‘Excuse me, I’m warm and I think I’ll step outside for a few minutes,’ she told her companion and turned away, wondering if she should be taking refuge in the cloakroom instead, but praying that the cooler night air would revive her.
The terrace was furnished with tables and chairs, and lights and candles held the darkness at bay. Lizzie took a seat, gratefully feeling the clamminess of her skin and the faint sickness recede again and breathing the fresh air in deep while she wondered if she was simply tired or if, indeed, she could be in the very earliest stage of a pregnancy. Wonder at that faint suspicion curved her mouth into a ready smile but delight at the prospect was swiftly tempered by fear of what such a development might mean to her relationship with Cesare. Would he back off from their current intimacy? Would he stop treating her like a real wife?
‘I saw you come outside,’ a female voice said lightly. ‘I thought we should get acquainted. I’ve known Cesare for so many years,’ Serafina Ruffini told her with apparent warmth. ‘You haven’t been married long, have you?’
‘No, only for a month,’ Lizzie admitted, struggling to maintain her relaxed attitude in the face of Serafina’s shrewdly assessing gaze.
‘My husband, Matteo, passed away last year. I’m fortunate to have my seven-year-old son to comfort me,’ Serafina confided.
‘I’m sorry for your loss,’ Lizzie murmured, guiltily dismayed at the news that the brunette was a widow. ‘It must be hard for you and your son.’
‘We’re getting used to being a twosome.’ Serafina signalled a waiter hovering by the door with an imperious gesture wholly in keeping with her rather royal air of command. ‘Champagne?’
‘No, thanks.’ Lizzie smoothed a fingertip round the rim of her glass of water while smiling valiantly as the brunette continued to watch her closely.
The champagne was served with a flourish. Serafina leant back in her upholstered seat. ‘Of course, you’ll know about my history with Cesare...’
Lizzie stiffened. ‘Yes.’
‘How honest can I be with you?’
‘As honest as you like but I don’t think Cesare would like us talking about him behind his back,’ Lizzie opined quietly.
‘He’s an Italian male with a healthy ego.’ Serafina laughed. ‘Being wanted and appreciated by women is the bread of life for him.’
‘Is that why you didn’t marry him?’ Lizzie heard herself ask helplessly. ‘You believed he would be a womaniser?’
‘No, not at all. I married for security. I didn’t grow up like Cesare in a comfortable middle-class home,’ Serafina confided, startling Lizzie with her frankness. ‘I came from a poor background and worked very hard for everything I got and I had a great fear of being poor again. Matteo was a proven success while Cesare was only starting out in the business world. I loved Cesare but I’m afraid that the security which Matteo offered me was irresistible.’
Thoroughly disconcerted by that unembarrassed explanation, Lizzie murmured without expression, ‘You made the right decision for you.’
Serafina saluted her with her glass in gratitude. ‘I believe that I did but once I saw how well Cesare was doing in business, I naturally wished I had had more faith in him.’
‘I expect you did,’ Lizzie conceded tautly. ‘But you had a husband and a child by then and everything had changed.’
‘But I still never stopped loving Cesare and, I warn you now, I intend to get him back.’
‘You expect me to listen to this?’ Lizzie asked, beginning to rise from her seat, having heard enough of Serafina’s self-absorbed excuses.
‘No, don’t go,’ Serafina urged impatiently. ‘I’m sorry if I shocked you but I want you to understand that, right now, Cesare is set on punishing me for what I did to him almost ten years ago.’
Involuntarily, Lizzie settled back in her seat. ‘Punishing you?’
‘What else could he have been doing when he married you? He married you to hurt me. Here I am, finally free and available and he marries you. What sense does that make?’
‘Has it occurred to you that maybe he’s over you and doesn’t want you back?’ Lizzie asked helplessly, provoked by the brunette’s conviction that she would always be Cesare’s most desirable option and reminding herself that she was supposed to be Cesare’s real wife and should be reacting accordingly to Serafina’s little spiel. ‘Your affair ended a long time ago.’
‘You never forget your first love,’ Serafina argued with ringing conviction. ‘He’s even living in the house we planned together.’
‘What house?’
‘The farmhouse. We first saw it as students. It was a wet night and we made love in the barn,’ Serafina admitted, a rapt look in her bright eyes as Lizzie hastily dropped her lashes to conceal her expression.
Too much information, Lizzie was thinking anxiously, an odd pain clenching her down deep inside. She could not bear to think of Cesare making love with Serafina and could have happily tossed Serafina’s champagne into her sensually abstracted face. Serafina had married her older man for security and wealth while still loving and wanting Cesare. Lizzie did not think the brunette had any right to expect to turn the clock back or indeed any excuse to risk upsetting Cesare’s new wife with intimate and threatening images from the past she had once shared with him.
‘Even though I was already married to Matteo, Cesare still bought the farmhouse as soon as it came on the market,’ Serafina told her smugly. ‘Look across the valley in the evening from the pool terrace and you will see the Ruffini palazzo blazing with lights on the hillside. He wants me back, Lizzie, he’s simply too proud to admit it yet.’
‘I don’t think he would’ve married me if that was his intention,’ Lizzie commented in a deflated tone.
‘Oh, I guessed that he married you to get that stupid island back into the family,’ Serafina retorted with a wry little laugh and she shrugged. ‘I don’t care about that. Your marriage is temporary and I’ll be waiting when he decides to forgive me.’
‘Whatever,’ Lizzie mumbled, thrusting her chair back and rising. ‘You can hardly expect me to wish you luck with my husband and I really don’t understand why you wanted to talk to me in the first place.’
‘Because you can make things a lot easier for all three of us by quietly stepping back the minute Cesare admits that he wants his freedom back,’ the princess pointed out smoothly. ‘If it’s a question of money.’
‘No, I don’t need money and I can’t be bribed!’ Lizzie parried grittily, her cheeks reddening. ‘I wish I could say it was nice meeting you...but it would be a lie.’
‘You’re a farmer’s daughter with no education. Surely you don’t believe you have what it takes to hold a man like Cesare’s interest?’ Serafina fired back with a raised brow. ‘Cesare and I belong together.’
CHAPTER NINE
LIZZIE COMPRESSED HER LIPS, said nothing and walked back indoors.
A pounding headache had developed at the base of her skull. How she got through what remained of the evening, she had no idea, but she smiled so much her mouth felt numb and she made polite conversation until she wanted to scream. She was angry with Cesare for ever loving a woman as selfish and grasping as Serafina. Serafina only wanted Cesare now because he had built up an empire worth billions. Nevertheless a few of her remarks stayed with Lizzie like a bruise that refused to heal.
‘You never forget your first love. He married you to hurt me. Cesare and I belong together.’
And who was she to assume that that wasn’t true? Cesare had never dreamt of regaining the island of Lionos in the way his father and grandmother had. Never having seen it, he had never learned to care for it and could probably well afford to buy his own island should that have been his wish. Was it possible that Cesare had been willing to go through with marrying Lizzie because he had a stronger motive? A desire to punish Serafina for her betrayal all those years ago? Revenge? Certainly that was how the princess had interpreted his behaviour of getting married just at the point when she was finally free again. Exasperated by the pointless thoughts going round and round in her sore head, Lizzie tried to blank them out by acknowledging that she knew no more about what Cesare felt for Serafina than she knew about what he felt for herself.
‘You’ve scarcely spoken since we left the benefit,’ Cesare commented as the limo drew up outside the farmhouse. He had noticed that she had seemed unusually animated throughout the evening. That had proved a surprise when he had assumed she might feel the need to cling to him in such exclusive and high-powered company. When she failed to demonstrate any desire to cling, instead of being relieved he had felt strangely irked and could not explain why. He had always felt stifled by women who clung to him. He had always valued independence and spirit in a woman more than feminine weakness and soft words of flattery.
Yet when the spirited and independent woman whom he had once loved had approached him at the benefit for a private word, he had been totally turned off by the experience, he acknowledged grimly.