CHAPTER FIVE
“SOMETHINGISDIFFERENT with my brother,” Mattea said one morning, shuffling along beside Beatrice on what the surly teenager liked to call her daily forced march. Sometimes she even called it boot camp.
No matter what she called it, Beatrice only smiled, and walked faster.
“Perhaps he has gone ahead and become engaged,” Beatrice suggested today, and if those words tasted sour on her tongue, she would never admit it. She would swallow them down, every bitter drop, before she gave the slightest indication that she cared what Cesare Chiavari did with himself, his life, or his betrothal.
This was why she insisted on morning walks out in nature. It was healing.
She was healing.
“Impossible,” Mattea was saying with all of that overweening confidence of hers that she could produce at will. “He might like to keep it secret, obviously, because he’s always ranting about escaping the glare of public interest, blah blah blah, but there’s no way she would go along with that.”
As if she knew the woman in question, was all Beatrice could think, when she’d been under the impression that Cesare was still in the process of choosing—
But none of this was her business. None of this concerned her at all.
When Beatrice did not reply, the younger girl sighed. “It’s a fact that every woman in Europe has chased after my brother at one point or another. Whoever lands him will be celebrated far and wide. It will be called a coup. You must know this.”
“I can’t think of any topic that concerns me less than your brother’s betrothal,” Beatrice said icily, as much to remind herself as to get Mattea to drop the subject.
It had been almost a month now, here in this beautiful place that only seemed to root itself more deeply inside her by the day. But she had other things to worry about when it came to things inside her, thank you. Everyone loved Tuscany, but Beatrice’s waist grew thicker and her belly protruded unapologetically, and at night she rubbed herself with lotions and was deeply grateful that she’d had the foresight to buy such baggy, oversize clothes that made her look twice her size anyway.
She only looked rounder now.
If asked, she would claim it was the endless supply of homemade pasta that accompanied every meal.
Beatrice expected she would dream about the handcrafted pasta here for the rest of her life.
What she would try to forget was that every week, Cesare called her before him and interrogated her about his sister’s progress, whatever that was supposed to be. He was never as open as he’d been that first time, and she told herself she was grateful.
But she also didn’t know what progress he was looking for from a teenager who was doing surprisingly well with the constant company of her former headmistress.
After all, she had said last time, with perhaps more asperity than necessary—in his office, because he’d never had her back to that glorious terrace at sunset, and thank goodness—there are no exams to sit, are there? She will either disrupt your wedding or she won’t.
But now all she could think was that he had not corrected her. He had not said that he wasn’t getting married, so she had to assume he still was. Even if privately she agreed with Mattea. If a man like Cesare had gotten engaged, the world would know.
I would know, something in her insisted, as if knowing the man she’d exulted in for only one night allowed her to know this cold man who’d taken his place, too.
“Maybe he won’t get married after all.” Mattea was speculating now as they took their usual route, out into the vineyards, out a little farther every day, and then back when Mattea started to get a bit fractious. Or remember that she should. “He doesn’t really need to.”
And it made Beatrice’s heart hurt to hear the way the girl said things like that. With so much hope in her voice that it would have horrified her, if she could hear herself. It made Beatrice want to turn on her heel and charge back into the house so she could upbraid the man in question about the way he treated this little sister of his. This child who only wanted a relationship with him, no matter how she went about it.
But that was not her place.
And besides, there really was a change in Cesare, but Beatrice didn’t think it had anything to do with his plans to marry. For all she would know or be told, the wedding could be next week. It had taken her a week or so to figure out what, precisely, it was that she was sensing during her meetings with him. And when he dropped into the little adventures she and Mattea took around the house and the grounds.
It is almost as if you are showing her how to treat this place, he said on one such occasion, coming up behind Beatrice and nearly making her jump. He had been looking past her toward his sister, who had been laughing with Amelia as the maid tried to teach her how to set a table in the formal style. Did I hear that yesterday my sister learned how to do laundry?
Beatrice had dared Mattea to try, claiming she would ruin all the garments and likely flood the house, but she didn’t tell Cesare this.
Don’t let your sister know it’s educational, she whispered in mock horror. That would ruin everything!
She’d turned to look at him then and had found Cesare gazing at her in that way he’d been doing for weeks now. And she’d finally realized that it felt a lot like suspicion.
As if he was actively suspicious of her.
It told her things she was not sure she wanted to know about herself that her reaction to the possibility that he was onto her true identity—or anyway, the identity she’d flirted with in Venice, because she couldn’t say that was her at all—filled her with more delight than despair.
You have been shockingly wrong about the content of your character your whole life, she told herself sternly. It’s only this past year that you have actually met your true self.
And her true self, it turned out, was a bit shocking.
But these were not conversations she could have with Mattea, who she found she liked a great deal now that the girl was not playing to her classmates. But they were not friends. They could not be friends.
“Many men in your brother’s position feel that they must marry,” she told the girl now instead. And it was possible she was explaining that to herself, too. And the baby inside her. “They feel a tremendous duty to carry on the family line. I think you’ll find this is the story of the world as we know it.”
“It’s stupid,” Mattea replied, with an epic eye roll.
That Beatrice agreed with her was, of course, also not something she could share. She gave her charge a reproving look. “In the meantime, dare I hope that this spate of good behavior from you will continue? Last time I met with your brother, he asked if you were ill.”
Mattea laughed, but there was color in her cheeks to Beatrice’s eyes, and not from temper today. It was fresh air, maybe. Or far healthier emotions than usual.
“I’m too bored to bother,” Mattea said, but she was biting back a smile at that lie. “Don’t you worry, though. There’s loads of time for me to meet every low bar Cesare has in place for me.”
Beatrice thought about that later, during the evening quiet hours she’d instituted over the past weeks. Mattea had protested at first, bitterly, claiming she might wish to do things normal teenage girls did on a summer evening and sometimes that included music as well as a reasonable curfew. Beatrice had been unmoved.
You do not have a single friend in a hundred-mile radius, she’d said crisply. It was her feeling that Mattea had precious few friends at all, because she gravitated toward troublemakers like herself, who were always about the drama they could cause above all else. But she knew better than to share that observation. So the only thing you could possibly do of an evening is get yourself into trouble. We will not be doing that.
Maybe I want to watch a movie that it would be embarrassing to watch with my jumped-up governess. Maybe I want to hang about in chats or on video calls making up stories to tell my friends. Maybe I just want to be alone, she’d hurled back.
You can be alone all you like, as long as I know where you are, Beatrice told her serenely. You can listen to whatever music you choose, using headphones. If you want to interact, I will teach you how to play games that, yes, you can weaponize in various ways when you’re older. I suggest you worry about your own reaction to any movies, not mine. If you wish to send sulky and insulting texts to your friends, presumably about me, by all means. Feel free to do so, but you will do it while sitting in the same room as me. These are the rules.
Mattea had won herself extra quiet hours that day for her profane response to that.
But she had settled into the routine Beatrice imposed upon her with surprising ease. Sometimes they did actually play games. Sometimes they watched movies in her media room, though they got less provocative once the girl realized Beatrice refused to give her the reactions she wanted. And many nights featured Mattea performatively typing into her mobile or her laptop for many hours while Beatrice caught up on her reading.
Lately Beatrice had begun to think that there was probably more to this run of good behavior on Mattea’s part than the rules Beatrice had set down. It wasn’t that Mattea was suddenly filled with the desire to be obedient.
It was that she was the most outrageous when she had an audience, for one thing. And for another, it was that this might very well be the only time she’d ever had somebody else’s full attention.
“Did you spend a great deal of time with your mother while she was alive?” Beatrice asked one afternoon while dealing a hand of cards.
Mattea swiped up her cards and fanned them out before her. “When she was around, I guess.”
“Did you do mother-daughter things? Did you have traditions?”
“I told you she liked to have her little afternoon soirees. She would dress me up and teach me how to be delightful.” Mattea made a face, frowning at Beatrice over the top of her cards. “Why are you asking me this?”
Beatrice gazed back at the girl, trying to keep her expression impassive as her heartbeat picked up speed. Why was she asking such things? She told herself it was because she cared about Mattea, but even as she did, she knew there was more to it.
Maybe she simply wanted to hear what it was like to have a mother for longer than she’d had hers. Maybe she wanted to soak in that bond, no matter what it was like, so she could figure out how to love her own baby as well as possible.
She cleared her throat. “My mother died when I was seven. I remember when I was very small, she’d read me stories. When I was a little older, we would go on walks in the evening and we would talk about the days we had. It made me feel very grown-up.”
Mattea didn’t actually sneer, but it was a close call. “That sounds sweet, really,” she said, making it clear she thought it was anything but. “That’s not the kind of mother mine was.”
“How was she, then?”
“My mother threw parties or she went to parties. So she slept all day, woke up in the afternoon, spent hours getting dressed, and then went out. She made me sit with her while she was getting dressed, so she could teach me how to be a sultry and alluring woman. She would spray me in perfume and make me taste her champagne. She taught me how to dance for a lover when I was eight. Sometimes she liked to take pictures of the two of us, but only when she looked young and fresh. But none of this made me feel like I was a grown-up.” Her blue eyes were hard and sad when they found Beatrice’s. “More like I was her pet hamster.”
It cost her a lot not to react to any of that the way she wanted to, because showing the girl the deep compassion she felt—and the anger she wished she could share with a dead woman who should have treated her daughter better—would only make Mattea recoil. She knew that appearing nonchalant was the only way to keep her talking. “And what about your father?”
“Oh, he forgot he had a kid.” Mattea shrugged when Beatrice only gazed back at her. “He always seemed surprised to see me. Too surprised. You know.”
Beatrice had to bite her tongue as she discarded some cards and picked up others.
“It was always the most fun when Cesare visited,” the girl said a few moments later, unprompted. “I thought it would be like that all the time when I came to live with him, but it’s not.”
“And why do you think that is?” Beatrice asked her.
Mattea looked at her, then looked down. “I know what I’m like, Miss Higginbotham. And so do you.”
Then she was done with cards in a sudden, swift storm of a mood change. She threw hers onto the table and whirled around, making her way back to her favorite couch and curling up with her mobile, refusing to look up again until late.
You can’t make me go to bed just because you tell me to, Mattea had shouted at her on one of the first nights. I’m fifteen. I’m not a child.
You can sneak out if you want to, Beatrice had replied, unfazed. But I have instructed the staff to deliver you to me when they catch you out and about. If I can’t trust you to stay in your room, Mattea, I will make you sleep on the floor in mine. How does that sound?
My brother will never allow it, the girl had snapped.
But she also hadn’t snuck out since, apparently not wishing to test the theory.
Now that they had discussed emotions and family dynamics and had almost managed to get into Mattea’s self-worth, Beatrice supposed everything was back on the table. And so, when she made her typical nightly announcement that it was bedtime and that she would be leaving Mattea to make good choices, she didn’t go up to her rooms.
She went downstairs instead, smiling when she encountered Mrs. Morse in the servants’ stair.
“Off to bed?” the older woman asked, because she knew everyone’s schedule down to the minute.
“I have a feeling that tonight might be a night that Mattea attempts something,” Beatrice said. “I thought I’d position myself in the best possible place to apprehend her.”
Mrs. Morse sighed. “She has been worryingly quiet of late,” she agreed. “Follow me. I’ll show you where she normally climbs down.”
It was another beautiful summer evening outside. The stars were out, crowding the sky. Beatrice went and found herself a bench to sit on in the gardens, tucked back in the shadows but with a full view of Mattea’s bedroom windows one story up.
But while she waited for the teenager’s inevitable attempt to do something, what she thought about was Cesare.
And that particularly narrow, assessing way he’d been looking at her lately.
She blew out a breath, not surprised to feel it thick and tight in her throat.
He wasn’t engaged yet. Not yet.
She knew he wasn’t.
It was her secret shame that she looked every morning on her mobile before she got out of bed. Every morning before she rose, washed, and loved on her baby belly in the only place she could. In private. Before she stopped being a mother to the child she carried and became the headmistress. Before she twisted back her hair until her eyes watered, stuck on her glasses, and wore billowy clothes to hide herself.
And it was shameful enough that she looked.
But it was nothing short of sad that every day she woke without news of his betrothal, she felt hopeful.
The same way her fifteen-year-old charge had sounded hopeful that he might decide not to marry at all.
Maybe it was more than simply shameful. Maybe it was pathological.
“It is a lovely evening,” came Cesare’s voice, as if she’d imagined him out of the stars above and the faint breeze that danced over the garden, bringing with it hints of rosemary and night-blooming flowers.
She almost thought she was dreaming, but when she pinched herself, she was still there, sitting still on that bench in the garden. And Cesare was melting his way out from the shadows deeper in the garden, where the hedges were higher, and she heard there had once been a maze.
As if he’d been out on a night constitutional for, perhaps, the same reason she marched around in the mornings.
Her heart took up a terrible knocking deep in her chest.
But she made herself smile at him primly, the way she always did. “It’s beautiful, but then, it’s always beautiful here.”
She could hardly recall what she was agreeing to.
“I did not realize you enjoyed sitting out and taking the night air,” he said, prowling closer.
There was no other word for how he was moving, though Beatrice tried desperately to find one. Because there was no need for her to be reacting to him as if he was some kind of big jungle cat, stalking her where she sat. That could lead nowhere good.
She refused to let herself think about dancing with him in Venice. In that packed little venue. On a bridge by themselves.
Then again, back in his room.
Where he had talked of passion and then taken her through an exploration of it.
Maybe the truth, obvious to her out here in the soft night that blurred everything, was that she hated that this was the same man. She hated it.
And she hated that he couldn’t see her for who she was.
Yet none of these thoughts were the least bit productive.
Beatrice folded her hands in her lap and sat up straighter, trying to exude so much virtue that some of it sank into her, too. “I’m not sure I’ve ever met someone who did not enjoy a starry night, Mr. Chiavari.”
He seemed to study her for moment too long, then another.
And then he confounded her completely by sitting down beside her.
Too close, she thought in a panic. He was too close, and she could not allow that. Because she knew how much closer they could get—
Seize hold of yourself, Beatrice ordered herself then. All he sees is a servant.
“I think it’s time you call me Cesare,” he suggested, another shock. “After all, Beatrice, you and I are involved in the same great enterprise, are we not?”
And she had not let herself wonder what it would be like to hear her name on his tongue. To yearn for it. She had not thought she ever would. It was like honey. It was like heat, and it was everywhere. It was far, far better and more seductive than she could possibly have anticipated.
It was a disaster.
“I’m perfectly happy to maintain formality between us,” she told him, with less control than she would have liked.
“I think not,” was all he said.
Beatrice made herself sit perfectly still. She could feel her internal temperature rocket up to something more akin to a forest fire, but there was nothing she could do about that. She gripped her laced fingers tightly, so tightly that it hurt, but she would never forgive herself if he knew these things that were happening to her. If he could see.
She did her best to exude a cool she didn’t feel, and for the first time since she’d assumed the headmistress’s position years ago, she wasn’t sure it worked.
“You are, of course, the final word on all things,” she said, agreeing with him in that way she knew was its own arch provocation.
She was not prepared for the rough caress of his laughter, dancing on the breeze. She hadn’t heard that since Venice. Not in real life, anyway. Though she knew, the moment she heard it, that it was the song in her head, every morning when she opened her eyes.
It was a trap, she told herself.
But she didn’t stand up and walk away, the way a wise woman would have.
“I’m delighted that you accept that I’m the person in charge,” he said, after a moment. “As if there was some doubt.”
Beatrice didn’t understand what was happening, but as her head seemed to spin this way and that, she had to think that this had something to do with the way he’d been studying her lately. She didn’t let herself imagine it had something to do with his delayed engagement, because that was madness.
But even though he disconcerted her simply by existing, she had become quite talented at hiding that. Or she hoped she had.
She concentrated on her posture. On the undeniable coolness of her tone. “I anticipate that at any moment, your sister will climb out of one of her bedroom windows,” she told him matter-of-factly. “I made the very great mistake of prodding at her emotions and I imagine her reaction to that will be to get herself back into trouble as quickly as possible, because that feels much better. More familiar.”
“I would think it would be the opposite. That getting into trouble would be the more emotional path.”
“Getting into trouble allows a person to focus on who is to blame for doling out any consequences,” Beatrice told him in the tone she reserved for junior staff. She was trying not to use her nose, because the scent of him was just there, like the breeze. Pine and rosemary and something warmer. Something she knew tasted deeper and richer when she had her mouth on him. It was entirely him. She felt her breasts grow heavy beneath her drapey clothes. “And to think deeply on how misunderstood one is, etcetera. Discussing emotional things is much harder. It requires a person to be vulnerable and most people avoid that at any cost.”
“But not you, Beatrice. You have somehow transcended the reactions of mere mortals.”
Her smile felt a bit brittle, but she aimed it at him anyway. “Not at all,” she said. “The fact is that I have always recognized my vulnerabilities. Being orphaned will do that to you.”
“You do realize that I am also an orphan, do you not?” Again, that laugh of his that cascaded through her like sunlight. “Though I will admit, I do not consider myself one. Still, both of my parents are dead.”
She actually turned and frowned at him then, though she knew that wasn’t wise. “You are an extraordinarily wealthy orphan, and I think you know that. I, on the other hand, was an extremely poor one. With no options. I made my own way in this world. Added to that, I’m a woman. And women are always more aware of their vulnerabilities. That is the way of the world.”
“You are not the only person alive who misses their parents, Beatrice.”
That stung. Deeply. She sucked in a breath, and her hands clenched in her lap were more like a single fist. “I never said anything like that. I never thought anything like that.”
But he had turned toward her, too, and this should not have been happening. “I will not claim that there are no privileges, but they come with a high price. Is that vulnerable enough for you? Or would you prefer that I tell you, step by step, what it was like to be eighteen years old and suddenly in charge of the vast Chiavari empire while I knew that all the while the world was holding its breath, waiting for me to fail?”
Beatrice would love him to do just that, but that was dangerous ground. And she was already afraid she would never be able to walk away from this garden bench in the moonlight. She was already afraid she’d come face-to-face with the real trouble here.
She didn’t want to.
“And if you did fail, what would happen?” she asked him, fighting for her usual calm tones and not quite getting there. “You’d be slightly less rich, that’s all. You and I are not the same.” She blew out a breath. “But that doesn’t make up for losing your parents. I’m sorry.”
And she thought she heard his breath, like a sharp inhale.
“It shocks me, Beatrice, that you have spent all these years catering to the whims of these people you so despise.” But now he was the one using a deeply sardonic tone. He moved closer and she could suddenly no longer see the stars above, so broad were his shoulders. So intensely did he regard her. And then, impossibly, his fingers were on her chin, tilting her face toward his. Just like that night months ago. “What do you think that precious school of yours would say if I were to tell them that all this time, you have been a wolf in hiding?”
And somehow, she was no longer sure that he was talking about the same thing she was. All she was conscious of was the danger. It seemed insurmountable.
And it, too, felt like that hot, sweet honey inside her.
She pulled back, and then stood. And told herself she could not afford to allow herself to process the touch of his fingers against the skin of her face.
Not now. Maybe not ever.
Not while she carried his baby deep inside her, and he looked at her as if he’d never laid eyes on her before.
Although, though she knew it must be a trick of the darkness, he did not appear to be looking at her like that just now. “I don’t work there anymore,” she reminded him, as gently as she could. “So you may tell them whatever you wish. And if our arrangement is no longer working for you, I would ask only that you pay me for time served and I’ll be on my way.”
She didn’t mean that. She didn’t think she did. It came out of her mouth without warning, but she kept herself from showing any surprise.
“I will decline that offer,” he said, with hints of laughter in his voice.
He was going to be her undoing.
Again.
Everything in her pulled tight, because she was sure he was going to leap to his own feet and advance upon her once more, and Beatrice thought she would die if he did. She knew she would die if he didn’t.
But instead, he laughed again, and that was worse.
Or better, something in her whispered.
But with a jut of his chin, he directed her attention to the house. To Mattea’s windows.
That easily, he reminded her where they were. And what she ought to have been paying attention to. Because Mattea was climbing over the side of her balcony, dressed like some kind of fashion-conscious burglar. Complete with a beanie set just so on her blond head, though it was not cold by any measure.
Beatrice didn’t mean to—surely she didn’t mean to—but she drifted back toward the bench, back into the shadows, closer to Cesare.
“Where do you think she imagines she’s going?” Cesare asked, his voice low.
“She’s well aware that there’s nowhere to go,” Beatrice said quietly. She folded her arms in front of her, aware that her breasts were tender, and felt swollen, and she could pretend all she liked but she knew it wasn’t her pregnancy. Not when she could feel that bright, blooming heat between her legs. “So I have to assume that she has some mischief in mind.”
“And what do you, in your infinite wisdom as headmistress extraordinaire, imagine we should do about this?”
Beatrice had never felt less wise in her life. If anything, she felt a strange kinship with Mattea because, deep down, there was no getting away from the fact that she wanted this man’s attention too. If she’d been wise she would’ve walked away from this place the moment she’d seen that he didn’t know who she was.
But it was too late for all that, so instead she tried to think tactically, knowing what she did about Mattea specifically and teenage girls in general. “She wants your undivided attention and I’m guessing she only gets it when you’re furious with her.”
“Are you suggesting—again—that I neglect my own sister?”
She shot him a look, but didn’t answer that question. “I think part of her good behavior of late has been because she had my undivided attention,” she said instead. “If I think critically about the year she spent in Averell, I have to conclude that what she’s looking for is the full, irrevocable, and undeniable attention of the authority figure in every situation she’s in. I assume none of that was available with her parents.”
He was silent beside her, and Beatrice cautioned herself. She didn’t know him. She might have spent a night with him, but that didn’t mean she knew anything about what might be happening in his head now.
Though she did.
Because he proved it the next breath. “However neglectful you might imagine I am,” he said in a low voice that left a few marks in every place it touched her, “let me assure you, it bears no resemblance to the total lack of regard in which she was raised.”
It was only then she realized that there was a trembling, deep inside her, and the fact she was keeping it locked deep inside her didn’t make it any better.
“What I suggest is a little bit of a mind game.” Beatrice didn’t look at him. She didn’t dare. She wasn’t sure she could count on her own restraint tonight. “If I’ve read your sister right, she will start attempting acts of defiance and destruction. I suggest we quietly put out whatever fires she sets—hopefully only metaphorically—and never mention them at all.”
“That is the very opposite of doing one’s duty and learning the consequences of one’s actions,” he growled at her.
“It is not a tactic I would take with you,” she retorted without thinking. “But I think it has a very real chance of getting inside your sister’s head in a way a lecture never will. She’s already heard every lecture there is.”
His eyes were too blue, hinting at all that passion she knew was there. She’d felt it. She’d lost herself in it. And she was not strong enough for this. For this coldness where so much heat should have been. She had never been strong enough for this. For him.
But she made herself pretend she was anyway, the way she always did.
Beatrice smiled as if nothing Cesare did concerned her in the least. “Of course, the choice is yours.”