tramping down the multitude of steps that featured in the gardens. He was in a filthy mood. Telling Umberto, who ran the palazzo, that his bride was missing had embarrassed him and very little, if anything, embarrassed Cristo. But if he couldn’t find Belle, he knew that calling the police in would be considerably more embarrassing. He didn’t know what he was going to say to her if he did find her either. Was he supposed to lie and pretend he hadn’t meant his indictment? Apologise for speaking the truth? He was damned if he was going to apologise when she was forcing him to tramp all over his extensive property in search of her in the middle of the night. Dio mio! Obviously he was worried about her. Suppose she had come down here in the dark and she had fallen? Hitched a lift out on the country road from some cruising rapist or pervert? Her temper might make her do something self-destructive or dangerous, he reasoned grimly. Cristo’s imagination was suddenly travelling in colourful directions it had never gone in before.
And then he heard a noise, the human noise of feet shifting across gravel. ‘Belle?’ he called.
Dismay gripping her at the sound of Cristo’s voice, Belle returned to her stone bench, having stretched and glued her lips together, but he kept on calling and her silence began to feel childish and selfish and eventually she parted her lips to shout back. ‘Go away!’
Relief assailed Cristo. She was safe, would no doubt live to fight many another day with him, a reflection that sent a wash of something oddly like satisfaction through his tall, well-built frame. He followed the voice to its most likely source: the garden pavilion at the very foot of the garden, sited beside a craggy seventeenth-century-built rushing stream and waterfall. Rounding a corner on one of the many paths, he saw her there sitting in darkness, long legs extended in front of her along a stone bench, eyes reflecting the moonlight.
‘I was worried about you,’ Cristo declared, coming to a halt a couple of feet from the pavilion steps, intimidatingly tall, outrageously assured. ‘You didn’t answer your cell phone.’
‘I don’t have it with me and I’m sure you weren’t that worried about my welfare,’ Belle remarked curtly while quietly noting that he looked more amazing than ever when clad in faded jeans and a casual tee, bare brown feet thrust into leather sandals. ‘Not after the way you spoke to me.’
‘It was the wrong place, wrong time,’ Cristo admitted, mounting the steps to lift the lighter from its hook on the wall and ignite the fat pillar candle in the centre of the stone table.
Not even slightly soothed by that comeback, Belle tilted her chin as the candle flame illuminated his darkly handsome features while he looked down at her from the opposite side of the table. ‘But it was obviously what you thought...blackmail?’
‘I did tell you that other people could be seriously embarrassed by you taking such a story to court on your siblings’ behalf,’ Cristo reminded her stubbornly. ‘You told me you didn’t care.’
Your siblings, not his as well, she noted in exasperation, since he was clearly still set on denying that blood tie. ‘Why should I have? Neither you nor your brothers care about them.’
‘Neither Nik nor Zarif even know of your siblings’ existence as yet,’ Cristo pointed out. ‘Nik’s not into children though. For Zarif, however, the news that throughout the whole of his parents’ marriage Gaetano was sleeping with another woman and having a tribe of children with her would be deeply destructive and damaging. He’s the new King of Vashir.’
Belle rolled her eyes, unimpressed or, at least, trying to seem unimpressed. ‘I know that.’
‘Vashir is a very devout and conservative society and Gaetano’s behaviour would cause a huge scandal there, which would engulf Zarif’s image in Gaetano’s sleaze. Every ruler has opponents and it would be used against him to remind people that his father was a foreigner with a sordid irreligious lifestyle. He doesn’t deserve that. Like all of us, he paid the price of having Gaetano as a father while he was still a child,’ Cristo informed her grimly. ‘I offered to marry you and adopt those children to prevent that from happening.’
‘But you didn’t tell me that, so you can hardly expect me to be sympathetic now,’ Belle told him roundly. ‘It’s not only a little late in the day to start calling me a blackmailer, it’s also darned unfair when you never gave me those facts in the first place!’
At that spirited retort, Cristo gritted his teeth again in smouldering silence.
‘I did not blackmail you!’ Belle exclaimed, sliding off the bench to stand up and walk down the steps before turning back to face him while his attention lingered on her slender leggy proportions in the denim shorts and camisole she wore. ‘Evidently my plans to go to court on the children’s behalf put you between a rock and a hard place but you made the decision to propose marriage!’
Lean, strong features set in forbidding lines in the shadowy candlelight, Cristo stared broodingly back at her. ‘I did but even now I know that your plans to have your day in court would have damaged those children more than you can possibly appreciate.’
‘You don’t know what you’re talking about!’
‘I know exactly what I’m talking about—in fact nobody knows better!’ Cristo parried with unexpected rawness, his dark eyes glittering like stars. ‘Gaetano trailed my mother through court in a supposed attempt to gain custody of me when I was a child. Of course what he really wanted was a bigger payoff from the divorce. He didn’t want me; he never wanted me. All the dirty secrets of my parents’ marriage were trailed out in court and made headlines across Europe and you can still read about it online if you know where to look. Do you really think those children would thank you either now or years from now for seeing their parents’ less than stellar private life splashed across the tabloids and the net?’
That angle hadn’t occurred to Belle and she gulped. ‘Naturally I didn’t want your charity when the children were legally entitled to a share in their own name.’
‘It wouldn’t have been charity.’
‘No, but you would’ve been buying my silence and theirs!’ she lashed back at him angrily. ‘I watched what you did with Mayhill—all aboard the Ravelli gravy train to keep everyone quiet about Gaetano, Mary and their kids.’
‘Didn’t you climb aboard the same train with a wedding ring?’ Cristo taunted with sizzling derision.
‘No, I darned well didn’t!’ Belle hurled back, temper leaping up in a surge of inner flame. ‘Because no matter what you think I’m not a gold-digger or a social climber! I married you for the sake of my brothers and sisters, so that they would never have to go through what Bruno and I went through!’
‘What did you go through?’ Cristo demanded with galling impatience.
‘When Mum started the affair with Gaetano and then later when she gave birth to Bruno, I think people were inclined to turn a blind eye to it all because everybody knew she’d had a rough time with my father until he died.’ Belle breathed in deep, angry pain and mortification coursing through her slender length. ‘Back then the locals felt sorry for her—my father was an abusive drunk.’
‘And then?’ Cristo’s attention was locked to her beautiful face and the glistening lucidity of her wide green eyes.
‘And then it went sour for all of us because Mum continued the affair with Gaetano and went on having children. Everyone knew Gaetano had a wife abroad. They decided Mum was shameless and bold and stopped talking to her, wouldn’t even serve her in some village shops,’ Belle recounted unhappily. ‘But she lived in the Lodge outside the village and shopped elsewhere so the hostility didn’t really touch her...but I went to local schools with the children of those judgemental parents...’
Her voice momentarily ran out of steam and then picked up again as she shared a memory, a haunted look on her face as if she had drifted mental miles away, and in a way she had because she was back there, walking into a classroom as a vulnerable adolescent, being called a slut by a bunch of girls because everyone knew her mother was a woman who had just given birth to two more children by