choice." She laughed, throwing back her head to expose

the olive length of her throat, and Lorenzo had

a savage impulse to close his hands around it and

squeeze the laughter from her it. He did want the

Castillo. He wanted it very badly. And he was determined

to have it. And he was equally determined that

he was not going to be trapped into marrying

Caterina.

"You told my grandmother I loved you and wanted

to make you my wife. You told her that the fact that

you were so newly widowed, and that your husband

Gino was my cousin, meant that society would frown

upon an immediate marriage between us. And you

told her you were afraid my passion would overwhelm

me and that I would marry you anyway and

thus bring disgrace upon myself, didn’t you?" he accused

her. "You knew how na..ve my grandmother

was, how ignorant of modern mores. You tricked her

into believing you were confiding in her out of concern

for me. You told her you didn’t know what to

do or how you could protect me. Then you ""helped""

her to come up with the solution of changing her will,

so that instead of inheriting the Castillo from her — as

her previous will had stated — I would only inherit it

if I was married within six weeks of her death. As

you told her, everyone knows how important to me

the Castillo is. And then, as though that were not

enough, you conceived the added inducement of persuading

her to add that if I did not marry within those

six weeks, you would inherit the Castillo. You led her

to believe that in making those changes she was enabling

me to marry you, because I could say I was

fulfilling the terms of her will rather than following