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A dark brow arched. “I did not realize you read Italian.”
“They are in English. Your great-grandmother wished to keep her thoughts private from the staff. Your grandmother agreed.” She could smell the truffles in the risotto and she already knew that the cook was an artist, but still, she couldn’t taste a thing. “Your great-grandmother was called Isadora and it seems that your great-grandfather got her as a kind of barter.”
Ago placed his fork on his plate with extraordinary precision. Then he lifted his eyes and gazed at her in that arrogant amazement of his. “I beg your pardon?”
Victoria did her best to ignore the sudden chill. “Her father was at one time a very rich man, by all accounts. But he fell into difficulties after the first World War, which is perhaps unsurprising. He became a bit reckless, Isadora reckoned, as men of his station were wont to do. Having so little experience with any consequences of note.” Ago continued to stare at her in that astonished way that made her feel like a pauper who’d insulted a prince. She had to remind herself that there was no royalty here. And no paupers either. “Your great-grandfather was smitten. He did not require a dowry and better still, paid off the bulk of his father-in-law’s debts, all so he could marry Isadora.”
“I was always told that she was a rare beauty,” Ago said. “She was said to have bewitched the better part of Europe in her day.”
“If by that you mean she took a great many lovers, yes,” Victoria said. Serenely.
Her husband’s dark gaze swung to hers. “I am certain you are mistaken.”
“Not according to her diary,” Victoria replied. “She considered herself quite an accomplished lover, in fact. She and your great-grandfather took great pleasure in choosing lovers for one another, and then playing them off each other.”
She could admit that the stunned silence that followed that pronouncement was pleasant.
So pleasant that it seemed to return her appetite to her. She dug into her risotto with gusto, and when the staff swept back in with the usualsecondiandcontornidishes, cooked meats and plates of vegetables to tempt any palate or mood, she heaped her plate high.
Ago did not speak until they were alone again. “Are you suggesting... Do youdareto suggest that my great-grandparents were...swingers, Victoria? Are you unwell?”
“I’m not suggesting it,” Victoria said merrily, as if she hadn’t heard his frigid tones. “I’m telling you that they were. And they were quite happy. What they were not, as far as I can tell, was at all concerned that their hobbies would impact negatively on the family name.”
She felt more than saw Ago’s frown, then. In all its ferocity.
But she was only getting started.
“Your grandparents were far more conventional, mind you,” she continued, applying herself to her meal as if she was unaware that he was having an intense reaction to her words. An intense negative reaction, that was. “Your grandmother’s family was well known to yours, it seems. Your grandmother wrote that she and your grandfather were raised together, for all intents and purposes. She had known your grandfather her whole life by the time he asked her to marry him.”
Ago had stopped pretending he was eating. He now stared at her, as if attempting to stop her from continuing on by the force of his brutal regard alone. Victoria had the full force of his attention, God help her, and that was what mattered.
She reminded herself that this was what she wanted. To be a player in her own life, for once. Even if it was only for the length of this meal, it was something.
Andsomethinghad to be better than the whole lot of nothing she’d always known.
“If I were you, I’d be very careful,mia mogliettina.” His voice was far darker, far colder, than the December night outside. “My grandfather was one of the finest men I have known.”
“I’m sure that he was,” Victoria replied with tremendous calm. She felt none of it, but she could sound as if she did. That, too, felt like something. “But you see, by her reckoning, he knew that your grandmother loved another. He convinced her that because they had grown up together, they could marry as friends. They could be merry companions who wanted the same things out of a life.”
“My grandfather was not a clown. He was notmerry. He was a great man, revered by all who knew him. And he is responsible for taking Accardi Industries out of the bucolic hills of Tuscany and into the global market.”
“She suspected that he was desperately in love with her,” Victoria continued, as if sharing secrets with a close friend. “But he promised her that wouldn’t matter. The problem is that such promises are made to be broken, aren’t they? He resented that she could not love him. She suspected that he built up the business not only to impress her, but to prove to her that she was a hundred times a fool to have given her heart to some low-class carpenter who could never provide for her as he did.” She smiled at her husband. “Then they were trapped, both of them desperately and hopelessly in love with someone they could not have. As far as I can tell from the diaries they both left behind, neither one of them was ever untrue. But your grandmother turned to drink. Your grandfather became embittered. They were held up as great paragons of virtue to all who knew them, but the truth is that they were excruciatingly unhappy.”
Ago looked as if he wanted to bolt up from his seat, though he did not. She watched, telling herself she felt nothing as that muscle in his jaw worked. Telling herself she was happy that she had brought these things to his attention, dropping them like bombs over dinner.
She had intended to tell him all this earlier today, after all. Though she would not have presented the facts quite so baldly, she could admit.
Still, she was glad she had. He needed to know. She assured herself that was not her bravado talking, despite the flush she could feel in her cheeks that suggested otherwise.
“Do you take some pleasure in digging up these graves?” Ago looked at her as if she had done something to him. As if the facts she had recited here were an assault. Victoria wanted to explain herself. She felt the urge race through her—but she bit her tongue. “And have done so, with such obvious relish, do you truly imagine that I would wish to hear such unsavory details? I remember my grandparents, Victoria. They might not have loved each other, but then, that was not the purpose of their marriage. The purpose was doing their duty, and they did their jobs. They did them well.”
“What I’m trying to suggest to you, husband, is that you can choose how you do this duty of yours, to which you have dedicated the whole of your life. Your great-grandparents were of a like mind. And happy for it. Your grandparents were miserable. Nothing you have ever told me, or I have heard, about your parents suggests thattheywere anything but—”
“Devoted,” Ago bit out, his dark eyes a blaze of warning.
And the truth was, she was just as happy not to touch on the issue of his parents.
“This is what it suggests to me,” she said instead, telling herself that she disliked him as she set her gaze to his, though the lick of flame that worked through her whispered that she was a liar. “That even you, such a lifelong devoted servant to the Accardi legacy, can choose the path that suits you. If you wish. That’s all.” Victoria shrugged, but perhaps a bit too elaborately, because his eyes narrowed. “Because they were all just people. Not giants or celestial beings who you feel so compelled to live up to. Just regular people. Nothing more, nothing less. Some of them were virtuous, others not. I suspect the real truth is that they were all bits of both. As are we all.”
