Common sense ought to have reasoned it away. She loved Luc. She loved children. Where was the problem? Yet still the feeling persisted and her templ
es began to throb. When the phone buzzed on the table and Luc reached for it impatiently, she was starting to feel distinctly shaky and sick into the bargain.
Luc was talking in Japanese with the languid cool of someone fluent in a dozen languages. A frown pleating his dark brows, he sighed as he replaced the phone. 'Business,' he said. 'I have to go inside to make a few calls. I'll be as quick as I can.'
Sunlight played blindingly on the surface of the pool several feet away. As a faint breeze sent a glimmering tide of ripples across the water, the effect was almost hynotic. Catherine's head ached too much to think. She wondered ruefully if she had had too much sun.
A sound jerked her out of an uneasy doze. A child emerged from below the trees. His stubby little legs pumped energetically in pursuit of the ball he was chasing. As it headed directly for the water, Catherine flew upright, consumed by alarm. But he caught the ball before it reached the edge, and as he did so one of the maids came racing down the slope from the castle.
'Scusi, signorina, scusi!' she gasped in frantic apology for the intrusion as she scooped the child up into her arms. He gave a wail of protest. As he was hurried away, still clutching his ball, Catherine stopped breathing.
The thumping behind her forehead had for a split second become unbearable, but now it receded. She didn't even notice the fact. She was in a benumbed state that went beyond shock into incredulous horror. Daniel…Daniel! The sybaritic luxury of the pool with its marble surround vanished as she unfroze.
Snatching up the phone, she pressed the button for the internal house line. A secretary answered. 'This is Miss Parrish.' She had to cough to persuade her voice to grow from a thread into comprehensible volume. 'I want you to get me a number in England and connect me. It's urgent,' she stressed, straining to recall Peggy's maiden name and the address of her home and finally coming up with them.
Shaking like the victim of an accident, she sat down before her legs gave out beneath her. What sort of a mother could forget about her son? Oh, dear God, please let me wake up, please don't let this nightmare be real, she prayed with fervour.
The phone buzzed and she leapt at it.
'Hello? Hello?' Peggy was saying.
'It's Catherine. Is Daniel there?'
'He's out bringing in the hay. I cried off to make refreshments,' Peggy chattered. 'Our phone was out for a couple of days and we didn't realise. Have you been frantic, trying to get through?'
'Well—'
'I thought you would've been,' Peggy interrupted with her usual impatience. 'I tried to ring you a few times from the call-box in the village but I always struck out. I suppose you've been out scouring the pavements in search of a job if you've decided against working for Mrs Anstey.'
'I—'
'Daniel's having a fabulous time. The weather's been terrific. We were planning to camp out tonight but, of course, if you want to speak to him…'
'No, that's OK.' I've been kidnapped. I'm in Italy. I'm getting married tomorrow. The revelations went unspoken. Peggy would think she was a candidate for the funny farm. In any case, she would be home before they were back in London. Nobody need ever know, she thought in that first frantic flush of desperation.
'Catherine, somebody's just driven into the yard. Wow, fancy car. Can I ring you back?'
'No…no, I'm out…I mean, I'm ringing from somewhere else. Give my love to Daniel.' She dropped the phone as though it burnt, and tottered backwards on to the lounger.
The hideous, absolutely inexcusable events of the past week were suddenly all crowding in on her. She flinched and she shrank and she cringed over the replay. Humiliation scored letters of fire into her soul. From rock-bottom there was only one way to go, and that was up, as she relived what Luc had done to her.
And really, there wasn't anything that Luc hadn't done. While she was in no condition to know what was happening to her, he had moved in for the kill. Plotting and intrigue were a breath of fresh air to that Borgia temperament of his. It had been as easy as stealing candy from a baby. Baby. Baby! She blenched and recoiled from that terrifying train of thought, completely unable to deal with it on top of everything else.
For a week she had been unaware that she was living four years in the past. He had left nothing within her possession that might jog her memory. Not a newspaper or a television set or a calendar had been allowed anywhere within a mile of her.
Every detail had been bloodlessly, inhumanly precise. It had Luc stamped all over it. He hadn't made a single error. She had been baited, hooked and landed like a fish. Only even a fish would have had more sense of self-preservation. A fish wouldn't have scrambled up the line, thrown itself masochistically on to the gutting knife and looked forward to the heat of the grill…but she had.
What Luc wanted, he took. Scruples didn't come into it. Costs didn't come into it. The end result was all that interested him. He had believed that she had planned to marry Drew and, with Drew's freedom so close, time had been a luxury Luc hadn't had. No doubt if she had thrown herself gratefully at his feet that night marriage would never have been mentioned. But in resisting Luc, she had challenged Luc. And he could not resist a challenge.
Her teeth ground together and her stomach heaved. That degrading fish image wouldn't leave her alone. Her small hands clenched into fists. Rage shuddered through her; rage that knew no boundaries; rage so powerful that it boiled up in a violent physicality she had not known she could experience.
At that precise moment, Luc appeared, striding down the steps set into the slope, and she remembered the episode in the back of the limousine and death would have been too quick a release for him to satisfy her. Springing upright, she grabbed up a glass and threw it at him. As it smashed several feet to the left of him, he stilled.
'You filthy, rotten, cheating, conniving swine!' she railed at him, snatching up the second glass and hurling it with all her might. 'You rat!' she ranted, and the phone went in the same direction. 'You louse!' she launched, bending in a frenzy to take off a shoe, her rage only getting more out of control at her failure to hit a fixed target. 'Bastard!' She broke through her loathing for that particular word and punctuated it with her other shoe. 'I want to kill you!'
'Poison would be a better bet than a gun.' Luc spread a speaking glance over the far-flung positions of the missiles, entire and smashed. 'Marksmanship wouldn't appear to be one of your hidden talents.'
Her rage reached explosive, screaming proportions. 'Is that all you've got to say?'