Читать книгу The Italian Duke's Wife - Пенни Джордан, PENNY JORDAN - Страница 8

THE room they entered was furnished with several pieces of intricately carved dark wooden furniture. A coat of arms had been cut into the stone lintel above the huge fireplace. The carpet on the stone floor beneath her feet looked worn and shabby, and she could see where the film of dust on a table in the middle of the room had been disturbed by something thrown down on it with such force that it had skidded through it.

A door in the far wall was thrown open, and a woman stood there, framed in the opening. Immediately Jodie forgot her surroundings as she focused on her. Tall and soignée, she was everything one imagined a wealthy and elegant Italian woman should be. Her dark hair was pulled back in a smooth knot to reveal the perfect bone structure of her face. Dark eyes flashed a look of triumphant possessive mockery towards Lorenzo—the same kind of predatory female look Jodie had seen in Louise’s eyes when she had looked at John. The other woman hadn’t even seen her, hidden as she was in the shadows. Who was she?

A sense of disquiet started to seep through her; an awareness of deep and dark waters driven by dangerous unseen currents that could suck her down into their icy depths if she wasn’t careful. Instinctively Jodie sensed that Louise and this woman were two of a kind, and that knowledge was enough to rub against the still painfully raw emotional nerves inside herself. She looked at Lorenzo. He looked relaxed, but she could feel his tension in the sudden increased pressure of his fingers, where they were splayed across her back. Something was going on here that she wasn’t privy to—but what? So many unanswered questions, and they were destined to remain unanswered, Jodie guessed, as she watched the full mouth thin, crimson with carefully applied lipgloss, and the delicate nostrils flare. A huge diamond flashed blindingly as the woman raised one hand to touch the deep vee neckline of the expensive black dress she was wearing in a deliberate gesture of enticement. What man could resist following with his gaze the scarlet glisten of the long nails as they rested briefly in the valley between the tight, high fullness of her perfectly shaped breasts?

Her dress moulded to a waist so small that Jodie guessed it must be the result of a tightly laced corset, before curving lushly over rounded hips. Its hemline revealed a pair of long, slender, warmly tanned legs, whilst her feet, with their scarlet-painted toenails, were adorned with the highest and most delicate pair of strappy sandals Jodie had ever seen. She looked like someone who was about to walk into the most sophisticated and luxurious kind of setting there was, instead of being here in this dilapidated fortress in the middle of nowhere.

A look of open triumph lit the Italian woman’s face as she sashayed towards Lorenzo. But her brown eyes lacked any kind of warmth, Jodie noticed, and as she walked, talking quickly, her voice sounded harsh and slightly flat, jarring against Jodie’s ears, rather than warm and musical as she had expected.

She had almost reached them when Lorenzo held up a commanding hand and said smoothly, ‘In English, if you please, Caterina. That way, my wife-to-be will be able to understand you.’

The effect of his words on the woman was cataclysmic. She stopped moving and turned to look at Jodie, who discovered that she was being propelled forward out of the shadows and anchored to Lorenzo’s side by means of his almost manacle-like grip on her wrist.

A furious, disbelieving female glare savaged Jodie where she stood, followed by an equally furious outburst of Italian.

‘This way,’ Lorenzo instructed Jodie, ignoring her.

‘No!’ The woman placed herself in front of them, and said in English, ‘You will not do this to me. You cannot! Who is she?’

‘I have just told you. My wife-to-be,’ Lorenzo answered her dismissively.

‘No. You cannot do this.’ The flat, metallic voice was filled with fury. ‘No. No!’ She was shaking her head from side to side so violently that Jodie felt dizzy, but not one single strand of the immaculately coiffed hair escaped. ‘No,’ she repeated. ‘You will not make such a nothing your duchessa, Lorenzo?’

His duchess?

‘You will not speak so of my intended wife,’ she heard Lorenzo saying coldly.

Dear God, what on earth had she got herself into?

‘Where has she come from? What gutter did you—?’

Immediately a look of haughty rejection stiffened Lorenzo’s expression, but Caterina ignored it, grabbing hold of his arm and insisting, ‘Answer me, Lorenzo, or I will…’