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“What are you doing here?” Angelina demanded. Her face was pale, her beautiful blond hair whipping around her with the force of her reaction. One hand was at her throat, and he could see the panic in her eyes.
If he was a better man, the fact thatherfear pierced his soul would drop him, surely. And he would not stand here, wondering why it was that heightened emotion made her even more beautiful.
Or why it reminded him of the look on her face when she’d shuddered all around him, again and again.
Or why nothing about her was like the others—and hehatedthat they were here in this room anyway. Playing out this same old scene. This curse of his he had chosen when he’d never imagined he would want to see the end of it, much less meet someone who’d made it—and him—feel broken from the start.
“Why should I not be here?” he asked, aware as he spoke that he was...not quite as in control of himself as he might wish. Not as in control as he usually was for this scene. “Perhaps you have forgotten that I’m the master of this castle.”
“Now that you mention it, you do look vaguely familiar,” she threw at him, any hint of fear on her face gone as if it had never been. Instead, she looked fierce. “You almost resemble a man I married, who abandoned me after one night.”
“I did not abandon you.” He spread his hands open before him. “For here I am, Angelina. Returned to you. And what do I discover but betrayal?”
“You ordered me to stay out of an empty room,” she said, as if she couldn’t believe it. The hand at her throat dropped to her side, and she took a step toward him, her blue eyes as stormy as the sea and sky outside. “Why would you do that? Do you know what I thought...?”
“But this is a room of terror, clearly,” he taunted her, his voice dark, and it was less an act than it usually was. “Look closely, little one. Surely you can hear the screams of the women I’ve murdered. Surely if you squint, you can see their bodies, splayed out like some horrific art installation.”
He watched her emotions move over her face, too quickly to read. And wished—not for the first time—that it was different.
Lord help him, but he had wished that she would be different.
“That is what you came for, is it not?” he demanded, his words an accusation.
“Are you trying to tell me that is not exactly what you wish me to think?” She waved one hand, the ring he’d put on her finger gleaming like the only blood in this room. “Is that what makes you happy?”
“I gave up on happiness a long time ago,” Benedetto growled. “Now I content myself with living down to people’s worst nightmares? Why shouldn’t I? Everyone needs a villain, do they not?”
Angelina moved toward him, staggering slightly, her bare feet against the cold stone. “I do not want a villain, Benedetto. I want a husband.”
“If that were true, you’d be asleep even now, tucked up in the marital bed. It would not have occurred to you to disobey me.”
“What you are describing is a dog, not a wife,” she snapped at him. “I never promised you obedience.”
“Surely that was understood,” he shot back. “When I bought you.”
And again, he knew that he was far less in control of himself than he ought to have been. He had played this scene out before, after all. He usually preferred an iciness. A cool aloofness that wasn’t an act, because it was his usual, normal state.
Nothing about Angelina had been normal or usual. Nothing about this was ordinary.
Even now he wanted to bundle her up into his arms and carry her off. And never, ever put her down again.
“Are you going to tell me what all of this is about?” she asked after a moment, when he’d found himself entirely too entranced by the way her jagged breaths made her body move.
He could see her cheeks were tearstained. She was the one who had disobeyed, the way they all disobeyed, and yet he felt as ifhehad betrayedher.
For moment he couldn’t understand why.
And then it hit him.
For the first time since he’d met her, Angelina was looking at him as if he really might be a monster, after all.
Of all the things he’d lost, of all the indignities the choices he’d willingly made long ago required that he endure, it was this he thought might take him to his knees.
“Or are these just the kinds of games you like to play?” Angelina asked when he only stared at her. She shook her head, swallowing hard, as if she was holding words back. Or a sob. Or, if that hectic look in her eyes was any guide, a scream. “I am so deeply sick and tired of being nothing more to anyone but a game piece to be moved around a board that is never of my choosing. Is this how you do it, Benedetto? Do you set up every woman you marry in the same way? Do you plot out the terms of your own betrayal, give them the key, and then congratulate yourself on having weeded out yet another deceitful bride? When all along it is you who creates an unwinnable situation?”
He eyed her, amazed that he felt stung by the accusation when he knew it was perfectly true—and more, deliberate. Yet no matter the sting, he was entranced by the magnificence of her temper that reminded him of nothing so much as the way she played that piano. In his weeks here as the resident ghost of his own lost childhood, he’d found himself listening to her play more than he should. He’d found himself sitting behind the stairs, losing himself on the notes she coaxed from the keys.
As if she’d still been playing for him.
