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He dropped it.
As if it really was on fire.
“That’s that, then, isn’t it?” Victoria said, rather too brightly. With what sounded like laughter in her voice, when this was obviously no occasion for levity of any kind. “We’re married.”
And then, to his astonishment, she actuallylet outa laugh. As if she couldn’t quite believe it. As if something magical and wondrous had occurred here today.
Ago looked back toward the chapel and saw that Everard had been caught up by the priest on the front step. The two looked to be deep in conversation.
No doubt debating the state of Ago’s immortal soul. Or lack thereof.
But Ago took advantage of this moment. The first time he’d been alone with Victoria since that fateful night six months back.
“Is this what you had planned all along?” he demanded, his words like bullets, and for once he did not concern himself with how they might land. “Were you planning it six months ago? Was it a trap from the very start?”
He expected her denial. Perhaps some tears.
But instead, Victoria Cameron—Victoria Accardi, now, he corrected himself with no little bleakness and fury—fixed him with a solemn stare.
“Yes,” she said, without blinking. “And no.”
He glared down at her, and even though his temper was a black thing that wrapped him up tight, he was not immune to the sheer perfection of her form. The blue of her eyes, a far lighter shade than his. Her spun gold hair, pulled back at the crown and then left to flow down around her shoulders. The fine, aristocratic line of her nose. Her elegant mouth that could be, as he knew to his cost, deliciously wicked.
And he could not tell if he had always found her this tempting, even when he thought that his own brother ought to marry her. Or if this was a more recent affliction.
“I suppose I should be grateful that you actually dare admit it to my face.” Ago did not feel grateful and he doubted very much that he sounded it.
Victoria, unlike his trembling heiress selections, did not look even remotely undone by his tone or likely fierce expression.
“It never occurred to me that you would look twice at me,” she replied matter-of-factly. “So in that sense, there was no plan. I also never expected to run into you at that party. Even if I could have imagined that I wouldn’t have assumed that you would wish to talk to me as much as you did. So again, I had no plans on that score.”
It was a sunny November day in Tuscany today, though cool. And still it was far warmer than the fragile British day at the end of May when he’d run into her in a grand old home on the southern coast to do a bit of business.
He had not expected to find Victoria there. Or, having found her, that she should also be wholly unsupervised, when he had never encountered her previously without a phalanx of chaperones. But the house belonged to her father’s brother, and was considered safe for his daughter’s virtue. Her usual guards had not been watching her as closely as they normally did.
So it was that he had been able to walk with her in the garden on that not-quite-warm evening. Worse, he had been able to offer his apologies for what had occurred between her and his brother—or hadn’t, rather—the previous Christmas.
He had not expected to find her fascinating.
And Ago was not a man who found much in this lifeunexpected.
He didn’t much like that she’d managed to surprise him again now.
“You saidyesfirst,” he growled at her.
Victoria lifted a shoulder, then dropped it, and he could not help but notice that the look on her face was wholly unrepentant. If anything, she looked...smug?
“I couldn’t have planned any of that,” she reassured him. He remained wholly un-reassured. “But once it happened, I’ll admit, I was hoping it would turn out like this.”
“Because it is every girl’s dream, is it not?” His voice was low, a silken fury, and it took more self-control than it should have to keep from wrapping his hands around her shoulders and hauling her toward him. To emphasize his outrage, he assured himself. “A shotgun wedding in a mad rush to legitimize a child before its appearance.”
“My father didn’t actually have a shotgun,” Victoria said with another laugh that made that storm in him rage anew. Her gaze moved over his face, and, somehow, she laughed yet again at whatever she saw there. When he knew oligarchs and heiresses alike who would cower at the sight. “I’m sorry if this wasn’t what you wanted.”
“How can you doubt it?”
“I’m finally free, Ago. So if you must hate me, I accept that.” Victoria shrugged again, as if to suggest the impossible. That his wishes did not matter. That he could hate her and she would not care at all. “It’s a reasonable consequence.”
CHAPTER TWO
