Constantino's Pregnant Bride Page 9

  Not a soul came out to welcome them as the car passed beneath a stone arch and snarled to a stop in an inner courtyard bound on all four sides by the palazzo walls, nor did Benedict seem to find this strange. “I’ll bring in the luggage later,” he said, ushering her into a vast stone-paved entrance hall. “Let’s get you settled first.”

  Outside, the sun shone from a cloudless sky, but nothing of its warmth penetrated that cold interior. Nor did it touch the throaty contralto of the woman who suddenly appeared from the shadow of the massive central staircase dominating the area. Although she spoke in her native tongue, her displeasure was unmistakable and sent a chill of foreboding up Cassie’s spine.

  It had no such effect on Benedict. Leading Cassie forward, he said in English, “I have brought my wife to meet you, Mother, and she does not speak Italian. And so, in her presence, neither will we. Cassandra, may I present to you my mother, Elvira.”

  Before Cassie could pull herself together enough to recite her little speech, Elvira Constantino stepped closer, skimmed her in a disparaging head-to-toe gaze, and turned to Benedict. “So, le mio figlio,” she drawled, her tone insultingly close to a sneer, “this is the woman of whom you spoke on the telephone.”

  Not about to show her dismay at such a reception, Cassie boldly stared back. When they’d stopped to buy their water, she’d noticed black-clad women, with shawls covering their heads, sitting in house doorways, knitting or weaving, and chattering animatedly among themselves. Many had stopped what they were doing long enough to smile broadly, and wave a greeting.

  In common with them, Elvira also wore black, but there the similarity ended. Not for her the villagers’ simple cotton or friendly greeting, but attitude to spare, all dressed up in Italian haute couture at its most elegant. Her tailored suit of finely corded silk was exquisite, her shoes fashioned from leather so soft they appeared to caress her feet, rather than encase them.

  Her nails were lacquered and she wore gem-studded rings on the fingers of both hands. Gold hoops swung from her ears and her hair, a magnificent shining ebony mass with not a hint of silver, was swept up in a classic chignon to showcase her smooth olive complexion and aristocratic features.

  Although her dark eyes snapped with hostility and her mouth curved in scorn for the pale, pathetic specimen her son had landed on her doorstep, she had been a great beauty in her youth and remained an indisputably handsome woman.

  “This is my wife and her name is Cassandra,” Benedict repeated in a tone that, had he addressed Cassie in such a way, would have left her withering on the spot. “And I expect you to make her feel at home here, Elvira.”

  “I am no miracle worker,” the woman returned disdainfully. “Calabria is for Calabrians and it’s well-known that foreigners do not adapt easily to our way of life. But…” She lifted her elegant shoulders as though importuning the gods to reward her well for her charity. “I will do my best.”

  Her immediate “best” was to lean forward and touch her cheek to her daughter-in-law’s, and it was all Cassie could do not to shrink from the contact. A corpse possessed more warmth!

  “So…” She stepped away again and subjected Cassie to another sweeping survey. “You would like to repair yourself before we share a little refreshment, yes?”

  Cassie had taken great pains with her appearance that morning, choosing fine wool slacks and a tunic top in hyacinth-blue, with ivory low-heeled shoes which were every bit as elegant in their way as Elvira’s black pumps. Nevertheless, she quailed under that contemptuous stare and, feeling suddenly as dusty and travel-stained as a stray picked up off the side of the road, muttered lamely, “Thank you. That would be very nice.”

  Dismissing her with a languid blink of her magnificent dark eyes, Elvira stepped to the wall and pulled on a chain which resulted in a bell sounding distantly, somewhere in the bowels of the building. “I have arranged for you and your wife to stay in the blue suite on the third floor, Benedict. It offers more space than your usual room,” she said. “Speranza will show her the way.”

  “Oh, that’s not necessary,” Cassie began. The idea of being shipped off with a stranger, to some remote part of this mausoleum, had all the makings of a horror movie she’d just as soon not be taking part in. “I can wait until Benedict’s ready to go up, as well.”

  But her words fell on deaf ears. “That will not be for quite some time. There are matters I must discuss with my son which hold no interest for you,” Elvira informed her bluntly, and proceeded to match action to her words by interspersing herself between Cassie and Benedict, and making her way toward a room opening to the right of the staircase. “The problems we spoke of last week, Benedict,” she said, tossing the words over her shoulder, “have intensified. We must take immediate action to prevent any further disruption to our operations.”

  “Bianca mentioned as much,” he replied, following his mother, and Cassie knew from his distracted expression that he’d already relegated his wife to the back of his mind.

  Well, what else did she expect? Hadn’t Bianca warned her, Always with this family, the business must be attended to first?

  But recognizing the truth of the statement did little to mitigate the sense of abandonment sweeping over her as she stood alone in that chill, unfriendly place. Never before in her life had she felt so utterly and completely irrelevant.

  The blue suite turned out to be a dim and cavernous pair of overfurnished rooms, with cold marble floors, heavy, dark draperies at the windows, and a vaguely damp smell permeating the air. It lay at the end of a long corridor on the third floor, and Cassie feared for the poor soul commandeered to show her the way.

  Speranza was an ancient little lady, doubled over with age, arthritis, or a combination of both, and how she managed the stairs so nimbly was nothing short of extraordinary. She spoke not a word of English, but her eyes, though sharply observant, were kind, and her smile genuine as she pointed out il balcone off the sitting area, the massive iron four-poster in the bedroom, and finished off the grand tour with the en suite bathroom.

  “Il bagno,” she declared proudly, flinging open the door with a flourish. “Moderno, si?”

  “Si,” Cassie agreed, although there was no shower stall and the deep, claw-foot tub and washbasin, with their large brass faucets, bore the stamp of an earlier era. But the toilet and bidet were of more recent vintage, and the towels, folded neatly on a glass shelf, thick and luxurious. “Grazie.”

  “Prego!” Nodding and smiling encouragingly, the old woman poked herself in the chest. “Sono Speranza,” she declared.

  “You’re Speranza?”

  “Si, si!” Eyebrows raised inquiringly, she pointed at Cassie. “Come si chiama?”

  “Cassie,” she replied, guessing she’d been asked her name.

  “Cass-ee. Eccellente!” Grinning approval, Speranza patted her arm, then shuffled back to her duties below stairs, leaving a vast and lonely silence in her wake.

  Were the other rooms on this floor occupied, or were she and Benedict to live up here in splendid isolation, Cassie wondered, drawing back the draperies in the bedroom, and gazing down at the courtyard.

  To her surprise, she saw Benedict there, hauling their luggage out of the car, with Elvira standing close by. Gesticulating wildly, she spoke to him in rapid, staccato bursts, and although her words were indistinguishable, her voice, hoarse with urgency—or anger—floated clearly up the chimneylike enclosure formed by the surrounding walls.

  Eventually, Benedict answered with something short and imperative which stopped her in midstream. She took a step back from him, held a hand to each side of her perfectly coiffed head, and rocked it back and forth as if in great pain. After observing her in silence a moment, he spoke again, less harshly this time, but the genuine affection Cassie had witnessed between him and his sister the evening before was markedly absent.

  Elvira spat a reply and turned to stare across the courtyard which lay cast in shadow already, even though the sky remained a clear an
d tranquil blue. A still, black figure in a gray and somber setting, she’d have resembled the evil witch in a fairy tale had she been bent and gnarled with age. Instead, she stood tall and regally proud, every line in her body proclaiming her a woman who’d make a formidable enemy for anyone who, in any way, thwarted her ambitions.

  Suddenly, as if sensing she was being observed, she tilted her gaze up to the window three floors above. Even though she stood some forty or more feet away, the rage in her eyes was so apparent that Cassie recoiled. Not normally given to superstition, she experienced such a chilling prescience of tragedy that her skin puckered with dread.

  Her movement did not go unnoticed. Elvira’s joyless mouth widened in a smile as purely malevolent as anything Cassie ever hoped to encounter.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  ALTHOUGH the face was the same, the virago who’d alternately railed and sniped at Benedict for the last hour bore no resemblance to the mother he’d known as a child. Nor, for that matter, was she anything like the woman she’d been a year ago.

  There was a malice in her now which soured everything she touched, including her relationship with him. He might have attributed the change to grief at losing her husband, except that she’d been widowed for four years. Unless she was suffering a delayed reaction, he had every reason to suppose her period of mourning was long past.

  “Understand this,” he told her, putting an end to her ranting by striding from the office to the rear of the main hall, and claiming the suitcases still at the foot of the stairs. “I will tolerate none of your nonsense toward Cassandra. Accept that she is my wife.”

  “Never!” Elvira vowed, trailing after him. “You were meant to marry Giovanna.”

  “That was your dream, Elvira, not mine.”

  His mother’s voice inched a notch closer to outright hysteria. “You do not love this American! There is no passion in your eyes when you look at her! You are a red-blooded man, Benedict—a Constantino—and she will never succeed in filling your needs!”

  No? Recalling the night before, he had to curb a smile.

  Taking his silence to mean he agreed, Elvira continued her harangue. “Why have you shackled yourself to a woman so pale and uninteresting?”

  He debated telling her about the pregnancy, and decided to stick with his first instinct to keep the news for a more auspicious time. He and Cassandra were there for only a short while. Why cause more friction than already existed? It would be different if they planned to move permanently to Italy.

  “You see?” his mother gloated. “You can’t answer, because you know I speak the truth. You’ve married an adventuress who will bring you nothing but grief, when you could have taken for your wife a fine Calabrian woman who adores you and understands the role required of her. What sort of sense does that make?”

  “Relationships don’t have to make sense in order to work, Mother,” he said, starting up the stairs with the luggage. “Let it be enough that Cassandra and I are committed to one another. If you can’t deal with that, at least have the good grace to put up a pleasant front for the time we’re here, otherwise you’ll leave me with no choice but to take my wife back to the United States immediately—which I’m perfectly prepared to do, and which will then leave you and Francesca to sort out, on your own, the mess you’ve made of things here.”

  With a stunning reversal, she latched onto his arm. “When did you become so cruel that you’d speak to me so coldly? You were never this way before. What’s changed you?”

  “I might ask you the same question.”

  “I am your mother,” she said, and for a moment, with her tone and demeanor, she was. “Benedict, I beg you, in the name of your dead father, do not humiliate me by leaving, when you are so badly needed here!”

  Despite all her earlier, irrational raving, this last plea at least made sense. The Calabrian operation was in a shambles and all because his mother had mismanaged the land and its workers to the point of revolt and sabotage, something unheard of in his father’s time. Now, her pride in taking over where her late husband had left off was on the line—and heaven knew, when it came to pride, Elvira’s was unequaled. The Constantino name had been revered in Calabria for centuries; she’d walk over burning coals before she’d allow herself to go down in history as the one who brought dishonor to it.

  “I’ve stated my terms, Elvira,” he said, torn between pity and anger. “Treat my wife with respect, and I’ll do what I can to put things right on the labor front.”

  “But of course I will,” she almost moaned, pressing her fingertips to her temple and squeezing her eyes closed as if to ward off a clamor of voices only she could hear. “She will become my beloved daughter-in-law.”

  Really? We’ll see, he thought grimly, continuing up the two flights of stairs to the third floor and letting himself into the suite. According to Bianca, their mother’s mood swings were becoming both more unpredictable and more extreme, which made her sudden acquiescence to his demands highly suspect.

  He found Cassandra taking a nap. She lay on her side on the bed, with one hand tucked beneath her ear, and her legs drawn up as if she were cold. He hadn’t dared respond to her touch last night, for fear of where it would have led him. Hadn’t dared so much as look at her. But now, with her magical hands and tongue at rest and therefore unable to drive him over the edge, he allowed himself the luxury of examining her, inch by inch, and imagining how it would be, when the danger of her miscarrying was past.

  In sleep, her face appeared almost childlike and very vulnerable. Her mouth was soft and innocent; her brow smooth and untroubled. Carefully, he bent down to sweep a strand of hair from her cheek, and marveled at the texture of both. Silky and golden, just like the soft northern California sunshine of her homeland.

  As for her body…his gaze slipped lower, to the even rise and fall of her breasts beneath the loose-fitting top, the sweet curve of her hips and elegant length of leg. Ah, the body was that of a woman, ripe with early pregnancy!

  He had never seen her fully naked—not even on the night they’d conceived their child—but the lush contours her clothes couldn’t hide offered a tempting preview of all he’d so far missed, and his mouth went dry.

  He wanted her. Badly. So much that he was hard and aching, just from looking at her. He wanted to kiss her, touch her, taste her, until her eyes were glazed with passion, and she entreated him, in breathless little sighs, to join his body with hers, and put an end to the madness he’d invoked in her.

  He wanted all that and more; had from the second he first set eyes on her. No point in asking himself what it was that made her different from other women he’d known. She simply was, that’s all, and if he were less the hardheaded businessman and more given to self-delusion, he’d have said that fate, and not Nuncio Zanetti, had had a hand in bringing them together.

  She stirred and made a little murmur. Stretched her legs and turned onto her back. Braided her hands over her belly where his child lay sleeping.

  Would the baby be a girl who’d grow up beautiful, like her mother? Or a boy, tall like his father, and her willing slave from the moment he took his first breath? Would there be other babies, conceived at leisure and with love?

  As if the intensity of his stare penetrated her sleep, her lashes fluttered, then lifted to reveal fading dreams in her deep blue eyes. Slowly, she rolled her head from side to side, taking in the bedroom’s dark, brooding furniture, and as the real world swam back into focus, her brow furrowed and the restful innocence of sleep fled, chased away by an almost fearful uncertainty.

  “How long have you been standing here?” she asked in a husky voice.

  Gently, he stroked the back of his hand down her cheek. “But a moment or two only, cara,” he assured her, again questioning his decision to bring her to the palazzo. Coping with a high-risk pregnancy was enough; she didn’t need the added burden of dealing with a mother he was beginning to fear was edging disturbingly close to madness.

  Cassandra ran her tong
ue over her lips and swept another glance around the room, this time noticing the shadows of early dusk clouding the tall windows. “What time is it?”

  “Almost six o’clock.”

  “That late? Why didn’t you wake me sooner? I was supposed to freshen up and meet you downstairs almost an hour ago!” She sat up and swung her legs over the side of the bed. “I bet your mother’s fit to be tied.”

  “Not at all,” he said, steadying her when she lurched to her feet too quickly and swayed dizzily against him. Her skin, where it had been pressed against the pillow, wore the soft, faintly crinkled blush of a newly opened rose, she smelled of warm, lightly perfumed sleep, and it was all he could do not to kiss her. “My mother will understand.”

  Cassandra flung him an incredulous stare. “Your mother understands nothing about me,” she said, pushing him away and clinging to the edge of the bed for support. “I’m an affront to everything she holds dear. She made up her mind to hate me before she ever laid eyes on me.”

  Turning his mind away from temptation, he took refuge in platitudes which rang hollow even to his ears. “She’s set in her ways, that’s all. She never expected I’d marry an American, but that’s not to say she has anything against you personally.”

  “Save your breath, Benedict,” Cassandra scoffed. “I saw the expression on her face when you introduced us. If it were up to her, she’d have the ground open and swallow me whole.”

  “But it isn’t up to her,” he said soothingly, “nor does she make my decisions for me. I married you of my own free will, Cassandra, and while I admit the suddenness of our wedding came as something of a shock to her, now that she’s had time to get used to the idea, I think you’ll find her more hospitable.” He pushed her toward the bathroom. “Take a few minutes to splash some water on your face before we join her in the salone. Then you’ll see for yourself that what I’m telling you isn’t just wishful thinking on my part.”