As if, if he only applied himself, he could take all that hope and beauty, all that magic and music, and infuse it directly into his veins.
As if there was more than one way to eat her alive.
As if he could keep her.
And in the morning, dawn crept through the windows, pink and bright. It woke him where he lay stretched out before that fire still.
He had done everything wrong. He knew that.
But that didn’t change what had to happen now. It didn’t alter in the slightest the promises he’d made. The choices he’d walked into with his eyes wide open, never expecting this. Never expecting Angelina.
Benedetto lifted her up. He tried to steel himself against the way she murmured his name, then turned to bury her face against his shoulder, not quite waking up.
He carried her through the suite, everything in him rebelling as he walked into the bedchamber at last. Outside the windows, he could see the light of the new day streaking over the sea.
It should have been uplifting, but all he wanted to do was rage. Hit things. Make it stop.
He took her to that bloodred bed and laid her in it. He drew the coverlet up, but left her hand exposed, that bloodred ruby marking her as his. And a fortune or two of them surrounding her.
Blood on blood.
He didn’t want to leave, but he knew he had no choice if he was to keep his old vow. He handled the hateful practicalities and then he tore himself away. He forced himself out of the bedchamber and refused to allow himself to look back.
But the sight of her was burned into his brain anyway. Blond hair spread out over the pillows like silver filigree, somehow making all that dark red seem less ominous. Cheerful, almost.
As if she really was an angel.
Benedetto took a long shower, but that didn’t make it any better. He dressed in a fury, then had another fight on his hands to keep himself from walking back into the bedchamber and starting all over again.
Instead, he stepped out into the hall. He wasn’t the least bit surprised to see the figure of his housekeeper waiting there, halfway down. Right in front of the door he’d told Angelina she was never to open.
Inside him, he was nothing but an anguished howl. But the only sound he made was that of his feet against the floor.
Walking toward his duty and his destiny, as ever.
When he reached Signora Malandra, they stared at each other for a quiet eternity or two.
“It is done,” Benedetto said, the way he always did.
The older woman nodded, her canny gaze reminding him of his grandfather.
Or maybe that was his same old guilt talking too loudly once again, trying to drown out that tiny shimmer of hope.
“Very well then, sir,” she said. She smiled at the door, locked tight, then at him. “So the game begins. Again.”
CHAPTER TEN
ANGELINA WOKE UP on the first morning of her married life with a buoyancy inside her chest that she would have said was impossible—because she’d certainly never felt anything like it before.
At first, she was a bit surprised to find herself in that great, blood colored bed. More than surprised—she was taken aback that she had no memory of getting into it. The memories she did have were white hot, stretched out in front of a fire her forbiddingly grand husband built himself. A delicious shiver worked its way over her body, inside and out.
She sat up slowly, holding the bejeweled coverlet to her chest as she looked around. But nothing had changed. The room was still a stark aerie, nothing but stone before her and above her, and the sea outside. Waiting.
But for some reason, what she’d expected would feel like a fall to her death felt like flying instead. Exhilarating. She shoved her hair back from her face, and spent a good long while staring out at the sea in the distance. Blue. Beautiful.
Only as brooding as she made it.
When she swung her legs over the side of the high bed and found the cool stones beneath her feet, she felt almost soothed. Not at all the reaction she would have expected to have in this room that had scared her silly yesterday.
She took a long, hot shower, reveling in such a modern installation only yards from that medieval bedchamber. And as she soaped herself up, reveling in how new her own skin felt, she thought that Benedetto was much the same as this castle of his. Stretched there between the old and the new and somehow both at once.
Benedetto.
Her heart seem to cartwheel in her chest, and she couldn’t help the wide, foolish smile that took over her face at the thought of him. He had taken her virginity—or more accurately, she’d given it to him. First while she played, offering him everything she was, everything she had, everything she hoped and dreamed.
The physical manifestation of the music she’d played for him had been appropriately epic.
She could still feel his hands, all over her flesh. She could feel the tug and rip of her gown as he’d torn it from her, then buried himself inside her for the first time. She still shuddered as images of the darkly marvelous things he’d taught her washed through her, over and over.
And she couldn’t wait to do all of it again.
Maybe, just maybe, she could be the wife who stuck.
She was turning that over in her head, thinking about stories that lost more truth in each telling, as she dressed herself in the sprawling dressing room that was filled with clothes that she knew, somehow, would fit her perfectly. Even if they bore no resemblance to the meager selection she’d brought herself. And she remembered, against her will, what Petronella had said. That two or three lost wives could be a tragedy, but add another three on top of that and there had to be intention behind it.
That, or Benedetto Franceschi, the least hapless
