'And nothing could make me happier,' Elena a.s.sured her levelly.

Ashley stared at her in bewilderment.

Elena sighed. 'I do mean that sincerely. I'm so desperately sorry that I interfered in what was none of my business four years ago. I made a dreadful error of judgement for all the wrong reasons and if I hadn't been so stubborn I would have told him what I had done the minute he came back from London. He was so shattered when you turned him down. I'd never seen him like that before but I told myself he'd get over it.'

'He did, but you don't need to feel responsible. I...I had other reasons for not marrying him,' Ashley responded uncertainly.

'Why haven't you told him about my visit?'

'There was no reason to tell him. That's in the past,' Ashley said, wanting to show that she could be equally generous.

'I really do want you to be happy with my son. I just wish that I could turn the clock back for both of you.' Elena looked a little tearful. 'And some day I hope we can become friends.' Her sincerity was unquestionable. Elena clearly believed that she was the woman Vito loved. Ashley had been softened by her honesty and her careful avoidance of any mention of Carina but she was in no position to respond in kind. How would Elena feel when this marriage also came to an unhappy end? Ashley found herself hoping Vito's mother wouldn't start thinking that her past interference had had any bearing on that development.

Vito was standing across the hall in a clump of other men. As she approached, he immediately excused himself. Interpreting her greater relaxation, he murmured, 'I could have told you there was nothing to worry about. My mother's a very gentle woman.'

Men were so stupid sometimes, Ashley thought irritably. Elena was an unashamedly emotional woman and a ruthlessly protective mother, far less fragile than appearances might suggest. Momentarily she surprised herself with the awareness that she would rather have welcomed Elena as a friend. As it was, she wouldn't be around long enough to scratch the surface even as a daughter-in-law.

The next hour was a blur of names and faces. Vito infuriated her. The reserve she had endured all week was blatantly cast aside. He was showing her off like a trophy. Mine, that firm hand on her shoulder said. Look but don't touch, said his eyes. Self-satisfaction emanated from him in waves. Only one of his three sisters was present. Giulia, proudly pregnant in a beautiful designer gown, greeted her like an old friend.

'I'm so happy for you and Vito,' she said warmly. 'I insisted on being here tonight. I wouldn't have missed it for anything.'

'When did you get married?' Ashley enquired. 'Almost three years ago.' Giulia patted her stomach complacently. 'And this will be our third child.'

'Your third?' Ashley was quite stunned by the announcement.

Giulia laughed. 'I had twins the first time. You have a lot of catching up to do.'

Ashley managed a very forced smile, thinking how easy it was for some women to reproduce and how horrendously difficult for others. Bursting with health and vitality, Giulia actually made the process look simple, she thought painfully.

'Giulia's crazy about kids,' Vito delivered with a grim look, a betraying tautness etching his hard bone structure.

Something snapped inside Ashley. 'Oh, shut up and go to h.e.l.l!' she flared in a ferocious hiss, and walked off, fiercely keeping her anguish to herself. She was d.a.m.ned if she would ever tell him again. He deserved to be left in ignorance but she did not deserve the snide remarks.

'Ashley!' A man she was brushing past closed a hand over her arm and looked at her with surprise and pleasure. 'What on earth are you doing here?'

She blinked bemusedly as she recognised Josh's familiar, friendly face, and suddenly grinned. 'I could ask you the same question.'

'Oh, I've been on the guest list ever since I delivered Giulia's twins.' His bright blue eyes twinkled. 'She came over to London on a shopping trip and went into labour in Harrods, of all places. Instead of giving birth in the very exclusive clinic in Rome which she had selected, she ended up in a National Health hospital. So what's your excuse? Care to share it while we dance?'

She allowed Josh to fold her into his arms. Vito was so tall that she could see him across the crush. Even at a distance she could feel the dark force of his appraisal. Dear heaven, here she was actually fraternising at close quarters with a member of the forbidden species ... a man! She wondered whether she would be shot at dawn and whether she would be allowed a last request.

'I was a late arrival. Have you seen her yet?' 'Seen who?' she asked.

'Vito di Cavalieri's wife-to-be.' 'You're dancing with her,' she sighed.

'You're kidding me!' Josh held her back from him.

Slowly he shook his head and his mobile mouth compressed. 'You're not kidding. How the blazes did you meet him?'

'A long time ago.' She saw his pain and impulsively leant up and pressed a kiss to the corner of his tight mouth. 'I'm sorry it wasn't you, but he's like a migraine that won't go away,' she whispered, belatedly realising that she had drunk just a little too much champagne since her arrival. 'Why can we never love the people we want to love, Josh? Why do we always have to love the wrong ones?'

'Nature made it that way to keep us all on our toes.' Josh skimmed a wayward strand of t.i.tian hair from one perfect cheekbone and withdrew his hand not quite steadily. 'You're so beautiful, I can't think straight around you-'

'Then permit me to do your thinking for you, Mr Hennessy'.' At the sound of Vito's smooth dark drawl, Ashley's head whipped round so sharply that it hurt. 'Put your hands on her just one more time and I'll break every bone in your body!'

As she spun, Vito clamped a hand that bruised round her forearm, his darkly handsome features a mask of rigidly constrained anger. She clashed with glittering golden eyes and paled.

CHAPTER SIX.

'How could you do that to me?' Ashley gasped. 'How could you embarra.s.s Josh like that?' Wrathfully unrepentant, Vito poured himself a whisky from the decanter on the library table. 'I warned you. If I hadn't felt sorry for the poor b.a.s.t.a.r.d, I'd have hit him! Dio, what sort of a woman are you?'

'What's a kiss on the cheek?' she demanded. 'Josh is an old friend.'

'And presumably the bed sheets have yet to cool,' Vito breathed with stinging derision.

'I won't even dignify that with an answer.'

His sensual mouth was set in a cold line of austerity. 'He's in love with you. As a former victim, I'm an expert on the symptoms. Did you give him the same run-around that you gave me? Was he weak enough to beg? He's a fool. If anyone begs in our relationship, it will be you.'

She shivered, the bite of that menacing a.s.surance making her skin p.r.i.c.kle with fear. 'You'd have to kill me first.'

'No, cara,' Vito contradicted silkily. 'All I have to do is take you to bed. Something I plan to do over and over again in the very near future. It would seem it was a mistake to neglect you all week.'

'I-I don't know what you're talking about,' she muttered tightly.

'You looked across at me and then you were all over Hennessy like a second skin.' A heady flush washed her complexion. Yes, she had known he was watching her, indeed had been aware with every fibre of her being. She was too honest with herself to deny the fact. He had hurt her and she had reacted as impulsively as she usually did. She was suddenly ashamed of encouraging Josh to put himself in such an awkward position.

'So why did you do it?' Vito drawled.

Whipped on the raw once too often, she flung back her glorious head of hair and lifted her chin. 'Go to h.e.l.l,' she said fierily.

'If I go to h.e.l.l, I take you with me.' His strong, dark features taut with anger, he reached for her. 'I want to know why you found that cheap little exhibition necessary.'

A powerful hand was welded to her narrow shoulder, denying her the retreat she had been about to make. Involuntarily she collided with narrow dark eyes fringed by dense black lashes and the effect was paralysing. Her breath tripped in her throat. 'We should get back to the party.' Vito ran a blunt brown forefinger up the extended line of her throat and she swallowed jerkily. The atmosphere was heavy, intense. Her mouth ran dry, her soft lips parting as she s.n.a.t.c.hed in air. Heat was beginning to surge up inside her. Long fingers glanced caressingly along her jawbone and she had to fight the temptation to turn her cheek into his palm like a sensuous cat begging to be stroked. The hand on her shoulder slid down her rigid spinal cord, tracking her raw tension and then sinking into the narrow indentation just below her waist to ease her closer still.

'The party,' she repeated shakily, struggling to hold on to thoughts already blurred round the edges. His brilliant gaze glittered over her wide eyes and tremulous mouth as his fingers spread over the curve of her hip and pressed her into the hard cradle of his lean thighs. Excitement, wild and inescapable, shock-waved through her. The bold thrust of his erection against her stomach electrified her. She quivered in response and shut her eyes tightly in soundless despair, wanting to feel revulsion, wanting to feel anything but this insane compulsion to uncurl her taut fingers and force him even closer.

'Why?' he persisted.

'Why what?' she mumbled, despising herself. 'Hennessy?'

'Giulia ... you hurt me.' The words came in an unsteady rush.

His hands dropped from her and he stepped back, relocating his gla.s.s. He left her marooned in the centre of the carpet. Dazedly, she looked at him, the shock of separation shrilling through her nerve-endings with a butcher's efficiency. In the soft pool of the lamplight, he had the beauty of a dark angel but the hard, ruthless angles and sleek lines of a predatory animal. Neither, she registered dully, could have been more coldly merciless in administering punishment. And she was painfully reminded of how easily he had walked away from her once before.

Her legs were wobbling. Her stomach felt seasick but worst of all was that clawing hunger of arousal still clamouring for a.s.suagement. She sank down on to a sofa, pale and drained and deeply ashamed that he could exercise such effortless power over her.

'You really do hate me, don't you?' The question that sought no answer simply slid from her tongue. 'And you blame me for everything that happened four years ago. You don't want to accept that the view is very different from my side of the fence.'

'Is it?' There was no emotion whatsoever in the flat response.

'You walked out, not me,' she condemned in an undertone. 'I needed to find somewhere else to live and I was broke-'

'The rent on that apartment was paid up until the end of the year,' Vito incised drily. 'There was no need for you to move out. I also opened an account for you so that you would not be short of money.'

'Yes .. .' A choky little laugh escaped her. 'I'll never forget that most sentimental of final farewells. A cheque-book delivered by special messenger. Just what every woman wants as a last touching memory of your undying devotion. What did you think I was? Some little bimbo you had to payoff?'

An almost imperceptible flush demarcated his high cheekbones. 'I was responsible for you. I discharged that responsibility in the only way open to me at that time.'

'I didn't take your money when I lived with you. Why would I take it when you were gone?' she whispered hoa.r.s.ely. 'I couldn't go back to the flat I'd shared because I sublet it two weeks before you left. That's why I ended up on Steve's couch.'

'The baby ... was it mine?' He shot the question at her without warning. He was out of context but she could see by his stillness, his cold concentration that it was really the only topic he was ready to focus on. 'The subject is closed', he had said a week ago, but even Vito was human.

The raw cruelty of that question pierced her like a knife. And the strength of her own pain surprised her or she had believed that she was prepared for that suspicion. 'How can you ask me that?' she gasped.

In the smouldering pulse of the silence, Vito elevated a satiric ebony brow. Ashley bowed her head, quivering with a hatred that was but a thin patina over a painful surge of confused emotions. Where was her anger? She wanted her anger, she needed that anger. But instead she was suffering a desperate sense of loss and futility. Why did it hurt so much to hate him? Why did she feel so terrifyingly vulnerable? Why all of a sudden did it matter so much that he believed her?

'It was yours.' She surrendered, despising herself for the weakness. 'And-'

'That's all I want to know,' Vito interrupted fiercely. 'But how did you know?' she demanded finally.

'I put a private investigator on you. I was curious.' Vito cast her a freezingly shuttered glance but one brown hand clenched into a fist in betrayal as he spoke. 'I believed that there was another man involved. In the end that angle was immaterial. Purely by accident, I discovered that you had a far more powerful reason for wanting me out of your life.'

Ashley flinched. He thought that she would have gone to any lengths to ensure that she had the freedom to dispose of their unborn child. It was a sordid picture and one she did not have the means to dispel. In her absence she had been convicted and sentenced four years ago and he was allowing her no right of appeal.

'You won't listen to me,' she pointed out strickenly. 'But I didn't have the abortion. I changed my mind. I had a miscarriage a couple of months later.'

'We should return to the party.'

'Vito, you can't do this to me!' she cried.

He expelled his breath in a savage hiss. 'It's in the past. Let us bury it forever. I should never have told you that I knew-'

'But you did,' she interrupted emotionally. 'So you can't bury it again!'

'We have to.' He surveyed her ashen pallor and his dark features tightened. 'I accept that I was mistaken in a.s.suming that the decision you made cost you no pain. Clearly it did if the subject still causes you such distress, but you have to accept that we are each the products of a very different upbringing and I am as much a victim of that conditioning from childhood as you. I cannot change what I feel, but I can learn to put those feelings behind me. It is something I should have done a long time ago.'

In a pa.s.sion of pain and bitter frustration, Ashley rose to her feet. Strive as he could, his judgemental att.i.tude of reproach and a complete inability to understand emanated from him in waves. Hot tears brightened her beautiful eyes to luminescence. 'Why don't you put those feelings behind you and try concentrating on what you should be feeling?'

'Meaning?' he prompted drily.

'Where the h.e.l.l were you when I needed you?' Raw emotion shrilled from the embittered demand. 'Where were you, Vito? I was nineteen years old and there was nowhere I could turn! You got me pregnant. You walked out. You married another woman. And you say that you I-loved me? Well, the only response I have for you now is ... where were you, and where was that love when I needed it?'

He was rigid with shock, all the natural vitality bleached from his golden skin. His cla.s.sic bone structure stood out in harsh relief, his dazed dark eyes twinned nakedly with hers as he was finally forced to take account of his own sins of omission.

Ashley drew in a deep shuddering breath. 'You don't live in the real word, Vito. You never have and you never will,' she condemned. 'You have a loving, supportive family and an obscene amount of money. You know about as much about how the rest of us live as a cartoon character! In the whole of your life you have never been in a position where you had no easy choice. So, you can afford to have ideals set in stone. You've never had to wonder where your next meal is coming from or how you're going to survive ... and that's when ideals get compromised!' A dark rise of blood had banished his pallor. He raised a not quite steady hand and brushed away the tears streaking her cheeks. In one of those lightning-fast switches of mood that disturbed her, she found herself within an ace of throwing herself into his arms. The compulsion was so strong that she might have given in to it had not Vito abruptly withdrawn his hand and straightened again, having belatedly mastered the shocked turmoil she had briefly seen in his strained gaze.

A soft knock on the door prefaced Elena's carefully slow entry. 'I do hope I'm not interrupting, but there is a party out here lacking the two princ.i.p.al guests.' 'Ashley will join us in a moment.' Deliberately placing himself so that Ashley's distraught profile was shielded, Vito guided the older woman out of the room.

In the buzzing silence he left behind, she fought harder than she had ever fought for self-possession and calm. Somewhere a clock struck midnight, and she trembled beneath the awareness that in less than thirty-six hours she would be Vito's wife.

'We should reach the villa in another hour.' Vito settled back in his seat, having enjoyed a long and apparently effortless conversation with their driver, Bandu, in Sinhalese. The house in the hill country had been in the Cavalieri family for four generations. He, had dropped that fact casually as they boarded the plane in London, modestly neglecting to mention that he also spoke the language.

Even after a nerve-racking hour, Ashley was still on the edge of her seat at the sheer death-defying style of driving in Sri Lanka. Bandu wove in and out wildly at what seemed far too great a speed for safety, jumping on his horn with gusto and making absolutely no use of any other form of signal. Behind them an ox was pulling a cart piled high with pineapples, unconcerned by the jam building up to its rear. In front was an incredibly dilapidated lorry. A lanky youth was sleeping precariously on top of the sacks, quite unaware that a sack near him had come open and was dropping coconuts at regular intervals beneath their wheels. An ancient old man, balancing a basket of fish on his head, jay-walked out in front of them at an unbelievably leisurely pace and actually stopped to adjust the load he carried. Ashley vented a stifled shriek, certain they would hit him, but Bandu simply swerved violently and continued on.

'Driving in Colombo requires nerves of steel,' Vito commented with wry amus.e.m.e.nt. Still shaking with reaction, Ashley suppressed a yawn.

'You are still tired?' Vito looked politely astonished. 'A bit.' Yet she had slept throughout most of that endless flight. Perhaps that was why none of this seemed real. The wedding had taken place yesterday and they had spent the night on the plane. She couldn't understand why she was still so tired. Possibly it was the immense strain of striving to accept that she was now Vito's wife.

It didn't seem possible. Ashley di Cavalieri. The Press had been outside the church, dealing yet another shock to her system. She had expected a very quiet wedding. True, Vito had not said it would be, but she had a.s.sumed that, since this was not to be a normal marriage, he would prefer a register office and an absolute minimum of frills.

As a result, she had been quite unprepared for the delivery and last-minute fitting of an oyster silk wedding gown and equally unprepared for the bouquet, the two hundred guests, the private party afterwards and the exquisite wedding cake flown in specially from Rome. Actually, by that stage, Ashley had gone beyond shock. She had played a starring role in the sort of grand bridal soap opera that she had never dreamt she would experience. At the back of her mind screamed the awareness that today, thanks to the power of the media, her entire family would learn that she had married.

Her mother would be deeply hurt by her total ignorance of the proceedings. Her father would be furious that that same ignorance would be equally obvious to their neighbours. Susan would be offended. And Tim? Ashley's soft mouth took on an anxious curve. Her brother would probably be very suspicious of the extraordinary speed and secrecy with which the marriage had taken place.

The streets, crammed to capacity with children, cattle, bicycles and every other possible form of transport, were now behind them. The narrow winding road climbed through coconut and cashew plantations. Rice grew in paddies along the way and in every direction palm fronds were etched like lacy sentinels against the deep blue unclouded sky.

A trio of dark-skinned girls, wrapped in colourful sarongs, stood washing themselves at a standpipe by the side of the road. Bandu braked to avoid the staggering steps of a naked little toddler stamping in a puddle near the pipe. Ashley grinned. Children were the same the world over. The attraction of water play was universal.

'What a beautiful child.' She craned her neck to catch a last glimpse of the engaging toddler.

'The Sinhalese are a very attractive people.' Something in his tone made her turn her head. A questioning glint lit his perceptive gaze. Suddenly conscious that she had accidentally jettisoned her role of indifference to children, Ashley avoided his eyes and stiffened.

A few miles further on, the car turned up a steep, gated drive through a grove of ca.s.sia trees. Ashley climbed out into the hot, still air and dazedly studied the building before her. Dropped into an English village, it would have looked perfectly at home there. It had all the solid charm of a Victorian country house with the addition of a wraparound veranda to permit greater enjoyment of the tropical climate.

'My great-grandfather bought the estate from a British planter. I turned the tea plantation over to a workers' co-operative,' Vito explained. 'But I retained a considerable amount of land to ensure the seclusion of the house.'

An astonishing number of smiling faces were gathering on the veranda to greet them. Scorn in her eyes, Ashley whispered, 'Surely even your dignity does not require this number of staff?'

Vito sent her a stinging look of reproof. 'Employment is far from plentiful here. While wealth may cushion me from what you choose to call "the real world",' he derided in an undertone, 'I follow a policy of providing work for as many people as possible.'

Scorched by the rejoinder and flushed, Ashley was propelled forward to meet the staff. It was a long drawn-out process. Such chattering friendliness could not be swiftly concluded. All but the youngest spoke good English and it was clear from Vito's questions that he was well acquainted with each and every one of them.

Another yawn crept up on Ashley. Seeing her stifle it, Priya, the small, rounded housekeeper, smiled and swept her upstairs into a large bedroom, full of beautifully carved mahogany furniture in the colonial style. But Ashley barely had the time to admire it because the first thing she saw was a large photograph of Carina set in prominent position beside the enormous bed.

Quick as a flash, Priya registered the source of her sudden tension. 'You want that I should remove?' she pressed anxiously. 'I did not like to without instruction.'

'Oh, please leave it there.' Alarmed at being so easily read, Ashley forced a casual smile, behind which she boiled with a confusion of angry sensations. Were there photographs of Carina everywhere? Was she expected to lie in Vito's arms tonight with the saintly first wife staring down at her from the sidelines? A sense of deep humiliation and rage intertwined inside her.

After Priya had finished showing her the adjoining bathroom and dressing-room with touching pride, Ashley said that she wanted to lie down for a while and refused the offer of refreshment. She threw herself on the bed. That photograph, she reflected fiercely. There could be no stronger reminder that this was not to be a normal marriage. She rather thought that Vito, who excelled on small sensitive details when he so desired, would have tactfully banished the photos had this been a different sort of alliance. And why did she kid herself that Carina was the one on the sidelines?

It was she, Ashley, who was on the outside. If Carina hadn't died, Vito would still be with her. They would have had children by now. Dear G.o.d, why did she persist in denying the obvious? Why shouldn't Vito have come to love his first wife? They had shared so much; family, friends, background and outlook. He held her memory in the highest possible esteem and spoke of her only rarely but then with repressed but strong emotion. In every way they had been very well matched. Why couldn't she face up to the fact that Vito had loved Carina? Until now she had flatly refused to accept that Vito might have married for more than the 'right reasons' supplied by their similarities. Jealousy and resentment had blinded her. Once he had called Carina a very dear friend. Ashley had been the infatuation, Carina the woman he turned to and finally stayed with. And suddenly she was agonisingly conscious that all Vito wanted from her was a baby and a quick exit from his life. From the outset he had made it abundantly clear that that was the only use he had for her now.