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He looked at the long couch where he’d spent many nights sleeping. In his bedroom suite, where every Count of Varno had slept, he was suffocated by the weight of his history. How he’d destroyed it all. That was why he’d taken to this room, with a blanket, a fire and a bottle of alcohol to drown out the self-recrimination.
‘I rarely sleep more than a few hours at a time. Please let me show you, then you can decide.’
He stood as Lucy clambered up from the floor in her coat. Then he noticed her feet. ‘Are they...socks with unicorn cats?’
Her cheeks flushed a soft pink. She blew out a huff of breath. ‘You’re really not seeing me at my finest. I’d planned an official visit, where I looked more...competent than this. I promise I know how to be an adult when I try.’
‘My sister’s studying teaching. I’m sure she has a pair of socks with cats on them. Not unicorn cats... She would be envious.’
‘Don’t forget, these arerainbowunicorn cats. It’s all about the rainbows. My gloves match, too.’
She held out one hand and wiggled her fingers.
‘It is a fashion statement I’ll never forget. Perhaps I’ll try to find some for my sister, as a gift.’
She smiled, and it hit him in the solar plexus like a punch. All the breath left him. That smile brimmed with an innocent-looking joy, no artifice. It lit up the room, taking a grey world and turning it multi-coloured and gleaming, like the rainbows adorning her hands and feet.
‘You’re a good brother. I can give you the website. I promise she’ll love you for it.’
He stilled. If only Lucy knew, she wouldn’t be saying these things. His actions had successfully torpedoed his siblings’ future. He must never forget this was the woman who might have information that could recover everything for him. That wouldn’t happen if she didn’t trust him and wasn’t prepared to talk—which meant he had to find the shred of humanity he’d buried deep inside.
He was sure she knew something. He’d seen the tightening around her eyes when he’d said he was searching for the nation’s lost treasures at dinner. She hid things—he just wasn’t sure what.
‘Let me take your violin.’
She hesitated before relinquishing it.
As he took the handle of the case their fingers brushed and it was as if time slowed, the stroke of skin over skin seeming to take minutes rather than the briefest of seconds. Lucy made a sound, an exhalation. The shimmering heat of that touch flowed through him. His heart pumped hard and fast. She looked up at him, eyes wide, as if she’d seen him for the first time. Her lips parted.
They stood close, a world of clothes between them, and yet it was as if he was completely exposed. A small sprinkle of freckles dotted her nose, and Stefano wanted to take his time, count each one. He wondered if there were more on areas exposed to the sunlight when the weather was warm, on her shoulders, her chest...
He stopped, shook himself from the fantasy. ‘Follow me.’ He cleared his throat, his voice rough and raw. ‘We need to get you warm.’
That devil’s voice in his head began hinting at the many enjoyable ways he could keep this beautiful woman warm and occupied for days. Ways which would allow him to forget the weight of obligation, his failures.
But he didn’t deserve that kind of relief. Not the pleasure, not the softness. If she knew anything at all about him she wouldn’t be looking at him now with a kind of naked wonder written all over her face.
He began to walk and she followed, still wrapped in the down duvet which trailed behind her like an oversized cape. She appeared regal, almost as if she owned the space, making him feel like an impostor.
‘This place is amazing,’ she said. ‘More like a museum than a family home.’
In many ways she was right, but still, this placehadbeen a home to him as much as a showcase. He’d tried to make it so for his brother and sister, when his parents had left them here to pursue their own ambitions, and before those ambitions had become his too, since he really had nothing else.
‘The benefits of a five-hundred-year-old family history,’ he said.
‘I can’t imagine the...the responsibility of all that behind you. What that would be like to have always sitting on your shoulders. Or are you so used to it that it doesn’t matter?’
It was all he knew. The responsibility simplyexisted. There were expectations he’d accepted because there was no option or choice. It hadn’t bothered him in the beginning—especially when the power of that obligation to something larger than himself had become like a drug. When he’d realised as he’d left his childhood and moved through his teens that sitting in the top echelons of his country’s society was a good place to be.
That sickened him now, because in his arrogance he hadn’t realised the privilege of his position and how easy it was to fall from the lofty pedestal his family had built for themselves.
‘I simply...am.’
What more could he say? He was the Count of Varno. The Shield of the Crown. A role he’d never made the most of. He’d worn it like a cloak rather than wielded its power for anything worthwhile. Now the opportunity to do so was lost to him. The sting of self-recrimination was a constant reminder of how he’d failed. He didn’t know how to be anything or anyone else.
‘Do you ever wish the expectations had never existed? That you weren’t who you were born to be?’
They’d reached the door of his room—a blessed relief, because she asked questions it was hard for him to answer, referred to things he couldn’t think about lest he dwelled too hard on what he’d thrown away. But to the last question there was only one response he could give.
