“I play the piano. Whenever I can, for as long as I can. My other interests include listening to other people play the piano on the radio, taking long walks while thinking about how to play Liszt’s La Campenella seamlessly, and reading novels.”
Her voice was not quite insolent. Not quite. Next to her, her mother drew herself up again, as if prepared to mete out justice—possibly in the form of a sharp slap, if Benedetto was reading the situation correctly—but he lifted a hand.
“Both of your sisters attempt to interact with the outside world. But not you. There’s no trace of you on the internet, for example, which is surpassingly strange in this day and age.”
There was heat on her cheeks. A certain glitter in her gaze that made his body tighten.
“There are enough ways to hide in a piece of music,” she said after a moment stretched thin and filled with the sounds of tarnished silver against cracked china. “Or a good book. Or even on a walk, I suppose. I have no need to surrender myself to still more ways to hide myself away, by curating myself into something unrecognizable.”
Petronella let out an affronted sniff, but Angelina did not look apologetic.
“Some would say that it is only in solitude that one is ever able to stop hiding and find one’s true self,” Benedetto said.
And did not realize until the words were out there, squatting in the center of the silent table, how deeply felt that sentiment was. Or was that merely what he told himself?
“I suppose that depends.” And when Angelina looked at him directly then, he felt it like an electric charge. And more, he doubted very much that she’d spent any time at all practicing her expression in reflective glass. “Are you speaking of solitude? Or solitary confinement? Because I don’t think they’re the same thing.”
“No one is speaking about solitary confinement, Angelina,” Margrete snapped, and Benedetto had the sudden, unnerving sensation that he’d actually forgotten where he was. That for a moment, he had seen nothing but Angelina. As if the rest of the world had ceased to exist entirely, and along with it his reality, his responsibilities, his fearsome reputation, and the reason he was here…
Pull yourself together, he ordered himself.
The dinner wore on, course after insipid course. Anthony and Margrete filled the silence, chattering aimlessly, while Benedetto seethed. And the three daughters who were clearly meant to vie for his favor stayed quiet, though he suspected that the younger one kept a still tongue for very different reasons than her sisters.
“Well,” said Anthony with hearty and patently false bonhomie, when the last course had been taken away untouched by a surly maid. “Ladies, why don’t you repair to the library while Signor Franceschi and I discuss a few things over our port.”
So chummy. So pleased with himself.
“I think not,” Benedetto said, decisively, even as the older daughters started to push back their chairs.
At the head of the table, Anthony froze.
Benedetto turned toward Angelina, who tensed—almost as if she knew what he was about to say. “I wish to hear you play the piano,” he said.
And when no one moved, when they all gazed back at him in varying degrees of astonishment, outright panic, and pure dislike, he smiled.
In the way he knew made those around him…shudder.
Angelina stared back at him in something that was not quite horror. “I beg your pardon?”
Benedetto smiled wider. “Now, please.”
CHAPTER THREE
“ALONE,” ADDED THE TERRIBLE, notorious man when Angelina’s whole family made as if to rise.
He smiled all the while, in a manner that reminded Angelina of nothing so much as the legends she’d heard all her life about men who turned into wolves when the moon was high. She was tempted to run to the windows and see what shape the moon took tonight, though she did not dare.
And more, could not quite bring herself to look away from him.
Angelina had not been prepared for this. For him.
It was one thing to look at photographs. But there was only so much raw magnetism a person could see on the screen.
Because in person, Benedetto Franceschi was not merely beautiful or sinful, though he was both.
In person, he was volcanic.
Danger simmered around him, charging the air, making Angelina’s body react in ways she’d thought only extremes of temperatures could cause. Her chest felt tight, hollow and too full at once, and she found it almost impossible to take a full breath.
When he’d singled her out for conversation she’d responded from her gut, not her head. And knew she’d handled it all wrong, but only because of her mother’s reaction. The truth was, her head had gone liquid and light and she’d had no earthly idea what had come out of her mouth.
Nothing good, if the pinched expression on Margrete’s face was any guide.
Still, disobedience now did not occur to her. Not because she feared her parents, though she supposed that on some level, she must. Or why would she subject herself to this? Why would she still be here? But she wasn’t thinking of them now.
Angelina wasn’t thinking at all, because Benedetto’s dark, devil’s gaze was upon her, wicked and insinuating. A dare and an invitation and her own body seemed to have turned against her.
He wanted to hear her play.
But a darker, less palatable truth was that she wanted to play for him.
She told herself it was only that she wanted an audience. Any audience. Yet the dark fire of his gaze worked its way through her and she knew she wasn’t being entirely honest. The yearning for an audience, instead of the family members who ignored her, wasn’t why her pulse was making such a racket, and it certainly wasn’t why she could feel sensation hum deep within her.
She could hardly breathe and yet she stood. Worse, she knew that she wanted to stand. Then she turned, leading him out of the dining chamber,
