One Night: Red-Hot Secrets: A Secret Disgrace / Secrets of a Powerful Man / Wicked Secrets. PENNY JORDAN

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       CHAPTER SEVEN

      ‘OH, CAESAR, I nearly forgot! I think the excitement of your marriage must have been a bit too much for your housekeeper. I overheard Signora Rossi telling the maids to make up your parents’ old interconnecting state bedrooms for you and Louise this morning, just before I came down to the chapel for the ceremony.’

      Caesar’s cousin wrinkled her nose and laughed, whilst Louise froze. The adults of the family were in the ‘small’ dining room—all fifty feet of it—having a brief post mortem on the undeniable success of the day, before retiring.

      ‘So old-fashioned of her—but then, of course, she was your parents’ housekeeper. As though you and Louise would want to have separate rooms! I told her to instruct the maids to move Louise’s things to your own suite instead. Apart from anything else your suite is so much more modern and comfortable than those dreadfully old-fashioned state bedrooms your parents occupied. I know that for a fact from when she allocated them to Ricardo and me on our first visit after our marriage.’ She stifled a small yawn.

      Louise had to take a small sip from the brandy glass she had been nursing, her lips trembling against the glass as she did so. She wasn’t really a drinker, but Anna Maria’s lightly amused words had sent such a shock of dismay through her that she felt she needed the glowing warmth of the spirit to banish that shock’s icy coldness.

      ‘You must both be exhausted. I know I am,’ Anna Maria continued, thankfully oblivious to the consternation she had caused.

      As much as Louise desperately wanted to look at Caesar, to see how he was receiving his cousin’s well-meaning interference in his careful arrangements, she couldn’t trust herself to do so.

      ‘The boys dropped off the minute they were in bed, didn’t they, Louise?’ Anna Maria chattered on.

      Numbly, Louise nodded her head.

      When they had discussed their marriage Caesar had mentioned the fact that for form’s sake their marriage must seem ‘normal’, but that they could get round the fact that neither of them wanted any sexual intimacy with the other by occupying the interconnecting state bedrooms, each with its own bathroom, dressing room and private sitting room, which until his parents’ death had traditionally always been occupied by the Duca and his duchess.

      The rooms need some refurbishment, Caesar had told her when he had shown her over them, and he intended to leave the choice of redecoration of her own rooms to her. He would return to his own suite whilst those renovations were taking place, and she had agreed with him that the arrangement would give them both the physical separation from one another they wanted whilst preserving the fiction that their marriage, and with it their sexual relationship, was that of a normal married couple.

      Now, though, it seemed that thanks to Anna Maria their sleeping arrangements had been changed, and Louise knew that she would have to wait until they were finally alone in Caesar’s suite before she could give vent to her feelings about that change.

      Once they were in Caesar’s personal suite of rooms, though, it wasn’t her angry dismay at the changes that had been made that occupied her thoughts so much as the emotions gripping her throat and momentarily silencing her as she looked round the familiar space that was Caesar’s exclusive territory.

      On their first visit to the castello it had been her father’s girlfriend Melinda who had prettily but determinedly insisted on seeing Caesar’s private suite. Her pouting and teasing him about the probability of his bed being covered in decadent black silk sheets had resulted in him admitting them into his private domain. Louise admitted that then she had found the simplicity of the decor in his study-cum-office and adjoining bedroom rather dull and unexciting, after Melinda’s deliberate flirtations and sexy verbal build-up. It had only been later, as she’d matured and learned, taught herself to appreciate real style and elegance, that she had come to realise how very smart and understated the colour scheme actually was.

      Here in Caesar’s private quarters the wooden panelling was painted a soft blue-grey, with deeper toned beautifully soft modern rugs softening the starkness of the marble floor. Modern leather-covered furniture—heritage pieces for future generations, Louise felt sure—broke up the space of the businesslike and yet comfortable space that was the sitting room for the whole suite. Bookshelves and cupboards filled the space either side of the fireplace, and a very modern computer desk set beneath one of the now shuttered windows.

      Through the off-white painted double doors she could see into the bedroom—and see the enormous double bed, its bedding folded down at both sides, ready for shared occupation.

      Louise couldn’t control her reaction—a physical shudder that ripped through her body.

      Once before she had shared that bed with Caesar. Shared it? Wasn’t it the truth that she had virtually begged him to take her there?

      The sheets—white and very, very expensive—were of the finest quality possible, even if back then she had not known enough about such things to recognise that fact, and it was surely safer to focus on that fact and use it to block out those awful unwanted images that were threatening to crash through the barriers she had erected against them.

      On one side of the bed were double doors that led to a modern marble-and-glass bathroom with a free-standing bath, and on the other a pair of double doors that led to a dressing room.

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