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“What did you think?”
There was a certain gleam in her gaze then that reminded him that this was a woman he’d not only married, but had enjoyed for the past month. And just today, had made sob out his name like another one of her symphonies.
Benedetto smiled. “I was young and brash and foolish. I thought that as long as Carlota and I had agreed on all the important things—like the fact neither one of us was interested in fidelity once our duties were handled, hale, and hardy—we might as well.”
He could remember Carlota’s bawdy laugh. The way she’d smoked cigarettes with dramatic, theatrical flourish. The way she rolled her eyes, speaking volumes without having to speak a word.
I can’t cope with having it all hanging there over my head, she’d declared a few months before their wedding. It will be just be too tedious. Let’s get in, get out. Get it done.
Are we a sports team? Benedetto had asked dryly.
In his memory, he was as he was now. Cynical. Self-aware and sardonic. But the reality was that he’d been twenty-two. Just like her. And he’d had no idea how quickly things could change. Or how brutally life could kick the unwary, especially people like them who thought their wealth protected them from unpleasant realities.
They’d both learned.
“I was so arrogant,” he said now, shaking his head. “I was so certain that life would go as planned. Looking back, there were any number of warning signs. But I saw none of them.”
“Was she very depressed?” Angelina asked, her eyes troubled.
“Carlota? Depressed? Never.” Benedetto laughed. “She was in love.”
“With you.” Those blue eyes widened. “So you did break her heart when you refused to give up your mistress.”
“That is a very boring tabloid story.” Benedetto sighed. “Sylvia was my mistress, though I think you will find that when a man is twenty-two years old and dating an actress of roughly the same age, they’re just...dating. But no matter, that does not make for splashy, timeless headlines.”
“Mistress is certainly catchier,” Angelina said quietly.
“Carlota was in love, but not with me,” he said, because he couldn’t seem to stop doing this. Why was he doing this? Nothing good could come of unburdening himself to her. “He was not of our social class, of course. Her parents would not have cared much if she carried on with him, because everyone could boast about sleeping with the odd pool boy—which is something her mother actually said to me at her funeral. But you see, Carlota wasn’t simply sexually involved with this man of hers. She was head over heels in love with him, and he with her. Something I knew nothing about.”
And then he hissed in a breath, because Angelina lifted a hand and slid it over his heart.
“It works, Benedetto,” she said quietly. “I can feel it.”
He felt something surge in him, huge and vivid. Something he could hardly bear, and couldn’t name, though he had the terrible notion that it had been frozen there inside him all this time. That it was melting at last.
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—”
