The Lady's Man

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Matthew was almost at the door when she finished the sentence. Unhurriedly, he turned round and looked into her face and his eyes were a pair of steel hooks tearing into her.

‘You know,’ he informed her, ‘you’re making a big mistake. I’m really not the best man to pick a fight with. People who pick fights with me invariably end up regretting it. And I guarantee,’ he added in a tone like a whiplash, ‘that you will be no exception to the rule.’

Never before had Caterina seen such a look in a man’s eyes. A look without mercy. Black and menacing. But instead of feeling scared, or outraged, or angry, what she felt was a sudden flare of reckless excitement and a trickle of anticipation like cool fingers down her spine. She was going to thoroughly enjoy the fight ahead.

Matthew continued to watch her, then, with a quick, cynical smile, he inclined his head briefly in his usual parody of a salute.

‘Goodbye for now, Lady Caterina. Until dinner this evening.’

Then he turned and strode swiftly from the room.

There was only one thing for it after that encounter with Matthew Allenby—a nice long bubble bath laced with oil of patchouli to help restore her frayed and tattered nerves.

‘Help!’ she’d told Anna, her personal maid, when she’d returned to her private quarters still seething with anger. ‘Be an angel and run a bath for me. I think I’m going to explode!’

And that was where she was now, up to her chin in scented bubbles, listening to Anna happily singing to herself next door as she got Caterina’s things ready for the dinner this evening. Though she was only listening with half an ear. Most of her attention was focused on trying to sort out the hopeless jumble in her head. Her brain felt as though it had been attacked by an electric blender.

Damn Matthew Allenby! Damn him to infinity! What had she ever done to deserve this blight on her life?

She lay back, letting her hair trail in the water, and gazed up at the painted and gilded ceiling with its pictures of water nymphs and seashells and dolphins. In a way, she felt appalled by the stance she’d been forced to take with him, threatening to ruin him and have him kicked out of San Rinaldo. She must have sounded like some heavy in a second-rate gangster movie! But what alternative did she have? She simply could not work with him. And anyway, after what he’d done to her, he deserved every nasty thing she could fling at him.

She sighed. In the beginning, of course, she hadn’t realised he was such a viper. She’d known little about him, other than that he worked for her brother, and their paths had crossed only on brief and rare occasions so that the two of them had remained virtual strangers. He had really only become of interest to her when Orazio had opened her eyes.

Orazio. Her gaze still fixed on one of the water nymphs, she paused in her thoughts and let her mind settle on Orazio.

She had thought she was in love with him, but now she suspected she never had been. She had got over him far too quickly for it to have been love. But she had been fond of him. He had been fun and a decent and caring person, and he definitely hadn’t deserved to be treated as he had been.

The whole disaster had happened, of course, because of what he knew about Matthew Allenby. For he had a friend, he had told her, who had once worked for Matthew and who had told him all about the way he went about his business. Bribes, intimidation, secret handouts, blackmail. These were the methods by which he had got where he was. And, of course, by the careful courting of those with influence and power.

‘Your brother can’t possibly realise what kind of man he’s got tied up with. For God’s sake warn him,’ Orazio had advised her just a short while after they’d started seeing each other.

And she had. She’d gone to Damiano and told him everything and her brother’s response had been very clear and simple. ‘Accusations without proof are worthless,’ he’d told her. ‘Show me some evidence and then we can start talking.’

And so Orazio had set about gathering together what they needed—files and letters and tapes and photographs—and they had planned that, as soon as he’d gathered enough, Caterina would present the whole lot to Damiano. She’d gone along with this plan not out of any malice towards Matthew Allenby, for at that stage she’d had nothing personal against him, but because she loved and wanted to protect her brother.

But neither she nor Orazio had realised they were playing with dynamite.

The first hint of the shambles that lay ahead had been when Damiano, who didn’t normally interfere in her private life, had started expressing disapproval of Orazio—not saying anything specific, just that he considered him unsuitable—and brother and sister had exchanged sharp words on the subject. But Caterina had not been prepared for the avalanche that was to follow.

It had happened quite out of the blue. Damiano had called her to his office and proceeded to regale her with a list of accusations against Orazio.

‘He’s a crook,’ he’d told her, ‘a two-bit crook and a lowlife, and I can’t allow you to continue to see him.’

Caterina had been outraged. She’d refused to listen. How dared he make these false accusations?

‘I know the real reason!’ she’d stormed at him. ‘It’s because he’s a commoner! Well, I won’t stop seeing him and you can’t make me!’ Then she’d added, just out of bravado, because she was so damned mad at him, for really there had been no such intention in her head, ‘I might even marry him if I decide it suits me!’

That had been when Damiano had, almost literally, exploded. ‘Take my word for it,’ he’d warned her, ‘that that will never happen!’ And there and then he had ordered her to break off the romance immediately or he would cut her off without a penny.

He’d meant it, too. But that hadn’t stopped Caterina, as she’d swung out of his office in tears of helpless rage, retorting defiantly, ‘I don’t care! I won’t stop seeing him!’

For she could be as hard-headed as Damiano and, besides, it was a matter of principle. She would not be dictated to in this fashion.

And she would have stuck to her guns if Orazio hadn’t talked her out of it and insisted on making a discreet withdrawal.

‘I can’t let you make this sacrifice,’ he’d told her. ‘I’d never be able to live with myself if I did.’

Besides, he’d no longer had a job nor much hope of finding another one. Word was already being circulated that he was persona non grata—Damiano hadn’t wasted any time there—and it really hadn’t looked as though there was much of a future for him in San Rinaldo. So within a week he’d been gone, in spite of Caterina’s pleas that he stay on and at least fight to redeem his good name. ‘I’d rather sacrifice my good name than bring you embarrassment,’ he’d told her. And that had been the end of the romance.