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“Yet here we are,” she said, no matter how much she might have liked to stop and parse the things he said and fight him about it.
She knew better.
Life had taught her all manner of things so far, but perhaps nothing so keenly as the utter pointlessness arguing with men who had already made up their minds.
Even if—especially if—she thought they were lying to themselves.
“The only point I’m trying to make is that you didn’t purchase my father’s famously virginal daughter that he’s been hawking for years. Our marriage isn’t about innocence at all. It’s about righting a wrong.” When his eyes only blazed at her, all that longing and too many memories, she tapped her belly. “The supposed stain on my honor, which I think we both know means, on my father’s pride.”
Ago studied her until she felt...itchy.
But her years in convent schools meant she knew better than to show her reactions to such severe regard. No matter how difficult it was to stand there and gaze back at him tranquilly, she did it.
When he spoke, his voice was a dark silk, woven through with a distinct sort of threat that made everything inside her seem to shift. “I have no idea why you think that a reasonable response to forcing me to hunt you down as you flitted about the country, heedless of your own safety and that of the child you carry, is to stand here before me and tell me things I already know.”
“Because you don’t seem to have drawn the appropriate conclusions,” she returned, still with the exaggerated calm andreasonablenessthat she, personally, considered her trademark. “I don’t owe you anything, Ago. I could have refused to marry you. And for all my father’s carrying on, it’s not as if he was going to reel in the sort of great men he imagined I would marry while I was pregnant with your child. I could have gone the single parent route.”
There was a part of her, she could admit, who had hoped that her father might toss her out—so she could do as she pleased and raise her child how she wished. No need to share her pregnancy with Ago. No need to involve any men at all.
Ago only lifted a dark brow, as if he knew exactly what she’d hoped. “There is no scenario in which any woman would ever be raising my child as a single parent of any kind.”
There was something about the way he said that. It made Victoria swallow, hard. “What matters is that scandal has already happened and can’t be fixed. Your worst nightmare has occurred and so has my father’s. There’s no taking any of it back.” She made herself stand a little bit taller, then hated herself for needing to. “And it seems to me that instead of concerning myself with the dark imaginings of the two of you, I should, at last, concern myself with whatIwant.”
“That is this freedom you speak of?” He folded his arms in a way that made the back of her neck prickle, so at odds was it with that heated thing in his gaze. The one she recalled too well from that long-ago night. “Why am I unsurprised to discover that your notion of freedom involves traipsing about in an irresponsible fashion, spending someone else’s money, and considering it heroic? That is a hallmark of your generation, is it not?”
That stung. And she hated that it stung. It wasn’t as if she’d been allowed to cross a street on her own, much less head out and make her own way in the world, was it? All she’d ever had before now were daydreams and private fantasies—the only things she could keep to herself.
But she focused on the swipe at her youth. “You’re not exactly my father’s age, Ago. You might want to rethink the generation talk.”
“The same attitude permeates everything these days,” Ago said, moving his hand in a motion that would have been a languid wave from anyone else. Yet nothing about this man was languid. “It is selfish and hedonistic. My own brother is guilty of it. But unfortunately for you, Victoria, you have put yourself into a position that, by its very nature, excludes you from such self-centered behavior.” Once again, the intensity of his gaze, the stern set of his mouth, seemed to pierce straight through her. And, to her shame, made that same old heat bloom deep within her. “The mother of the next Accardi heir cannot wander about at will.My wifecannot pretend, for even a moment, that she is in any way common. And before you accuse me, this has nothing to do with ego or pride. It is a simple fact that you, alone and in your current state, are a target. Maybe you think nothing of risking yourself. But you should think about the fact that your life is no longer only your own.”
And, suddenly, it was unimaginable to her that she had ever laughed in this man’s presence. Much less moaned in pleasure. She cradled her belly as iffromhim. “I know that you’re not trying to stand here and lecture me on what it means to be pregnant with a child. I know that not even you would dare.”
“It’s time to grow up, Victoria.” The way he said that was nothing short of a slap. “In a few short months you will be a mother. And I have no idea what kind of mother raised you—”
“I think you know perfectly well that my mother died when I was small. So if you have concerns about my upbringing, I suggest you raise them with your good friend and business associate. My father.”
He ignored that. “My child requires a mother of impeccable breeding with an attention to duty and a willingness to put our son above all else. That means,mia mogliettina, that there can be no more assignations in dark gardens. Or even the faintest hint of them.”
Her jaw actually dropped at that. “I have had one assignation in my entire life, and it was with you. I doubt very much that you can say the same!”
“No gardens,” he said again, very much as if he was handing down rules. As if this was the convent all over again, and no matter that she could see the heat in his gaze. “No indiscriminate appearances, flashing your pregnant belly for all the world to see. And certainly no childish disobedience, willfully rebelling for no better reason than to indulge some immature longing for wanderlust.”
She was finding it hard to breathe as she glared back at him. “You sound like Mother Superior. Yet I am certain I graduated some years back.”
That look in his dark gaze shifted, though she could not have said how. Only that she could feel it, deep within. A new flame, brighter than before.
“I am sorry that your life has not been as you wish it to be, Victoria. Truly, I am. But neither one of us has any justification to bemoan the life that could have been.” And now the faint hint of something like softness she’d heard in his voice was gone as if it had never been. While that fire in him only seemed to burn cold. “We were both in that garden, as you pointed out. We both participated in the making of our child. And so we both will pay this penalty.”
Victoria had to fight to stay calm. “And what if I don’t want my life, or this marriage, or my child’s upbringing to be apenalty, Ago?”
She fully expected him to blaze at her in a temper, or growl at her again. Or to coldly express his further astonishment at her temerity. Maybe even to give in to that heat she could sense in him, whether cold or blazing hot. But instead, he only looked at her as if he...couldn’t understand what she meant.
Not as if she wasn’t making sense, but as if he truly couldn’t conceive of any of those things unless they were some or other form of punishment.
And she couldn’t tell what it was—deep inside of her where she felt him in ways she couldn’t explain, that had nothing to do with what had happened between them in that garden—that broke a bit at that. Only that it did. It shattered, and that what followed was an emotion she dared not name.
“There is more to life than an endless parade of brutal penalties, Ago,” she said softly. Because there had to be, surely.
