The Italian Duke's Virgin Mistress (5 page)

These, though, were not modern drawings, but sketches and watercolours of parts of the original garden, Charley quickly recognised, immediately becoming so absorbed in them that everything else was forgotten as she was mentally swept back to another century, enviously imagining what it must
have been like to be involved in such a wonderful project. The plans and sketches alone were minor works of art in their own right, and Charley’s fingertips trembled as she touched the papers on which those long-ago craftsmen had etched their sketches and detailed measurements of fountains, statues, colonnades and grottos.

A perspective overview showed the full layout of the garden. The formal sweep of a curved, colonnaded entrance opened in the centre, to draw the eye down a wide avenue planted with what looked like pleached limes. Either side of it the garden was intersected by narrower walkways, opening out into sheltered bowers decorated with seats and statuary, beyond which lay a stone fountain, in the middle of which was a huge piece of statuary. A paved terrace shaded by vines marked the boundary, where the land fell away with a view over an ornamental lake, complete with a grotto.

There were sketches for small, elegant pavilions, ‘secret’ water gardens designed to spring into life when the unsuspecting walked close to them. Charley ached with longing to have seen the garden following its completion. Raphael was right to say that trying to recreate such beauty using cheap manmade materials was an insult to the original artists.

She was so wrapped up in the world those long-ago craftsmen and artists had created that she didn’t hear the soft click of the door opening, and was oblivious to Raphael’s return and the fact that he was standing watching her as she stood looking down at the papers on his desk, her expression one of absorbed intensity.

Charley lifted her gaze from the desk, her eyes shadowed with all that she was feeling, lost in her own world—only to come abruptly out of that world when she saw Raphael.

How long had he been there? The way he was looking at her made her feel acutely vulnerable. She stepped back from the desk, so intent on escaping from his gaze that she forgot about the small table behind her on which the maid had placed the tray of coffee.

As she bumped into the table she dislodged the heavy thermos jug. Before she had time to react Raphael had reacted for her, reaching her side, pulling her away from the table just as hot coffee spouted from the jug and onto her jean-clad thigh.

She must have cried out, although she wasn’t aware of having done so, because immediately Raphael looked down to where the hot liquid had soaked through her jeans, his sharp and almost accusatory, ‘You have been burned,’ causing Charley to shake her head.

‘No. I’m all right,’ she insisted.

Her face was burning with a mixture of emotions. Her leg was stinging painfully beneath the wet fabric of her jeans, but it was her own embarrassment at having been so clumsy rather than any pain that was making her feel so self-conscious. There was a small puddle of coffee on the snow-white starched linen tray cloth with its discreet monogram, and coffee on the floor as well, but thankfully it had missed the rug that covered part of the marble-tiled floor. Her parents would have shaken their heads if they had witnessed her mishap, pointing out to her that she
was dreadfully clumsy. How she had longed to be deft and delicate in her movements, and not like the baby elephant her mother had always teasingly told her she was.

‘It’s my own fault,’ she told Raphael. ‘I shouldn’t be so clumsy.’

Clumsy? Raphael frowned. She was tall, yes, but her hands and her feet were elegantly narrow, her body far too slender for her ever to be ‘clumsy’. In fact if anything Raphael had noticed how controlled and economical her movements were, almost as though she was afraid to express herself.

‘You’ll want to get changed. I’ll wait for you down here.’

‘There’s no need for me to change,’ Charley told him. ‘My jeans will dry.’

He was looking at her in a way that said very explicitly what he thought of a woman who cared so little for her appearance that she was content to continue wearing jeans that were stained with and smelled of coffee.

Gritting her teeth, Charley lowered her pride to admit, ‘I haven’t got anything to change into, since you insisted that I was to stay here instead of going home and then returning.’

Now that the immediate shock was receding Charley was beginning to realise that the scalding coffee had hurt her more than she had first thought. Her leg was throbbing and burning, the pain growing more intense with every passing second, but she was stubbornly determined not to let Raphael see that.

‘Go up to your room,’ Raphael commanded. ‘I’ll
speak to Anna about providing you with something to wear for now.’

It was easier to give in than to argue—especially with the pain growing more intense by the second, Charley admitted as she stood up. And then, to her shock, she felt her burned leg give way beneath her, causing her to stumble into Raphael’s desk.

Raphael was on his feet immediately, opening a drawer in his desk, coming towards her as she clung to the edge of the desktop for support.

‘No!’ Charley protested, and protested a second time as she saw the scissors in his hand. But it was no use. He was cutting through the wet denim as ruthlessly as he would have cut down an enemy. The cool air on her burned flesh caused Charley to shudder. She felt slightly sick and light-headed when she looked at her leg and saw how the flesh had reddened and blistered.

Raphael’s mouth tightened as he looked at the burned flesh. ‘This needs proper medical treatment,’ he announced grimly.

‘No. I’m all right,’ Charley insisted. ‘I’ll go upstairs and bathe it with some cool water.’ She let go of the desk and took a couple of steps, the blood draining from her face as her body responded with a surge of pain.

Raphael had seen enough. Of all the stubborn, stupid women…Before Charley could stop him he was lifting her into his arms, his action forcing her to hold on to him tightly by putting her arms around his neck. He couldn’t possibly be intending to carry her all the way to her room—but it seemed that he was, and
Charley could only guess at the power in the muscles cloaked by his fine linen shirt as he did so, as effortlessly as though she weighed little more than a child.

Once they were inside her room, Raphael placed her on the bed and then, after instructing her not to move, he left.

Strange how the pain had subsided whilst she was in Raphael’s arms. But it had returned now, and if anything was even worse. It was ridiculous for her to feel as though she had been abandoned, and even more ridiculous—dangerously so—for her to wish that Raphael had stayed with her. Charley looked down at her lower body which, unlike her damaged leg, was still encased in her jeans. She wasn’t helpless, she reminded herself. She sat up and started to ease her jeans off, wincing as the fabric brushed against her burned flesh.

‘What the devil…? I told you not to move.’

Charley swung round. Raphael was coming towards her, carrying a first aid box.

‘I’ve rung the doctor, and he should be here soon, but in the meantime the burn needs to be covered by a dressing.’

Raphael was kneeling on the floor next to her now bare legs, apparently oblivious to the fact that she had removed her jeans and was now only covered by the lacy briefs which had been Lizzie’s Christmas present to her.

‘There’s really no need…’ she began, but Raphael stopped her.

‘On the contrary—there is every need,’ he told her.

She had removed her jeans, and now it wasn’t just
the slender length of her legs that was distracting him from his self-imposed task, Raphael acknowledged. He had seen women wearing far more provocative and revealing underwear than the lacy briefs that Charley was wearing, but right now the fact that he was acutely aware of what lay beneath the barrier concealing her body from him was having a very unwanted effect on him physically. Angry with himself for allowing his body to overcome his self-control, Raphael worked quickly to open the medical kit and remove the necessary dressing, keeping his gaze fixed firmly on the burned flesh of Charley’s thigh, which had now begun to tremble slightly.

‘The pain is getting worse?’ he demanded.

Charley nodded her head. It was, after all, true that the pain was bad, but it was also true that it wasn’t the pain that was causing her body to tremble. Nor was it the reason that the trembling increased when Raphael placed the dressing on her bare flesh. Her reaction to his touch horrified her. She was behaving like an adolescent with a crush.

‘There—that should protect the burn until the doctor gets here to look at it properly.’

Charley nodded her head, managing a reluctant, ‘Thank you.’

She felt shivery and sick, her nerves jangling—and not, she suspected, purely because of her burned thigh. This time it was a relief when Raphael left her.

I
T WAS
another lovely sunny morning, her second here in Italy, in Raphael’s
palazzo,
in what was in effect his bedroom, since he owned the
palazzo.
Goosebumps rose on her skin as though it had been touched, caressed. Helplessly Charley closed her eyes. It must be the painkillers the doctor had given her yesterday, after he had looked at her burn, re-dressed it and pronounced that she must spend the rest of the day in bed, not her wayward thoughts of Raphael.

She knew better this morning than to go and stand on the balcony in her sleepwear.

Instead of worrying about who owned the bed she slept in, what she should be doing was worrying about how she was going to manage without her jeans—the one and only garment she had with her to clothe the lower half of her body. She could hardly appear in public in the loose pyjama shorts she was currently wearing, although Raphael had said that he would speak to Anna on her behalf.

She owed Raphael a debt of gratitude for dealing
with the situation so properly and promptly. The doctor had told her that the burn could have turned very nasty indeed if it had been left unattended, as she would have chosen to do left to her own devices. Luckily it was not so severe that she would need skin grafts, but he had warned her that she might end up with an area of flesh that would forever be vulnerable to heat and sunlight.

Charley looked at her untouched breakfast tray. She was too on edge to eat. She pushed her hand into her hair to lift it off her face. She had lost a great deal since coming to Italy: her hairband, her jeans, her pride and even some of her self-respect. And hadn’t she forgotten something? her conscience prodded. Charley defended her omission. Wasn’t the list she had just given herself long enough? Did she really have to add to it that she was also in danger of losing the protection she had put in place around and within herself to stop her from feeling the pain of not being good enough, not being woman enough to merit male attention?

She looked round the room, desperate to find something she could focus on that would enable her to avoid dealing with what was happening to her. The room must have been remodelled at some stage, because its Baroque decor belonged to a later age than the
palazzo
itself. The softly painted grey-blue wooden panelling was decorated with gilded swags and cupids, and heraldic arms were carved into the imposing bedhead. Her bathroom contained a huge claw-footed bath, in addition to a more modern shower, and the room’s walls were tiled in marble.

She heard someone knock on the bedroom door
and, assuming it was the maid coming to collect her untouched breakfast tray, went to open the door for her—only to discover that the person standing outside the door was not a maid, but Raphael. As he stepped into the room and closed the door behind him Charley saw that he was carrying a large, not very deep square box, stamped with an international delivery service’s label, beneath his arm.

‘Are you still in pain?’ he asked. ‘Dr Scarlarti has left with me some more medication if that is the case.’

Charley wasn’t a fan of taking any kind of medication unless it was strictly necessary, so she shook her head, answering him truthfully, ‘The skin is still slightly sore, but no more than that.’

The fact that he was in her room fully dressed, whilst she was wearing little more than a vest top and a pair of shorts not intended for public view, was making her feel far more uncomfortable than the burn on her leg. Raphael, on the other hand, looked perfectly at ease—but then Charley suspected he was far more used to being in a bedroom with a member of the opposite sex than she was. Just looking at him was enough to tell her that he was a sexually experienced man who must have shared his life and his bed with any number of willing women.

She gave an involuntary glance towards the bed, where Raphael had deposited the box he had been carrying, unable to stop her imagination from providing her with an image of him on a wide double bed, with the woman he had just pleasured lying in his arms. Her body had started to ache with heavy, sensual
longing, and a pulse was beginning to beat low down in her body. A fierce stab of envy whipped through her. Somehow she managed to drag her gaze away from the bed, but looking at Raphael wasn’t doing anything to banish either her inappropriate thoughts or the desire they were causing—far from it. How could she be experiencing something like this? It was humiliating—and dangerous.

It took Raphael’s crisp, ‘Why haven’t you eaten your breakfast?’ to bring her back to reality, turning her aching desire into prickly defensiveness.

‘I wasn’t hungry,’ she told him.

‘We’ve got a busy day ahead of us, and several acres of abandoned pleasure garden to walk through, provided your leg isn’t causing you any pain, and that’s something you won’t be able to do on an empty stomach. I’ll tell Anna to send up a fresh breakfast for you, and then you can meet me downstairs in say an hour’s time.’

‘I’ll have to ask Anna if she can find me something to wear first,’ she pointed out.

‘That won’t be necessary.’

‘I can’t go out like this,’ Charley protested, and then wished she had not as her words caused him to give a probing, prolonged look at her legs. It made her quake inwardly in recognition of how much and how foolishly one part of her wondered what it would be like to have that probing look transformed to one of slow, sensual exploration, followed by the even more sensual stroke of his touch against her skin. Such dangerous, reckless thoughts were not to be encouraged.

‘No,’ he agreed, coming towards her, causing her to move back and then stop when she realised that she couldn’t back up any further because the backs of her legs were already pressed against the bed.

When Raphael stood in front of her and leaned towards her Charley sank down onto the bed, her heart thudding with a mixture of expectation and apprehension, her gaze fixed on the second button of his shirt, not daring to move either up to the tanned bare flesh above it or down to the waistband of his jeans below it. He was reaching towards her—no, not towards her but past her, Charley recognised, dragging her gaze from his chest to his arm just in time to see him retrieving the package he had dropped on the bed earlier.

Mortified by her own misinterpretation of the situation, Charley scrambled to her feet.

‘I took the precaution of ordering these for you,’ Raphael was telling her impersonally, handing her the box. ‘Hopefully they will fit.’

He was obviously waiting for her to open the parcel—so, turning her back to him as she placed the box back down on the bed, Charley proceeded to do so.

The first thing she noticed once she had removed the carrier’s cardboard wrapping was that the elegant black box inside it was stamped in gold with the name of a world-renowned fashion designer. Her heart sank. How on earth was she going to pay for designer jeans?

Uncertainly she opened the box, her anxiety deepening when she realised that the tissue layers inside it didn’t just contain a pair of jeans. There was also a tee
shirt and what looked like a butter-soft, fashionably shaped tan leather jacket.

Dropping the lid back on the box, Charley turned to confront Raphael.

‘I can’t possibly wear these clothes,’ she told him flatly. ‘It’s…it’s kind of you to have thought of replacing my jeans, but these things…’ She gestured helplessly towards the box, embarrassment burning her face. ‘They’re way outside my price range,’ she was forced to tell him. ‘I couldn’t afford—’

‘There is no question of you having to pay for them,’ Raphael interrupted.

‘What?’ Charley was too overwrought to conceal her feelings. ‘I can’t let you buy clothes for me. It wouldn’t be right.’

Raphael crossed his arms and gave her a haughty look of arrogant disdain.

‘Where my affairs are concerned, I am the one who says what is and what is not right. I do not intend to waste time in resolving the issue of your tender pride whilst you wait for a member of my staff to source a pair of jeans for you. You will wear the clothes which I have provided. If wearing them is so offensive to you that you do not wish to keep them, when you return to England you may send them back to me—or give them to a charity.’

Charley tried to withstand the look he was giving her, but it was her gaze that fell away first, even though she managed to muster the determination to tell him, ‘The jeans look smaller than my normal size. I don’t think they will fit me.’

‘On the contrary—they will be a perfect fit,’ Raphael told her.

He was so arrogant, so sure of himself, so sure that he was right that Charley had what she knew was a childish urge to puncture that self-confidence.

‘You can’t possibly know that—even if you checked the size of my own jeans.’ Designers were, after all, notorious for making their clothes smaller than those of less expensive manufacturers.

To her shock, instead of backing down Raphael gave her an even more haughty look and told her, ‘I didn’t need to check your jeans to assess what size you would need. I am a man, and despite the fact that you choose to inflict on your body clothes that smother it instead of enhancing it I am perfectly able to assess the shape and proportions of what lies beneath them.’

What was he saying? That he could see through her clothes to the body she had always been so anxious to protect from male appraisal and criticism? Flustered and defensive, Charley argued fiercely, ‘That’s not possible.’

Before she could stop him Raphael had taken hold of her—one hand holding her arm and preventing her escape, the other resting on her waist. Charley sucked in her breath. Why hadn’t she thought to wear the towelling robe hanging up in her bathroom? Why hadn’t she checked who was knocking on the door of her bedroom? Why had fate allowed her to be trapped in this untenable situation? Her heart was hammering into her ribs, tingles of awareness shooting to every part of her body from the pressure of Raphael’s hand on her waist.

‘From the span of my hand against the curve of your waist I can tell that your waist can’t be much more than twenty-two inches,’ he announced matter-of-factly.

A swift spasm of shocked recognition at his accuracy shook Charley’s body—or was it the fact that Raphael’s fingertip was moving in a straight line down over her still tensed stomach, causing rivulets of unwanted sensation to run from his touch with faster gathering force the lower his fingertip moved. Like lava from a long-suppressed volcano, they gathered speed and spread out, overwhelming the opposition of her tightened muscles and sending their message of aching arousal deep into her body. Surely it was only her own wanton imagination that was telling her that he had momentarily flattened the whole of his hand against her body, so that the heel of his palm momentarily pressed hard against the vulnerable flesh surmounting her sex? Shame, guilt and fear surged through her. How pitiful she was for actually thinking what she was thinking. She could understand why her body would be aroused by Raphael’s touch, but how on earth could she imagine that he might want her?

Raphael was now drawing a line out to her hip bone and telling her coolly, ‘Your hip measurement is approximately thirty-four inches.’

‘Thirty-four and a half, actually.’ Charley managed to find the courage to correct him.

‘Which is still too narrow for your height.’

‘Which you can also assess, no doubt?’ Charley couldn’t stop herself from snapping.

‘Certainly,’ Raphael agreed, releasing her arm to
step close to her and turn her round, holding her against his own body and directing her attention to the fulllength mirror in front of her.

‘I am six foot three, which means that you are around five foot nine—and you have long legs, in proportion to your height.’ His hand brushed the top of her bare thigh, causing her to grit her teeth to control the shudder that gripped her.

Charley was beyond telling him that in fact she was five nine and a quarter. She was beyond doing anything other than staring with growing horror at the sharp peaking of her nipples beneath her thin top, the erotic contrast between their erect, eager stiffness and the swell and softness of her breasts filling her with humiliation.

‘What I cannot understand,’ Raphael continued as she battled to force herself to concentrate on what he was saying and not what his touch was doing to her, ‘is why a woman—any woman—should want to conceal the beauty of the perfect form that nature has bestowed upon her with such ugly, concealing clothes.’

Distracted from her humiliation by the unexpectedness of his words, Charley struggled to assimilate them. Raphael was praising her body? Describing it as perfect? The body she had always felt so inferior? Her heart thudded against her ribs, making her dizzy with emotion. But wasn’t it more likely that he had simply meant that the female form in general was beautiful and perfect, rather than meaning her body in particular?

Shakily, Charley tried to pull herself away from
him and turn round at the same time, but somehow all she managed to do was turn so that now she was face to face as well as body to body with Raphael, whilst his hands still held her hips. Automatically she looked up at him, her ability to breathe stifled by the way his probing gaze fastened on her mouth and stayed there. Immediately, as though commanded to do so, her lips parted, her breath coming quickly and urgently, lifting her chest in small unsteady movements. What would she do if he kissed her? She could feel his hands tightening against her body. What would it feel like to have them caressing her? Her whole body jolted as though it had received an electric shock so strong was its reaction to her own thoughts. She wanted to lean into him and offer herself to him. She wanted to curl her hand behind his head and bring his mouth down to her own. She wanted to feel his touch against her bare skin…She wanted…

Abruptly Raphael released her, and stepped back from her, leaving Charley to tell herself that she was glad that he had brought an end to her reckless and unwanted imaginings.

‘Very well, then,’ she told him, struggling for normality. ‘I’ll wear the jeans, but that’s all. I don’t need the jacket.’