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But she remembered now. She remembered hearing him on the phone with her father and her sickening realization that it was all a lie. “I suppose this is just another version of what you do, isn’t it?” she asked, and she felt as if she was screaming even though she knew she wasn’t. “Using our child as ransom. Using whatever you can to make me do what you want. I tried to tell you, Ago. I’ve already done this.” She shook her head. “Surely there has to be a better legacy than this.”
She expected him to drop her hand. To pull back, draw himself up to his impressive height, and thunder at her the way he did. Maybe she was remembering it or maybe she simply knew him, but either way, she braced herself for him to take her apart. To point out all the ways she was deficient and should be grateful that he bothered with her.
Had he threatened tochainher?
But Ago didn’t move.
“I agree with you.” He lifted her hand and pressed a kiss to her knuckles, though his gaze remained trained to hers. “How about love?”
And it was as if everything just...stopped.
Victoria was surprised that she could still hear the beeping of the machines she was connected to.
She realized she didn’t believe her ears. “What?”
“If love is the only legacy that matters,mia mogliettina, then love is the only legacy I will dedicate myself to,” he told her. And when she stared at him blankly, his mouth curved. “That is what you told me,mia amata. Cuore mio.Before you fell into my arms and I thought you were dead.”
Victoria gazed back at him, her lips parting as she tried to take in what was happening.
And at the same time, tried to remind herself that this was likely all an act...even if she felt, deep in her bones, that it was nothing of the sort.
As if he could read all of that on her face, Ago’s expression turned solemn, though his eyes still burned. “I want to promise you, here and now, that all the vows we took in that chapel mean something. I want to love you, honor you. I want to care for you and our child, and never do to him what was done to me. I would promise you all of these things right now, and I would want to mean them with all my soul, but the simple truth is that I have never done them.” He shook his head. “I was taught from a young age that love was the enemy. And I suspect that I will not be any good at it. But for you,mia adorabile mogliettina, I will try. Every day, every hour, I will try.”
And she knew better. She knew that there was nothing in this life more dangerous than hope—though try she might, she couldn’t seem to keep it at bay. It flooded into her, kicking all around, knocking down walls and making her think...
What if?
And she had the strangest notion that all the freedom she could ever dream of was waiting for her, right here, if she was just brave enough to make that leap.
Not away from him, but toward him.
Because there wasn’t a single part of her thatwantedto leave him. No matter how she thought sheshould.
Victoria reached over with her other hand, so she could hold both of his. “It’s all right,” she told him softly. “I don’t mind that you’re inexperienced. Someone told me once that it’s the enthusiasm that counts.”
She watched as a kind of dawn broke over his dark face. Because he was the one who’d said that to her, long ago in her uncle’s garden.
And just as he’d done then, Victoria smiled and leaned in a little closer. “Trust me.”
“I love you,” he said, and paused, as if tasting those words in his mouth. “I love you, Victoria. And I think, if I’m honest, I loved you the moment I saw you at that dinner in your father’s house. But I couldn’t make sense of it. It was unintelligible to me. I assumed the fact that I felt unsettled in your presence meant that I should disqualify you from any kind of consideration. I kept you close only way he knew how.”
“By trying to fob me off on your brother,” she said dryly. “It’s practically a love poem.”
But then, finally, she thought that this might be real after all. Because stern, uncompromising, relentlessly grim Ago lifted his hand so he could press a kiss to her knuckles again. One set, then the next.
And when he looked up at her again, he smiled.
In all that dark blue, she saw a gleaming light.
“I betrayed myself entirely for the chance to touch you in that garden,” he told her, his voice rough and beautiful and laced through with something she’d never heard in him before. She thought it sounded a lot like joy. “And I would do it again. I did. You left me, and I hunted you down, and then had the brilliant idea that I would keep you with me by using sex. So certain was I that I could love you like that and feel nothing in return. But it didn’t work. My only love, my heart, none of this has ever worked.”
“Ago,” she whispered, and even now, she couldn’t get over the taste of his name in her mouth. “I would have married your brother, and happily, because it would have been easy. Friendly. Likely uncomplicated.”
“I suspect there would have been complications,” Ago murmured, shaking his head.
She smiled, brighter and happier than she could ever remember being before. “You and I might not be easy. On some days we might not even be friendly. But there will be joy. Sometimes it will be messy, because how could it not be, to love someone else like this? But it will be love. Because I loved you first. And I will love you forever. I can’t wait for the rest of our lives, so I can show you.”
“All you have to do is ask, my love,” he said, shifting so he could come closer yet, pressing his lips to her forehead, her cheeks, her lips. “Ask for anything at all,mia mogliettina, my forever love, and it is yours.”
