have— Where does it say? Let me see!"

She virtually flung herself at him and Lorenzo retrieved

the will he had thrown down onto the table

earlier. Seizing it, she read it, her face white with

rage.

"You have changed it. Somehow you have— She

wanted you to marry me!" She was almost hysterical

with fury.

"No." Lorenzo shook his head, his face impassive

as he watched her. "Nonna wanted to give me what

she believed I wanted. And that, most assuredly, is

not you."

As Lorenzo stood beneath the flickering light of the

old-fashioned flambeaux, the small abrupt movement

of his head was reflected and repeated in the shadows

from the flames.

The Castillo had been designed as a fortress rather

than a home, long before the Montesavro Dukes of

the Renaissance had captured it from their foes and

then clothed and softened its sheer stone walls with

the artistic richness of their age. It still possessed an

aura of forbidding and forbidden darkness.

Like Lorenzo himself.

Dark shadows carved hollows beneath the sculptured

bone structure he had inherited from the warrior

prince who had been the first of their line, and his

height and the breadth of his shoulders emphasised

the predatory sleekness of his body. His mouth was

thin-lipped—"cruel", women liked to call it, as they

begged for its hardness against their own and tried to

soften it into hunger for them. It was his eyes, though,

that were his most arresting feature. Curiously light

for an Italian, they were more silver than grey, and

piercingly determined to strip away his enemies" defences.

His well-groomed hair was thick and dark, his