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He did not move. He did not seem to so much as breathe, but then, Victoria found she could not draw in any air herself. It was as if he caged her with his arms, locking her down into her seat. When in reality he was still seated at the head of the table, his eyes blazing, not a finger on her. No cage at all.
Save that of her own making.
“Is this something you would like to confess?” he asked, his voice cold. “Have these pleasures we have discovered together so enchanted you that you have decided you must experiment with them? To traipse about the continent, taking lovers? Because I must warn you, Victoria. It doesn’t matter what you’ve read. I am not a man who shares what is his. Ever.”
And deep inside her, something seemed to sing to her at that. Even though there was a wild, reckless part of her that wanted to rush to her feet and announce that she intended to follow in his great-grandparents’ footsteps and cut a swathe through the male population.Don’t worry, she could tell him, with great sophistication and a hint of boredom, as she imagined the sort of women who wanted such lives always spoke.I’ll be certain to keep you informed of my each and every move. In detail.
But she knew she only wished to say such things to him to see if she could poke him into displaying that emotion that she knew—shehoped—lurked just beneath his skin. Locked away long ago by this idea of his that every breath he took had to be dutiful, or he didn’t deserve to take it.
This isn’t supposed to be about him at all, something in her argued.This is supposed to be aboutyou, claiming some measure of revenge here. Making him regret his manipulations however you can.
Either way, Victoria wanted to push him. She wanted to make him fall apart, the way she had, by any means necessary. But instead, she only smiled, and shook her head.
“Of course not,” she said, though she hadn’t given a great deal of thought to indiscriminate sex. Maybe it was because she’d fallen pregnant after having sex exactly once. It seemed to have put a damper on any notion that she ought to go freewheeling about, notching up bedposts. “I only thought that as we will soon have our own son to raise, we might concentrate less on duty, as it can be interpreted in so many ways. And more on being a good man. A decent human. A person who would never lie or deceive another. Just a thought.”
But he did not seem to follow her where she was going, straight back to himself and their marriage.
“You say duty like this a bad thing,” Ago replied in a low, taut voice, his gaze so dark it hurt to look at him directly. Though Victoria did it anyway. “While I have always considered it a guiding light. And if there is any gift I could give my son, it would be that. Because it would always lead him home.”
And later, in their bed, she could feel the intensity come off of Ago in waves. She couldfeelthe emotion in him—
But he never broke.
He gave in to his passion, eventually, but no matter how she tried to do to him what he did to her, to make him beg her as he fell apart in her hands, he never let her.
And so she curled up on her side and pretended to be asleep, his heavy arm slung over her body, his hand on the bump where their son slept. While all the while, inside, she told herself that she could deal withherfeelings much better than he could, and so she would.
She could start by remembering that he had set out to control her by this deception, this pretense that he was as besotted with her as she was with him.
He had led her to believe that what burned between them meant something.
But the only fire in him was for his bloody name.
Victoria needed to remember that. She needed to know it in her bones. So she could work on leaving him, once and for all.
CHAPTER EIGHT
AGODIDNOThave particularly fond recollections of Christmas. Like most things in his family, there were usually command performance appearances, duties to acquit and responsibilities to meet.
The traditional meatless dinner on Christmas Eve, a pageant of seafood that his family had always made longer and more trying by filling the table with local dignitaries and the odd overawed peasant—the better to extol the virtues of the restrained and elegant Tuscan character while feasting. Christmas Day had meant the local church, endless masses, and then stilted formal meals that had been tedious and awkward until he’d come of age and could retreat into the good whiskey like everyone else.
But that wasn’t the end of it, for the 26th wasil giorno di Santo Stefano, when his family would ostentatiously parade from one nativity scene in a local church to the next, giving donations to all, then hitting up the hospitals for more opportunities to display their benevolence. Only to return to the villa for yet another too-long meal, which usually devolved into recriminations and histrionics that everyone pretended not to remember for the rest of the Christmas season, which in Italy stretched on until the Epiphany in January. There would be visits from La Befana, thestregafrom folklore who delivered stockings filled with sweets in the night, and yet another family meal during the day—a national holiday—during which his mother and grandmother would murmur things likeL’Epifania, tutte le feste porta viato each other and into their wine, as if the Epiphany not only took the holidays away for the year but all of their hope and happiness too.
Buon Natale, one and all.
But despite his aversion to the spectacle, Ago had made an effort this year. He had told himself it was all part and parcel of giving Victoria what she wanted, and thus to continue lulling her into a false sense of security. Because it was clear to him that Victoria, having lost her mother at a young age, was certain to throw herself full tilt into the mothering of their child.
He knew this by the way she crooned to her bump when she thought she was alone. The way she talked to their child on their walks, pointing out items of interest as if the baby inside her could see what she saw.
No matter how much help she might have on hand, as befit the mother of his heir, he was certain that she would insist on being as hands-on as possible. Unlike his grandmother, who been far more concerned with appearances and what she thought was owed to the community as the reigning Accardi matriarch. Or his mother, who had been distant and medicated and under constant supervision on the few occasions per year she actually interacted with her sons.
Your mother had a responsibility to produce the two of you, his father had said whenever Ago or Tiziano dared complain.Whatever you may think of her, she did her duty. You can do her the simple courtesy of appreciating what she did without forever expecting more. Can you not?
Ago had done exactly that. He had expected nothing from his mother after the age of nine or so, up until her death when he was fourteen. And by the time his father had died when he was twenty-one, he’d stopped expecting anything from that quarter too. And in the meantime, he’d learned a great many valuable lessons about the ways it was possible to arrange events to suit himself without seeming to do so.
It was only one of the ways he was good at his job.
With Victoria, it had seemed the easiest thing imaginable to play the besotted newlywed. It had not been difficult to do his best to keep her lost in a haze of sensual bliss until the child arrived. After all, there were only a few months left. Why not make sure this marriage he hadn’t wanted ran as smoothly as possible, so that his son and heir could have a lovely and joyful start?
