Chapter Thirteen #2
Lunch was a hideous ordeal. Tonia’s attentions to Sanzio became ever more blatant, her eyes constantly on him, lingering and provocative, her reminiscences of the time she had been with him uttered purringly, accompanied by throaty laughs.
If she’d put a sign over her head she couldn’t have been more obvious.
Even placid Edouard had started to look uncomfortable.
Pity for him meant that Eleanora manfully kept a neutral conversation going, while Tonia quite shamelessly flirted with Sanzio.
That, Eleanora could have endured. It was just Tonia trying to wind her up.
For herself she didn’t care—Tonia meant nothing to her.
But Sanzio—
As the meal progressed, Eleanora realised with growing, disbelieving dismay that the flirtation Tonia was pursuing with Sanzio was not being repulsed. Confusion filled her initially—then it changed. She could not tell herself Sanzio was only trying to deflect Tonia—he was doing the very opposite.
Encouraging her—
She felt her insides constrict. Why, why was Sanzio being like this?
Why was he capping one outrageous recollection of times he had once spent with her sister with yet another one?
Why had he refreshed her cocktail, and then poured her a full glass of wine as well?
Why was he giving every sign that being made the focus of her sister’s increasingly uninhibited attentions was something he actually enjoyed… welcomed? Why?
He was leading her on—she could see him doing it, but it made no sense. How could it?
Then, into her head came Tonia’s vicious taunts from that ugly meeting in Rome, that she could get Sanzio back any time she wanted.
‘All I have to do is snap my fingers for him!’
Cold pooled inside Eleanora. She had called Tonia’s claim garbage, fuelled by vanity and spleen, dismissing it out of hand. Any lures thrown out by Tonia, Sanzio would find only repellent.
But right now, he wasn’t, was he? He was letting Tonia make up to him, smiling as she did so.
More of Tonia’s vicious, mocking taunts crowded her head—that Sanzio’s whole purpose in confronting her with Eleanora looking so beautiful at the charity gala was simply to challenge Tonia to want to get him back, to pique her interest again.
And that Sanzio would spin me a line so I didn’t realise that was what he was after.
Now, as she watched Sanzio laugh at some salacious comment Tonia had just made to him, her sister’s sneer hit home.
Is that what he has done? Were all his protestations that she is toxic simply to blind me to him being set on getting his own back on Tonia for rejecting him, by challenging her to want him again?
Right now, in front of her very eyes—and her own husband’s—Tonia was hitting on Sanzio, impervious to her husband’s clear embarrassment, and certainly, from the taunting looks she was increasingly throwing at Eleanora, wanting to slam home her triumph in captivating Sanzio.
Who seemed perfectly happy to be captivated.
Going along with it openly.
But then the cold pooling inside Eleanora turned to ice—after all, why shouldn’t he? That very morning she’d made clear to him that she was expecting them to end their marriage shortly.
He’ll be free soon—I’ll be off his hands.
And then—
But she could not bear to think of more. It was too horrible. Too horrible to think that Tonia had been right, that Sanzio would welcome her wanting him back. Would want it too.
But what other reason could there be for Sanzio returning Tonia’s blatant come-ons as he was? She could think of none. Not a single one. Only the one staring at her.
She wants Sanzio back—and he wants it too.
Tonia’s threat was coming true right in front of her eyes.
She was snapping her fingers, and Sanzio was welcoming it.
* * *
Sanzio pushed back his chair. ‘OK, how about showing you what’s been done in the Palazzo?’ He smiled encouragingly at Tonia.
Things were going the way he wanted. There was turmoil in his head, but he was holding it on a tight rein. He was going to make the most of the opportunity that Tonia was presenting him with. Use it for his own purposes.
His glance went briefly to Edouard. The poor guy had looked increasingly uncomfortable…
bewildered, as Tonia had flirted so increasingly outrageously with his wife’s sister’s husband—her ex-fiancé, as Tonia had several times reminded him, as if that excused her behaviour.
Sanzio himself had encouraged it—for his own purposes, yes, but maybe, who knew, the thought had occurred to him at some point, it would serve another purpose too.
A bonus outcome. The dark glint in his eye intensified.
‘I can’t wait!’ Tonia replied now, getting to her feet. She was swaying slightly, and Sanzio wasn’t surprised, given the amount of alcohol she’d knocked back. Her inhibitions—not that she ever had any, he well knew—were well and truly zero. Which was just what he wanted.
The dark glint in his eye came again. Even darker now.
Tonia turned to her husband, who had politely also got to his feet.
‘Go and see the gardens with my baby sister!’ she declared imperiously.
‘And don’t hurry back!’ she laughed throatily, seizing Sanzio’s arm, clinging to him.
‘Come on, darling!’ She gave her throaty laugh again, lavishing an archly languished look on him.
Carefully, Sanzio unhooked her taloned hand, but smiled down at her. ‘Let’s go then,’ he said. He glanced at Eleanora. ‘You’ll show Edouard the gardens, won’t you?’ He kept his glance brief; he didn’t want to make eye contact. Tension was radiating from her. And dismay.
And that was just what he wanted too. Exactly what he wanted. For a moment, compunction smote him, then he crushed it.
She told me she was expecting us to divorce. All I’m doing now is showing her what happens next.
He guided Tonia off into the Palazzo. Wondering how brief Eleanora—and probably Edouard too, judging by his confused and anxious expression—would keep their tour of the gardens.
* * *
Eleanora did her best to be a good hostess, describing to Tonia’s hapless husband the work done on the Palazzo’s gardens, but it was agonisingly hard to do so. All she wanted to do was to run up to her bedroom and sob her heart out.
But what right had she to do so? Sanzio was not hers to be possessive of. Their marriage was ending—he would be a free agent again. She had thought better of him than to stoop to another man’s wife, but that was not the only thing she had wrong about him, was it?
I thought he was finished with Tonia—that he’d accepted her rejection, wanted nothing more to do with her.
When all along…
He was just waiting for her to show an interest in him again. An interest he himself had created by parading me in front of her, looking beautiful as Tonia had never dreamt I could look, infuriating her while Sanzio feigned an indifference to her—an indifference she can’t bear.
So Tonia had got her hapless husband to bring her here—to bring Sanzio to heel. Willingly to heel…
Misery consumed her, though she had no right to it. No right to anything. Above all—pain smote her heart like a hammer—no right to Sanzio.
No right to want him.
He wanted her sister instead.
Wants her, not me.
Always Tonia. Always her sister. Her voluptuous, seductive, irresistibly alluring sister, the way she always had been, always would be, so that Sanzio would always want her.
Never me.
That was the brutal, undeniable truth of it.
‘Shall we go back indoors? It may be cooler.’ Edouard’s voice penetrated Eleanora’s misery.
She blinked. Yes, despite the icy cold inside her, the sun was beating down on them, as pitiless as the truth she was having to face.
‘Yes, yes, of course,’ she replied. She didn’t want to go indoors, didn’t want to see her sister all over Sanzio. And Sanzio welcoming it.
But she led the way indoors all the same. Edouard, she registered dimly, was looking unhappy, and with part of her mind she pitied him. Perhaps for the first time he was seeing a side of his bride he had not seen before.
Or had he?