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mocking as he went on coldly, ‘I may be a second son, but I never, ever accept second best, much less third-rate. Now, since we have both made our position clear, maybe we can discuss what I shall require of you rather than what I most certainly do not?’
    He had insulted her, but he could not hurt her, Leonora assured herself as she glared dry-eyed at him. She didn’t care how third-rate he considered her to be sexually. In fact she was glad that he wasn’t interested in her.
    Alessandro pushed back the cuff of his shirt and looked at his watch. Why had he made that comment to her about his position as a second son? He didn’t have to justify or explain himself in any way to anyone, never mind this irritatingly challenging woman who was the very last person he would have chosen to accompany him to the castello had he actually had any choice.
    He could, of course, always go on his own, but that stubborn stiff pride that had driven him all his life insisted he had to prove to his elder brother that he could produce a woman who would not under any circumstances look at any other man—and that included Falcon himself. In that respect Leonora Thaxton was perfect, since he possessed the power to ensure that she would not do so.
    He gave her a mercilessly assessing look, his mouth compressing. The raw material might be there, in the tumbled hair and the well-shaped face with its clear skin, but that raw material was in need of a good deal of polishing if his elder brother was not to take one look at her and, with a lift of that famously derogatory eyebrow of his, burst out laughing.
    ‘Come,’ he announced. ‘My chauffeur’s wife will be wondering where he is, and Pietro himself will be wanting his supper. My car is this way.’
    Did he really expect her to believe that he was in the least bit concerned about his chauffeur or his chauffeur’s wife? Leonora thought indignantly, as she was forced to run to catch up with him as he strode away from her, plainly expecting her to follow him to where she could now see a large limousine waiting in the shadows.
    The chauffeur had the doors open for them as they reached the car, and Leonora’s heart sank as she realised that she was going to have to share the admittedly generously proportioned back seat of the car with Alessandro.
    As she sat down beside him on the tan leather seat he instructed her, ‘You will need to give Pietro your passport so that he can show it at the customs office at the gate.’ And then opened his laptop and ignored her, leaving her to seethe.
    She handed over her passport, which was duly presented to the customs officer, but it was into Alessandro’s outstretched hand that the chauffeur placed the returned passport once they were through the gate, not her own. Alessandro did not return it to her, despite the demanding look she gave him, choosing instead to slip it into the inside pocket of his jacket without so much as lifting his eyes from his laptop to meet her angry look.

CHAPTER THREE
    ‘C ATERINA WILL SHOW you to the guest suite, and once you have refreshed yourself I will explain to you over supper the role I wish you to play. Since we shall have to leave Florence by mid-afternoon tomorrow we will not have much time, so immediately after breakfast we will address the matter of providing you with a suitable wardrobe for the weekend.’
    ‘I have a change of clothes with me,’ Leonora said, pointedly looking down at the small case which Pietro had placed on the marble-tiled floor of the elegant hallway in the two-storey apartment inside this eighteenth-century palazzo to which Alessandro had brought her.
    Alessandro followed her gaze, and then swept his eyes from the case to the full length of her body and her face, with a comprehensive thoroughness that lifted the hairs on the back of her neck.
    ‘And that change will be what? A pair of jeans and a shirt?’
    ‘What if it is?’ Leonora demanded.
    ‘The events to which I wish you to