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“Our discussion of the stock market led him to make an urgent call to his investment manager,” Ago said. Very coolly.
He sat back in his chair, and the gaze he leveled on her made her feel as if she should sit up straighter. As if she should retreat into that shroud of scrupulously exquisite manners that she’d learned from the nuns was nothing short of battle armor. But something in her made her stop, because she didn’t want him to see her do such a thing. She wanted—desperately—to pretend that he wasn’t getting to her.
“He’s quite close with his investment manager,” she said, with a great studied casualness. “I think he likes no one better in all the world.”
Ago only eyed her for a long moment. So long that she found herself sitting up straighter despite what he might or might not see.
“This is the first time we have been alone,” Ago said quietly, but not very softly. “Do you have nothing to say for yourself?”
“La Signora Victoria Accardisounds like a stranger,” she heard herself say, though she’d no intention of saying anything. His dark brows rose, and he gazed at her as if he failed to understand the actual words she used. It made her absurdly nervous. “I never said I would take your name.”
His mouth curved, though she was not foolish enough to think it a smile. “You carry my child and so too shall carry my name. There will be no debate on this.”
Victoria had never given the issue of taking or not taking a husband’s name much thought. Or any thought. But the way he said that, with such matter-of-fact arrogance, put her back up at once.
“You do know that these days, a woman gets to decide what name she takes, don’t you?”
Ago did something that was not quite a shrug for he was nothing so indecisive, but still. She felt dismissed as she was clearly meant to.
“If you wish to have these debates,mia mogliettina, you should have married a different man.” Her mouth dropped open, and something she couldn’t name gleamed in his unusually dark blue eyes, but he didn’t give her a chance to speak. “But unfortunately for you, you have married me. And when it comes to my work, I’m a very modern man. I value women and you need not take my word for it. It is reflected at the highest levels in my company.”
“I congratulate you on doing the very barest minimum, Ago,” she murmured. “How nice that you take part in the current century.”
His dark eyes gleamed brighter. “But that doesn’t mean that I expect the same arrangements at home. I am an Accardi. The child you carry is an Accardi. And the Accardi name is sacred to me. The Accardi legacy is the guiding force of my existence. I do not require you to understand this. To be honest, I care little if you do or not.”
And now there was no mistaking that the gleaming thing in his gaze was, if nothing else, a weapon. Sharp and hot, it pinned her back against her chair.
“You may be free of your father this day. But you will never be free again, Victoria. You will be an Accardi until the day you die, and when you do, you will be interred in the family mausoleum—forever at my side. There will be no escape, ever, for either one of us. I hope that this is what you wanted in that garden. I hope you are adequately prepared for the lifetime you see stretching out before you now, from this day forward.”
Victoria’s heart was beating much too quickly, but she made herself breathe. “And what of happiness on the way to the mausoleum?” she dared ask. “Where does that factor in?”
Ago only stared at her. “Happiness, Victoria, is for lesser men who do not have centuries of duty and tradition to occupy them.”
Her throat went dry. Still, she fought to keep her reactions to herself. It was safer that way.
“Is that meant to scare me?” she asked quietly. “You do know my father’s been trying to marry me off since I turned eighteen, don’t you? What kind of futures do you think I’ve imagined for myself over the years, all far bleaker than this?”
She did not say that none of those had ever promised the faintest hint of happiness at any point. Much less passion. Maybe that wasn’t a good thing. Maybe she would have been better off with a man who had sex with her only to produce children, then swanned off to his preferred bits on the side and left her to it.
That had always sounded like the best of all possible conclusions to her father’s obsession.
“Anyway,” she managed to say, because she found she wasn’t as sanguine about that option as she might have been once. As she’d used to be, she was certain, though it was difficult to recall a time before Ago Accardi had taken over the bulk of her daydreams. Or a time when she hadn’t known what sex was like, and what might be asked of her from men she didn’t find even remotely attractive in the sort of marriage her father had planned for her. “I’m not afraid of our future, Ago. I’m just pleased that I’m no longer in my father’s prison. That’s enough.”
But he did not smile back at her.
He did not smile at all. “You may well find your circumstances more prison-like than you anticipated, Victoria. Because I will have no scandal attached to my heir.” He nodded, as if that was the end of the discussion. “No matter what.”
CHAPTER THREE
THEPANICTHAThad been creeping around inside her until now, mostly contained in the wild beating of her heart against her ribs, exploded.
It took everything Victoria had, every little scrap of will, and maybe the way the baby kicked inside her, to remain still. Despite all the shrapnel that seemed to batter her again and again, tearing her up inside. Despite the detonation inside her that she was terribly afraid might have melted all of her bones where she sat.
But she didn’t move. She didn’t blink.
Victoria was suddenly, fiercely, glad that she’d spent the whole of her life in the particular jail cell of her father’s control.
It was because of all that practice that she was able to keep her reaction to herself. It was only because she’d spent years perfecting it that she was able to maintain a serene sort of smile, and no particular indication of her feelings on her face.
