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“Our dinner awaits,” he said softly. “If you are finished with my ancestors?”
She descended the last few stairs and fell into step with him when he began to walk. The castle seemed so immense all around them, so daunting. Shimmering chandeliers lit their way, spinning light down from the high ceilings, showcasing the grace and beauty of every room they walked through.
“Do we dine alone?” she asked in the same quiet tone he had used, though she was not certain why she felt a kind of pregnant hush surround them. She cleared her throat and tried to contain her wariness. “Where are your cousins?”
He glanced at her, then away. “They no longer call the castello their home.”
“No?” So polite, Bethany thought wryly, when she had nothing at all courteous to say about Leo’s spiteful, trouble-making cousins. She had been so delighted when she’d met them; as the only child of two deceased only-children, she’d been excited she would finally experience ‘family’ in a broader sense. “I was under the impression that they would never leave here.”
Leo looked down at her, his gaze serious as they moved through a shining gold and royal blue gallery. They headed toward the smaller reception rooms located in the renovated back of the castle that, as of the eighteenth century, opened up to a terrace with a view out over the valley.
“They were not offered any choice in the matter,” he said, a trace of stiffness in his voice. Almost as if he finally knew what she had tried to tell him back then. Almost as if …
Bethany searched his face for a moment, then looked away.
Both the cruel, beautiful Giovanna and the haughty, unpleasant Vincentio had hated—loathed—Leo’s spontaneous choice of bride. And neither had had the slightest qualm about expressing their concerns. The noble line polluted. Their family name forever contaminated by Leo’s recklessness.
But Leo had not allowed a word to be spoken against them, not in the year and a half that they had made Bethany’s life a misery. And now he had banished them from Felici?
She was afraid to speculate about what that might mean, afraid to let herself wonder, even as that treacherous spark of hope that still flickered deep inside of her threatened to bloom into a full flame. She doubted she would survive placing her hopes in Leo again. The very idea of it was sobering.
He did not lead her to one of the more formal rooms as Bethany had anticipated. She had not, of course, anticipated they might dine in the great dining hall itself, which was equipped to serve a multitude, but had imagined the more intimate family dining-room that was still elegant enough to cow her. But Leo did not stop walking until they reached the blue salon with its bright, frescoed ceilings and high, graceful windows.
Through the French doors that opened off the room, Bethany could see a small wrought-iron table had been set up on the patio to overlook the twinkling lights of the village and the valley beyond. The Italian night was soft all around her as she stepped outside, alive with the scent of cypress and rhododendrons, azaleas and wisteria. She could not help taking a deep, fragrant breath and remembering.
The table was laden with simple, undoubtedly local fare. Bethany knew the wine would be from the Di Marco vineyards, and it would be full-bodied and perfect. The olives would have been hand-picked from the groves she could see from her windows. The bread smelled fresh and warm, and had likely been baked that morning in the castello’s grand kitchens.
A simple roasted chicken sat in the center of the table, fragrant with rosemary and garlic, flanked by side dishes of mushroom risotto and a polenta with vegetables and nuts. Candles flickered in the night air, casting a pool of warm, intimate light around the cozy, inviting scene.
Bethany swallowed and carefully took the seat that Leo offered her. She felt a deep pang of something like nostalgia roll through her, shaking her. It was worse in its way than the usual grief, but by the time Leo took his place opposite her she was sure she had hid it.
“This is by far the most romantic setting I could have imagined,” she said, a feeling of desperation coiling into a tense ball in her belly.
Why was he torturing her like this? What was the point of this meal, of their elegant attire, of this entire charade?
She met his gaze, though it took more out of her than she wanted to admit, even to herself. “It is more than a little inappropriate, don’t you think? This is the first night of our divorce, Leo.”
Leo did not respond at once, letting her words sit there between them. There was something almost brittle in the way she sat opposite him, as if she were on the verge of shattering like glass. He was not certain where the image had come from, nor did he care for it.
