runaway?’
‘I will ask the owner to be discreet.’
‘It will all come down to who has the bigger purse, you or the wealthiest landowners around the lake.’
Rosa fell quiet again and Thomas adjusted his grip on the pensive young woman in his arms.
‘Are you sure you can’t sort this feud out with the Di Mercurios?’ Thomas asked softly, the levity gone from his voice. ‘It would be the easiest way.’
‘No.’ The force behind that one short word told Thomas all he needed to know about Rosa’s predicament. She was in trouble, real trouble, and it wasn’t going to be sorted with an apology and a friendly handshake. He couldn’t imagine the Di Mercurios had actually kept Rosa locked up, they were a respected and important family, but he was well aware he didn’t know the details. ‘I need to get away from here,’ Rosa said quietly. ‘I need to get back to England.’
Thomas quickened his pace along the dusty road and felt Rosa squirm in his arms.
‘Where are we going?’ she asked.
‘I’m renting a villa about a mile from here,’ Thomas said. ‘You will stay tonight and arrangements can be made in the morning.’
‘I’m not sure that is an appropriate—’
‘You don’t really have a choice,’ Thomas interrupted her. ‘It’s this or the Di Mercurios finding you within the hour.’
‘I am a young woman of a good family,’ Rosa said stiffly.
‘Trust me, there is nothing further from my mind than ravishing you. You’ll be perfectly safe.’
Not that she wasn’t pretty enough, in a wholesome, innocent sort of way, but Thomas had not been tempted in a long time and he wasn’t going to let this dishevelled young woman be the reason he stepped off his predestined path.
Thomas set her down gently on a wooden chair positioned on the terrace to the rear of his rented villa. Rosa was momentarily mesmerised by the view over the lake to the mountains beyond, the inky blackness of the water giving way to the solid outlines of the snowy peaks silhouetted against the starry sky. Although she’d been in Italy for a month she hadn’t seen past the walls of the Di Mercurio villa since her arrival.
‘Beautiful, isn’t it?’ Thomas commented as he caught her looking at the view.
She regarded her host for a few moments, trying to decide what she thought of him. He was confident and arrogant, a man used to getting his own way. She had bristled earlier when he’d made the decisions about her immediate future without really consulting her, but she’d bitten her tongue because...well, because she didn’t have anywhere else to go.
‘Who are you?’ Rosa asked as she took in the expensive furniture and no doubt expensive view.
‘Hunter. Lord Thomas Hunter. It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Miss Rosa Rothwell.’ Her name sounded seductive on his tongue.
‘Do you live alone here?’ Rosa asked.
‘Don’t worry,’ Thomas said, flashing her a lazy grin, ‘I meant what I said, your virtue is safe.’
Rosa instinctively laid a hand on top of her lower abdomen, stroking the fabric of her dress and thinking of the growing life that was to be her ruin. She’d lost her virtue long ago, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t hold some moral values. Staying in a house alone with a single, rather attractive gentleman was certainly on the list of Things a Young Lady Must Never Do that her mother had often recited to her when she was younger. Nevertheless, here she was, without any other option and ready to put her fate and her already sullied virtue into the hands of Lord Thomas Hunter. Her mother would be appalled.
Lord Hunter disappeared for a few minutes before re-emerging from the villa holding a bottle of wine and two glasses. Rosa watched as he pulled out the cork and filled both glasses, before pushing one towards her.
‘So, tell me, whatever have you done to make the Di Mercurios lock you away?’ He held up a hand as he took a mouthful of wine. ‘No, no, no. Let me guess. It’s more fun that way.’
‘It’s a private matter,’ Rosa said, watching as Hunter leaned back in his chair and swung both feet on to the table.
‘Did you steal something?’
Rosa refused to be drawn in and focused instead on her wine glass.
‘Something more scandalous, then,’ Hunter mused. ‘Did you insult one of the old women, the ones that look like mean English Bulldogs?’
‘Those old women are my grandmother and great-aunt.’
‘Oh, I am sorry. Well, maybe you won’t be quite so wrinkly when you’re older. All is not lost.’ He paused, then pushed on, ‘So they’re family, are they? The plot thickens.’
Rosa took a sip of wine and felt the warmth spreading out from the throat and through her body. It was warming and delicious and already a little intoxicating.
‘I was sent here in disgrace,’ she said eventually.
‘Your family sent you all the way to Italy? You must have done something pretty unsavoury for that amount of distance to be required.’
She supposed getting pregnant before marriage was pretty disgraceful, her mother at least had enough to say on the matter. Rosa was a disgusting harlot, an ungrateful wretch and as bad as a common streetwalker. The strange thing was, despite having been brought up with her mother’s strict set of moral values, Rosa didn’t feel disgusting or unsavoury, and she couldn’t summon anything but warmth for the small life blossoming inside her.
Uninvited tears sprung to her eyes at the thought of the venom in her mother’s voice as she’d told her she never wanted to see Rosa, or her child, ever again. They’d always had a difficult relationship, but the finality of her mother’s goodbye had hurt Rosa more than she would have imagined.
What had hurt even more had been the look of shock on her father’s face when Rosa had admitted her pregnancy. She and her father had always shared a close and loving relationship. It was her father, not her mother, who had played with her as a child, who often would call her into his study so they could spend hours discussing books. So when he’d been unable to rally on hearing the news that his only daughter was expecting a child out of wedlock Rosa had felt her heart rip in two.
Dipping her head, Rosa quickly blinked away the tears. She would not cry in front of a stranger, not about something that could not be changed.
‘I suppose it was unsavoury,’ she said, smiling sadly.
‘The Di Mercurios were meant to look after you?’ Hunter asked and Rosa was glad of his change of direction.
Rosa shrugged. She didn’t know what their instructions had been, but as soon as she had arrived it had been made clear she was not a welcomed guest.
‘They locked me in my room for a month.’
‘And fed you gruel, no doubt.’
She looked at him sharply, wondering if he was mocking her, but saw the joviality that had filled his eyes earlier had gone.
‘Well, sometimes they treated me to stew and a stale piece of bread.’
‘How generous. No wonder you wanted to escape.’
Rosa looked past her host, out over the dark water and to the night beyond and knew she would have put up with the cruelty if it hadn’t been for the threat of losing her child. On one of her daily walks around the grounds a maid had sidled up to her and whispered, ‘Don’t worry, signorina, the family they have chosen are kind and loving. Your little one will be well looked after.’
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