Betrayed by His Kiss Read online

  In a city of shadows…

  Orlando Landucci knows all too well what darkness lies beneath Florence’s dazzling splendor. And when his beloved sister is torn from him, he will stop at nothing to avenge her death.

  …only a kiss can light up the darkness

  But from the moment he lays eyes on innocent Isabella Spinola, something inside him shifts. She is the kin of his sworn enemy, yet he feels compelled to protect her. With every forbidden kiss Orlando’s sense of betrayal deepens, so when the time for vengeance comes, will their bond be enough to banish the shadows forever?

  “McCabe’s story charms readers.”

  —RT Book Reviews on Running from Scandal

  That kiss had been like nothing else she had ever known, or could even imagine.

  The very ground beneath her feet had swollen like the wave of a flooding river and burst, drowning her, and nothing could surely be the same again. It was as if she glimpsed the emotions only evoked by paint or charcoal on canvas.

  Yet then he had vanished. Disappeared as if he was one of her dreams, half-hidden, desperately sought, but always elusive.

  She closed her eyes for an instant, and in that darkness she saw again the way he looked at her after they kissed. The sadness and longing, the burning fire of passion, that made her want nothing more than to leap into those flames and be completely consumed.

  She knew she couldn’t have been fooled by that glow in his eyes. There was no artifice there in that instant, only raw, burning life.

  Yet there was that fathomless darkness, too. That darkness that had frightened her the first time she met him and she saw the depths of anger he held deep inside himself. That was there as well, fighting with the light of desire.

  * * *

  Betrayed by His Kiss

  Harlequin® Historical #1206—October 2014

  Praise for

  Amanda McCabe

  THE TAMING OF THE ROGUE

  “McCabe sweeps readers into the world of the Elizabethan theater, delighting us with a lively tale and artfully drawing on the era’s backdrop of bawdy plays, wild actors and thrilling adventure.”

  —RT Book Reviews

  RUNNING FROM SCANDAL

  “Including a darling little girl, meddling relatives and a bit of suspense, McCabe’s story charms readers.”

  —RT Book Reviews

  HIGH SEAS STOWAWAY

  “Smell the salt spray, feel the deck beneath your feet and hoist the Jolly Roger as McCabe takes you on an entertaining romantic ride.”

  —RT Book Reviews

  Amanda

  McCabe

  Betrayed by His Kiss

  Available from Harlequin® Historical and

  AMANDA McCABE

  *A Notorious Woman #861

  *A Sinful Alliance #893

  *High Seas Stowaway #930

  **The Diamonds of Welbourne Manor #943

  “Charlotte and the Wicked Lord”

  ^The Winter Queen #970

  ΔTo Catch a Rogue #989

  ΔTo Deceive a Duke #993

  ΔTo Kiss a Count #997

  Regency Christmas Proposals #1015

  “Snowbound and Seduced”

  **The Shy Duchess #1032

  +The Taming of the Rogue #1090

  ^Tarnished Rose of the Court #1110

  §A Stranger at Castonbury

  ¤The Runaway Countess #1154

  ¤Running from Scandal #1165

  Betrayed by His Kiss #1206

  Other works include

  Harlequin Historical Undone! ebooks

  *Shipwrecked and Seduced

  The Maid’s Lover

  ΔTo Bed a Libertine

  +To Court, Capture and Conquer

  Girl in the Beaded Mask

  Unlacing the Lady in Waiting

  One Wicked Christmas

  An Improper Duchess

  A Very Tudor Christmas

  ¤Running into Temptation

  *linked by character

  **linked by character

  +linked by character

  ΔThe Chase Muses

  ¤Bancrofts of Barton Park

  §part of Castonbury Park miniseries

  ^linked by character

  Did you know that these novels are also available as ebooks?

  Visit www.Harlequin.com.

  This book is for Kyle

  “I love you with so much of my heart

  that none is left to protest.”

  —William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing

  AMANDA McCABE

  wrote her first romance at the age of sixteen—a vast epic, starring all her friends as the characters, written secretly during algebra class. She’s never since used algebra, but her books have been nominated for many awards, including a RITA® Award, an RT Reviewers’ Choice Award, a Booksellers’ Best Award, a National Readers’ Choice Award and a Holt Medallion. She lives in Oklahoma with a menagerie of two cats, a pug and a bossy miniature poodle, and loves dance classes, collecting cheesy travel souvenirs and watching the Food Network—even though she doesn’t cook.

  Visit her at ammandamccabe.com and www.riskyregencies.blogspot.com.

  Contents

  Prologue

  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

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Epilogue

  Author Note

  Prologue

  Tuscany—1474

  The church was silent and marble-cold. Candles were lit over the altar, sparkling on the gilded image of the Virgin Mary surrounded by saints and solemn angels, but everything else was in darkness. Orlando Landucci was alone.

  Except for the woman who lay on her lonely bier before the altar steps. His sister, gone from him now.

  He knelt beside her, his hands clasped before him, but he could not pray. Even in this holy place he couldn’t let go of the fierce anger burning inside of him.

  Maria Lorenza’s face, so delicately pretty in life, was pale and still. Her blond hair was hidden by the white linen wrappings and her brown eyes were closed for ever. A rosary was threaded through her cold fingers. Perhaps she was at peace now, at last. Her torment had been so great for so long. Yet how could she be, when her murderer was still out there?

  Matteo Strozzi had not held the poison bottle to her lips, but he had surely guided her hand as she swallowed. The memory of his betrayal haunted even after all those months. The deep-dyed villain.

  She wouldn’t take Orlando’s help before, but he would give it to her now. He owed it to her for the sisterly love she had long given him.

  As he tucked a small bouquet of spring flowers into her hands with the rosary, he remembered Maria Lorenza as she had once been. The two of them as children, climbing trees, chasing through the barley fields, laughing. Her whispered jests and giggles in their father’s chapel, when they were meant to be solemn. Her tears, the raw fear in her eyes, when Matteo Strozzi had betrayed her and she had only Orlando to turn to.

  Maria Lore
nza had been there as long as Orlando could remember. His sweet, beautiful baby sister. She never deserved the torment that had driven her to this.

  A baby’s piercing cry suddenly broke the silence of the church. Orlando pushed himself to his feet and turned to see one of the nuns standing in the doorway. Maria’s new daughter was cradled in her arms, a fragile new life that bloomed in the face of her mother’s death. His niece, who had only him now to look after her. Who had lost her mother in the most horrible of ways. Maria had been so sure she could not look after her child, that the shame of having a bastard daughter would drown them both, and thus she had chosen to leave them all. She could bear the humiliation no longer.

  Matteo Strozzi had caused all of this. And he would pay. Orlando would make sure of that.

  Chapter One

  The Tuscan countryside—spring 1478

  My Most Illustrious Lords:

  My brother Giuliano has just been killed and my government is in the greatest danger. Now is the time, my lords, to help your servant Lorenzo. Send all the troops you can with all speed, so that they may be the shield and safety of my state, just as they have always been.

  Your servitor, Lorenzo de’ Medici.

  Letter to the Lords of Milan,

  April 26, 1478

  ‘In a short time passes every great rain; and the warmth makes disappear the snows and ice that make the rivers look so proud; nor was the sky ever covered by so thick a cloud that, meeting the fury of the winds, it did not flee from the hills and the valleys.’

  The girl’s voice, reading from the volume of Petrarch, flowed low and sweet on the warm breeze. It mingled with the hum of bees, seeking the most luscious of the early summer flowers, with the twitter and chatter of birds. The wind whistled through the gnarled branches of the heavy-laden olive trees and the tall cypresses. It was the slowest, most lazy of days. Steps grew heavy in the sunlight, laughter rich. Work was only an afterthought.

  Perfect for Isabella’s own task. There were few tasks for her to undertake at her father’s villa. Meals were lighter, the rich curtains and carpets of winter folded away and replaced by thin, airy linens. The servants gossiped by the open windows, peeling vegetables for a light pottage as the chickens, their feathery lives spared for the moment, scratched in the dirt of the back courtyard. No, she would not be expected at home until sundown, when her father stirred from his books and began wondering where his supper was.

  Isabella leaned over her sketchbook, easing the side of her thumb to smudge a harsh charcoal line. ‘The fury of the winds...’ The girl’s voice faltered.

  Isabella glanced up to find that Veronica, their neighbour’s young daughter, still sat in her spot of sun, the book she was reading from open on her lap. She was a perfect model, with her pale golden curls limned by the sun into a halo, her oval face lightly touched with the bronze of summer. Her pink-striped skirts spread around her on the grass like the ruffled petals of a rose against leaves. But, by St Catherine, the girl would not sit still!

  ‘What is it, Veronica?’ she asked.

  ‘May I see the drawing yet, madonna?’ the child said, eagerness hidden low in her gentle voice. ‘We have been sitting here for ever so long!’

  Long? Isabella glanced at the azure sky above them to see that the slant of the light had changed subtly, its rays shifting to a deep caramel. The sfumato of morning, that silvery-grey haze so peculiar to hot Tuscan days, had long ago burned off. Yet to Isabella, so absorbed in capturing the girl’s face on parchment, infusing the cold, black lines with Veronica’s sweet, innocent spirit, it seemed only moments had passed.

  ‘All the better to practise your reading, Veronica,’ she said, placing her charcoal back in its specially slotted box and flexing her fingers. Her skin and nails were stained deep grey, so engrained that surely she could not scrub it clean before her father saw. Ah, well. After all these years of living alone together, he was accustomed to her doings, as she was to his.

  ‘You read that poem so beautifully,’ she continued. ‘Your parents will be very proud.’

  Veronica closed the precious, green leather-bound book and held it tightly to her stomach, a shy smile touching her rosebud lips. ‘Do you think so, madonna? They say I must go to my aunt’s house in Florence once the summer is over, to learn to be a true lady and find a suitable betrothal.’ She glanced uncertainly down at the book. ‘I shouldn’t like to shame myself there.’

  Ah, Florence. Isabella repressed a flash of envy, of longing. Surely it was foolish to be jealous of a child, when she herself was a great, grown lady of nineteen! But to see the treasures of Florence, the art of Bellini, Botticelli, Ghirlandaio, the glorious churches and galleries and palazzi—it must be great indeed. A glory of unsurpassed beauty, of vast sophistication. A world completely unlike their quiet country existence.

  It was a world she knew only from her cousin Caterina’s letters and likely to remain that way for as long as her widowed father needed her. After he had lost her mother so many years before, he’d retreated into his own world of books and was likely to stay there, grieving over his wife. Isabella never wanted to face that herself.

  ‘Then we shall gift them with this drawing before you leave,’ Isabella told Veronica. ‘But you cannot see it just yet! Not until it is finished.’

  Veronica sighed deeply with disappointment and Isabella laughed at her pout. Surely the child had a long distance to go before she found that betrothal and set to running her own household! Much like Isabella, who was long past the age to marry, but who couldn’t imagine being a wife. She liked being herself far too much to submit to the will of a husband.

  And she had watched what had happened to her father when her beautiful mother died all those years ago. The way he had retreated into himself, giving into the grief of losing his wife so completely he even forgot he had a daughter for a time. She could not bear to feel thus herself. Her art took all her emotion.

  ‘Run along now, little bird,’ Isabella said. ‘Your mama will be looking for you.’

  Veronica stood up, shaking out her skirts, the book tucked beneath her arm. ‘Shall we meet again tomorrow, madonna?’

  ‘Of course, if it does not rain. We want to finish this before you go, no?’

  Veronica gave her one last giggle, then spun around and dashed out of the sunny grove, her gown a pink blur until she disappeared down a slope towards her parents’ villa.

  Isabella slid a thin piece of paper over the sketch to keep it from smudging before carefully closing the book. The pages were almost full now, the pristine whiteness covered with black-and-grey images of flowers, trees, houses, people, imaginary scenes. Anything that caught her eye and challenged her to capture its essence in lines and planes.

  She packed the precious volume carefully in a basket, along with her charcoal box and the remains of a long-consumed picnic meal. She would have to leave soon, as well, and abandon this secret, enchanted grove for the prosaic real world of the villa. Her father would be emerging from his library, looking about for her in his absent way.

  Not just yet, though. Isabella lay back in the warm grass, staring up at the sky through the long, lacy pattern of the olive branches. The bright blue of afternoon had faded to a paler, rose-tinged hue, but the air still hung heavy, not yet cooled by the onrush of evening. She smelled the green freshness of the grass, the sulphur-tinged sweetness of wild jasmine. It was a beautiful time of day, her favourite, when it seemed she was all alone in the world, that nothing could touch her, hurt her, change her. There were no responsibilities, no demands. No wild longings.

  Isabella closed her eyes, feeling the soft caress of the wind across her cheeks, through the fall of her loose, thick black hair. The song of the birds was muted now, as if they were far away. What would it be like to fly free as they did, to feel the breeze bearing her up, up, up? To soar above the earth.

&n
bsp; She imagined a painting in her mind, a canvas washed with an expanse of clear, priceless sky-blue, dotted with grey-tipped white clouds. At the very bottom of the scene, a string of buildings, villas, farms, the dome of a church. Perhaps the tiny dots of people going about their daily business. And above, hovering in the heady, thin air of perfect freedom, Icarus. A handsome young man, naked but for the pointed wings arcing above his head. A single moment of untainted glory. But high above, at the top edge of the canvas, the hot, waiting rays of the harsh sun. The fall that lurked for all men who dared fly too high.

  Isabella opened her eyes and for an instant she fancied she saw a tiny figure soaring towards the sunset. His face was indistinct, she couldn’t yet envision it, though she dreamed of just such a man. Somewhere out there, waiting for her.

  She laughed wryly. That was hardly likely. Their home here was beautiful, safe, tucked far away from the dangerous doings of the great men in Florence. The men of her Strozzi cousins’ circle. There were no dangerous suns here. But neither were there wax wings to bear a soul to freedom.

  The sky was streaked with vivid orange and gold now, a paint palette that signalled the close of one more day. She had stayed here too long.

  Isabella pushed herself up, rising slowly to her feet. Her legs were stiff from sitting too long, from balancing the sketchbook on her knees. Her dark blue skirts were streaked with ochre-coloured dust and grass blades, but she had no time to worry about that now. She had to get home, to make sure supper was waiting for her father.

  * * *

  The farm was slowly coming to life for the evening, after the long siesta of the sleepy afternoon. Outside the cottages, tables were being set up beneath the trees, candles lit against the gathering darkness. Children raced around, energized by the cool breeze that crept over the dusty land, banishing the heat of the day. Laughter, the barking of dogs, the fresh song of awakening night birds followed Isabella as she hurried down the pathway, dirt billowing around her sandal-clad feet, the hem of her gown.

  ‘Buona notte!’ people called after her and she answered with quick waves, smiles. At last she came to the top of the slope that led to her father’s villa.