And the only thing this was going to do was make this worse. He knew that all too well.
“We spent the first few days of our honeymoon as friends, because that was what we’d always been,” he gritted out, because he’d started this. And he would finish it, no matter the cost. “But then she decided that we might as well start making that heir as quickly as possible, so we could move on. She went off to prepare herself. Which, because she was in love with another man and had never had the slightest interest in me, involved getting drunk and then supplementing it with a handful of pills.”
“You don’t think she killed herself,” Angelina breathed.
“On the contrary,” Benedetto said grimly. “I know she did. It was an accident, I have no doubt, but what does that matter? It happened because she needed to deaden herself completely before she suffered a night with me.”
He had never said anything like that out loud before in his life. And he hated himself for doing it now. He wanted to snatch the words back and shove them down his throat. He wanted to insist that Angelina rip them out of her ears.
“Was she truly your friend?” Angelina asked, and he couldn’t understand why she wasn’t looking at him with horror, as he deserved.
Or with the same resigned bleakness his grandfather had.
“She was,” he said, another thing he never spoke about. To anyone. “She really was.”
“Then, Benedetto.” And Angelina’s voice was soft. “You must know that she would never want you to suffer like this. Not for her. Don’t you think she would have wanted at least one of you to be free?”
That landed in his gut like a punch.
He wasn’t sure he could breathe.
“You have no idea what you’re talking about, Angelina. You have no idea the kinds of chains—”
But he cut himself off, because that wasn’t a conversation he could have, with her or anyone else. He’d promised. He’d chosen. He gathered her to him instead, then crushed his mouth to hers, pouring it all into another life-altering kiss.
For a moment, he imagined that it really could alter his life instead of merely feeling that way. That he could change something. Anything.
He kissed her and he kissed her.
And Benedetto realized with a surge of light-headedness that the taste he hadn’t been able to get enough of over the past month, that impossible glory that was all Angelina, was hope.
Damn her, she was giving him hope.
He sensed movement in his peripheral vision, so he lifted his head, holding Angelina close to him so he could see who moved around in the dining room on the other side of the windowed doors.
It was Signora Malandra, and he felt himself grow cold as the older woman stared out at him.
She didn’t say a word. But then, she didn’t need to. Because if this castle was a prison, then Signora Malandra was the jailer, and it was no use complaining about a simple fact.
Angelina didn’t see the silent, chilly exchange. Benedetto checked to make sure, and when he looked up again the housekeeper had disappeared.
Taking his fledgling hope with her.
“You don’t have to tell me anything further,” Angelina told him then. “You don’t have to tell me anything at all, Benedetto.”
Her face was still so perfect. Her expression still so dreamy. And he knew that she had forgiven him for acts she knew nothing about, even if that was something he could never do himself.
He swept her up into his arms again. And he didn’t head for that bloodred bed in the room of stone that might as well have been a stage.
Benedetto shouldn’t have done any of the things he’d done with Angelina, but he had. And he wasn’t going to stop until he had to. But that only meant he needed to make sure what stolen moments they had were real.
She was the only thing in his life that had ever been real, as far as he could tell, for a long, long time.
He carried her into one of the salons, this one with a fireplace and a thick, soft rug before it. He lay her down and then busied himself preparing the fire.
“I would have sworn that there was no way a man of your consequence would know how to light a fire,” Angelina said, laughing again.
And what was he supposed to do with her when she kept laughing where any other woman would have been crying? Shivering with fear? Barring herself in a bathroom? All things other wives of his had done after Sylvia had died, and with far less provocation.
But then, he hadn’t touched any of them.
He looked over his shoulder at her, incredulously, but she didn’t seem to take the hint.
“The only reason I know how to do it is because we relied on fires for light and heat in my father’s house,” she confided. Merrily, even. “Necessity makes you strong or it kills you, I suppose. Either way, not something the great Benedetto Franceschi would ever have to worry about, I would have thought.”
He busied himself with the logs. “It was not always in my best interests to alert members of this household as to my whereabouts. I can fend for myself. Inside the walls of the castle, anyway.”
“But surely—”
But Benedetto was done talking.
“Quiet, little one,” he growled, and then he crawled toward her, bearing her back down beneath him.
And he taught her everything he knew.
How to take him in her mouth. How to indulge herself as if he was her dessert. How to ride him and how to drive him wild by looking over her shoulder with that little smile of hers while he took her from behind.
He was a man possessed, falling asleep with her there before the fire, only to wake up and start all over again.
He could not taste her enough. He could not touch her
