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Alessandro smiled. “My mother taught me at a very young age never to overlook a woman’s mind, no matter how frivolous she might appear on the surface. She is an incredible woman, and my father would never have achieved the success he did if not for her, though he never acknowledged it. But not all men behave so.” He laughed, his good humor returning. “Some of us are less pigheaded than others.”
“Certainly,” she replied with aplomb. “I know several very worthy gentlemen; however, even the best sometimes err. Whenever one makes a pigheaded comment in my presence, I simply remind him of his place.” She grinned and took another sip of wine.
He ran a fingertip down her arm. “I have always admired intelligent, daring women.”
“So you’ve said. But tell me, how many have you loved?”
“I remember every single one,” he said, “but I have never kept count. To do so would cheapen the memory, whether good or ill.”
“But none could hold you.” It was not a question.
“There was one,” he said. “But because of my past, she did not believe me capable of love.”
Mélisande’s heart twinged first with sympathy—and then with guilt. She’d passed precisely the same judgment on him. Was it so unreasonable to think him capable of loving honestly? “Who was she?”
He looked away. “Do not ask me to speak of her, I beg you.”
“Forgive me, I just thought that...” Feeling awkward, she looked up to find him staring at her expectantly. “I just thought that for a man like you, the world must be an endless buffet of pleasures. I never considered that it might become tiresome.”
“Running from bed to bed is great sport when a man is young and his breeches are bursting into flames,” he said with a faint smile. “But the older I get, the less it seems to appeal. The body can easily be sated, but the soul, it longs for something more. My brother, Pietro, once told me that it doesn’t take a great lover to bed a different woman every night; it takes a great lover to bed the same woman night after night and leave her wanting more. At the time, I did not really believe him. But now, I begin to see the truth of his words.”
Mélisande blinked in surprise. “Then you regret your past?”
“Not at all,” he told her. “I’ve quite enjoyed my adventures. To say I regret my life would be to say it has been a waste, which it has not. But that does not mean I wish to be the man I was at the age of twenty for the remainder of it. That would be foolishness. No. I fully intend to one day marry, have children, and settle into the life of an ordinary, boring, plump country lord. Perhaps I shall even learn to like fishing.” He smirked.
This man will never be ordinary or boring, thought Mélisande. Plump seemed a rather unlikely prospect as well. “Do you look to that day?”
“More and more, truthfully. Though you may find it hard to believe, I lead a very solitary life. I surround myself with people in order to stave off loneliness, but a man can find himself in the midst of a crowd and still be very isolated.”
“I know what you mean,” she agreed. “No matter how many friends I make, no matter how busy I am, it is the same for me. I constantly find myself alone in a roomful of people, and I grow weary of it in my heart.”
“I would never have expected a woman so lovely and charming to be lonely.”
A soft laugh escaped her. “I’m an unmarried, rich, titled woman, Alessandro. Since my parents’ deaths, I have endured constant attention from men interested only in what they can gain from an alliance. They don’t care about me. You would not believe the depths to which some have stooped in order to convince me of their ‘undying love.’ It sickens me. I trust few people, an
d of those rare few, there are but two in whom I confide.”
“And what of a man who has no need of your wealth or title?”
“If that was the only prerequisite, I would have married David for convenience and simply had affaires, as he once suggested. But I want more. Perhaps I’m a foolish female after all, but I want love.”
Her own words surprised her, but the more she thought about it, the more right it seemed. “I want happiness and contentment. I want passion! And it doesn’t matter if the man is as poor as a church mouse. If he can bring me those things, I will gladly share all I have.” She shook her head angrily. “I’ve been disappointed so many times by men I thought to be good and true, only to discover lying blackguards who cared nothing for me. Even if an honest man claimed to love me, I wouldn’t believe it!”
Realizing she had just confessed her deepest thoughts and desires, Mélisande grew silent. Feeling horribly vulnerable, she regarded Alessandro cautiously to see his reaction, but he merely continued to stare into the hearth and rub her arm absently.
“You know,” he responded haltingly, “in the beginning I was, like every other man, the pursuer. Then, as my reputation as a lover grew and eventually began to precede me, women pursued me rather than I them. It made me arrogant and vain.” He turned to her, his smile sheepish. “What man would not become a peacock under such conditions?”
She laughed. “You were a bit conceited when I first met you.”
A wicked gleam stole into his eyes. “Perhaps, but at least some small portion of my pride was well deserved, madam. Would you not agree?”
She felt her cheeks heat.
“I enjoyed myself immensely for a while,” he continued. “But it soon became clear that most of my pursuers were less motivated by desire for me and more interested in what my reputation could do for them. I cannot tell you how many times I have been used to provoke the jealousy of another man. Thankfully, I have always managed to escape with my life. Proficiency with both blade and pistol is an unfortunate necessity when one lives as I have lived.”
Mélisande had seen the scars on his body but hadn’t really considered what they represented. “How many duels have you fought?”
“I’m afraid I have lost count. I stopped accepting challenges three years ago, after a woman I thought in love with me thanked me for ridding her of her husband, a man I later learned had committed no crime against her beyond having a brother she favored more. They had planned the entire thing.”
