He shook his head, his dark hair gleaming. ‘In this at least you can’t hide your true nature.’
He started to walk around her and Lara’s skin prickled. Her pulse was still pounding. She felt raw.
‘How could you do it?’ he asked from close behind her. ‘How could you take that man into your bed every night and let him—?’
Lara whirled around, bile rising. ‘Stop it! I won’t discuss my dead husband. Not on the day of his funeral. It’s...immoral.’
Ciro emitted a harsh bark of laughter. ‘Immoral, is it? More immoral than promising yourself to a man only to leave him by the wayside as soon as you realise how close you’ve come to sullying the perfect Templeton family line with a brood of half-Sicilians?’
Lara’s heart squeezed painfully. At one time she had fantasised about the children she would have with Ciro, wondering if they’d inherit their father’s dark good looks and vital charisma. The fantasy mocked her now. She’d been so deluded.
Her voice trembling slightly, she said, ‘You accuse me of being immoral, but you admitted that your motive for marriage was nothing but a cold calculation to improve your social standing.’
Ciro stood back and his dark gaze narrowed on her. She immediately felt exposed.
‘There was nothing immoral about seeking out a union that would benefit us both. You really didn’t have to go so far as to feign feelings for me, cara. It was entertaining, but unnecessary.’
Lara smarted as she recalled yet again how naive she’d been. Because it wasn’t as if he’d led her on—he hadn’t professed any feelings for her. Instead she’d pathetically read too much into every tiny gesture and word, building up a very flimsy belief that he was falling for her too.
Ciro continued. ‘Why didn’t you try to secure your future by giving Winterborne an heir? Is that why he left you with nothing? Because you didn’t fulfil your wifely duty?’
Lara shook her head to negate what he’d said. She couldn’t seem to formulate words. Memories were rushing at her in a jangled kaleidoscope of images—Ciro proposing, down on one knee in the middle of a piazza in Florence, with everyone looking on and clapping, the pure joy she’d felt in that moment.
And then another memory—the awful dark, dank smell of fear as she’d been jostled in the back of that van with a hood over her head. Ciro’s arms had been around her and she’d clung to him with a death grip...
‘I don’t... I never wanted to marry—’
‘Me,’ Ciro interjected. ‘Yes, I know.’
Lara swallowed. He’d misunderstood her. She’d wanted to marry Ciro so desperately that she was afraid if she opened her mouth now it might all spill out and then he would tear her to shreds.
She couldn’t imagine—didn’t want to—what he would do if he ever found out that her uncle had been behind the kidnapping in an elaborate bid to show Lara the lengths to which he would go to ensure she married someone ‘suitable’.
She had to regain control of this situation and of her fraying emotions. She injected all the froideur she could muster into her voice. ‘You’ve proved your point, Ciro. You haven’t forgiven me for leaving you. But if it’s a wife you need I suggest you look elsewhere. I’m not available.’
She turned away to leave, but before she could take a step her arm was taken by a firm hand. She stopped, every part of her body tense against the inevitable effect Ciro had on her.
He drew her back around to face him. ‘Please do tell me what it is you’re so busy with now that you’re a free woman again?’
He dropped her arm, but the imprint of his fingers lingered. She rubbed it distractedly. She looked at him, but the truth was that she was busy with nothing, because she literally had nothing—as he well knew.
She had just enough money in her account to see her through a week, maybe, in an inexpensive hostel. And that was it. She had nowhere to go. No one to go to.
The stark reality of just how isolated she was hit her like a body-blow.
‘The fact is you’re not busy—isn’t that the truth, Lara?’
It was as if Ciro was delving casually into her mind and pulling out her innermost humiliation for inspection.
She tipped up her chin. ‘I’ll keep myself busy finding a job, somewhere to live.’
Ciro snorted. ‘A job? You wouldn’t know a job if it jumped up and bit you. I doubt an art history degree gets you very far these days. You were bred to fulfil a role in society, Lara. Anything else is beneath you.’
Hurt hit Lara squarely in the chest. She’d once confided in Ciro about wanting to do more than what was expected of her. No doubt he thought she’d been lying.
She lashed out. ‘You mean like marrying you? We went through this once before—do you really want to be humiliated again, Ciro?’
This was the Lara that Ciro remembered. Showing her true haughty colours. He could recall only too easily how two years ago she’d morphed in front of his eyes into someone distant and calculating. Utterly without remorse.
It had shocked him. And yet it shouldn’t have. Because it wasn’t as if he hadn’t already learnt how beautiful women operated at the hands of his brittle, self-absorbed mother. She’d made a fool of his father over and over again in her bid for desperate validation that she was desired.
His father had put up with it because he’d loved her, and Ciro had believed from an early age that if that was what love meant, he wanted none of its ritual humiliation.
And yet Lara had sneaked under his defences before he’d known what was happening.
His first image of her was still etched into his memory, no matter how much he’d tried to excise it. She’d been standing just a few steps from Ciro on a busy street in Florence, a hand up to her face, shading her eyes, seemingly entranced by an ornate building. She’d been like a vision of a Valkyrie princess against the ancient Florentine backdrop. Long bright blonde hair falling to the middle of her back... Acres of pale skin...
She’d been oblivious to the attention she was drawing. Or so Ciro had believed. But now he knew she must have been aware of exactly what she was doing, with that face of an angel and the body of a siren.
Suddenly someone had jostled her from the pavement and she’d stumbled into the busy road. She would have been hit by a car if not for Ciro grabbing her and pulling her to safety. She’d landed against him, all soft lithe curves. Silky hair under his hands. And her scent...lemon and roses. Huge shocked blue eyes had stared up into his and he’d fallen into instant lust, for the first and only time in his life. Captivated.
But memories were for fools and he would never be such a fool again. He knew who—what—Lara was now. He would make use of her and then discard her, exactly as she had done with him when he’d literally been at his lowest point.
‘You’re really not in a position to bargain, Lara. You have nowhere to go and no one to turn to. You wouldn’t survive half an hour outside that door.’
Lara clenched her hands into fists. The only thing stopping her making a vociferous defence was the fact that Ciro was speaking her fears out loud. What skills did she have? What meaningful education? Where would an interesting but useless degree get her in this new digital age? Some menial job in an art gallery if she was lucky? She could probably plan and host a diplomatic function for fifty people, but in reality domestic cleaners were more highly qualified than she was.
Taking advantage of her silence, Ciro said, ‘This is what I’m proposing. We will get married in Rome, exactly as we planned two years ago. I think a year of marriage should suffice, but we can review it after six months. During