“You will find a variety of salons, an extensive private library, and an entertainment center along this hall.” Benedetto nodded to doors as he passed them. “Any comfort you can imagine, you will find it here.”
“Am I to be confined to this hall?”
“The castle is yours to explore,” her husband said. “But you must be aware that at times, the castle and grounds are open to the public. Signora Malandra leads occasional tours. Because of course, there is no shortage of interest in both this castle and its occupant.”
“But…”
Once more, she didn’t know what on earth she meant to say.
Benedetto’s dark eyes gleamed as if he did. “Foolish, I know. But far be it from me not to profit off my own notoriety.”
He paused in the direct center of the long hall that stretched down the whole side of the castle. There was a door there that looked like something straight out of the middle ages. A stout wooden door with great steel bars hammered across it.
“This door opens into a stairwell,” Benedetto told her. He did not open the door. “The stairwell goes from this floor to the tower above. And it is the only part of the castle that is strictly forbidden to you.”
“Forbidden?” Angelina blinked, and shifted so she could study the door even more closely. “Why? Is the tower unsafe?”
His fingers were on her chin, pulling her face around to his before she even managed to process his touch.
“You must never go into this tower,” he said, and there was no trace of mockery on his face. No curve to that grim mouth. Only that blazing heat in his dark eyes. “No matter what, Angelina, you must never open this door.”
His fingers on her chin felt like a fist around her throat.
“What will happen if I do?” she asked, her voice little more than a whisper.
“Nothing good, Angelina.” The darkness that emanated from him seemed to take over the light pouring in from outside. Until she could have sworn they stood in shadows. At night. “Nothing good at all.”
She felt chastened and significantly breathless as Benedetto pulled her along again. Hurrying her down the long corridor until they reached the far end. He led her inside, into a master suite that was larger than the whole of the family wing of her parents’ house, put together. It boasted a private dining room, several more salons and studies, its own sauna, its own gym, a room entirely devoted to an enormous bathtub, extensive dressing rooms, and then, finally, the bedchamber.
Inside, there was another wall of windows. Angelina had seen many terraces and balconies throughout the suite, looking out over the sea in all directions. But not here. There was only the glass and a steep drop outside, straight down into the sea far below.
There was a large fireplace on the far wall, with a seating area arranged in front of it that Angelina tried desperately to tell herself was cozy. But she couldn’t quite get there. The fireplace was too austere, the stone too grim.
And the only other thing in the room was that vast, elevated bed.
It was draped in dark linens, gleaming a deep red that matched the ring she wore on her finger. Like blood, a voice inside her intoned.
Unhelpfully.
Four dark posts rose toward the high stone ceiling, and she had the sudden sensation that she needed to cling to one of them to keep herself from falling. That being in that bed, with nothing but the bloodred bedding and the sky and sea pressing down upon her, would make her feel as if she was catapulting through space.
As if she could be tossed from this chamber at any moment to her death far below.
Angelina couldn’t breathe. But then, she suspected that was the point.
She only dimly realized that Benedetto had let go of her hand when she’d walked inside the room. Now he stood in the doorway that led out to the rest of the suite and its more modern, less stark conveniences.
Perhaps that was the point, too. That inside this chamber, there was nothing but her marriage bed, a fire that would not be lit this time of year, and the constant reminder of the precariousness of her situation.
And between her and the world, him.
“Is this where it happens, then?” She turned to look at him, and thought she saw a muscle tense in his jaw. Or perhaps she only wished she did, as that would make him human. Accessible. Possessed of emotions, even if she couldn’t read them. “Is this where you bring your wives, one after the next? Is this where you make them all scream?”
“Every woman I have ever met screams at one point or another, Angelina,” he said, and there was a kind of challenge in his gaze. A dark heat in his voice. “A better question is why.”
But that impossible heat pulsed inside her, and Angelina didn’t ask. She moved over to the bed and as she moved, remembered with a jolt that she was still dressed in her wedding gown. And between her legs, that pulsing desire he had cultivated in her thought it had all the answers already. She ran her hand over the coverlet when she reached it, not at all surprised to find that what she’d seen gleaming there in the dark red linens were precious stones. Rubies. Hard to the touch.
She pressed her palm down flat so that the nearest precious stone could imprint itself there. She gave it all her weight, as if this was a dream, and this was a kind of pinch that might jolt her awake.
Did she want to wake up? Or would it be better still to dream this away?
You keep thinking something can save you, something in her mocked her. When you should know better by now.
Angelina’s palm ached, there where the hard stone dug into her flesh. And the man who watched her too intently from across the
