were out of the car and standing in a lift. ‘It fell into disrepair after my parents’ death. I had it restored, but decided to retain only two of its five floors and let out the others.’

The lift had stopped, allowing them to step out of it and into a magnificent eighteenth-century marble hallway, with curved niches containing polished marble busts, and a wrought-iron banister curling upwards with the marble staircase. But where Charley imagined gilt-framed traditional family portraits must have once hung on the staircase wall, the walls now had a distinctly modern air to them, with their dark grey paint and their white-framed black and white photographs of street scenes and buildings. The effect somehow suited the hallway. It certainly spoke of a man who had the confidence and the arrogance to follow his own artistic instincts rather than adopt those of someone else. She couldn’t imagine herself having the confidence to impose such a modern style on a traditional building.

‘I don’t employ any staff here; I use a concierge service instead,’ Raphael was informing her. ‘I will show you to your room, so that you can leave your things there, and once you have done that I suggest you rejoin me in the living room, which is through that door to the left of us.’

She and Raphael were going to be alone in the apartment? Charley fought to remain composed as she followed Raphael towards the stairs, wide enough for them to climb side by side, thankfully with a good few inches between them.

The room Raphael showed her to was furnished in a French empire style and decorated in soft blue, grey and white. It had, as she discovered once Raphael had left her to ‘make herself at home’, a huge en suite bathroom, with an enormous claw-footed bath and several wall mirrors gilded with swags and cherubs. Charley could easily imagine someone like Napoleon’s sister Pauline relaxing in the deep tub as she gloated over her brother’s conquest of Italy. Despite its delicate colour scheme, somehow the rooms possessed an air of sensuality that reminded Charley of her own awkwardness. This was a bedroom for a woman confident in her sexuality—a purring, sensual seductress of a woman, who wore silks and satins and spent long, lazy summer afternoons lying in the arms of her lover.

Was this where Raphael brought his lovers? Sophisticated, knowing women who—Quickly Charley clamped down on thoughts she had no right to have, and which were an intrusion on Raphael’s privacy that surely shamed her just as much as the betraying ache which had now started to pulse through her lower body. She must not let herself feel like this. She must not and she would not, Charley assured herself as she made her way back downstairs—just in time to see a small plump man stepping out of the lift to shake Raphael’s hand.

‘Charlotte, your timing is excellent,’ Raphael told her. ‘Come and meet my friend, Paulo Franchetti. It is Paulo who has acted as go-between for us with Niccolo Volpari.’

Impossible for her to pull away when Raphael reached out to take hold of her arm and draw her towards them.

‘Buongiorno, Charlotte.’ Paulo greeted her with a smile and a handshake.