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He wasn’t sure that he’d enjoyed anything like that upon his arrival into this family, if he parsed the stories he’d been told about his childhood.
Not that Ago liked to do much parsing.
Besides, it was easy enough to run his office from the villa. His grandfather had built this wing for precisely that purpose. His father had used it more often than not, particularly during the years Ago’s mother was the most unwell. Ago’s own staff were well used to him going mobile, since he routinely traveled to the various Accardi Industries offices around the world. He’d even taken Victoria with him on some of those more recent jaunts, though he had not paraded her about as his wife.
He had seen to it that the fact that they had married was mentioned nowhere. He couldn’t control whispers, but he could do his best to sink stories before whispers became questions he might need to answer for his stockholders.
Because what he was doing—what all of this was, as he reminded himself daily—was sticking to his plan.
Even if the trappings were a bit different than he might have originally intended.
The idea of using the Christmas season to help keep her docile had occurred to him late. He had walked with her one morning here, through the cold mists that snaked over the hills and gathered in the valleys. And he had become so accomplished at playing his part that he found himself taking her hand without even thinking that he ought to do it. Rubbing his thumb over the back of hers, he’d swung their arms slightly as they moved together at a pace that seemed to come to them both naturally.
If it was real, he might have thought they were uniquely suited to each other.
It is so beautiful here, Victoria had said, her clear blue eyes fixed off into the distance.It will be lovely to have our first Christmas here.
What do you normally do for Christmas?he had asked in some astonishment, for it had not occurred to him until that moment that Christmas was something she would expect to celebrate. Or even what it might mean to her, if it meant anything at all.
When, really, he should have done. As far as he had ever been able to tell, the moment it began to get dark in the afternoons in England the whole country went Christmas mad. By early December, it was nearly impossible to find an Englishman who was capable of conducting a serious business meeting, too busy were they all with their holiday merrymaking and their ugly sweaters and their fancy dress parties.
The Italian preference for a Christmas season that ran for roughly a month, from the 8th of December through to the Epiphany, seemed very nearly rushed in comparison.
My father was not one to celebrate the holiday, Victoria had told him.By his reckoning, the gifts he gives all year round, for which I ought to be more grateful, are more than enough. Still, I take pleasure in all the decorations. I like all those lights, sparkling so happily even though the nights are long.
Ago had smiled down at her she gazed up at him.How am I to know how to give you the Christmas you desire if you don’t tell me?
She had laughed at that, and though he’d only said that because it seemed like the right thing to say, he had suddenly been determined that he would, by God, deliver her the perfect Christmas.
He’d told himself it was simply another way to sweeten the pot.
I don’t actually want anything particularly special, she’d said, still laughing, the sound somehow making the mist all around them feel bright.Evergreens and candles. Christmas carols. Something festive and happy and with no talk of gratitudeowed, that’s all.
Ago had set his staff to the task of researching the quintessential British Christmas and then making it happen, right here in the villa. Both the things she already knew of and the things he’d kept in reserve.
He had thought that they’d nailed it. Victoria had seemed delighted at first. Her lovely face had gone soft when she’d caught sight of the Christmas trees that shed their needles in every room. Her eyes had glowed when she’d seen the fairy lights strewn on the branches of everything that stood through the winter outside, from trellises to trees.
But over the past few days he had the sense that he was missing something, somehow. And he was not used to missing things. He was Ago Accardi. He made millions without even thinking about it, all thanks to his discernment.
Yet Victoria grew more opaque by the day.
He’d tried to put his finger on what could have happened, but it had proved impossible. There had been that night when she’d laid out all those things he did not wish to know about his great-grandparents and his grandparents, but he hadn’t argued about it any further. Mostly because what she’d said made a great many parts of his childhood suddenly make a lot more sense. Perhaps more sense than he might have wished.
And he didn’t think she’d intended to wound him with her discoveries, because she’d come to him with all of her typical generosity and greed in bed that night. And every night thereafter.
Ago knew all kinds of women who could hold hatred in their hearts and still enjoy the marital bed. Apparently, some of his forebears were among them. But he could not believe that Victoria was that jaded.
Not yet.
And still, he found her more difficult to read by the day. Maybe because of that, he found himself returning to the things she’d said over and over. He’d even found those diaries himself, when he’d never had the slightest inclination to delve into what his family members, all long dead, had got up to behind closed doors.
But if what Victoria had said was true—and he discovered, sadly, that it was not only true, but that his great-grandmother had a flair for the descriptive—it meant that everything his grandfather and father had beaten into him since he was small was...
Not quite right. Not right and more, not even a fair representation of their own lives.
Particularly when he considered his own parents and what he’d observed of their relationship—yet had decided was none of his concern.
It was possible his father had encouraged him to think it none of his concern, now he considered it.
