Rags To Riches Collection. Rebecca Winters

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СКАЧАТЬ up as judge and jury and he would never believe her side of the story.

      She scraped back her chair and stood up, trembling with pent up emotion. ‘My morals are not questionable,’ she said fiercely. ‘I am not a thief, and I never touched Alicia Devington’s wretched earrings. I don’t think a notorious playboy who sleeps around would be a good role model for Sophie,’ she went on, after snatching a ragged breath. ‘You’ve admitted you were too drunk that night to remember if you slept with Mel. Why don’t we assume that you are not the man she spent the night with and drop the idea of doing a DNA test? I’ll take Sophie back to England and you can forget about both of us.’

      ‘You mean you would be prepared to bring her up on your own? Without any financial pay-out?’ Cesario demanded, his black brows drawing together.

      ‘I only ever wanted a bit of money to give her the things I never had when I was a child—nice clothes, trips to the cinema, maybe the occasional holiday. I don’t mean expensive foreign holidays,’ Beth assured him, ‘just a week at the seaside somewhere. But material things don’t really matter. I love Sophie, and for a child to know it’s loved is the most important thing of all.’

      Dio, she sounded so convincing. Could he have misjudged her? Doubt filtered into Cesario’s mind. Could the story about her stealing from her employers be untrue? Perhaps nothing more than spiteful gossip and hearsay that the investigator had reported as fact?

      ‘For Sophie’s sake we must go ahead with the test,’ he said abruptly. ‘Her biological mother is dead, and however much you might love her she has a right to know who her father is.’

      He exhaled heavily, his temper cooling as he considered the possibility that the investigator might be wrong. It had been unfair of him to react the way he had without verifying the information he had been given, he admitted. But if he was honest with himself he was annoyed by his attraction to Beth. He didn’t like the way she made him feel, and he had seized on a reason to think the worst of her.

      ‘Sit down,’ he commanded, lifting his glass and taking a long sip of wine. The only way he could form a fair opinion about Beth Granger was to get to know her better; and perhaps over dinner and a few glasses of wine she would relax and open up to him. ‘I’ll ring for Teodoro to serve the main course.’

      His arrogance was breathtaking, Beth thought furiously. She did not often lose her temper, but she was so hurt and angry she wanted to throw something at Cesario and wipe the superior expression from his face.

      ‘Do you really expect me to continue with dinner after you’ve made those awful accusations and threatened to take Sophie from me?’ she said bitterly. ‘Do you think I have no feelings? That because I have no money or family I am somehow a lesser person and don’t deserve to be treated with consideration?’

      She lifted her head and met his gaze, unaware that he had noticed the shimmer of tears in her eyes.

      ‘I don’t want to eat with you. You are not pleasant company and I’d probably choke,’ she told him tightly, before she wheeled away from the table and raced from the room. ‘It’s stopped raining at last.’ Beth sighed as she stared at the sullen sky which promised more rain to come. ‘I had no idea that it rained so much in Sardinia,’ she said, turning away from the window to Filomena, who had brought her lunch up to the nursery and was now clearing away the plates of hardly touched food.

      ‘You did not like my pasta with my special recipe tomato sauce?’ the cook demanded.

      ‘It’s lovely, but I’m afraid I’m not hungry today.’

      Filomena gave her a sharp look, but said no more about her lack of appetite. ‘Some years we have a wet spring,’ she said with a shrug. ‘But you will see—in a few weeks the sky will be blue all day long and the sun will be too hot for your fair skin.’

      Would she still be in Sardinia when the weather improved? Beth wondered. Would the results of the DNA test be known? And if, as she suspected, they proved that Cesario was Sophie’s father would she be embroiled in a battle for the right to have a role in the baby’s life?

      After last night’s confrontation with him she had been so worried she had barely slept. Maybe Sophie had sensed her tension and that was why she had been so unsettled all morning, she thought, glancing over to the cot where the baby was finally sleeping peacefully after screaming for almost an hour.

      ‘Leave the bambina with me,’ Filomena suggested softly. ‘Go for a walk in the gardens while the rain has stopped. It is not good to be inside all the time.’

      Beth shook her head. ‘I don’t want to leave her in case she wakes up and wants me.’

      ‘I can take care of her if she wakes. You think I don’t know about babies?’ Filomena demanded. ‘I have brought up six sons.’

      It wouldn’t do any harm to get some fresh air, Beth conceded. Maybe a walk would help get rid of her headache. She gave the cook a faint smile. ‘All right. I’ll go for twenty minutes. Sophie should sleep for at least an hour.’

      It was too warm for her coat, she discovered, when she stepped outside a few minutes later. A pale sun had emerged from behind the clouds, although many of the higher peaks of the mountains were still shrouded in mist. Ignoring the path that led to the gardens, she walked across the courtyard and out of the main gateway. The Castello del Falco felt brooding and oppressive today, and she was glad to escape its towering grey walls.

      Turning off the road that wound down the mountain, she followed a narrow footpath that at first dropped steeply before the land levelled out into fields strewn with wild flowers and bordered by dense woodland. The countryside was ruggedly beautiful, its silence only broken by birdsong and the occasional bleat from the sheep grazing some way in the distance.

      It was good to forget all her worries for a while and simply enjoy being outside. The Gennargentu Mountains seemed a world away from the busy streets of East London, and as Beth walked she lost all sense of time. A strange sound carried on the breeze made her halt. It seemed to come from somewhere in the trees—a mournful howl that sent a shiver through her. She glanced around fearfully, wondering if there were wolves in Sardinia. The howling came again. Thinking it could be a child’s cry, she forgot her fear and ran towards a copse of tall pine trees—but stopped dead as a sickening sight met her eyes.

      ‘Oh, no.’ Horrified, she dropped to her knees beside a dog lying on the ground with its leg caught in a trap. Wicked-looking metal teeth were gripping the animal tightly, and Beth quickly realised that she would be unable to free the wounded creature. Her heart clenched when the dog looked at her with pain-filled brown eyes. Ignoring the fact that a wounded animal might be vicious, she patted it gently, and it gave her hand a feeble lick. ‘I’ll go and get help,’ she choked. She hated to leave the injured animal, but it would die if it was not set free soon.

      * * *

      ‘You say Beth went out an hour ago?’ Cesario questioned Filomena, raising his voice above the loud cries of the baby, whom the cook was endeavouring to comfort.

      ‘She said she was going for a walk in the gardens, but when I sent one of the staff to look for her there was no sign of her.’ Filomena shook her head as she tried to feed Sophie from a bottle, but the baby spat out the teat and screamed louder. ‘I cannot imagine what has happened. Signorina Beth is devoted to the bambina and would not leave her for long.’

      Cesario’s eyes were drawn to the inconsolable infant in the cook’s arms, and he СКАЧАТЬ