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She did not feel quite so happy now.
And she did not appreciate having dour old women try to scare her, either.
“My husband?” she asked again, as Signora Malandra looked as if she was headed for the door.
“Your husband is gone,” the old woman said coolly. And again, with that hint of triumph in her gaze. “Did you not get what he left you?”
“What he left me?” Angelina repeated, not comprehending. How could Benedetto begone?Did she mean...into town, wherever that was? She tried to conceal her shock. “Has he gone out for the day?”
And this time, there was no mistaking the look on the other woman’s face. It was far worse thantriumphant.It was pitying.
“Not for the day, mistress. Two months, I would say. At the very least.”
And by the time Angelina had processed that, Signora Malandra was gone.
This time, when she found her way back into the bedchamber, it seemed ominous again. Altered, somehow. Almost obscene.
Someone had made up the bed in Angelina’s absence, and that felt as sickening as the rest, as if some unseen evil was swirling around her, even now—
A sound that could have been a sob came out of her then, and she hated herself for it.
She remembered his face, out there on the balcony last night. That had been real. She was sure of it. Angelina had to believe that what she felt was real, not the rest of this. Not the stories that people had told, when the one he’d told her made more sense. Not because she wanted to believe him, though she did.
But because real life was complicated. It had layers and tragedies. It was never as simple asa bad man. It was never black and white, no matter how people wanted it to be.
There was nothing in the room, not even bedside tables, and she thought the housekeeper must have been playing with her.
Even as she breathed a little easier, however, she realized with a start that the mantel over the fire didn’t look the way it should. She drifted closer to the fireplace, her heart in her throat, because there was a bit of paper there with an object weighting it down.
She could have sworn it hadn’t been there when she woke up. Then again, her attention had been on that happiness within her that now felt curdled, and the watching, waiting sea.
Her whole body felt heavy, as if her feet were encased in concrete as she moved across the floor. But then, at the last moment—almost as if she feared that someone would come up behind her and shove her into the enormous hearth if she wasn’t careful—she reached out and swiped the paper and its paperweight up. Then moved away from the fireplace.
The object was a key. Big and ornate and attached to a long chain.
She stared at it, the weight of it feeling malevolent, somehow. Only when she jerked her gaze from it did she look at the thick sheaf of paper with a few bold lines scrawled across it.
This is the key to the door you must not open.
Benedetto had written that. Because of course, this was his handwriting. She had no doubt. It looked like him—dark and black and unreasonably self-assured.
You must wear the key around your neck, but never use it. Can I trust you, little one?
And for a long time after that, weeks that turned to fortnights and more, Angelina careened between disbelief and fury.
On the days that she was certain it was no more than a test, and one she could handily win, she achieved a kind of serenity. She woke in the morning, entertained herself by sparring with the always unpleasant housekeeper, and then tended to her walk. When the weather was fine, and the tide agreeable, she did in fact walk the causeway. Out there on that tiny strip of not quite land, she felt the way she did when she was playing the piano. As if she was simultaneously the most important life in the universe, and nothing at all—a speck in the vastness. The sea surged around her, birds cried overhead, and in the distance, Italy waited. Wholly unaware of the loneliness of a brand-new bride on a notorious island where a killer was said to live. When the man she’d married had been a dark and stirring lover instead.
Her husband did not call. He did not send her email. She might have thought she’d dreamed him altogether, but she could track his movements online. She could see that he was at meetings. The odd charity ball. She could almost convince herself that he was sending her coded messages through these photographs that appeared in the society pages of various international cities.
Silly girl,she sometimes chided herself.He is sending you nothing.You don’t know this man at all.
But that was the trouble. She felt as if she did.
She didn’t need him to tell her any more of his story. She knew—she justknew—that her heart was right about him, no matter what the world said.
Those were the good days.
On the bad days, she brooded. She walked the lonely halls of the hushed castle, learning her way around a building that time had made haphazard. Stone piled upon stone, this wing doubling back over that. She walked the galleries as if she was having conversations with the art. Particularly the hall of Franceschis past. All those dark, mysterious eyes. All those grim, forbidding mouths.
