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“Indeed.” His brow remained where was, arched high. “What influence do you have? And over what—or whom?”
“My personal brand is really a complicated mix of—”
“I am not interested in brands,” Benedetto said, cutting her off. “Brands are things that I own and use at will according to my wishes. The purpose of a brand is to sell things. Influence, on the other hand, suggests power. Not the peddling of products for profit. So. What power do you have?”
She shifted in her chair, a strange expression on her face. It took him a moment to recognize it as false humility. “I couldn’t possibly say why some people think I’m worth listening to,” she murmured.
Benedetto smiled back, and enjoyed watching the unease wash over her as he studied her, because he was more the monster they thought he was than he liked to admit.
Especially in polite company.
“Pretty is not power,” he said softly. “Do you know how you can tell? Because men wish to possess it, not wield it. It is no different from any other product, and like them, happily discarded when it outgrows its usefulness or fades in intensity. Surely you must know this.”
Petronella, too, dropped her gaze. And looked uncertain for the first time since Benedetto had walked in to the dining room.
He was not the least bit surprised that neither of the Charteris parents intervened. Parents such as these never did. They were too wrapped up in what they had to gain from him to quibble over his harshness.
But he hardly cared because, finally, he was able to focus on the third daughter. The aptly named Angelina.
“And you?” he asked, feeling a coiling inside of him, as if he was some kind of serpent about to strike. As if he was every bit the monster the world believed he was. “What is it you do?”
“Nothing of consequence,” she replied.
Unlike her sisters, Angelina did not look up from her plate, where she was matter-of-factly cutting into a piece of meat he could see even from where he sat was tough. They had given the choice cuts to him and to themselves, of course. Letting their children chew on the gristle. That alone told him more than he needed to know about the Charteris family. About their priorities.
Perhaps the truth no one liked to face was that some people deserved to meet a monster at the dinner table.
“Angelina,” bit out Margrete, in an iron voice from behind a pasted-on smile and that magnificent chest like the prow of a ship.
“I spoke the truth,” Angelina protested.
But she placed her cutlery down, very precisely. She folded her hands in her lap. Then she raised her gaze to Benedetto’s at last. He felt the kick of it, her eyes blue and innocent and dreamy, like the first flush of a sweet spring.
“I play the piano. Whenever I can, for as long as I can. My other interests include listening to other people play the piano on the radio, taking long walks while thinking about how to play Liszt’sLa Campenellaseamlessly, and reading novels.”
Her voice was not quite insolent. Notquite. Next to her, her mother drew herself up again, as if prepared to mete out justice—possibly in the form of a sharp slap, if Benedetto was reading the situation correctly—but he lifted a hand.
“Both of your sisters attempt to interact with the outside world. But not you. There’s no trace of you on the internet, for example, which is surpassingly strange in this day and age.”
There was heat on her cheeks. A certain glitter in her gaze that made his body tighten.
“There are enough ways to hide in a piece of music,” she said after a moment stretched thin and filled with the sounds of tarnished silver against cracked china. “Or a good book. Or even on a walk, I suppose. I have no need to surrender myself to still more ways to hide myself away, by curating myself into something unrecognizable.”
Petronella let out an affronted sniff, but Angelina did not look apologetic.
“Some would say that it is only in solitude that one is ever able to stop hiding and find one’s true self,” Benedetto said.
And did not realize until the words were out there, squatting in the center of the silent table, how deeply felt that sentiment was. Or was that merely what he told himself?
“I suppose that depends.” And when Angelina looked at him directly then, he felt it like an electric charge. And more, he doubted very much that she’d spent any time at all practicing her expression in reflective glass. “Are you speaking of solitude? Or solitary confinement? Because I don’t think they’re the same thing.”
“No one is speaking about solitary confinement, Angelina,” Margrete snapped, and Benedetto had the sudden, unnerving sensation that he’d actually forgotten where he was. That for a moment, he had seen nothing but Angelina. As if the rest of the world had ceased to exist entirely, and along with it his reality, his responsibilities, his fearsome reputation, and the reason he was here...
Pull yourself together,he ordered himself.
The dinner wore on, course after insipid course. Anthony and Margrete filled the silence, chattering aimlessly, while Benedetto seethed. And the three daughters who were clearly meant to vie for his favor stayed quiet, though he suspected that the younger one kept a still tongue for very different reasons than her sisters.
“Well,”said Anthony with hearty and patently false bonhomie, when the last course had been taken away untouched by a surly maid. “Ladies, why don’t you repair to the library while Signor Franceschi and I discuss a few things over our port.”
