A Savage Betrayal

Surely within the closer relationship of marriage Cesare would begin to realise that he had misjudged her? She would ask for the evidence which he insisted he had. No, she would not ask, she would demand that evidence. Somehow she had to clear her name. She refused to contemplate the idea that that ambition might not be satisfied.

‘Mina?’ The strained quality to Winona’s call made Mina glance up from the toys she was tidying in the sittingroom. ‘Cesare’s here.’

‘Again?’ she gasped in astonishment.

He appeared in the doorway. Instant wish-fulfilment, she reflected dazedly, running her amethyst eyes from the crown of his dark head, down over the rest of his long, lean body, the most inescapable sense of possessiveness powering through her. He took her breath away, even though he looked uncharacteristically frazzled round the edges. His black hair was slightly tousled, his jawline blue-shadowed and he wasn’t wearing his jacket.

‘I was wondering,’ Cesare breathed tautly, faint lines of strain indented between his nose and his set mouth, ‘if you would like to dine out this evening?’

It was already after six. Thrown by his unexpected arrival for the second time in the same day, Mina didn’t say anything; she simply stared and nodded. She got up off her knees, suddenly understanding his presence. He wanted to know her decision, evidently had not been able to wait even a reasonable interval to give her time to make up her mind. As the children clattered in a clump through the hall behind him, his head jerked round in obvious search for Susie. He heard the teddy bear first. Their daughter skipped in and grinned up at him.

Cesare couldn’t take his eyes off her. Something mean and envious twisted briefly inside Mina and she was instantly ashamed but at that moment she would have given anything to have the power to extract the same answering smile from Cesare on her own behalf. In addition there was a bonding beginning to take place which had nothing to do with her.

Susie was not accustomed to much in the way of male attention. Visitors and relatives made more of her cousins. Susie was well aware that she was a bit of an outsider in this household. She had spent the entire day brandishing that bear, painfully proud that for once she had got a present exclusively for her.

‘You’re a very pretty girl.’ Cesare hunkered down on a level with his daughter.

Susie beamed. ‘Not bite again,’ she said in reward.

‘I’ll get changed,’ Mina murmured, deciding to leave them alone instead of hovering like a gatecrasher, uncertain of her welcome.

At the door, she paused without looking back. ‘I’ve decided.’

‘What?’ Growling tension accented the question.

‘The marriage solution would be the best for you-know-who.’

There was a long silence. Why did she get the idea that it was smouldering? But she wouldn’t have turned her head and shown her face for a thousand pounds. ‘Cesare?’

‘I’ll make the arrangements,’ he murmured without any expression at all.

Winona cornered her on the upper landing. ‘There’s a limo with a chauffeur out there!’ she stage-whispered, impressed to death. ‘Do you want to borrow something to wear?’

‘No, thanks.’

By the time she came downstairs again, dressed in a casual floral skirt and blouse, Cesare had already told her family that they were getting married. Roger had opened a bottle of wine to celebrate, patently determined to make up for the deficiencies of Cesare’s welcome on his previous visit, and Winona had for some reason changed Susie into a white broderie anglaise dress which had once belonged to Lizzy. Her sister’s motivation soon became clear.

‘I thought that Susie should dine out with us,’ Cesare drawled, skimming Mina with flat, unreadable dark eyes.

And if there had been any prospect of Mina thinking that Cesare felt that they had anything personal to celebrate, it simply died there. She had wanted and expected to be alone with him and even admitting that to herself in the face of his cool indifference cut her to the bone.

* * *

Mina flicked a glance at her shiny new wedding-ring, her soft mouth tightening before she went back to surveying the Sicilian countryside through the window of the limousine. They appeared to be travelling right into the very heart of the island.

Cesare had said they would be staying at his home. Since he had offered no further details, Mina had chosen not to ask for them. But the landscape of rolling agricultural land had changed. The climbing road was now passing through thick forests of pine and eucalyptus trees, dappled sunlight and then shade playing through the silent car.

The silence was like a razor rasping against tender flesh. No doubt it was her nervous tension which translated the atmosphere as one of menace. Her imagination was playing tricks on her, she told herself. The worst Cesare could do was continue to ignore her. In fact she marvelled that, feeling as he so evidently did about her, he had decided to make such a trip.

They had married in the local church early that morning. The deed had been done very quietly. Cesare had not invited a single relative or friend to attend and although Mina had not been sorry to miss out on Sandro, whose reaction to their marriage would surely not have been a joy to behold, she had felt that that omission said a lot about how Cesare viewed their marriage.

Not that she should have required that further education after the past three weeks, she thought painfully. Cesare had driven down to Thwaite Manor several times but all his attention had been reserved for his daughter. Mina had been consistently sidelined and held at a distance. When she had agreed to marry Cesare, she had not expected to be treated like some sort of

hanger-on, only to be tolerated in Susie’s presence!

‘He really is desperately fond of her already, isn’t he?’ Winona had said with rather forced cheer, doing everything but heave an open sigh of relief on Mina’s behalf when Cesare had actually accepted her twin’s offer to hang on to their daughter for the duration of their trip to Sicily.

Evidently Cesare could not forgive her for keeping Susie’s existence a secret. And, though he had decided that marriage was the only acceptable solution to Susie’s needs, the necessity of doing so had outraged him. Only six weeks ago, Cesare had exploded back into Mina’s life, determined to punish her for what he saw as her betrayal four years ago. But Susie had come between Cesare and the revenge he desired.