Читать книгу: «Stolen Bride»

CHAPTER ONE

IT WAS cold in the church, away from the pounding heat outside, but Cara felt a chill that had nothing to do with the temperature.

She took a glance once more at the man standing next to her, and then down at her dress, the heavy silk dragging away from her waist like an ice slope. In a few moments she was going to marry a man she knew she couldn’t love, and there was nothing she could do about it. She couldn’t back down now.

Behind her, she knew, the church was packed with the two families who looked upon this moment as the final seal on the relationship between them. A medieval view, maybe, but one that still held in this part of Italy. Especially when it concerned the future good fortune of the family.

Cara clasped and unclasped her fingers. What was it the priest had just said? By her side, Luca seemed to be taking everything in, listening gravely to the man’s words. His neck, reddened where he had shaved it, bulged slightly over his collar. It reminded her suddenly of a wild turkey her uncle had once shot, and she looked hurriedly away.

There were huge candles, as thick as her arm, burning everywhere in the church, their flames steady in the still air. And there was incense, too, its sharp smell pricking her nostrils. She shook her head irritably. Why did this ceremony keep reminding her of a funeral? It was supposed to be the happiest day of her life.

She shot another surreptitious glance at her bridegroom. She had always known Luca. Treated him as the big brother she had never had. And when he had suggested marriage she had been initially excited by the idea. She had never been encouraged to have a career, and being the wife of an important man like Luca seemed rather glamorous. She had been very flattered that he had chosen her.

How foolish she had been. She stared woodenly at the priest and bit her lip. It hadn’t taken her.that long to realise that Luca had chosen her because ... well, because it made good business sense. Her uncle was one of the most powerful men in this part of Italy, and whoever married her could soon follow suit.

But her dawning realisation over the past few weeks that Luca didn’t love her hadn’t actually hurt as much as she thought it would. Why was that? And then there was the discovery last night that he had a mistress, too. In fact, if she wasn’t mistaken, the woman was at the back of the church right at this minute. She quelled the urge to turn and stare at her.

Everything was going so smoothly. So fast. She shivered again and then stiffened as the priest turned to her. All she had to do was agree with him. She stared at Luca and swallowed as her eyes met his. If anything, she was slightly taller than him, and he had used that often to make her feel clumsy and awkward. The priest repeated the question, and still she could say nothing.

Behind her she could feel the congregation stirring. It was right that she should hesitate, they seemed to be saying, but not this much. Just who did she think she was?

Cara half turned to Uncle Pancrazio for support, but he merely smiled and motioned her to carry on. She jerked her head round and looked at Luca once more. His hard brown slightly bloodshot eyes stared coldly into hers, and suddenly her mind was made up. She shook her head. ‘No,’ she whispered at last.

Had anybody heard? Or had she merely thought she had spoken? She scrunched up a handful of white silk in her left hand and gripping it tightly, she repeated the word more loudly. ‘No.’

There was a stunned silence in the church, and she swallowed hard at the expression on Luca’s face. ‘I can’t marry you.’ She forced the words out. ‘Truly. I thought I could love you, but I can’t. Please don’t be upset. You ought to find—’

But there was an uproar in the church by now, and Luca was turning to the priest. ‘Get on with the ceremony,’ he ordered.

The priest looked worriedly at Cara and then at the rest of the congregation. There were too many men in rather bulky jackets for him to refuse.

Half-unbelieving that she was being ignored, Cara turned to her relatives. ‘Uncle Pancrazio,’ she pleaded, ‘you’ve got to stop this. I don’t love Luca. I can’t go through with it.’

He looked at her for a long moment, but when he replied it was to Luca, not her. ‘It’s just nerves,’ he replied at last, and then signalled to the priest. ‘Carry on. There is no problem.’

Cara stared at him dumbly as Luca’s fingers enclosed her wrist and pulled her to his side. ‘You will pay for shaming me like this,’ he grated. ‘I—’

‘Just stop right there,’ said a new voice. Cara turned wildly, her wrist burning in Luca’s grip, to see the whole congregation staring at a lone man standing in the aisle. He was tall, taller than Luca, with dark hair and deep blue eyes. Everyone, including the many bodyguards lining the pews, seemed mesmerised by him.

Luca spun round and Cara, stumbling a little, was forced against him. Carefully she righted herself, holding herself as far away from him as she could.

But Luca tightened his grip, and she gasped as his fingers bit into her flesh. ‘Who are you to stop this wedding?’ he roared. ‘What right do you have here?’

His voice boomed around the church, echoed and died away. Only silence was left. So sudden and so deep it seemed a physical thing. All her relatives, everyone she knew, Luca’s family, her uncle’s business colleagues, people who together could make more noise than an average football crowd just by saying their prayers, seemed struck dumb. Even Luca seemed suddenly uncertain, his authority reduced to blustering.

Cara’s eyes rose to meet the stranger’s, and she felt an odd little lift in her heart. ‘I have the oldest right in the world,’ he drawled. ‘This woman just happens to be my wife.’

Her breath seemed to catch in her throat at his words. She could feel Luca staring at her, questioning the stranger’s words, but she wouldn’t return the look, knowing even he could read the truth in her eyes.

He was coming closer now, the stranger, that long-legged stride looking so slow and in reality so fast. He was wearing a blue linen shirt and white chinos, his hair not black as she had thought, but a deep dark brown, his eyes as blue as a summer sky at midnight.

He had a look in those eyes that dared her to tell the truth, and trusted her not to. The look in the eyes of a man determined to release a wild thing from a trap, even though it might turn on him.

He strolled up to her, and seemingly with no effort at all, took her hand from Luca’s. She did not resist, even though she could feel the eyes of every single one of her relatives staring at her in pure shock. And still they were silent.

She knew how they felt. It was as though she was being hypnotised. As though she was dreaming. Her fingers felt cold in his warm ones, and she realised suddenly she was shivering uncontrollably.

He nodded curtly at Luca and then looked at her once more. ‘Come along, darling.’

She looked at her fingers almost with surprise as they curled instinctively in his, and then, as she gazed into his eyes once more, she gave him the ghost of a smile and let him lead her towards the door.

‘It is a lie!’ shouted Uncle Pancrazio, his voice echoing around the church’s high ceiling. ‘What do you think you are doing! Of course she is not married.’

Cara looked into the stranger’s eyes and then at her uncle. ‘It is true.’ She forced the words out, feeling oddly light-headed at the lie she was telling. Was it really her speaking? ‘Last summer—’

‘Just keep walking,’ whispered the stranger, urging her along as she gabbled at her uncle. ‘Whatever happens, don’t stop.’

‘Last summer!’ roared her uncle. ‘You faithless—I will kill you both!’

‘Run!’ yelled the stranger, pulling her out of the church and down the sweeping stone steps. ‘There’s a killer in there!’ he shouted at a knot of bodyguards, now bounding towards them from the waiting cars, already loosening their jackets and reaching inside for their guns. ‘Quick! I’ll look after her.’

As the chaos of shouting, milling bodies erupted in the church doorway, Cara breathlessly stumbled almost headlong down the steps and then down the deserted street. The stranger was fumbling in his pockets as he ran, pulling out some keys and then opening a car door. He got in and pushed open the door on the other side. ‘Get in,’ he ordered.

Cara stood irresolute. ‘But—’ she began.

‘No buts,’ he snapped. ‘We haven’t time. Your family will come round that corner in ten seconds flat, and they’re not going to be carrying violin cases.’

Cara took one wild glance back and then somehow squeezed herself and the billowing dress into the passenger seat. Her veil parted from the wreath of fresh flowers on her head and bobbed briefly in the air behind them before dragging down onto the dust. It was the last thing she saw before the stranger wrenched the car round a tight bend and she finally managed to shut the door.

They drove in silence for several miles, the stranger concentrating tautly on driving as fast as he could, his eyes constantly flicking to the rear-view mirror.

Cara tightly clasped her hands, which were trembling almost uncontrollably. Was this really happening? It was so... She shrugged and gave up looking for a description. Her brain seemed to have simply frozen in shock.

She pinched the skin on the back of her hand. Could she be dreaming all this? It was hot in the car, and the sun was blazing straight in her eyes. Blinking a little, she moved her legs slightly, and the silk of her dress rustled coldly against her skin. She definitely wasn’t dreaming.

She looked at the stranger out of the corner of her eye. What on earth had she done? He could be anybody. He could be the sort of attacker her uncle and Luca were always on guard against. And she had actually let him take her away. Luca had once called her stupid, she remembered, and she had been furiously angry. Maybe he had been right after all.

She turned her head to look carefully at the stranger’s face and then back at her lap. ‘Who are you?’ she said at last. And then without waiting for an answer demanded, ‘Why are you doing this? Where are you taking me? Are you kidnapping me? What—’

He lifted one hand off the steering wheel, and she instinctively recoiled. Was he going to hit her, like Luca had once done? But the stranger was merely holding his hand, palm outward, like a traffic policeman.

“My name is Finn Cormac,’ he said at last.

English. He was speaking English. But how did he know she would understand? Her eyes widened at the implications of that. No one had spoken English to her for a long, long time. But it was not something she could ever forget how to speak. It was the language of her childhood, of happy times, of the finishing school she had been to when she was eighteen, when she had had her one and only glimpse of freedom.

She stared at him, wondering exactly how much he did know about her. ‘But who—’ she began.

‘No.’ He waggled his hand and she fell silent. ‘If you’re going to jabber at me, you can get out of the car. Now is not the time for twenty questions.’

Her mouth closed and she looked at him warily. He didn’t look like a kidnapper. But then what did one look like? And besides, it had been her defiance at the altar that had set this whole thing in motion.

She subsided in her seat, confused by the strangeness of his name and the unreality of what was going on. Questions still buzzed around her brain, but she recog-nised the sense of what he had said. Now was not the time for them.

‘I am Carenza Gambini,’ she said at last. ‘But everyone calls me Cara.’

He nodded. ‘I know.’

She breathed in deeply, then looked sidewise at him. He was driving very fast, with utter concentration on the road ahead. She almost didn’t like to disturb him. She tried to think of what her family was doing. Her uncle had been furious. The way he had shouted at her had been almost enough to stop her in her tracks.

And he had turned so paper white when she had followed the stranger that he had looked ill. She felt a sudden shaft of guilt and then thought about the way Luca had pulled her to him. Did he care enough about her to follow?

‘Do you think Luca will really come after me?’ she asked tentatively.

‘Are you joking?’ demanded Finn, his foot hard on the accelerator. ‘Is this Italy or Iceland?’

She breathed out slowly. Of course Luca would come after her. They all would. It had been a stupid question. She knew her family better than anyone. But she had been thinking in terms of how Luca felt about her. Maybe he did love her, after all. ‘Maybe she had just made a terrible mistake.

‘He doesn’t love me,’ she offered, hoping Finn would contradict her. Hoping she had been wrong.

‘You’re his property, sweetheart,’ replied Finn matter-of-factly. ‘And you’ve hurt his pride.’

She felt as though all the air had been knocked out of her. She had just heard, for the first time, someone else—and a complete stranger, at that—express all her secret doubts about the way Luca regarded her—that she was a piece of property. Valuable, maybe, in terms of what marrying her meant. But that was all.

It was something that up until now she thought only she knew. Just who was this man sitting next to her? Helping to boot Luca so surely, right in the middle of his pride?

‘Maybe he won’t...hurt you,’ she offered, not sure at all what she was saying. ‘I mean, when I’ve explained...’

‘I heard you trying a bit of explaining at the altar,’ replied Finn drily. ‘Maybe I’m not very observant, but somehow, he didn’t look too bowled over by your reasoning.’

‘He’s... he’s very hot-blooded,’ began Cara.

‘So am I,’ drawled Finn, taking the turn for the autostrada. ‘And I’d like to stay that way.’

The entrance to the autostrada was getting closer, but before they reached it, Finn took a sharp right turn down a cart track into a small wood. He drove carefully through the trees, the car’s suspension protesting loudly at the pits and bumps, before coming to a stop as the trees began to thin out by the side of another road.

He switched off the ignition and looked at her thoughtfully. ‘Okay,’ he said at last. ‘We’ll wait here until dark. I don’t want to take any chances of someone spotting you. I don’t think anyone saw the car, and only an idiot would expect us to hide right under your relatives’ noses.’ He shrugged. ‘Not that Luca is exactly in the genius class. But I reckon this is our best chance. We’ll be all right here for a while.’

She breathed out, a little shakily, noting the use of the word we and not sure what it implied. ‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘But I want to know—’

He sighed and she stopped, uncertain once more about the kind of man she was dealing with. ‘Don’t thank me,’ he drawled. ‘You’re in deep trouble, if you hadn’t already realised it.’ He waved his hand at the trees and smiled. ‘We are not out of the woods yet.’

She shook her head. ‘I don’t care,’ she said in a low voice. ‘Nothing could be worse than being Luca’s wife.’

Finn shifted easily in his seat. ‘Well, there’s something in that,’ he conceded.

She decided to begin again. ‘Who are you? Are you...’ She swallowed. ‘Are you someone with a grudge against my uncle?’

He looked at her reflectively. ‘No,’ he said at last. ‘And before you start on that catalogue of questions you’ve obviously got, I might as well say that I’m not sure I want to tell you too much about me. You’re a rather dangerous woman to know, Cara Gambini.’

She stared at him, amazed. ‘Dangerous?’ she echoed. ‘Me?’

He nodded. ‘Yes, you. I don’t know you, and I don’t know how serious you are about getting away from your family.’

‘I want to get away from Luca, not my family,’ she said hotly.

‘Is there a difference?’ he asked gently.

There was silence while Cara looked woodenly at her dress. Then he asked, ‘Have you any idea what you want to do now? A plan, maybe?’

‘A plan?’ she echoed blankly. She had never in her life been asked such a question. Everybody else always made plans for her. Suddenly Cara found herself thinking of possibilities and consequences. And all of them looked black.

She eyed the stranger doubtfully. ‘What about you? Do you have a plan?’

He scratched his jaw. ‘Oh, plenty,’ he agreed. ‘But unfortunately I made most of them before I attended your wedding. And none of them included a runaway bride with half the thugs in Naples on her tail.’

She bit her lip and stared at him in astonishment. ‘You mean you have no idea what we’re going to do at all?’

He gazed levelly at her. ‘No.’

She met his eyes and noticed little dark flecks in the deep blue. With an impatient shake of her head, she tore her gaze away and stared out the window. For the first time in her life, she was truly on her own. And she would have to start making some decisions. Fast.

‘Okay,’ she said at last, a lump rising in her throat as she grasped the door handle. ‘I’ll get out of your way then.’

He reached across her, his hand on hers, her body stilling at the close contact. His face was only inches from her own, his eyes probing deep into hers. Then he pulled back, her hand imprisoned in his, and gazed at her for a few moments.

‘Let’s start again, shall we?’ he said softly. ‘First of all, is there any place that you could safely go? Somewhere Luca and your uncle won’t be able to coerce you?’

‘There is only my uncle’s home,’ she said in a low voice. Finn was stroking the back of her fingers with his thumb, almost as if it was helping him think. Her first instinct, to pull away completely, slowly melted at the oddly comforting sensation.

‘Maybe,’ she began diffidently, ‘maybe it would be all right if I went home. If I tell them it wasn’t nerves, that I truly don’t love Luca, then maybe they’ll listen.’

‘Really?’ Finn drawled. His eyes gazed into hers, and she reddened and looked away.

‘I’m sure my uncle wants only what is best for me,’ she said in low voice.

‘Uh-huh,’ he replied, his tone loaded with disbelief, and she glanced angrily at him.

‘Who are you to pass such judgement on my family?’ she demanded.

‘Let’s say I’m an interested observer,’ he said at last.

‘Observer?’ she echoed. ‘What did you say your name was?’

‘Finn—’

‘Cormac!’ she interjected, pulling her hand away and glaring at him. ‘Finn Cormac. I know now! You are the...’ She tried to think of a suitable swear word and failed. “The...thing who wrote all those lies about Luca’s family. You made millions out of blackening his name. You—’

He held up his hand. ‘Save it,’ he interrupted. ‘In the first place, everything I wrote was true. Luca is just one step ahead of the police at the moment, and two steps from a very long jail term. And in the second, the money I made out of that book, I earned. Unlike the fortune his family has extorted and stolen and been bribed with over the last thirty years.’

Her jaw dropped. ‘That’s a lie,’ she whispered.

‘Okay.’ He shrugged. ‘It’s a lie, and your jilted bridegroom is a saint in disguise. So what are you going to do about it?’

She jerked open the car door. ‘I’m going home,’ she snarled, angry tears beginning to fill her eyes.

‘To marry Luca?’ he said softly.

Her hand stilled on the door. ‘What else can I do?’ she said in a low voice. ‘I have nowhere else to go. I have no one but my family.’ She swallowed a sob. ‘Luca’s not so bad, I suppose.’

Finn shook his head in disbelief. “I can’t believe I’m having this conversation with a woman in the late twentieth century,’ he said. ’Have you no independence at all?’

She stiffened her body and stared at him. ‘Independence?’ she echoed, trying to match his tone. ‘In my family? How can I be independent? I have no money, I am not qualified to do anything except...’ She waved her hands. ‘Except marry, run a home and bring up children.’

She glared at him. ‘Maybe if I’d been brought up somewhere else I’d be running an oil company, like in those soaps you see on TV. But I wasn’t, and I’m not, and I can’t help it.’

He looked at her for a long moment and then lifted his hands helplessly and dropped them. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I suppose that was a rather stupid remark.’

Cara relaxed a little at his tone. ‘I know that I have led a very sheltered life,’ she said carefully. ‘But I never saw it as something particularly to regret until I found myself locked into marrying Luca.’

She shrugged self-consciously, ‘If I’m honest, at first I liked the idea. I thought of the nice big house we would live in, and I imagined the dinner parties, the clothes...’ Her voice faltered. ‘The children I would have.’

She bit her lip and then went on more steadily. ‘And then little by little, I realised that in every picture I conjured up, none of them contained Luca.’

She raised her eyes to Finn’s. ‘Not one,’ she repeated. ‘Isn’t that crazy? It was as if I was just day-dreaming. And then someone, I forget who, someone made a joke about my wedding night, and I realised that I really was going to marry Luca, that it was all set, and that after all the things I had imagined—the ceremony and the fuss and the party—1 was actually going to have to get into bed with him.’

Her voice trailed away and she swallowed. ‘You probably think this was really silly of me, that it took so long to come to grips with reality. But Luca has always been in my life. I just never thought of him as a husband.’

Her eyes rested briefly on Finn’s face and then slid away while she waited for him to tell her how stupid she had been. Why on earth had she told him all that? He was a stranger who at best probably thought she was as dim as Luca did. She oughtn’t to be telling him anything.

It was with a bolt of pure shock that she felt him take her hand and raise it to his lips. ‘What... what are you doing?’ she blurted.

He kissed her hand and smiled at her. ‘Just a spur of the moment thing,’ he drawled. ‘But it seems kind of appropriate to kiss the person who’s belted Luca Finzi right where it hurts.’

She tugged her hand away. ‘Well, don’t,’ she said, more sharply than she meant to. It was just silly, the way he was making her feel. Desperately, she cast around for something to say. Anything.

‘If I could choose,’ she said hurriedly. ‘If I was independent, then maybe I would go to England.’ She looked him straight in the eye and tried to ignore the way her heart was thumping erratically. ‘My nanny was English, and my uncle always used to listen to her. He said Sarah talked a lot of sense. Maybe if I went to her, he would listen again.’

There was a long silence, so long that she looked away and began to wonder if he had lost interest in the whole conversation. Maybe he was waiting for her to get out of the car.

Then he sighed, and she looked quickly at him. ‘What’s the matter? Don’t you think it’s a good idea?’

‘It stinks,’ he said simply.

Her eyes narrowed, but before she could say anything Finn went on, ‘Let’s get this straight, okay? Just so there’s no confusion. We are on the run from the Mafia and you think the only person they will listen to is some decrepit old nanny of yours who probably spends most of her days mumbling over her knitting?’

Cara thought of the last time she had seen Sarah. Even now her nanny wouldn’t be more than fifty, and her natural elegance was the kind that drew all eyes. Her jaw dropped at the picture Finn was drawing, but in the circumstances his conclusions were probably reasonable enough. She just had to get him to see her point of view. ‘You’re being over the top,’ she said as calmly as she could.

‘Over the top?’ he echoed. ‘Me? Uh-uh. There’s somebody in this car who has a screw loose, and it’s certainly not me. Not even a baby would think that your answer to Mary Poppins will be able to wave a magic wand and save you.’

Cara shrugged angrily. ‘Take me back to the church, then,’ she said recklessly.

He grabbed her other arm and gave her a little shake. ‘Are you crazy?’

She glared at him. ‘Do what you like,’ she snapped. ‘I’m perfectly sane. And so is Sarah. She’s the only one that stands any chance of making my uncle listen.’

He looked at her scathingly, and she burst out, ‘Well, she is! And for your information I don’t think she does much knitting.’

‘Probably past it,’ snapped Finn. ‘Isn’t there anybody else you know?’

‘No one,’ Cara said firmly. ‘She is our best bet, truly.’

‘So why wasn’t she at the wedding?’ he demanded.

Cara shrugged. ‘Uncle Pancrazio said she was too ill to come.’

Finn nodded. ‘That figures,’ he said drily.

Cara realised she was pleating a small square of her dress. ‘Would you lend me the money for a plane ticket to England?’ she asked at last, not daring to look up.

‘No,’ he replied, and her heart sank. ‘There’s no way you could get on a plane without being spotted and stopped by Luca’s men,’ he added. ‘I’m going to England. I have contacts there who may be of use. I’ll take you.’

‘In the car?’ she said blankly. ‘With you? All the way to England?’

He smiled mockingly at her. ‘I think you have the gist of the idea.’

‘On my own, with you?’ she added again, just to be quite certain.

‘Of course,’ he said casually. ‘It would be a business arrangement.’

Her head jerked up and she stared him straight in the face, her pulse suddenly thundering in her ears.

He gazed blandly at her. ‘But it would be to our mutual benefit... and even enjoyment, I hope.’

She licked dry lips. So that was it. She might have known there was a price attached. ‘You want me to...’ But she couldn’t say it. Couldn’t bring herself to put into words what Finn might be suggesting.

His fingers brushed her cheek. Her voice when it came seemed very old and far away. ‘Go to hell,’ she told him.

His fingers paused, then he tipped her face to his, his eyes darkening as he took in her exasperation. ‘I do believe,’ he drawled, ‘that you think I’m expecting you to go to bed with me.’

Her heart was jumping so much she felt like it was bouncing into her throat. ‘What other kind of a proposition would a man like you make?’ she asked.

His hand slid around the back of her neck and drew her closer. ‘Would you accept?’ he asked.

She sat upright, her nerves twanging at his tone and his touch. ‘What do you think I am?’ she asked miserably.

‘The question is,’ he corrected softly, ‘what do you think you are? Since the idea of you paying your way by going to bed with me wasn’t actually what I had in mind.’

A slow flush crept up her skin at his words, flooding her throat and then her face until she was crimson. ‘It never occurred to me that a man like you could have any other sort of proposition in mind,’ she said as bitingly as she could.

‘Well, if you’re willing to consider it, I am,’ he drawled. ‘What exactly did you have in mind? Instalment payments?’

Her hand made a sharp cracking sound on his cheek before she had consciously thought of retaliating.

But before she could withdraw her hand his fingers enclosed her wrist and he was staring at her, his eyes inky pools. ‘You count yourself so little,’ he said harshly. ‘And other people even less. Do you really think I am the kind of man who would blackmail a woman into bed?’

The look in his eyes was too searing, too probing. She twisted away from him and looked in silence at the woods. ‘I don’t know what kind of a man you are,’ she admitted at last. ‘Except that you must be crazy to be helping me like this.’

‘Did your family make you this suspicious?’ he asked softly. ‘This jumpy?’

‘It’s none of your business,’ she replied. ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’

She knew without looking that he was leaning towards her, moving close. Too close for comfort. She pressed herself against the door and turned to face him. ‘Don’t touch me!’ she yelled in sudden panic. ‘Don’t you dare!’

‘What would you do if I did?’ he demanded. ‘Have a fit of the vapours?’

She gasped as if he had slapped her, but he continued, ‘Don’t you want to know what I was going to suggest? Or are you planning on running up that road all on your own? Because I guarantee you won’t get very far.’