lungs.
It was the same feeling she’d experienced a few times before, when she’d had to climb the five flights of stairs up to her flat because the lift in the tower block had been vandalised yet again. She took a deep breath and forced herself to calm down. There was no point in worrying about anything at the moment. Nothing could be decided until the results of the DNA test were known.
The nursery was at the end of a long passageway on the second floor. Beth had guessed that it would simply be a guest bedroom furnished with a cot, for the use of any visitors to the castle with a baby. She certainly had not expected this, she thought in astonishment when Teodoro ushered her into the room.
Spacious and airy, the room was painted a delicate primrose-yellow which complemented the pale oak furniture. A beautiful antique cot stood in the centre of the room and a maid was adjusting the exquisite cream lace bedding. She looked round when Beth entered the room and stared curiously at Sophie, before Teodoro spoke to her in Italian and she quickly left the room.
‘Carlotta will bring you anything you need. Just pull on this rope here to call her,’ he explained to Beth.
‘Thank you.’ She walked slowly across the cream velvet carpet and paused in front of a wooden rocking horse. She had seen pictures of luxurious nurseries like this one in glossy magazines featuring houses owned by wealthy celebrities. Everything here was the finest quality. But this room had not been designed as a showpiece. She sensed that love had gone into the creation of this nursery, and as she looked down at Sophie, who was asleep in her arms, an unexpected feeling of peace swept over her.
‘It’s a beautiful room,’ she said softly. Something about the nursery puzzled her. Maybe it was simply her imagination, but she felt a presence that she could not explain. She glanced at the butler. ‘It feels as though a child used to sleep here not that long ago.’
‘It was Signor Piras’s son’s room.’
Beth could not hide her shock. His son! ‘So, is Mr Piras married? Do his wife and son live at the castle?’
‘Not any longer.’ Teodoro gave her a brief nod. ‘If there is nothing else, signorina, then I will leave you. The door over there leads to an adjoining bedroom, which has been prepared for you. I will have your bags sent up as soon as they arrive.’
Evidently the subject of Cesario’s wife and child was not something the butler was prepared to discuss, but Beth had dozens of questions she longed to ask and felt a surge of frustration as Teodoro departed from the nursery. She wished she had been able to discover more about Cesario before she’d left England. He was the head of one of Italy’s largest banks and she had expected to find a detailed profile about him on the internet. But all she’d unearthed was one paragraph explaining his family history and the fact that the Piras and Cossu banks had merged a few years ago. Cesario’s personal life had not been mentioned, and it was a shock to now discover that he was married. Where were his wife and son? she wondered. Why didn’t they live at the castle with him?
Her arms were aching from holding Sophie. Aware that the baby would wake again soon and need a bath and feed, she tried to dismiss the enigmatic master of the Castello del Falco to the back of her mind as she laid Sophie in the cot and went to inspect the room where she was to sleep.
Her room was smaller than the nursery, but no less charming, with pale walls and soft green curtains and bedspread. She would love a cup of tea, Beth thought wearily. And something to eat would be good; the hollow feeling in her stomach reminded her that she hadn’t eaten anything since the piece of toast she’d had before she’d left her flat in East London that morning.
She wondered if she dared pull the bell rope to summon the maid, but she felt like a fraud. She had worked as a nanny for several rich families, and although she had shared a certain amount of intimacy with her employers’ lives she had never forgotten that she was a member of the household staff—and she’d certainly never had a maid wait on her before.
Maybe a shower would take her mind off her hunger pangs? And there was still that half-eaten cheese sandwich she had bought on the plane in her handbag, she remembered. She would make do with that.
The heartrending cries of a baby drifted along the corridor. Pausing at the top of the stairs, Cesario felt his mind fly back to the first months after Nicolo had been born, when he and Raffaella had taken it in turns to pace the nursery, trying to soothe their restless son.
He had once read that becoming parents for the first time often put a strain on a marriage. But the birth of their son had resulted in an unexpected closeness between him and Raffaella, he brooded. Their devotion to Nicolo had created a bond between them. But their harmonious relationship had been short-lived, and by the time of Nicolo’s second birthday Raffaella had started an affair with an artist who had been employed to carry out restoration work on the Castello del Falco’s antique paintings.
‘You cannot blame me for falling in love with another man,’ she had told Cesario when he had confronted her. ‘Our marriage was a business arrangement and there has never been any love between us. I’m not sure you are even capable of loving someone. Your heart is made of the same impenetrable stone as the walls of this castle.’
‘I love my son,’ Cesario had replied fiercely. ‘Go to your lover if that’s what you want, but you will not take Nicolo. I will never give him up.’
Unable to bear the thought of being separated from Nicolo, of the little boy growing up with a stepfather, he had immediately applied to the courts for custody of his son. He had agreed that Raffaella should have access visits. Remembering how devastated he had been when his own mother had left, it had never been his desire to prevent Nicolo from seeing his mother.
But he had underestimated the power of love, Cesario thought bitterly. Raffaella had been torn between her lover and her son. Her plan to snatch Nicolo from the castle would have been successful but for the fact that Cesario had returned home from a business trip a day earlier than expected. The ensuing row had been acrimonious—a furious exchange between two people who had never loved each other but who both loved their child.
If only he had not lost his temper. If only he had tried to reach an amicable agreement with Raffaella instead of angrily threatening to stop her visiting Nicolo. Regret burned like poison in Cesario’s gut.
In an attempt to calm the situation between them he had left her alone to say goodbye to Nicolo, but while he had been in his study she had bundled the little boy into her car and driven away.
The screech of tyres on the twisting, wet mountain road still haunted his dreams. The terrifying silence that had followed still tortured his soul. He had run. Dio, he had run as he had never run before—like a man fleeing from the devil. But he had been too late.
Cesario dragged his mind back to the present, his nostrils flaring as he drew a harsh breath and sought to bring his emotions under control. The cries were growing louder. Tonight another child was in the nursery—a child who, astoundingly, might be his.
His jaw tightened and he strode along the corridor, intent on finding out why Sophie’s guardian was apparently not taking care of her.
‘Come on, sweetheart, let’s see if holding you over my shoulder helps,’ Beth murmured as she lifted Sophie up from the change mat. The baby had been crying for nearly an hour, and although she was regularly unsettled at this time of night Beth felt a rising sense of despair. After four months of disturbed nights she was utterly exhausted. But there was no chance she could go to bed until she had managed to settle Sophie.
Patting the baby gently on the back, she wandered over to the window and looked down at the courtyard below. It was dark now, but a little while ago car headlights had blazed as the party guests had departed from the castle.
Watching them, Beth had been tempted to slip downstairs with Sophie and plead for someone to take them to Oliena. The discovery that Cesario had a wife and son had complicated an already difficult situation. Part of her felt it would be better for everyone if she disappeared from the castle and had no further contact with Cesario Piras. She would manage