Raphael might not welcome what was planned for the restoration of the garden, but he welcomed even less the effect this young woman responsible for managing the restoration was having on him. Such was the intensity of his anger that it was fostering within him a desire to punish her for daring to provoke it in him. And that could not be allowed. Not now or ever.
Anger and cruelty were the twin demons that together created men whose savage legacy could never be forgotten or forgiven. And the propensity to exhibit them flowed as surely through his veins as it had done through the ancestors who had passed down that legacy to him—but with him that inheritance would end. He had vowed that as a thirteen-year-old, watching as his mother’s coffin was placed in the family vault in Rome to join that of his father.
Raphael looked unseeingly towards the padlocked entrance to the gardens. He could feel the heavy, threatening shadow of those twin emotions at his back, following him, out of sight but always there, over his shoulder…
They ran through his family like a dark curse, waiting to escape. He had taught himself to imprison them with reason and ethical awareness, to deny them the arrogance and pride that were their life blood, but now, out of nowhere, simply by being here this Englishwoman had brought him to such a pitch of fierce passion, with her tawdry, ugly replicas, her lack of awareness of what the garden should be, that the key to freeing them was now in the lock without him even being aware of putting it there. Forcing back his urge to physically take hold of her and force her to study the original plans of the garden, to see the damage she would be doing to such a historical asset, was like trying to stem a river in full flood, straining every emotional and mental sinew he had.
The walls of his self-control had already been tested by his meeting with the town council as he had studied the plans they had so proudly showed him, while telling him what a bargain they had secured. And now here was this…this woman, so slender that he could have broken her with his bare hands, daring to deny him access to the garden his ancestor had originally created, expecting him to accept the shoddy, tawdry mockery of the artistic elegance and beauty that had once been.
‘You have no right…’ she had said. Well, he would make it his right—he would make the garden what it should be, and he would make her…
Make her what? A sacrifice to the darkness within his genes?
No! Never that. Nothing and no one would be allowed to threaten his control over that dark, dangerous capacity for savagely violent anger that ran through his veins and was patterned in his DNA.
He needed to speak to the local authorities and put before them the plan he was now formulating—for him to take control of the restoration project, so that it could be placed in more appropriate hands, and the sooner the better.
Unaware of what Raphael was thinking, Charley was both surprised and relieved when he started to stride away from her, moving to climb into a sleek, expensive-looking car parked several yards away, its bodywork the same steel-grey colour as his eyes.
CHAPTER TWO
CHARLEY looked worriedly at her watch. Where was the haulier the town officials had assured her would arrive to collect the supplier’s samples? In another fifteen minutes the taxi booked to take her to the airport in Florence would be here, and Charley was far too conscientious to simply get into it without ensuring the samples were safely on their way back to the suppliers. She was beginning to wish now that she had spoken with the carriers herself, instead of accepting the city official’s offer to do so for her.
Her earlier run-in with ‘The Duke’ had left her feeling far more unsettled and on edge than she wanted to admit. It had been a long couple of days, filled with meetings and site inspections, and the realisation of the enormity of the task of restoring the garden. Privately, it had saddened her to examine the overgrown, brokendown site and recognise how beautiful it must once have been, knowing that the budget they had been given could not possibly allow them to return it to anything like its former glory. And now, instead of being able to indulge in a few days of relaxing in Florence, soaking up everything it had to offer, she had to fly straight back to Manchester because there was no way her boss would allow her any time off. Not that she could have afforded to stay in Florence, even if he had been willing to let her take some leave. Every penny was precious in their small household, and Charley wasn’t about to waste money on herself when they were struggling just to keep a roof over their heads.
A van came round the corner of the dusty road and pulled up virtually alongside her with a screech of tyres. The doors of the van were thrown open and two young men got out, one of them going to the rear of the vehicle to open the doors and the other heading for the samples.
This was the freight authority that had been organised? Charley watched anxiously, her anxiety turning to dismay when she saw the rough manner in which the young men were handling the samples.
But worse was to come. When they reached the open rear doors of the van, to Charley’s disbelief they simply threw two of the samples into it, causing both of them to break.
‘Stop it! Stop what you are doing,’ Charley demanded in Italian, rushing to stand in front of the remaining samples.
‘We have orders to remove this rubbish,’ one of them told her, his manner polite, but quite obviously determined.
‘Orders? Who from?’
‘Il Duce,’ he answered, edging past her to pick up another of the samples.
Il Duce! How dared he? Hard on the heels of her outraged anger came the knowledge that she must stop them—or face the wrath of both the supplier who had entrusted the samples to her and her employer.
‘No. You can’t do this. You must stop,’ Charley protested frantically. There was close on a thousand pounds’ worth of goods here, and the damage would be laid at her door. Out of the corner of her eye she saw a familiar grey car speed towards them, throwing up clouds of dust as its driver brought it to a halt on the roadside several yards away and then got out.
As soon as he was within earshot, Charley demanded, ‘What’s going on? Why are these men destroying the samples? The damage will have to be paid for, and—’
‘They are acting on my orders, since I am now in charge of the restoration project, and it is my wish that they are disposed of.’
He was now in charge? It was his wish that they were disposed of? And would it also be his wish that she was disposed of—or rather that her services were dispensed with? Did she really need to ask herself that question?
Helplessly Charley watched as the final sample was loaded into the van.
‘Where are they taking them? What you’re doing is theft, you know.’ She tried valiantly to protect the supplier’s goods, but The Duke didn’t deign to answer her, going to speak to the two young men instead. Charley looked at her watch again. She could do nothing about the samples now. But where was her taxi? If it didn’t arrive soon not only would she be responsible for the loss of the samples, she would also miss her flight. She could just imagine how her boss was going to react. Only her fluency in Italian had prevented him from sacking her already, so that he could give his daughter her job.
She reached into her bag for her mobile. She would have to ring the council official who had organised the taxi for her.
The white van was speeding away, and The Duke had come back to her.
‘There are matters we need to discuss,’ he told her peremptorily.
‘I’m