Chapter Three #2
And yet somehow, when she got back to the monastery from her shopping excursion, she found that she hadn’t bought herself any of her usual shapeless items at all.
She hadn’t bought anything that was quite as seductive as what she’d worn to her brother’s wedding—because that wasn’t who she was, either.
But the difference was, she was deeply pleased with what she’d chosen.
She felt like herself even though she knew perfectly well that she wasn’t in her normal, blend-in-with-the-furniture attire—maybe that was the point—when she walked down to dinner that night, a ritual that Pau had insisted upon.
After all, he’d said that first afternoon while they’d been so politely hammering out their terms and competing to see who could be more agreeable, more sanguine, which she found herself more and more irritated by the more she thought about it, we are to be married.
We are to be parents. Surely we should know each other a little.
She was sure she’d seen that banked fire in his gaze then, a reminder of exactly how they found themselves in the situation—but it had been gone again in an instant.
You will not need to worry about any demands on my part, he had told her.
Kindly.
Leontina thought a lot about that, too.
And tonight, as then, it was as if she was looking at a different person altogether when the staff led her to the dining room where Pau waited.
There was more than one dining room in this whimsical house, laid out in increasingly erratic wings that told the story of the centuries it had stood here and the whims of its inhabitants.
Some of these dining areas had views. Some were exercises in ostentation.
If there was a rhyme or reason to how they were chosen each night, Pau did not share his rationale.
It was one more thing she didn’t ask about.
“I see your shopping trip was a success,” he said with no particular inflection when she walked in.
And there it was again. The hint of fire in his gaze—
But on the heels of that answering surge of heat inside her, all she could feel in return was that bright surge of guilt that settled on her like a too-warm blanket.
Because unless she was mistaken, and she was rarely mistaken about the people she’d taken the time to study, Leontina was fairly certain that this man was under the impression that he had seduced her that night.
That he had somehow taken advantage of her innocence—or why else would he have mentioned her virginity the way he had?
What she’d discovered was that it turned out that it was one thing to plot and scheme in theory.
It was another thing to look directly into the face of the man she’d trapped into this situation, whose child she could feel like an insistent weight in her belly, and understand that in this scenario she was nothing but the sort of liar she’d gone to such pains to escape from.
And would remain a liar, she thought as she took her seat and did her best not to pull at the neckline of her dress. It wasn’t even particularly revealing, but there was something about the way Pau’s cool gaze moved over her flesh. It made her whole body seem to shimmer.
Tonight, like every night so far, they sat at a perfectly set table under an umbrella of exquisite politeness.
“How was your day?” she found herself asking, because surely that was the sort of thing a person ought to ask. How would she know? She’d spent most forced meals with her family trying to disappear into her chair.
“Quite pleasant,” Pau replied.
He did not elaborate.
They then ate in silence, until it clearly dawned on him that to remain polite, he would have to take a turn at saying something.
“You will have to tell me why it is that you chose that particular car for your journey,” he said.
She looked up at him and found a certain assessing look on his face.
“A 1957 Ferrari 335 S Spider Scaglietti. A rare treasure.”
When she only gazed back at him in incomprehension, because the car was one of her father’s toys—a red convertible like any number of red convertibles her father had scattered around the globe, because apparently he liked a red convertible—Pau’s brow lifted.
“I believe only four were ever made.” He sounded as if he was displeased—or perhaps it was disappointed—that she didn’t know this.
“I would love to tell you that there’s a story about that car,” she told him with an involuntary laugh, because imagine having stories about cars.
“Something I could pretend was casual and yet you could somehow dive beneath the surface and see me for who I really am, perhaps? But alas, I grabbed the first pair of keys I could find and drove here in the car they went with. There was very little choice involved.”
“That appears to be a defining feature in your life,” Pau said. Mildly.
So very mildly that it took Leontina longer than it should have to understand that he’d struck a blow. She felt the impact of it before she fully comprehended it.
“Are you suggesting that I don’t make my own choices in life?” she asked when she understood why it was she felt hollow, suddenly. She blinked, then focused on him. “Do you think that you do?”
That was dangerous, evidently, because suddenly she could feel that danger right there in the room with them.
Tonight’s dining experience was all about wide-open doors that led out to the patio and looked out over the vineyards.
It was beautiful, but she couldn’t spare a glance at the reliably stunning landscape.
Not when Pau was eyeing her from across the table, that perfect face of his set into speculative lines and the tension in the room so intense now that she could feel all the fine hairs on her arms stand on end.
“Surely you’re joking,” he said after a moment, though if he thought so, he certainly didn’t indicate that he found her at all amusing.
“I feel certain you know who I am, Leontina, and what I have accomplished in this life. No one has ever suggested that I somehow lack the ability to control my own destiny.”
That should have been the end of it. She could see that he wanted it to be, that the way his words landed—curt and certain—should have silenced her immediately. But she had been silent a very long time already, hadn’t she?
It suddenly seemed to her that if she ceded her voice here, in this new place that promised a new life, than she might as well have stayed behind at the castle and let Umberto do with her what he would.
An unacceptable end, so Leontina waved a hand to the view outside and then took in the old monastery that stood all around them.
“This land controls you as surely as my father controls me,” she told him matter-of-factly.
“It’s the Calixto family legacy and it controls your destiny no matter what choices you do or do not make.
It is no different for me, though I do not get the opportunity to preen about in boardrooms talking in secret corporate code words that make other men think I’m a profound genius in all I do. ”
Pau seemed to…expand, though she could see with her own eyes that he did not actually move. He stayed where he was, sitting in his seat across the table from her, those long, blunt-edged fingers of his tapping against the stem of his wineglass.
“That’s quite an indictment, Leontina. And I can only assume you’re speaking of your father when you speak of preening.” His expression shifted slightly. “Or perhaps your brother. What I know is that you cannot possibly think you are describing me.”
No one had offered her wine, which she knew was in deference to her pregnancy, but Leontina found it somehow emblematic of this entire experience. She was sitting on the grounds of one of the most famous and widely celebrated vineyards in the world. With a glass of sparkling water.
Those were the choices that she made.
“I was never given the opportunity to express myself or my feelings about my family legacy through universities or boardrooms,” she told him, and was proud of how even her voice sounded when she felt so ragged inside.
“What’s expected of me is my obedience. But I’ll be honest with you.
I don’t see a whole lot of difference between your situation and mine. ”
He didn’t speak. She wasn’t sure he moved, and yet she was certain she could see his resistance to that notion as if it was written all over him.
In bold print.
She kept going. “Here we both are, about to marry a near-stranger almost entirely because our legacies demand it. No shirking of responsibilities for us. I might be running from less pleasant options, I grant you. But the only thing that’s changed in my life is that, three months ago, I did in fact make a choice.
” She lifted her shoulder and then dropped it.
“I suppose we could say that really, I’m the only one who made any choices here. ”
And until she saw a flash of something that looked a good deal like temper move over his beautiful face, she didn’t realize that this was what she wanted from him.
She wanted to see behind his cool, closed-down exterior.
Because she was starting to think that all those images she still had in her head of what had happened between them that night were a dream.
If she couldn’t feel the baby she carried inside her, Leontina would be certain she’d imagined the whole thing.
She held her breath, thinking that he would explode at her temerity, and wondering why she was dancing so close to telling him truths she knew full well she should keep to herself—
But instead, he merely inclined his head. He took a sip of his wine.
And it was as if nothing had happened. As if there had been no intensity, no flash of anything, no wild sensation all over that had made her skin prickle.
As if she’d imagined all that, too.