A Whisper of Disgrace(22)
Had he known? she wondered. Had he realised before his own violent death that the daughter he’d so adored had been the child of the brother he detested? Had he been broken-hearted and careless as a result—dropping a match in that cavernous old warehouse which he and his brother had owned so that they had burned to death, their tortured cries carrying out on the hot, Sicilian breeze?
She was grateful for the loud knock which broke into her troubled thoughts and she opened the door to find Kulal’s driver standing there. Wordlessly, he took her suitcase from her, leaving Rosa to follow him. But her questions about Kulal’s whereabouts were met with a polite shrug. As if he didn’t understand what she was saying—even when she spoke to him in French—and Rosa got the feeling that he understood her very well.
Her feeling of isolation grew as the car headed out towards the airport and she peered out of the window at the upmarket holidaymakers. Against the azure backdrop of the sea, there were women in tiny shorts, big sun hats and even bigger pairs of sunglasses as they hung around the harbour areas, as if waiting for an owner of one of the luxury yachts to pluck them up and sail them away to paradise. She thought how carefree they all looked as they fished around in their giant leather bags. As if they had nothing more taxing on their minds than when their next coat of lipstick needed to be applied. She wondered if they even noticed her—the woman in the expensive limousine being taken to marry a man who was little more than a stranger.
The powerful car slid to a halt at the Nice airport and she was escorted straight out onto one of the airstrips, where a large plane stood waiting on the tarmac. Its gleaming jade-and-rose bodywork reminded her of some oversize exotic bird and a steward wearing matching livery ushered her on board. The light in the cabin was dim and it took a moment or two for her eyes to adjust to the sight of Kulal reclining on one of the seats, reading through what looked like a pile of official paperwork. He looked utterly relaxed, with his long legs stretched out in front of him and one arm pillowing his ebony head. Reluctantly, she ran her eyes over him in unwilling appraisal, unable to deny the sheer physical perfection of the man.
Did he hear her quiet intake of breath? Was that the reason for his enigmatic smile as his gaze flicked upwards?
‘Don’t look so frightened, Rosa,’ he said softly, his eyes making their own leisurely journey down over the entire length of her body.
‘I’m not frightened,’ she answered, trying to convince herself it was true, even though that lazy scrutiny was making her skin tingle in a very distracting way. She told herself that she’d met enough powerful men in her twenty-three years to make her impervious to them. But she’d never met anyone who had looked at her quite like that before. He had removed his jacket and was wearing dark trousers and a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up. She could see the crisp sprinkling of hairs on his powerful forearms and, despite his relaxed pose, she was very aware of all the latent strength in his muscular body.
‘Come over here and sit down,’ he said, patting the elongated seat beside him.
She approached with the caution of someone walking towards an unexploded bomb, knowing it would sound naive if she complained that the angle of the seat made it look more like a bed. Yet a couple of days ago she’d wanted more than anything to find herself in bed with him. She wondered what had happened to that new and confident Rosa Corretti, who had looked at this man and decided that she wanted him.
Was it because this morning he was exuding a sex appeal which seemed intimidating and for the first time she realised that he was planning to deliver? That things had moved beyond the hypothetical and sex had become a reality. She was aware that his initial relaxed pose had gone and been replaced by a sudden tension—as if he, too, had suddenly acknowledged the close confinement of the aircraft cabin as the outer doors slammed shut.
She slid into the seat beside him, aware that he was still watching her, his dark eyes seeming to drink in every move she made. She told herself that she mustn’t be intimidated. That she needed to be more like the woman who had pole danced her way into his line of vision, rather than the one whose heart was now beating out a thready tattoo. ‘I hope that what I’m wearing is “appropriate,”‘ she said.
‘Utterly.’ He watched as she smoothed the delicate material of her dress over her bare knees. ‘You will need an entirely new wardrobe to cope with the demands of life as a princess, of course—though I don’t imagine you’ll have much of a problem with that. I’ve yet to meet a woman who doesn’t salivate at the thought of buying new clothes, especially when someone else is picking up the bill.’