CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER FIVE
Irinka told herself that one small, inconsequential slip didn’t have to mean anything.
Zago had stayed in her room that night because neither one of them seemed able to move. They had slept together in that tiny, narrow bed and that had done her no good. She could admit that much. It was too much like all those dreams she’d had, except in a narrow bed like that there was no possibility that every part of her was not touching every part of him.
His scent was the only thing she could smell. He was every breath she took.
She slept and dreamed of him, woke and he was still there, and then it was so easy to simply turn in her sleep and meet him again. And feel him move deep inside of her.
And she had forgotten, that first time, that he really was that big. Long and thick and so hard it made her melt just thinking of it. But that did not mean she needed to slam herself onto him again and again in a kind of desperation that felt like the sharper edge of need.
In any case, he did not seem inclined to allow it.
So even in the dark, half-asleep in the middle of the night, he took his time. He moved his fingers through her slippery heat, making her bite down hard on his shoulder as she burst into flame, then shook all over him.
Only then did he find her molten core and push in, deep.
Only then did he set them both afire until, once again, there was little left of them but ash.
When Irinka woke again, it was morning. The very early morning, and her alarm was going off, and part of her thought that being with Zago was simply a dream. That same dream that she always had.
The dream that had taken her too long to wake up from, even when she’d limped back to England that summer, soft and bruised from the force of all those terrible emotions. Just as her mother had always warned her. She had slept on the floor for months to toughen herself up.
To make sure she would never be soft like that again.
But when she sat up, she could feel him all over her body. She was sore in a very specific, deeply satisfying way that made every nerve in her body feel more alive than she had in ages.
Her tiny little room was empty but she was naked in her bed, when Irinka never slept naked. And his shirt was one of the items of clothing strewn about on the floor.
Just in case she intended to keep telling herself she’d dreamed it all.
She went and picked up his shirt, betraying herself entirely when she held it to her face, breathing him in once more.
“Like a bloody addict,” she muttered to herself.
Not that thinking that stopped her.
But time was moving along and so she made herself head down the hall to the shower just the same, having learned quickly enough that if she set her alarm just a half hour earlier than everyone else’s, she could take her time. Today, she needed it.
And by the time she emerged from all that hot water, she was resolute once more.
There was no denying that she and Zago had chemistry. There was a part of her that was grateful to discover that they still did, that she hadn’t been quite so foolish a girl as she liked to remember when she thought of that summer. If anything, that chemistry was even stronger now than it had been then.
But Chemistry is what makes bombs, Roksana liked to say.
And so Irinka did not go and find him, despite the minor ruckus in her body that urged her to do just that. Instead, she marched herself back down to the kitchen and went back to work.
She worked all day, the way she always did here. And while she had certainly enjoyed needling Zago about the mortification of her flesh , such as it was, the truth was that there really was something about this work that she liked.
Irinka was fully aware that part of her ability to enjoy it was because this wasn’t actually her life. She was not doomed to scrub floors and steps and clean some rich man’s antiques forever. And she knew herself well enough to know that if it had been her life, she would have been far less enamored of it.
But as a break from her life, it was amazing how satisfying it was. She was given concrete tasks and all she had to do was complete them. And when she was finished, she had either achieved what she’d been asked to do or she had not. There was no wiggle room—something was either dusted or dirty. There was no intense problem-solving. No inhabiting roles and gauging every room she walked into so that she could adjust her performance accordingly, and quickly.
No one in this house expected her to be anything but what she was: il padrone ’s one-time lover back here playing Cinderella games.
It was remarkably freeing.
So much so that it was causing her to think about her life back in London in a way she hadn’t in years. To ask herself if what she was doing was sustainable, especially now that all of her friends had found happiness with their new loves in ways that Irinka applauded—for them—but certainly did not understand.
Because the changes her friends had gone through lately raised an interesting question that she kept finding herself pondering as she scrubbed and dusted and polished. She was the one who had made a great many of the contacts that had kept His Girl Friday solvent all these years. But if all of her friends were set for life now, and could work not to survive, but to please themselves…was it necessary for Irinka to continue her work, too?
Did she do it because she liked it? Or because the agency needed it?
Or maybe, something in her whispered, it has a bit more to do with the horrible wealthy man who treated your mother—and you—like actual rubbish to be tossed aside in the street, and you thought you might as well go in where smarter heads might fear to tread and help cut a bit of that waste removal off at the pass?
She couldn’t answer that—or she didn’t want to, because what did that say about her and her childhood trauma, how embarrassing that she’d never thought about that before—so while she mulled it all over she let the housework soothe her. On her lunch break she huddled at the back of the palazzo near the narrower canal used for deliveries and frowned out at the water and the steep sides of ancient buildings that rose all around. There were no walkways here, only steep sides and no boats, or she might have felt honor bound to attempt an escape no matter how soothing it was to make glass gleam.
Irinka was not foolish enough to tell her friends any of these things. They would all be on the next plane, rushing to her rescue, because they would assume that she had suffered some kind of head injury if she was extolling the virtues of being a domestic servant.
And she did not need rescuing. She never had.
This is all very mysterious, Auggie pointed out in the text chain later that night. Irinka, have you moved to Venice forever? Since when do you keep secrets from us?
I always keep secrets from you, Irinka replied. This you know.
I thought the entire point of Irinka was that she’s endlessly and needlessly secretive, Lynna agreed.
Secrets, Maude chimed in, are like walled gardens.
Irinka stared at that text, baffled. And also flooded with the usual surge of affection she felt for Maude and her gardens.
Yes, she texted back. Exactly that.
And she wasn’t particularly surprised when her door opened once again, on the other side of midnight.
“Some people knock and wait to be invited in,” she pointed out.
“Some people lock their door,” Zago replied.
This time he simply crossed to the bed and climbed into it. And she turned to him without any further words and slowly, carefully, recklessly they pulled each other into pieces.
And this went on, one week into the next.
Until one night, as they lay there tangled into their usual knot, panting into the crooks of each other’s necks, he shifted so he could look down at her.
“I think I’ve had enough of this,” he said.
“That’s a crying shame,” Irinka murmured. She moved her hips sinuously and smiled when his eyes went blank, because she could feel him harden inside of her. “I’ll miss this.”
“That is not at all what I mean,” Zago replied in that dark way that thrilled her, because she could feel it in her bones.
He stood then, pulled on the trousers he’d worn here only to toss them off upon arrival, and then picked her up. He did not bother to cover her. And Irinka couldn’t decide if she was startled, horrified, or wildly entertained when he simply walked out of her room and carried her through the house.
The palazzo was quiet all around them, but those famous paintings on the walls seemed to look askance at her, no doubt as taken aback as she was.
Zago carried her in no great hurry through the grand palace until he reached his own suite and then installed her in his bed.
Where she hadn’t been since that summer, but that didn’t bear thinking about just then.
“But il padrone ,” Irinka said, smirking at him, “I am but a servant girl.”
“I wish you were,” he growled at her. “I wish you were anything that simple.”
He then demonstrated his feelings on the topic by tying her to the bedposts, because there, in his bedchamber, no one would hear her when she screamed out her pleasure.
So she did.
In the morning she woke to find the light streaming in, which meant that it was late. She sat up in a rush, then froze.
Because Zago was there, lounging in the sitting area near the great fireplace. There was no fire at this time of year, and she thought that was a pity, because even during the stifling-hot summer she’d spent here she’d wished for one.
Though she supposed they’d made their own.
He did not look up from the newspaper that he was reading with a skeptical look on his face. “How nice of you to join us this morning.”
“You have made me unpardonably late for my duties,” she said. “The staff will be in an uproar.”
“They are far too well trained for that,” Zago said. He took his time setting the paper aside. And then gazed at her. “I’m sorry to tell you that your tenure as a housemaid has come to an end, Irinka.”
He was so beautiful that he made her throat hurt. She could feel a lump forming there, and an ache in her ribs, because something about this man made her feel blurry all over.
As if, given half a chance, she would throw herself into him and disappear.
Three years ago the prospect had terrified her.
She wasn’t sure why it was that this time around she could see something almost tempting about such a freefall.
“So it’s the dungeons for me, then?” And she really did try to keep her voice light.
“I cannot deny that I’ve enjoyed these weeks,” Zago said, in that deliberate way he had. Yet his amber eyes had that gleam. And she could feel something prickle all over her skin, some kind of warning. “But then, this has always been the problem, has it not? Three years ago I assumed that the only way to contain this was to formalize it. You disagreed.”
She actually laughed at that, because it was so unexpected. Like a sucker punch. “How funny.” Irinka did not think it was funny at all, but still she kept laughing. “That is not how I remember it.”
He had always been so good at this, she thought now. He could sit there as if someone was painting his portrait, a picture of dark masculine serenity, because that was what most people saw.
When all she could see was that simmering fury right there beneath the surface.
“What would you call it?” he asked, in a tone that suggested he was attempting to be reasonable. For her sake. As a gift.
It set her teeth on edge, but then, it was likely meant to.
“I don’t see any point in talking about this,” she said quietly, instead of succumbing to the lure of indignance. But he only looked at her, one arrogant brow raised high. And she had no doubt that he would keep her here, naked in his bed, until she had the conversation he thought they ought to have. That being the case, she decided there was no point in arguing. Better to fight with a weapon she had, she’d always thought. “If that’s your recollection, there’s no point arguing about it. Call it whatever you like.”
That amber gaze of his was searing, then. “I am sorry that it is still such a burden to you to have a simple conversation. Three years have passed from the night you ran off without a backward glance. How silly of me to imagine that some maturity might have occurred in the meantime.”
He intended that to be a blow, she could see that. And it was. She felt her temper surge in response, but she tamped it down. “If you think I am a silly little fool of a girl, the way you did back then, what purpose is there in having this conversation?” When he only glared back at her, she smiled wide, though it made her lips hurt. “I’ve never denied the chemistry between us. I was as overwhelmed by it as you were. But surely you understand that it was toxic.”
“What I recall is that you told me you loved me, Irinka,” he said, in that intense, low voice of his. “And that it was a lie.”
The unfairness of that swept through her like some kind of dark tide.
It was a wonder that she stayed where she was, sitting up in his bed—the very same bed where she had lost her virginity to this man and experimented with sensuality and sex, love, and longing for the whole of that breathless, airless summer. He had taught her so much pleasure, so much joy, so much despair. She had felt something like skinless in his presence, so attuned to his every move, his every whisper, his every thought.
It was right here in this bed where she had learned that despite all of her mother’s teachings over the years, she was actually fully capable of the deepest, wildest emotions.
It was also here, in this bed, where she had come to understand that if she did not leave this place and this man, she would combust . And there would be nothing left of her but ash.
And everything she’d ever been taught about the ways foolish women lost themselves in powerful men would have been for naught.
Even if she’d toyed with the idea, back then, that somehow she might be able to handle involving her heart the way Roksana had sternly counseled her never, ever to do. Not ever.
She could remember the exquisite grief of that summer vividly, knowing that she had only so much time before she would lose herself to the black hole of this passion that she knew even then could only eat them both alive.
Because that was what a passion like that did. Irinka was the result of such a passion herself, no matter what vile things the Duke liked to claim in the aftermath. She had known better.
But oh, how she had loved him. As well as she could, for as long as she could.
“You know perfectly well that it was no lie,” she said now, and it was a grueling sort of effort not to give in to the urge to shout at him. He wanted that, she knew. Because it proved that what he said about her was true and it wasn’t . “What you won’t accept is that there was no way to control this. No matter how hard you tried. Making me into some perfect Venetian housewife couldn’t have changed that.”
“Baldisseras are not housewives,” he retorted with a silken fury. “But even if they were, I fail to see the issue. I thought you took great pleasure in these roles you play.”
“I might enjoy playing a role, it’s true.” And this time, the way her temper rose was different. It wasn’t a combustible fire, or any kind of explosion. It was a slow kind of simmering thing. She didn’t think it would eat her alive—she thought it might scald her if she didn’t let it out. “What about you, Zago? No matter what act I put on, I always know the difference between the stage and me. Can you say the same?”
He stood then, though he did not move any closer. Not yet. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Don’t you?” She let her head tip to one side, but she didn’t look away from him. “You hide away here in this half-ruined palace in a sinking city, telling yourself that what you’re doing is building out your family’s legacy. You can never measure up to the things your father claimed were required of the heir to all this because he made them impossible on purpose. Impossible duties. Unacceptable responsibilities. The weight of all that history and a moral code he did not live up to himself. And yet you can never make up for what your mother—”
“If I were you,” Zago said, very, very quietly, “I would not speak about my mother.”
“Why not?” Irinka asked him. Or dared him. “Isn’t she the real reason this house is so haunted? Isn’t she the reason that your father all but abandoned his own children? Why he decided that he could lose himself in your family’s illustrious past, making up wilder and wilder stories as to why it was that he would need to live forever and—”
“I warned you.”
Zago was moving then, crossing the room swiftly until he was there at the bedside. And so Irinka moved too, meeting him. Going up on her knees so that they were face-to-face.
So that he would see that this time she had no intention of backing down.
“You were the one who thought it sounded like a fine idea to tear into our past this morning,” she pointed out. “Or is it only my past that you think needs interrogation?”
“Your past is complicated, is it not?” His voice was like ice, his eyes like chips of obsidian. “It is no wonder you walk around with a chip on your shoulder. You have been forced to carry the shame of your parents’ affair, forced to answer their sins, all your life.”
“I spent almost no time at all thinking about my parents’ affair,” Irinka said with a laugh that was not forced, exactly—but was also not precisely organic . “My mother has had a great many affairs, as it happens. I spent time considering precisely none of them.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“That’s all right,” she replied, and her voice was something like soft now. Something like it, anyway. “Shame requires secrets. When a secret shame is in every paper, there’s actually a ceiling on it. There is no further shame once that ceiling has been met.” Irinka took a breath, and said the rest of it. “I’m not sure the same thing can be said about guilt. Especially the misplaced guilt of a son who thought he should have saved everyone in this family, but couldn’t.”
Including your sister, she wanted to say, but didn’t quite dare.
She could see from the look on his face that he wanted to put his hands on her. There was a part of her that wanted that, too. Because maybe he’d forgotten this, in their years apart from each other. It wasn’t that they hadn’t talked the last time, it was that they hadn’t had their discussions in words back then.
It had all been heat and disaster, wildfires and regrets.
Maybe it made it easier to mischaracterize people.
But he did not touch her then, despite the temper and heat in his dark amber gaze. And she couldn’t tell if she wanted to celebrate him for that or mourn it.
“My mother was not like yours,” he told her after a moment, all that old pain in his voice. And Irinka found herself holding her breath, wondering if he was actually going to talk about something she had only ever read about in anodyne news articles and taut little paragraphs of snide speculation. “She was a fragile, emotional creature. She was raised for sunlight and ballrooms, laughter and parties. And my father may have wished to grant her those things at some point, but he was a man burdened by his obsessions.”
“I hesitate to point out that such a burden runs in your family,” she said. “And in your case, involves kidnap.”
She would not have dared to say something like that to him three years ago.
His eyes blazed. “I’ve talked to every servant who was in this house back then,” he told her. “I have made it clear that it was only their honesty I was looking for, to gain some kind of perspective on events that occurred before my birth. So that I could better understand what happened later.”
“You don’t have to dig this up,” she said then, because it hurt, and that was the part that she’d forgotten. That when this man hurt, she did, too. It was so unfair. And it made everything else that much harder.
“Venice is a city of graves,” Zago told her darkly. “We float upon our ancestors and sink, in time, to meet them. The veil between these things is cracked, eroded, washed away. And my mother was not made to live in the in-between.” His jaw worked. “Over time, she grew sadder, and I do not think there was any cure for it. But I also think that neither she nor my father thought to look for one.”
There was no part of Irinka that wanted to have this conversation any longer. But she couldn’t seem to stop herself from merely…kneeling there. Sitting back on her heels, studying his face, trying to understand him at last.
She couldn’t pretend that wasn’t what she was doing.
“And this is never something I would say to my sister,” Zago told her, gruffly, “but it is a certainty that our mother did not recover after giving birth to her. She was already frail and a shadow of herself, and then…”
He trailed off and shook his head, his shoulders stiff as if even this was a responsibility he carried.
“Zago.” Irinka said his name deliberately. She interlaced her fingers before her and held his gaze as best she could. “I didn’t bring her up because I was trying to hurt you.”
“Why not?” he threw back at her. “I should have expected it.”
That felt like a low blow, so low it took her breath away. “Because I’m so terrible?”
“Because I did it first.”
And that emboldened her, somehow. “I only meant that the way you look at what happened between us before doesn’t take into account that, perhaps, neither one of us is well-equipped to handle that much emotion. That much…”
But she had never known what to call this. How to quantify it.
“Is that why you went out and became who you became?” Zago asked, quieter now. But that fire in his gaze still burned. “Did you really believe— do you really believe—that spending your life breaking up relationships for these cowardly men who cannot do it themselves was preferable to marrying me?”
She had not expected him to say it. Sometimes she thought she had imagined that part, there at the bitter end.
Sometimes it was easier to think she must have.
“Zago—”
His gaze gave her no quarter, then. “Or is it that you thought that marrying into this family was a death sentence?”
And she must have known that he would go there. Wasn’t that where this conversation had always been heading? Wasn’t this why they’d avoided it in the past?
Because Zago kept going. “Just as it was for my mother when she took her own life.”