Weddings: The Nights: Virgin on Her Wedding Night / Claiming His Wedding Night / One Wild Wedding Night

‘I’m counting the hours until we’re alone together, cara mia,’ he imparted in a roughened whisper that sent her heart hammering into an all-out sprint. ‘All day we’ve been surrounded by people.’

‘Yes,’ she responded dry-mouthed, dreading the instant when she could no longer hide behind the presence of others.

He covered her champagne flute with his hand when a waiter attempted to top it up. ‘I want my bride wide awake,’ he teased, and she tried to produce a laugh and failed abysmally.

‘I don’t have a problem with alcohol,’ she whispered.

‘But you certainly do have a problem with food,’ Valente countered, taking her aback with that incisive comment. ‘You play with it but you never seem to eat it.’

‘I lose my appetite when I’m nervous … that’s all.’

‘What do you have to be so nervous about?’

‘Well, your guest-list for a start. There are some very important people here,’ Caroline pointed out, desperate to provide a credible excuse for her nerves.

Valente’s impressive guests ranged from Italian politicians and powerful international businessmen to a surprising bunch of very toffee-nosed cousins, who were behaving like aristocrats being forced to socialise with the lower classes. When she had asked him who they were and where they appeared on what he had once assured her was a very humble family tree, he had shrugged and given her no definitive explanation.

‘Don’t let anyone make you feel uncomfortable, tesora mia. This is your day. You are the most important person here,’ Valente had responded instead.

But Caroline felt more like a fake and a cheat, and her frame of mind was not improved by her mother’s comments while she was changing out of her dress into the sapphire-blue shift and beaded jacket that comprised her going-away outfit.

‘Just think,’ Isabel Hales urged. ‘You turned Valente down five years ago and inspired him into making a fortune so that he could come back and claim you!’

Caroline winced. ‘It wasn’t like that at all. I didn’t turn up at the church then and I let him down badly.’

‘But that wasn’t your fault—’

Five years ago Valente loved me, she wanted to scream. But now she meant nothing more to him than a long-awaited sexual experience. And in that context she certainly would be new and different, she conceded painfully.

Shortly after his private jet took off Valente rested questioning ebony eyes on her and breathed, ‘What’s the matter with you?’

Taken by surprise, Caroline blinked in confusion. ‘What do you mean?’

‘It’s like someone has sucked all the life out of you,’ he imparted with frowning force, releasing his belt to stand up. ‘You’ve turned into the original walking, talking doll since we came out of that church this morning.’

Intimidated by his attitude, Caroline shrank back into her opulent leather seat. ‘It’s been a stressful couple of weeks …’

‘Per meraviglia! It was your wedding day!’ Valente retorted in a crushing tone of exasperation. ‘Isn’t this what you wanted? Marriage and all the frills?’

Caroline was so tense that she was almost hyperventilating, and her heart was thundering in her ears. She got his point—she really did! She had insisted on marriage when he hadn’t wanted it, but he had still laid on all the bridal trimmings and acted the part of gracious bridegroom. A walking, talking doll. She recognised that it was a cruelly apt label for her stiff reserve so far today. Although in some ways he did not know her at all, he nonetheless knew her well enough to know that something was badly wrong. But there was no easy way of telling her new husband it was fear of the wedding night he was looking forward to that was at the base of her strained behaviour. For an instant she toyed with the idea of telling him the truth, but then, just at that moment, one of the cabin crew entered with a trolley and she lost her nerve.

‘I think I’m a bit tired,’ she muttered apologetically, and it was not a lie for she had barely slept for several nights.

That plausible explanation made Valente’s brow clear and his tension evaporated. He smiled down at her before reaching down to unclip her seat belt and scoop her up easily into his arms. ‘You should try to get some sleep during the flight.’

He set her down in the sleeping compartment and helped her out of her jacket. Everything he did simply unnerved her and, pausing only to kick off her shoes, she lay down still in her dress, her lashes screening her anxious eyes.

‘Wouldn’t you be more comfortable without your dress?’ Valente asked in surprise.

‘I’m fine like this,’ she told him, only breathing again once the door had closed firmly on his exit. Then she lay sleepless, staring up at the ceiling and wondering what on earth she was going to do…

CHAPTER SEVEN

UNTIL they landed in Tuscany Caroline had assumed their destination was Venice. Now they were driving through rolling woodland with glimpses of hilltop villages and serried ranks of grapevines illuminated by the setting sun. It was a gorgeous landscape. Finally she surrendered to her curiosity.

‘Where are we going?’

‘The Villa Barbieri, left to me by my grandfather, Ettore.’

‘When did he die?’

‘Three years ago.’

‘You must have been close?’ she assumed.

‘No, not in the cosy sense that you mean. But although we had very little in common aside from the blood in our veins, we understood each other very well,’ Valente pronounced coolly.

Caroline was wholly unprepared for the long gravelled drive lined with tall cypresses that led up to the most huge and magnificent house, fronted by a massive portico that would not have shamed a palace. ‘My word,’ she mumbled, wide-eyed. ‘Who was your grandfather?’

‘He was a count, with a dozen other lesser titles and a pedigree that stretched back to the Middle Ages. A man of great pride and intelligence who only chose to acknowledge my existence after the rest of his family had bled him dry.’

‘That sounds like a fascinating story.’

‘But not one I want to share, piccola mia. Content yourself with the knowledge that your mother will be ecstatic when you send her a photo and mention my connection to the aristocracy.’

Caroline reddened as though she had been slapped, but she could not argue with his forecast. Her mother’s great reverence for social status and wealth was as well known as it was embarrassing.

Valente led her into the enormous house, past alcoves adorned with marble statues and a parade of huge oil paintings. They were greeted in a great circular hall by a bowing rotund older man and a long line of staff.

‘The head of the household—the irreplaceable Umberto,’ Valente quipped with a smile as the older man stepped forward.

Caroline was so shocked by what she was discovering about Valente’s life in Italy that even though Umberto addressed her in English she could barely manage to string two words together. Five years earlier Valente had described the tiny Venetian apartment where he lived—the lack of modern facilities, the regular flooding and damp. Yet now it seemed that Valente was living like royalty. Her one-time frog had become a prince, only she doubted that a fairytale ending was in store for him or her.

Her tension broke when a familiar, dainty, furry figure came bounding out of a room nearby. ‘Koko …’ Caroline exclaimed in unconcealed delight, the familiar sight of her pet never more welcome.

Giving the distinctive cries with which she communicated, the Siamese cat wound her slender graceful body affectionately round Caroline’s ankles before condescending to be lifted and stroked, Valente came close to inspect the little animal. Koko’s round blue eyes blazed, the hair on her little head puffing up in an aggressive display as she spat and hissed at him, baring her teeth.

‘No, Koko,’ Caroline scolded, adding without thought, ‘She never took to Matthew either.’

The hardening of Valente’s jawline warned her that that had been a tactless reference.

An evening meal awaited them in a dining room as large and imposing as might have been expected in a building where the hall was big enough to function as a soldiers’ parade ground. While they were served exquisitely cooked and presented food Koko sat at her feet, releasing plaintive cries until Caroline let her pet curl up on her lap.

‘That is a spoilt cat,’ Valente commented.

‘Probably, but I’m very attached to her,’ Caroline admitted, thinking of how often the little animal had mirrored her mood and provided her with company and affection when she was feeling low.

Now, conscious that Valente noticed when she didn’t eat, Caroline made a real effort to rescue her appetite and consume a reasonable amount of what was put in front of her. It troubled her, though, that she was already trying to please Valente, just as she had once tried and failed to please Matthew. Would there ever come a time when she could simply please herself? When dinner was over, Valente addressed Umberto in Italian and swept her up the superb marble cantilevered staircase.