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He swung his legs over the side of the bed, causing the rumpled sheet across his middle to slide a few treacherous inches lower.
Fighting the dormant protective instincts that Beatrice woke in him, Dante shrugged, but the truth was the thing she actually needed protecting from was him.
‘I’m sorry.’
Cheeks hot, eyes wary, she dragged her wandering gaze up from his muscled thighs, but his expression was frustratingly hard to read.
‘For what?’ If he said he was sorry for last night she would hit him, she vowed grimly. ‘Marrying me? I knew what I was doing,’ she retorted, not happy at being cast in the role of victim.
‘And now you’re getting on with your life.’ Without him.
‘That might be easier if you weren’t sitting in my bed.’
‘I need to be in Paris tomorrow. The meeting was delayed and—’
‘You wanted to mess my life up some more?’ There was more weariness than reproach in her voice.
‘I didn’t invite myself into your bed, Beatrice.’
Colour scored her cheeks. Did he really think she needed that spelt out? ‘Sorry. I’m not blaming you. You’ve been very good about making it easy for me to leave.
‘So are there any papers?’
‘There are papers, but…’
‘But?’
‘The tabloids love to—’
She tensed, suddenly seeing where this was going, and why he wasn’t quite meeting her eyes. Pale but composed, she cut him off. ‘Congratulations.’
His brows knitted into a perplexed frown. ‘For what?’
‘You’re engaged…?’ Her racing thoughts quickly joined the dots, swiftly turning the theory in her head to fact in seconds. It would be something official. He wouldn’t have come all this way to tell her in person that he had a lover. She had kind of taken that for granted. A sensual man like Dante was not built for celibacy.
His steady stare told her nothing, but she knew and she was totally fine with it, or she would be if she didn’t throw up.
‘Aren’t you?’
Finally, a low hissing sound of amazement escaped his clenched teeth. ‘Engaged would be a little premature. I’m not divorced yet.’
Her eyelashes flickered like butterflies against her cheeks. ‘Oh, I just…’
‘Made one of your leaps based on the well-known scientific theory that if something is totally crazy it is true.’
‘It was a perfectly reasonable assumption,’ she retorted huffily, hating that she felt almost sick with relief, but adding for her own benefit as much as his, ‘You will get remarried one day—you’ll have to.’
Hisgut twisted in recognition of the accuracy of her words have to.She said have to—the people around him, his family, the courtiers, called it duty. Every word he spoke, his every action would be observed and judged. He would be judged.
The bottom line was his life was no longer his own. Even as he opened his mouth to respond Dante recognised the hypocrisy of his occupation of the moral high ground. ‘So, you think that I’d be engaged and sleep with you?’
‘Yes,’ she said without hesitation, the damning shame curdling inside her reserved for herself, not him, because she knew that nothing would have stopped her sleeping with Dante last night. ‘You’d only be keeping up the family tradition,’ she sniped.
One corner of his mobile lips quirked upwards as he remembered how shocked she’d been when she’d realised that his parents both had lovers who upon occasion slept over. His normality was her shocking.
‘Will you sit down? I’m not about to leap on you.’
‘No.’ She backed a little further into the corner. It wasn’t him she was worried about; they were both naked, and sitting was just one touch away from lying down. Her eyes widened as another equally and actually more probable explanation for his presence occurred to her. ‘Is this about the divorce?’ Her voice rose a shrill octave as she gulped and tacked on, ‘Is there a problem?’
