The Italian Duke's Virgin Mistress (9 page)

Now Raphael’s hand under her elbow felt like a form of imprisonment, but despite everything she believed about herself, humiliatingly, Charley was forced to admit that, when the sultry-looking sales assistant who had glided forward cast an assessing glance over her, she was glad she was wearing goodquality clothes—even though at the same time she felt acutely conscious of how badly her looks and lack of
self-confidence at being in this most feminine of female places compared to that of the sales assistant. Not that the sales assistant spent much time in looking at her—she was far too busy looking at Raphael for that, Charley thought acidly. But then an older woman came forward, dismissing the other girl, smiling warmly but professionally at Raphael.

‘My assistant is in need of a new wardrobe,’ Raphael told the saleswoman. ‘She will need everyday clothes, at least two business suits, and cocktail and evening dresses.’

No, Charley wanted to protest, not dresses. She never wore dresses. Her mother had always said that she was too much of a tomboy to wear them, and had laughed at her on the rare occasions when Charley had insisted that she wanted to be dressed like her sisters, telling her, ‘Oh, poppet, you can’t wear that.’ Dresses—indeed all feminine clothes—were Charley’s enemy. Just looking at them in shop windows brought her out in a cold sweat of remembered childhood humiliation.

The sales assistant’s dark gaze, sent once in Charley’s direction, didn’t return to her as she nodded her head.

‘Please come this way,’ she invited them.

Within two minutes they were inside a private tryingon suite, complete with newspapers, magazines and a television, coffee having been ordered for them both.

Charley was then whisked into a luxuriously equipped large changing room, where she was measured by the saleswoman and then allowed to return to the main room of the suite, where Raphael was drinking his coffee whilst studying his BlackBerry.

Two young assistants were summoned and given a volley of instructions in Italian so rapid that Charley couldn’t keep up with it, though she strained to catch the dreaded word ‘dress’ so that she could counteract it.

Swiftly, under the saleswoman’s silent eagle-eyed inspection, the clothes rail which had been brought into the room was filled with clothes—beautiful, elegant clothes, in wonderful fabrics and sophisticated colours. Two trouser suits, both black; smartly tailored shorts in black, tan and white; tee shirts and knits; blouses…Charley’s panic and dread were increasing with each new item added to the rail.

It was, of course, the evening dress that did it in the end: a swathe of cream silk satin, studded here and there with tiny crystals, the fabric so delicate that it fluttered sensually in the movement from the air-conditioning. Even without having seen it properly Charley knew instinctively that it was a gown designed for a woman who was confident of her own attractiveness—a woman who knew that when people looked at her the looks would be looks of admiration. She could just imagine the humiliation she would suffer if she allowed herself to be forced into such a dress; she would look idiotic, make a laughing stock of herself, the beauty and elegance of the dress simply underlining her own lack of them. The silk dress shimmered in front of her, warning her of the humiliation that was to come—inside her head she could hear her mother’s voice, as she stood with Charley and her sisters in the
children’s department of Manchester’s poshest store—Kendals on Deansgate—where she’d taken them to buy Christmas party dresses. She had been seven, Charley remembered.

She could see herself now, reaching out longingly towards a deep sea-green shot taffeta dress with a black velvet bodice and a wide sash, and then her mother had exclaimed, ‘Oh, no, Charley—you couldn’t possibly wear that.’

Just remembering the incident now, Charley could feel the sting of humiliation burning up under her skin, brought on by her mother’s words and her own awareness of people turning to look at her, no doubt contrasting her with her pretty sisters.

Unable to stop herself, she stood up.

‘I can’t possibly wear any of these clothes,’ she told Raphael agitatedly, too wrought up to notice the discreet manner in which the saleswoman had whisked her assistants and then herself out of the room.

‘Why not?’ Raphael was in no mood for female histrionics. He’d been awake in the early hours, questioning himself as to the wisdom of spending the night alone in his apartment here in Florence with Charley, and not very much liking the answers he had been forced to come up with.

And now, when he had decided that he had no alternative other than to make the best of the situation and see to it that she was properly prepared in every way to do the job for which he had hired her, the last thing he wanted was Charlotte behaving like a drama
queen over him providing her with the clothes she so obviously needed.

‘Why not?
Isn’t it perfectly obvious?’ Charlotte demanded bitterly. ‘Just look at them, and then look at me. There’s no way I’m going to try them on when I know I can’t wear those kind of clothes. I’ll look ridiculous and…make a fool of myself.’

Catching a note in her voice that was close to hysteria, Raphael put down the paper he had been reading and stood up, his irritation forgotten.

Charley was shaking, close to tears, and there was a look of deep self-loathing and misery in her eyes. The fact that her self-control was so obviously close to breaking was enough to arouse instincts within Raphael that he couldn’t ignore or deny. How could he call himself a man and ignore her distress? His parents had brought him up to be chivalrous and protective of the female sex, and besides…But, dangerously, her distress was also awakening other instincts within him—the instincts of a man who desired a woman. Of the two of them, only he knew how close he was to taking her in his arms and holding her there—and only he must know, Raphael warned himself, because once he had taken her in his arms there would be no going back. His pulse and then his body quickened, confirming what he already knew.

‘Why on earth should you think that?’ he demanded, and the curtness his own conflicted feelings had injected into his voice increased Charley’s misery.

There was a long pause whilst Charley looked away from him, and then, as though the words were being wrenched from her, she replied to him.

‘Because I do—that’s all.’

It was a child’s reply, defiance—a defence against something too painful to reveal. Raphael knew that because he knew exactly how it felt not to be able to admit the true cause of an inner pain that had gone too deep for comfort.

Why had she said what she had? Why had she let him see her vulnerability? Why had she given him the weapon with which he could destroy her? It was too late now to ask herself those questions, Charley knew.

‘I see.’ Raphael paused. Charley trembled inwardly in the long pause whilst Raphael assessed the situation. What had he wanted most as a child, when confronted by his own pain and fear? Hadn’t it been reassurance that there was in reality nothing to fear? A statement made confidently by ‘a higher authority’? He had not received that reassurance because it had been impossible for his mother to deny the inheritance that was his, and even all her love had not been enough to protect him from that harsh reality. A woman’s confidence in herself as a woman was everything. He had seen that in his mother, and somehow he wanted very much to restore it to Charley. But between that thought and acting upon it lay a noman’s land, and Raphael knew that he would be crossing a dangerous line within himself if he crossed that space.

He could stop. He could turn away from her. He could…

‘Well, the choice is yours, but personally my judgement is that this dress would suit you very well indeed.
You have the figure for it, and you carry yourself well, with elegance—something that not all women do.’

Too late now. He had crossed it. And in doing so had set in motion the situation he had sworn to himself he would avoid.

Charley could only stare at Raphael, her lips parting and then closing again. Raphael had complimented her. Raphael had said she carried herself well—with elegance. Raphael believed she could wear the dress.

A feeling—dizzying, euphoric, boundless in all that it offered her—flooded through her like a dam breaking, washing clean everything that lay before it, carrying away in its flood the detritus of all that was rank, festering and poisoned, leaving her feeling so different, so lightened, that she looked down at herself in a bemused fashion, as though her body was unfamiliar to her and something she had to learn to know and understand. ‘Elegance?’ she repeated wonderingly.

Raphael nodded his head, and told her, ‘Try on the clothes and see for yourself.’

There was no time for any further private conversation. The saleswoman had returned, accompanied by a girl carrying a fresh tray of coffee—a discreet excuse for having left them, to save
her
face, Charley recognised, as she allowed herself to be ushered back into the changing room.

Once there, Charley quickly discovered that there was far more to buying new clothes Italian-style than she had ever imagined. For a start, there was the makeup, applied deftly and determinedly by another impossibly
pretty, slender girl dressed, as they all were, in black. Only when she was satisfied was Charley allowed to step into the first of the two black trouser suits and a cream silk shirt. All the time Charley was forbidden to look at her own reflection until everything was done. Was it for her benefit or Raphael’s that her hair was brushed and tamed? Or was it more likely because of the size of the potential sale that she was getting all this attention? Charley couldn’t help wondering, a little cynically. It didn’t matter what the reason was in the long run because the result would be the same: she would look like a garish caricature; she already knew that.

Only when she was finally allowed to look in the mirror she didn’t look like a caricature at all. Instead she looked…As she stared at her reflection, Charley blinked her mascaraed lashes uncertainly. Her lashes looked so long, and her eyes looked so…so big, their colour somehow deeper thanks to the subtle addition of expertly placed eyeshadow, she recognised distractedly. She was putting off the moment when she would have to look again at her whole reflection, just in case she had been wrong and the miracle that seemed to have taken place had been more of a mirage than a miracle.

Guardedly and carefully, fearfully almost, Charley let her focus move downwards, past her mouth with its soft sheen of warm pink lipstick, down to where the open neck of the silk shirt revealed the little hollow at the base of her neck in a way that made her want to touch the unfamiliar vulnerability it revealed. Still she was holding back from fully looking at herself. But the
saleswoman was walking towards the door, and Charley knew that soon she would have to show herself to Raphael. She looked quickly into the mirror, holding her breath, and the air leaked from her lungs as she met the image looking back at her, and saw that the miracle had actually happened.

That
was
her—that immaculately groomed, slenderlooking, feminine young woman with long legs and fragile wrist bones. What magic was this? How could a simple trouser suit bring about such a transformation? Or was she after all just imagining it? Seeing in herself what she so desperately wanted to see? Believing what Raphael had told her because she wanted to believe it? Torn between hope and doubt, Charley blinked away threatening tears. There was only one way to find out. It was said that the eyes could not lie—perhaps only when she stood in front of him would she really know what Raphael truly thought.

When she walked into the room he put down his paper and looked at her, but it was impossible for Charley to tell what he was thinking from his expression. Something—a small swell of chagrin and disappointment—formed inside her.

She turned on her heel—or rather on the heels she had been given to wear to try on the suit—totally unaware of the instinctive and wholly female affronted flounce in the movement of her body.

Raphael saw it, though.

‘So are we agreed that I was right?’ he said dryly.

Charley knew that he was, but she wasn’t prepared to give in.

‘My parents—’ she began defensively, only to be stopped when Raphael spoke again.

‘Whatever your parents or anyone else might have said, whatever they might have believed, ends now and is in the past. Only the weak blame their past for the faults they find in their present; the strong acknowledge the effects of their past and then move on from it. We are all free to choose whether we will be weak or strong.’ His gaze challenged her to make her choice.

Charley took a deep breath. She felt dizzy again, light-headed, sort of untethered—as though something within her was floating free. As she struggled to understand what she was feeling she heard Raphael addressing the hovering saleswoman.

‘We will take everything.’

‘But I haven’t tried everything on yet,’ Charley tried to protest.

‘There’s no need. I am sure they will all fit perfectly—and besides, it’s nearly two o’clock and as yet we haven’t had any lunch.’

Charley could see that there was no point in trying to argue or protest.

By the time she had changed back into her own clothes everything was arranged. Her new things would be packed up and delivered to the apartment, and would be waiting for her when she returned there.

They had lunch in a small restaurant down an alleyway that opened out into a courtyard basking in sunshine, with tubs of spring flowers in bright bloom, but despite the relaxed ambience of the setting it wasn’t a pleasant
lunch. Raphael barely spoke to her, responding to her attempts to make conversation by asking him about the city with such terse replies that Charley lost her appetite, along with the desire to continue trying to converse with him. He was obviously bored with her company, and her heart turned over inside her chest and went leaden with pain when she saw him looking in the direction of a stunning redhead who was walking past their table. No doubt he was wishing that he was with the redhead instead of her, Charley guessed miserably.