CHAPTER FOUR
FRANCESCAHADALWAYS loved to swim, but like all the things she’d loved that she’d managed to get her father’s approval on, it had come with strings.
She couldn’t just play in the water. She’d had to train like an Olympic swimmer, no matter that competition was beneath a woman of her important standing. Laps and correct form and instructors watching her every move. Timing her. Urging her to do better and be better. All for...nothing, really. She’d never understood it, but she’d borne it to get the thing she wanted.
But this was more. Here, she simply allowed herself to...play. Like a child. And the simplicity of it, the joy of it, caused tears to form in her eyes. And since she was essentially alone, she let them fall, then be washed away to sea.
She knew Aristide watched her, though she did not know why, but he was not close enough to see tears track down her face. He would not be able to tell them from the droplets of water. So she just let herself feel. Cry. Fall into the surf and pretend to drown, only to claw her way back up again and live.
Live.
It was like a baptism. A new life. Hope and joy. So big and bright she was almost afraid to believe it was true.
But the week went on just like that. All the things she’d packed for her new life as Vale’s wife had appeared the second day, and other than some dark mutterings from Aristide about his brother, there seemed to be no real fallout from being stolen away. She hadn’t heard from her father, from Vale angry with her, from anyone. There were stories, of course, but they all seemed to focus on Aristide and why he might have done such a thing.
She slept in, swam every morning—usually as Aristide watched from a distance. She ate luxurious meals, not at all concerned about calories or fat content, and spoke with her husband about anything and everything.
It was a struggle, though not a painful or unwanted one. Just... She had always been a quick study of people. Learned how to maneuver them to whatever suited the moment. It had been necessary when living under her father’s iron fist.
But even with days under her belt, she did not know how to handle Aristide. He was an enigma. Not quite matching his reputation—which didn’t surprise her as she knew she didn’t match hers. But she couldn’t quite figure out what the disparity was.
He acted as though nothing bothered him, just as his reputation suggested. He made lazy innuendos, but never pressed. Never asked. He was the epitome of respectability and kindness underneath that facade of reprobate.
It was the kindness, she supposed, that she allowed herself to trust—slowly. Because she knew that kindness could not be truly faked. Meanness or true motives had always shown through. She knew he was kind to her not because he cared in any way, but because there was no reason to be unkind in these moments.
And she had precious little of that in her life.
Slowly, very slowly, she allowed herself to be...herself, instead of the outer shell her father had crafted. Always testing the waters, always careful not to show too much too quickly. But Aristide never seemed surprised or horrified by who she really was or what she really wanted.
She supposed this was one of the positives to marrying a man who, allegedly, had no morals or concerns.
Maurizio taught her how to bake. They’d started simple. Cookies. A cake. It was exhilarating, creating something delicious, though not always pretty, from simple ingredients.
“I did this one all on my own,” she announced, perhaps more excited than she had a right to be over something as simple and humble as her very rustic schiacciata alla fiorentina. It was their fourth night, and Aristide sat out on the porch they often retired to with a drink. She brought out her cake with perhaps too much fanfare, but Aristide had yet to make her feel foolish for enthusiasm.
She sat the pan down on the table, cut a piece and placed it on a waiting plate. She walked over and took the seat next to him. She didn’t know what possessed her, but she used the fork to section of a piece and then held it out to him.
“You get the first bite.”
His mouth quirked up, all charming amusement. But he dutifully leaned forward and took the bite she offered. Their gazes held as he took the fork into his mouth.
It was like a jolt of electricity, a reminder of the way her body had reacted on their wedding day, except this time they weren’t touching. And still that buzz of electricity moved over her skin, tightening and tingling all the way down deep into her core.
Francesca had no real experience with desire. She wasn’t even sure she would have recognized the disorienting swirling if she hadn’t read some romance novels—hidden from her father, of course.
But this felt like all of those descriptors. Wild and untamable. Alluring and alarming. Until she realized he’d taken the bite, so there was no reason to still be holding the fork up.
She dropped it to the plate like it had scorched her, when the only thing that had was this strange new heat he created inside of her.
“A feat, angioletta,” he offered, and if she was not mistaken his voice was more gruff than usual. “I shall have two pieces.”
She wanted to giggle, which was the most ridiculous thing. But it gave her an excuse to move. To serve him said two pieces, and then she went ahead and took two for herself. She settled into her chair, trying to resist the urge to study him as he ate.
It was such a strange thing, having spent some time with Vale, who had been...not harsh, exactly. But very...contained. There had been a stillness about him. A stillness she had recognized as the one she tried to project to the world around her.
Aristides was all energy. All action. He had this outer appearance of laziness, but there was such movement in him. Such...reaction, and it created this reaction in her too.
And not just that sparkling heat, but something else. He...sparkled, really. In conversation, in dinners where there were just the two of them. Even in silences such as now as he ate her cake. Two pieces.
He made her feel...
Well, she supposed that was it. Here in this strange world of his castle on his side of the island, she was just allowed to be her, for the first time ever. And there were a cascade of feelings that came from simply that.
Perhaps Aristide did not really care about her, nor did she expect him to. Perhaps he was wild in his personal life, reckless in business—though thus far it had only worked out for him. But he had never once been cruel to her or any of his staff. He had never once pressed her about begging, though she oftentimes felt his gaze hot and intent, like a brand itself.
It was like discovering a...friend.
“All those books you requested should be here tomorrow,” he said over dinner the following night as the week came to a close.
Because he’d encouraged her to order practically a library full of books after she’d mentioned the types of fiction her father had never let her read—one of the few things she’d been able to successfully sneak under his nose, but not enough to truly satisfy her.
“Wonderful, but I suppose next week won’t be quite as leisurely with lots of reading time.”
“No, we must do some travel. Emerge from our love cocoon.”
Francesca wrinkled her nose. “What a hideous term.”
He chuckled. “And yet, this is what the stories I so very carefully plant will say. Never fear, it will not be all balls and dinners. You will have reading and swimming and baking time and whatever else here and there as time allows. You are not to be treated as a prisoner just yet.”
She watched as he ate his dinner. Every move was languid, as if he had no care in the world. But he had plans, and no matter how different they might be, he surely had things he hadn’t done because of who he was.
“What about you?”
“What about me?”
“Is there anything you’ve always wanted or wanted to do that you haven’t been able to?” She sipped the wine, still even after nearly a week of this amazed that she could have as much or as little as she liked. She wanted to somehow offer Aristide the same.
Perhaps even some of that same reaction she felt from him.
Aristide raised those acrobatic eyebrows of his at her across the candlelit table. “What gives you the impression I have ever been under anyone’s thumb?”
Francesca rolled her eyes, then took a moment to revel in the freedom of letting her face do whatever she pleased. “Surely there was something you haven’t been able to do that appeals to you. Hot-air balloon rides? Climbing Mount Everest? One of those dreadful races where you spend days going from terrible climate to terrible climate on foot? An African safari?”
“I assure you, Francesca, if I have wanted to do it, I have done it.”
“Except rebuild your reputation.” Which she could definitely do for him. She could be an expert at that. Maybe this entire week had been a ruse to gain her loyalty. But that thought did not bother her. It was simply a ruse that worked, if so.
“Precisely. And on that note, the real work must begin. Up first, we will attend Ludovica Gallo’s ball in Rome.”
She was tempted to make another face, and then, reminded herself she could make whatever faces she liked. She stuck her tongue out at the invitation Aristide slid her way.
He chuckled. “My sentiments exactly. Signora Gallo is a mean old beast, but she wields a lot of power among the gossips of our world. We must go to her ball and convince her we’re madly in love.”
“She always tells me I am too skinny. I think it is the only flaw she can find with me. It will likely be quite exciting for her to believe I could do something so foolish as to fall madly in love with you.”
“Excellent. We want attention. Maybe even speculation to start, but over the course of the next few months we will build the image of the perfect couple. You have reformed me with your love and so on.”
Love. He brought that word up a lot for someone who didn’t believe in it, but she supposed that was the angle. The fairy tale. The sainted good girl reforming the careless rake.
But love, or whatever went on between any man and woman that got the whispers going, would require more than going to balls on each other’s arm. It would need more than their ability to have a pleasant conversation with one another. It would require...something more.
She did not think Vale had been gallivanting around with Princess Carliz behind her back, but he didn’t need to, because people liked to whisper about the way they looked at each other, the way they couldn’t be in the same room together. A chemistry everyone could feel, regardless of whether Vale and Carliz had acted on it at all. People were drawn to the drama of it all.
When it came to Aristide and Francesca, well, she supposed he did watch her, with intent eyes, any time they were together. And she might not know a thing about being kissed, but even knowing next to nothing about the real person inside of Aristide’s many masks, she had been affected by their lone kiss at the altar.
Maybe it was foolish to think there was any kind of attraction in a kiss, in a look over a bite of cake. Maybe he was acting, and it was all about his plans.
But she didn’t think so. Because he kept a very careful distance, even with his ever-present innuendos flung her way. And while she wasn’t sure how she felt about closing that distance he kept, they would need to if his plan was going to work.
“You know, to convince other people we’re in love, we’ll have to exist in the same orbit,” she said.
“Are we not doing exactly that right now?”
“Every meal you sit an almost entire length of table away from me. At the ball, we will be on each other’s arm. We will have to sit next to one another. Likely we’ll have to dance together. I have seen the pictures of many a model, actress, socialite et cetera draped across your arm. There is not an entire expanse of space between you and them when you walk into a ballroom.”
“Is this not the respectability we are in search of? I was not under the impression that saints went about groping one another in public.”
It was such a ridiculous image, she laughed in spite of herself. “Love and respectability are two different things entirely. We must accomplish the image of both.” Deciding to take matters into her own hands now that she had an objective, she stood. She dragged her chair down the length of the table and set it next to his before retaking her seat.
Aristide raised an eyebrow at her. “And what exactly will sitting elbow to elbow this evening for our meal do?”
“It’s called practice, Aristide. One must practice to get good at anything. We will need some work at portraying the image of a couple in love. And the lessons must begin now if we are meant to be successful at Signora Gallo’s.”
“I have never been much of a believer in lessons, practice, or anything else that sounded like work.”
She made a considering noise, because that could hardly be true when he’d amassed his own fortune independent of his father’s, but she was beginning to figure him out. He was more complicated than most—she’d certainly never spent more than a day or two puzzling out a member of the opposite sex—but there were telltale signs anyone gave off. When they were being serious, when they were putting up a mask, pretending to be what everyone else saw.
She would know. And she would maneuver him accordingly until she fully understood who he was underneath all that.
So she did not argue with him, even though she knew he had not spoken a full truth. “Unfortunately, if your plan is to work, you will have to put forth an effort in all those things. You married me for a reason, did you not? Trust that while my father controlled every aspect of my being that he could, I quickly learned how to make everyone including him think exactly what I wanted them to think about me. We can do the same for you, but you will have to take instruction. And you will have to practice.”
“I do not care for these stories of your father’s overbearing control.” He said it in the same dark way he often talked about his own father. Something fluttered in her chest, but she ignored it.
It had never mattered what anyone else thought of her father or his behavior. It only mattered that she was free of it now. “Join the club. He will likely be there. A ball in Rome? He won’t miss it.” She tried not to dwell on that, on seeing him again, on all the pretend that lay in front of her after this week of fantasy life. Just her. Just the ocean. Just her husband she didn’t fully know enjoying a cake she’d made.
Instead, she focused on her mission. She was free now, so what did her father matter? He could not take her home after and keep food from her, use his fists on her, rage and throw things at her.
No. That was over. And in order to ensure it, she had to make sure Aristide knew how to pretend they were in love for everyone to see.
“Now, when we are sitting at the grand dinner table, next to each other just like this, how will you sit?”
“Like a man eating his dinner, Francesca,” he said, gesturing at himself. Leaned back in his chair, one hand cradling a glass of wine, the other draped leisurely across his leg.
But there was something in his posture, ever so slightly leaning away from her. Rather than in. The thing about her station in life, being in her father’s iron control, was that she’d spent a lot of time observing people. Deciding whom to mimic, whom not to be like. Watching conversations to suss out what people were really thinking or feeling so she could behave accordingly.
She might not know anyone personally who was desperately in love, but she had watched strangers lean into it and desperately try to lean out of it. And Aristide himself certainly knew how to portray a man in lust if not love. They would have to use that.
“If I was your real date, a sparkling jewel with a generous bosom spilling out of her dress like its own buffet, where would your hands be? Your eyes?”
His mouth curved in the way that had her stomach doing strange little somersaults, a feeling she had been chasing more and more with every passing day.
“Ah, you know my type so well. You must have been paying attention.”
She ignored him, and the fact that her bosom certainly wouldn’t be classified a buffet. “Your gaze would drift over her, and even if you had the control to keep that gaze from taking in the sights, you would look at her. You would touch her. Lightly. On the arm, the shoulder. You would lean in to whisper something in her ear. Correct?”
“Yes. That is what I would have done, as a single man trying to talk a woman into my bed. Not as a man who already has a bedfellow as we’re trying to portray.”
She shook her head. “It’s the same thought process, you only alter it a little. You would still lean in, but perhaps instead of the neckline of whatever I was wearing, you would gaze into my eyes. You would lean into whisper something funny, and I would laugh, of course, gazing lovingly back. You would—as though you weren’t fully thinking the motion through—reach out and touch the ring you gave me as if to reassure yourself our union is real, and not just dreams come true.”
“My, you have given this some thought.”
“No, I know how to set a scene, through and through. I know how to get people to believe the image. I have spent a lifetime learning optics. Now, let us see if you can accomplish this.” She settled into her chair in her picture-perfect posture that she hadn’t had to trot out in almost a week. She pretended she was wearing a heavy gown and jewels instead of a fresh face and a light sundress.
He studied her, eyes narrowed subtly. “You do that well, angioletta.”
“What?”
“Put on the mantle of someone else.”
“That’s how I survived as long as I did. You will need to do the same if you wish to change years of debauchery into a beacon of goodness. Now, go on. Show me what you can do.”
It took another few seconds before he lost that studying look. He didn’t move, but he gave the impression of a more...intent than languid posture. Then he sat up a little, putting down his wineglass, and as his hand returned to his lap it brushed against hers on the way.
Electricity seemed to fission out from the contact—brief, almost nonexistent, and still her skin felt prickled with some kind of...heat. Instead of leaning back in his seat, his whole body angled toward her and he moved elegantly and seamlessly so that his mouth was at her ear.
“If you were not my wife, I think the whispers should be quite scandalous.”
That was all he said, and still, her breath caught a little in her throat. Just the touch of his breath against her ear felt scandalous. Who needed words? Certainly not Aristide Bonaparte.
“But as you are my sainted wife, an angel among mere mortals, I suppose I will not mention that I would happily partake in any buffet you might offer.”
Words and thoughts tangled in her mind for a moment. But this was...a party trick. He saw her as that stupid angel moniker. He wanted her reputation, not her. And those little innuendos meant nothing except to...shock her, she supposed. Set her back a little, because he did seem to want distance.
No matter what his eyes said.
She turned to meet his gaze, hooded and mysterious. As much as she thought she understood why he did things, said things, behaved a certain way, she knew there was an entire mystery under all of that of who he really was.
And she knew it would never be her purview to know it.
“The goal is not to shock me,” she managed to say, sounding prim and disapproving. “The goal is to make me laugh. Demurely.”
“Ah. I may need you to furnish some comedic talking points that aren’t shocking, then.”
“I will do just that,” she returned. She should leave it at that. Every rational part of her brain told her to leave it at that.
But there was some other part of her that had bloomed here. The one free to dive into the things she was interested in, curious about. There was no one here to tell her to be perfect, above reproach.
“Now you will show me how you can dance.”
He leaned back in his chair on a sigh. “Cara, please. You must know I can dance.”
“But can you dance with me? Can you make it look as though I am the great love of your life who has changed all your heedless ways?” She raised an eyebrow at him, all challenge. “I will remind you this is your plan. I’d be quite happy to never leave this castle and let everyone think you’ve locked me in a tower for good.”
His expression went grim, irritated, but eventually he must have realized she was right, because he carefully stood and held out his hand. She took it and allowed him to help her to her feet, then a few steps away from the table to a corner of the dining room that could act as a makeshift ballroom.
When he stopped, he took her other hand as well, then adopted a position that might start a dance.
If they were brother and sister. He held her—at arm’s distance—with enough space between them that an entire other person could fit right there.
“Aristide. You cannot be serious.”
“Am I supposed to ravish you in front of an audience?” he demanded, clearly annoyed.
She shook her head. “You would not have your hands anywhere...untoward, but you would hold me close. Not as though there were some holy spirit between us for chastity’s sake.”
This got a laugh out of him, which made her smile in return.
Until he pulled her close.
It made breathing easily hard. It made everything inside of her seem to tangle into disparate parts and she did not know immediately how to proceed. He still held one hand of hers in his, but his other arm had come around her so she felt it, warm and large, on the small of her back.
He was so much bigger than her—tall and broad—like a glacier looming over her tiny boat. She thought this should feel oppressive, but it made her want to lean in. To find some shelter.
What a strange thought.
“Is this better?” Aristide asked, his voice so low it seemed to reverberate against every inch of her exposed skin. It shivered through her, and she was glad she’d decided to practice this, because she would learn how to...brace herself for this. This...physical reaction to her handsome husband.
And she would not let him see. She would not let her voice be hoarse. She would not let all these strange sensations show on her face. She had a feeling that would be...dangerous. So she met his gaze and spoke very clearly. “Yes. Much.”
She tried to step forward, to begin the dance even though they had no music. It was a pantomime, after all. But he did not move with her. When she looked up at him with confusion, his mouth was curved in that ironic smile that made her wonder things about his mouth that she had no business imagining. Married or not.
“You follow my lead, angioletta.”
“In dancing, yes, but in love, you must follow mine.”
“All I know of love, so called, is that it blinds a person to everything sensible,” he said darkly, moving her in a rhythmic circle. “Every other person, every need of their own. It is a...parasite, really.”
“That is quite dire.”
“Have you witnessed love?”
“Not intimately, I suppose.” She did not allow herself to consider intimacy as her body moved in time with his. “I cannot imagine my mother loved my monster of a father, but she died before I can remember, so I could hardly say for certain. I’ve never believed it in the cards for me, so I haven’t given it much thought, but we must consider it if we are to mimic it.”
“Mimic what is essentially a parasite?”
She pulled away enough to look up at him. “I think the first step would be to not call love a parasite.”
“Perhaps.”
“Why... Why a parasite?”
Aristide shrugged. “All I have ever seen is it eat away at a person. My mother, for instance, loves and had an affair with a married man—who was cruel to all parties, I might add. And yet, she works there still. As his housekeeper. I have offered, time and time again, her own house, her own life, but she toils after a man who still pays her as the help. She calls this love.”
“Maybe she is simply wrong?”
“I thought you did not believe in fairy tales, Francesca.”
“I don’t, but it was always nice to think they might be reachable for other people. Perhaps Vale will get his princess and all will work out well there.”
“That would not bother you?” He quirked an eyebrow.
“I’d like to see someone in this situation happy.”
“You may pursue whatever kind of happy you like, Francesca. Love is certainly not the only happiness out there.”
“You are right.” And he was. And he held her close enough that to all and sundry it would look as though they cared for one another. Just a whisper of a distance that spoke to the idea they’d rather close it, but that was between the two of them—not anyone who watched.
It was perfect, and she had the strangest coiling sensation inside of her. An odd kind of grief. Like they would fake this for years and years to come and it would never be real. Nothing would ever truly be real for her. Because whatever she was deep inside, whatever she felt was wrong and needed twisting into a better version.
She closed her eyes against such old, foolish thoughts she had hoped she’d banished when she’d decided to find a way out. Because other people got to like what they liked, feel what they felt, be who they were. She was not special in any particularly bad or good way. She was only herself, just like everyone else.
But it was strange and alarming to realize her great plans for escape and find that being on her own would still be so lonely.
Aristide stopped abruptly. “There. A dinner demonstration. A dance.” He released her completely, stepped away. And didn’t quite look down at her when he spoke. “People will no doubt be fooled by our performance. Are you happy?”
But she wasn’t. She should feel some satisfaction. She’d taught him something, or he’d at least pretended that she had.
But she wanted to lean into him, to cry on his shoulder, and that was clearly not okay.