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completely illogically, he was actually experiencing an unwanted but undeniable emotional reaction to her deceit. Why? Why should he care that she was a liar who couldn’t be trusted? He didn’t, Marco assured himself,and told her curtly, ‘What you’re saying does not add up, therefore it cannot possibly be true.’
    Lily stared at him in stunned disbelief. Everything about his body language and the look on his face told her that nothing she could say would change his mind. He was calling her a liar, and he was making it plain that he wasn’t going to change his mind—no matter what she tried to say. It was as though he wanted to dislike and distrust her. Very well, she would defend herself by using the same ‘logic’ on him that he had used against her.
    ‘No one forced your nephew to accept the photo shoot, the money, or the party invitation,’ she pointed out, somehow managing to adopt a cool, clear, emotionless voice. ‘Instead of harassing me you might do better using your bullying questioning tactics on him. After all, a young man so well connected and coming from such a wealthy family shouldn’t need to accept work that pays so little—unless, of course, he had other reasons for accepting it.’
    She had hit a nerve now, Lily recognised. He might not have betrayed it in any visible way, but she knew as surely as if the reaction had been hers that inwardly he had recoiled from her challenge.
    ‘What reasons?
    His voice was harsh, almost raw with an emotion that was more than anger—as though something had been dredged up from deep within him against his will. Lily could feel herself weakening. Only he was not a man for whom she should feel compassion, she warned herself. In his way he was every bit as dangerous as those he was castigating, if not more so.
    Taking a deep breath, she challenged him silkily. ‘An uncle who keeps him on too short a rope, perhaps?’
    He didn’t like it. He didn’t like it one little bit. And yet to her surprise, instead of retreating into an angry and arrogant princely silence, no doubt meant to indicate to her that he did not have to explain himself or his actions to someone as plebeian as she, he told her, ‘Pietro is a young man with a tendency to behave impulsively and the belief that he is immortal. Traits which in my opinion are the result of a little too much maternal indulgence. If I believe he should be able to manage within his not ungenerous allowance then I do so in the knowledge that one day he will be responsible for managing a far greater sum of money. You may think that to be keeping him on a short rope. I consider it to be encouraging him to respect the benefits of living within his means.’
    ‘Perhaps that is something you should be telling him, not me?’ Lily suggested. ‘I accept that your nephew is important to you, but what is important to me right now is doing what the Trust sent me here to do.’ She looked pointedly at the closed doors he had barred.
    ‘And you can be trusted to carry out that duty, can you? Without disappearing to undertake some very different work on the side for a “friend”?’
    ‘You have neither the right nor any reason to question my commitment to my work.’
    ‘On the contrary, I have both the right—since I am responsible for persuading people to admit you into their homes—and the reason you have already supplied to me.’
    ‘We are keeping people waiting,’ Lily reminded him,anxious to bring their conversation to a close and to escape from him. She looked at the door, but he was standing closer to it than she was and he was watching her.

CHAPTER THREE
    T HE way Marco was looking at her was making Lily’s heart thump raggedly with tension. If only someone would come and interrupt them, bring her torment to an end. But no one did, and she was left with no alternative other than to listen to him.
    ‘I don’t accept for one minute that the motives of you or your friend were as altruistic as you would have