The Sicilian Duke's Demand

The Sicilian Duke’s Demand

Madeleine Ker

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

COMING NEXT MONTH

CHAPTER ONE

ISOBEL was trying to remember that line of poetry. Something about a glassy, cool, translucent wave. So appropriate for this beautiful, hot Sicilian day. Cobalt sky, flat sea, ripples of lacy foam around her pale skin.

From the indigo horizon, a cone rose up against the sky: Etna, just tipped with snow now that it was summer, and with the customary feather of white smoke drifting from the peak. A well-behaved volcano, doing its best not to frighten away the tourists. But she was not a tourist; she was here to work.

Yesterday’s storm had stirred up the sand on the bottom, making the water opaque, but it had settled overnight, and today the turquoise water was wonderfully translucent again. She could go back to the team and tell them to get ready to dive again this morning, with excellent visibility and calm seas.

She was floating past the rocks, right over what they had dubbed ‘Vector Alpha’, the line they believed corresponded to the keel of the wrecked ancient Greek galley, when the movement caught her eye.

Despite the blazing sun on her back, her heart seemed to freeze for a moment.

There it was. Or rather, there he was. About twelve feet below her. A powerfully built male body. Golden-skinned, with thick black hair floating around his muscular shoulders. Naked but for black Neoprene shorts that hugged his sleek thighs from waist to knee. He was wearing only a mask, like her: no scuba tanks. A free-diver.

He was drifting right along Vector Alpha, propelled by easy sweeps of his long legs, intent on the seabed below him. Hunting. Her stopped heart exploded into life, fuelled by anger. This intruder knew exactly where he was going. Like a shark cruising after the scent of fresh blood in the water!

She floated motionless, watching the predator tour the line of the wreck, oblivious to her presence above him. This was exactly why she and the others had travelled from New York to Sicily—to protect this archaeological treasure from marauders like this one. To defend the past from such plunderers as this.

Isobel waited for him to run out of air. She needed surprise on her side. He looked formidably powerful, muscles rippling from that taut waist to the wide sweep of his shoulders. Nor did her sharp eyes miss the hefty-looking knife strapped to one sinewy thigh.

Damn. What if this visitor turned out to be a real bad boy? And the others were still breakfasting on shore. She had come down to the site early, alone, to assess the chances for the day’s diving. She could race back to them, come back with the cavalry, but by then the pirate would be long gone—carrying with him whatever booty he had been able to steal.

Besides, Isobel Roche was not known to be afraid of anything. Character flaws she might have aplenty—she had been accused of arrogance, stubbornness and pride, and had even recently been called an imperious, sarcastic iceberg by her ex-boyfriend, who ought to know—but she had never been accused of cowardice.

She caught sight of a tattoo on the powerful right shoulder. An octopus, done in black, tentacles writhing against the tanned skin. Oh, yes. A real bad boy. Damn, again!

And he just wasn’t running out of air, either. Those big lungs were full of oxygen. He had almost reached the end of the wreck, swimming with lazy ease, the long hair spinning black swirls around his shoulders.

It was time to act.

Isobel drew a deep—and rather shaky—breath. Then, kicking hard, she dived down through the clear water towards the dark figure. He still seemed to be oblivious to her as she snaked through the water towards him like an avenging angel.

At the last moment, he seemed to glimpse her from the corner of his eye, and twisted away from her like a big fish. As he did so she saw the glint of gold in his clenched fist. Damn a third time. He had found something important and had seized it! Without thinking, she grasped at the swirling clouds of his long hair, black as ink in the clear water. Her fingers closed tight around the thick tresses. Pulling as hard as she could, she kicked for the surface, dragging him after her.

It did not occur to her until she burst through the surface that he could have drawn that big knife and stuck it into her liver. By then she was whooping for breath and trying to hold onto what had turned out to be a very big man indeed. A large hand closed on her arm and broke her grip of his hair. She braced herself for his counter-attack. But when she looked into his face, he was laughing at her; laughing with dazzling white teeth through a curling black beard, his bright eyes bluer than the sky above.

‘Give it to me!’ she demanded fiercely in Italian.

‘Give you what?’ he replied, still laughing.

‘What you found down there!’

‘I found nothing down there.’

‘Liar!’ They were floating face to face, his muscular shoulders and throat breaking the water. She grabbed for his hair again but this time succeeded only in getting a handful of that curly black beard. ‘Give it to me!’

‘That hurts!’ he protested, still laughing.

She clenched her fingers so that her knuckles dug into his warm skin. ‘Then give it to me!’

‘All right,’ he capitulated. ‘Let’s swim to the rocks and I will give it to you.’

‘Don’t try any funny stuff,’ she warned grimly, releasing him. But she was thinking of the knife strapped to his thigh as she spoke so bravely.

They hauled themselves onto the rocks. The sandstone shelf was slippery so they hunkered down, facing each other as if they were about to wrestle. Her captive was certainly a splendid specimen of the adult male. Built like a demigod, with that long black hair and beard, he was like an ancient hero sprung to life.

As if echoing her thought, he grinned and said in fluent, but accented, English, ‘Odysseus captured by a siren. That puts a new twist in the myth.’

‘You speak English?’

His voice was deep and husky. ‘And I walk upright, too. But sirens didn’t wear lime-green bikinis in Odysseus’s time, I believe.’ His appreciative eyes were roaming over her body, exactly the way he must have assessed the wreck. Her bikini was indeed lime-green, and none too big. She had not been expecting company so early in the morning. The skin of her breasts had tightened with the adrenaline coursing through her system and her nipples were making rigid exclamation points against the wet Lycra. She shook her long auburn hair forward, hoping it would provide some sort of curtain of modesty.

‘Give it to me,’ she panted, holding out her hand—which, she could not help but notice, was about half the size of his.

His deep blue eyes were mocking. ‘They say, ‘‘Finders, keepers’’.’

‘The police don’t say that,’ she snapped. ‘You have ten seconds to give it to me!’

Eyes dancing, he slowly opened his brown fingers. Isobel gasped. Gleaming in the broad palm of his hand was a heavy gold coin. It was ancient beyond a doubt. She could see—appropriately—the bearded head of a god gleaming on the heavy yellow disc.

She snatched at it but he was far too quick. His fingers closed around it and his smile mocked her. She grabbed his fist in both of her hands and tried to prise his fingers open.

‘You have no right to this,’ she panted.

‘Why not? I found it.’

‘This is an archaeological site. Stealing from an excavation is a very serious offence.’

He shook his head like a wet lion, spraying her with water from his hair and beard. ‘How serious?’

Her efforts to pry his fingers off the coin were in vain. Furious, she was about to bite those stubborn knuckles until it occurred to her she might catch something unsavoury from this villain.

‘Very serious. Besides which, it’s robbing the world of an incalculable piece of history.’

‘Incalculable?’ he echoed. ‘So it’s valuable?’

She glared into those taunting blue eyes. ‘You might get the price of a bottle of wine for it. Is that worth destroying an important part of the historical record for ever?’

‘A bottle of wine,’ he mused. ‘Against the, what was it again, the ‘‘historical record’’? Hmm. I have never been too impressed by clichés, bella signorina. I think I’ll take the bottle of wine.’

‘Damn you,’ she said angrily, frantic to see the coin again. She wasn’t the expert on numismatics on the team, but it was clearly the finest coin that had yet appeared on the site. ‘Give it to me!’

‘No.’

‘You thief!’ This time she threw caution to the winds. She pulled his unyielding fist to her mouth and sank her sharp white teeth into his knuckles.

Maddeningly, he just kept laughing at her. ‘Are you going to eat me alive? To preserve the historical record?’

She thought she could taste blood on her tongue. She spat. His pectoral plates were hard and strong, with dark nipples that were as rigid as hers, and crisp black hair making a triangle at the base of his thick throat. His arms were heavy with muscle. She was never going to get the coin away from him by force. He was much too strong. ‘I’ll buy it from you,’ she said desperately.

One dark eyebrow quirked in amusement. ‘I don’t think you could fit even the price of a bottle of wine in your lime-green bikini, siren lady. What do you intend to pay with?’

‘Give me the coin and I’ll bring back cash,’ she temporised.

‘The only thing you’ll bring back is a squad of carabinieri.’ He grinned. ‘Handcuffs don’t suit me. Think of something else.’

‘You’ll have to trust me,’ she said, glaring at her tormentor with furious jade-coloured eyes.

‘Sicilians say, never trust a woman with red hair and green eyes,’ he replied, as though imparting some important life lesson.

Having her hair called red was adding insult to injury. ‘Don’t you understand, you savage?’ she snapped. ‘That coin doesn’t belong to you or to me! It’s part of the national heritage. The world’s heritage. You’re not just stealing a lump of gold—you’re stealing a piece of our knowledge, our understanding of our past!’

‘Brava,’ he purred. ‘Is the lecture over?’ He was unimpressed by her passionate words, a primitive brute—a beautiful primitive brute—who was enjoying the situation to the full.

‘All right,’ she spat at him, her temper snapping, ‘take it, if that’s what you want. But at least let me see the markings on the coin—so I can make a note in the site log.’

‘I can tell you what’s on the coin,’ he replied. ‘Some old goat with a beard on one side, and a fork on the other.’

‘A fork?’

He made a jabbing motion with one arm, his biceps swelling as he did so. Her eye was caught by the octopus tattoo again, swirling tentacles etched against the tanned skin. ‘A spike with three points, like we use for spearing fish.’

‘A trident?’

‘Exactly, a trident.’

Poseidon, god of the sea, with his insignia. A gold Poseidon from Syracuse. Isobel bit her lip with even, pearly teeth. Not just a precious and beautiful coin, but important evidence. Vital evidence. ‘Listen to me,’ she said, trying to control her anger and dislike of this big ruffian who sat there mocking her every word. She spoke reasonably and slowly, as though to a child. ‘I’m going to try and explain this to you.’

‘Thank you, lady,’ he said gravely.

‘There’s a wreck down there. A very old wreck. An ancient Greek ship, called a galley. From a place called Corinth. We think it went down in a storm somewhere around three hundred BC. That’s over two thousand three hundred years ago,’ she added helpfully. He nodded, blue eyes filled with amusement. She pressed on. ‘That coin may be the key to the whole excavation. For one thing, it will give us a date. The coin can be dated to within a few years. And we’ll know that the wreck couldn’t have taken place before that date. You see?’

‘I see.’

‘For another thing, it shows us that the ship had already been to Sicily—and was on its way back. These galleys traded between Greece and the islands,’ she explained, her eyes searching his face for some sign of comprehension. ‘The presence of a gold coin from Syracuse on board means we can say that they had already visited Sicily and sold their cargo. So now we know that the cargo down there is Sicilian, not Greek—it was going back to Corinth to be sold there. You understand?’

‘I understand.’

‘But I can’t prove any of this unless I have that coin. It’s not enough for me to say I just saw a Syracusan coin in the wreck. I need to have it to prove—’

‘I’ll sell it to you for a kiss.’

Isobel’s sermon froze in her throat. ‘What?’

‘If this is so important to you, that’s a very small price to pay.’ His perfect white teeth flashed in a grin. ‘Sicilians also say that no woman can kiss like a woman with red hair and green eyes.’

‘My hair is not red!’

‘Do you want the coin or not?’

‘I—’

He reached out and brushed the heavy, wet ropes of hair away from her cheek. The same hand, surprisingly gentle for all its strength, then slid round to cup the back of her neck and drew her face forward to his.

To her eternal shame, she did not start struggling until after his warm, velvety mouth closed on hers.

And by then she was wrapped in the irresistible power of those muscular arms, which held her close and drew her tight against his naked chest. And the warm hand that held the back of her neck made it impossible for her to turn her mouth away while he kissed her…

And kissed her…

The first kiss was soft and assessing, as though he were getting the taste of her, smelling her skin, gauging the smoothness of her lips. She had the fleeting thought that expertise like this must have been gleaned at the expense of a hundred women in a hundred taverns along this rocky Sicilian coast.

He smelled warm, masculine, of the sea. His body was all male, living muscles swelling against her slim body as he enfolded her further into his embrace, the second kiss deepening as his lips caressed hers, pressing against her mouth.

In fact…

In fact, she was to recall later, by some weird chemistry of the female mind, it was not until she started to kiss him in return that she also started to struggle.

And that was what she was doing now, kissing him passionately and yet fighting him all the way. Her nails digging into those powerful shoulders, her knees trying to thrust at his groin, even as her mouth opened to his like a flower in the sun, and her eyes closed in ecstasy.

His hard, flat belly pressed to hers, the crisp curls caressing her skin.

Isobel’s heart was pounding wildly, her breath rushing hotly, mingling with his. The inside of her chest felt as though it were filled with some molten metal; her legs were boneless; her mind was whirling with emotions. Fury that he should do this to her. Resentment that her hormones should respond so vehemently to such an indignity. Relief that this brigand had just proved Michael Wilensky wrong. Imperious and sarcastic she might be, but an iceberg who had never responded to a man she was not.

Not any more.

And he kept kissing her, until his erotic mastery was so intense that, although he had not touched her breasts or anywhere else, she felt that swelling, rapturous pressure in her womb that only came when…

She shuddered violently in his arms, her emotions peaking almost unbearably inside her, holding her on a pinnacle of suspense for a long eternity until her body sagged in his arms like a released rag doll.

‘Mmm,’ he purred, releasing her at last, ‘the legend was right.’

In a hot blur, she saw that he was smiling at her, holding out one hand. Her fingers trembled as she took the coin from him. It was warm and heavy. She clutched it weakly.

Did he have any idea what he had just done to her?

Any idea?

‘You—’

She ran out of words after that first pronoun. ‘Sorry I took more than one kiss,’ he said in that husky, accented voice. ‘But it wasn’t breach of contract. There is actually a whole amphora of coins down there.’

‘Amphora…?’ she said weakly.

‘I don’t know what you would call it. Some kind of ancient pot. Full of coins.’ He gave her that dazzling smile. ‘Plenty more where that came from, siren lady.’

‘But—where?’

‘You’ll find them where I left a marker.’ He rose to his feet, a magnificent, bearded creature from some ancient myth, smiling down at her with knowing eyes. The black Neoprene clung to his thighs, revealing the swelling, male muscles of his body. ‘I will see you again.’

‘Oh, no, you won’t,’ she said, dragging her dignity back together again. ‘Unless it’s in a criminal courtroom!’

‘Nobody has committed any crime,’ he said softly. ‘Arrivederci.’

And now she could tell why he was so anxious to leave: the purring of an outboard motor could be heard threading its way between the rocks towards them. It was the others in the dive boat, coming to see why she was taking so long.

‘Don’t come back!’ was her parting shot.

He slipped into the water like a dolphin, leaving her with a final memory of a broad back and tight buttocks. Then he was gone.

Isobel sat clutching her coin, hot and cold flushes chasing one another across her skin as she waited for the other archaeologists to arrive.

The coin told her she was triumphant. So why on earth did she feel as though she had just been conquered?

CHAPTER TWO

FOR her pains, she had to endure a morning of merciless ribbing about her ‘encounter with Poseidon’.

None of the others had actually seen her mystery man, not even Antonio Zaccaria, their Sicilian liaison with the Beni Culturali, who normally saw everything. The boat, piled with diving gear, had rounded the little cape just after her Poseidon had vanished beneath the waves.

By their grins she could tell that they suspected she had had some kind of daydream, inspired by finding the beautiful gold coin—she did not tell them about the kiss—until David Franks and Theo Makarios strapped on scuba gear and went down, and found the floating marker attached to the pot of coins.

They were still talking about it late in the afternoon as they crowded around the workbench that they had set up in the vaults of the Palazzo Mandalà.

‘It’s a fantastic collection!’ Theo exclaimed, bright brown eyes alight with pleasure. He was carefully rinsing the coins with his ‘magic formula’ liquid cleaner. He was the coin expert among them, his lean fingers expertly sorting through the mass of metal discs, many of which had been welded together by corrosion. ‘Mostly bronze, and so corroded by the sea water that it’ll take weeks to separate and identify them. But there’s plenty of silver here, and that’s in wonderful condition. Stuff from Syracuse, a couple of super ones from Agrigentum, things from all over, really. But this gold Poseidon is just magnificent. A real treasure. Can’t believe you rescued it! I wonder how we came to miss this amazing treasure trove?’

‘The storm, yesterday,’ Antonio Zaccaria said. ‘It must have uncovered the pot. That’s how Poseidon found it this morning.’

They looked at each other. A storm had uncovered the wreck in the first place, shifting the sand so that the debris had been spotted by a fisherman, who had reported his find to the Duke of Mandalà, the major landowner on this stretch of the coast—who in turn had reported it to the Berger Foundation. Which was why they were here.

But another storm could just as easily bury the wreck again, perhaps for centuries. Thieves like Poseidon weren’t the only danger to a fragile site like this one.

‘The trouble is,’ Isobel said slowly, putting the thoughts of all of them into words, ‘that it’s not really a wreck at all. We’ve found no traces of the timbers—the boat itself must have rotted away a thousand years ago. All that’s left is the cargo, strewn along the sand, with nothing to protect it.’

Antonio nodded. ‘And the site’s so shallow that rough weather pulls it around, throws the material in different directions, covers it with sand…’

‘We need to work fast,’ Isobel said decisively. As the team leader, it was up to her to take decisions. ‘Between the weather, the tides and visitors like Poseidon, that material may not be down there much longer. We’ll have to work double shifts until we’re sure there’s nothing else left down there.’

The others nodded. Isobel glanced at what they had recovered so far. Not a bad haul for a few days’ work: a row of wine and olive oil amphorae, heavily encrusted with barnacles, but intact and, according to David, the pottery expert, of extremely rare shapes and sizes; the bronze fluke of an anchor and some other bronze fittings, yet to be identified; and now this hoard of coins.

All the finds lay soaking in neutralizing solution in plastic boxes, ranged rather incongruously along the carved marble bench that ran the length of the workroom they had set up. The Palazzo Mandalà was a magnificent, seventeenth-century palace that bore little resemblance to the rough quarters Isobel and the others were more accustomed to working in. Even the laundries and kitchens of the palazzo, which led off the vaults, were echoing marble halls, studded with carved angels and saints—no doubt to edify the souls of generations of skivvies.

The palace was the family home of Ruggiero, Duke of Mandalà, now in his eighty-first year, a noted benefactor of many causes, including the Berger Foundation, which employed Isobel, Theo and David. It was that lucky connection that had secured them the invitation to come and investigate the sunken Greek galley that had turned up practically on the duke’s doorstep, thanks to a Mediterranean storm.

And the old duke had extended his personal hospitality to the archaeologists, so that they were billeted in stunning chambers hung with Tintorettos and Caravaggios, instead of the leaky tents they were more used to.

The workroom, set aside especially for them, was a good place, spacious and secure, with an immense door like the portal of a cathedral, which could be locked with a key that weighed about three pounds.

‘The carabinieri have promised to keep an eye on the site,’ Antonio Zaccaria said as they made their way up the flamboyant marble staircase to the first floor, where they were roomed. ‘And the Coastguard say they’ll send a patrol past there every couple of hours.’

‘Think that’ll help?’ Isobel asked.

Antonio shrugged. ‘This is Sicily,’ he replied.

‘This is Sicily?’ she repeated. Of the three of them who had come from New York, she was the only one who had never been to Sicily before and, good archaeologist as she was, she sometimes felt out of her depth. ‘What does that mean, ‘‘This is Sicily’’? The cops have to keep that jerk away!’

‘I’m sure they will,’ Antonio soothed. ‘You were very brave to confront Poseidon like that, but not very wise. Especially since you say he had a knife. You were lucky he just backed off.’

‘He won’t come back,’ she said confidently. The story she had told the others had been highly edited. If it got out that she had allowed herself to be kissed by the marauder, her reputation as the Ice Princess of Archaeology would melt in a second!

‘We’ll see. We’ll ask the old man for help on this—I’ve just been informed that he’s joining us for dinner.’

‘The duke?’ Isobel asked, raising her arched eyebrows.