No detail seemed too small to be spared a remark.
But the focus of her attention had been the bed. She’d stood, unmoving, staring at it in silence, a smile playing about her full lips until Ellie had wanted to scream.
She’d said at last, ‘I am trying to imagine you in the act of surrender on this bed, but strangely I find it quite impossible. You still look so innocent—so sadly untouched, it makes me wonder if he has ever taken the trouble to consummate the marriage. He will have to do so eventually, naturalmente,’ she continued musingly. ‘It is his duty to his family to have a son, as I am sure Contessa Cosima has told him, so you can be of use for that, if nothing else. I wonder what has been holding him back? Maybe he still thinks of what might have been—with me.’
Ellie forced herself to meet Silvia’s mocking gaze. To speak levelly, ‘Why don’t you ask him?’
The smile widened, and became laughter. ‘I shall not have to, Elena mia. He will tell me himself soon enough.’
She’d gone to the door, then suddenly paused and walked back, bending to run a caressing hand across the magnificence of the bedcover.
Her voice had been quiet but very distinct. ‘It isn’t over yet, cara. You have to understand that. Because I still want him. And I shall have him, just as I would have done that night. Except he had to be punished. But now I think he has suffered enough—don’t you?’
And she had smiled again and left, hips swaying in her red dress, her hair a golden coronet in the late afternoon sun, while Ellie followed, numb with disbelief and some other emotions not quite so easily defined.
Now looking at the bed, seeing again Silvia’s possessive fingers stroking its cover as if they were someone’s skin, she felt as if she’d been somehow coated in slime. And, for a moment, terribly afraid—as if the sun had gone out forever, leaving her in darkness.
Oh come on, she adjured herself impatiently. You’ve just had an unpleasant hour or so, and it’s thrown you because your own cousin’s become someone you only thought you knew.
But for the moment at least, she found she did not want to lie down on the bed, and having tried and failed to get comfortable on the chaise longue, she decided to attempt a different ploy.
She walked into the bathroom, shedding her clothes as she went, and turned on the shower, gratefully allowing its powerful cascade to stream over her, washing away the foam from the scented gel she’d applied to her skin and with it some of the tensions and sense of unease left in Silvia’s wake. And, if she was honest, some of the pain too.
Some, but not all, she thought as she stepped dripping out of the cubicle, reaching blindly for a towel.
Only to find herself being firmly enveloped in a bath sheet, then carried, swaddled and helpless, back into the bedroom where she was set on her feet.
‘Buona sera, my sweet wife,’ Angelo said softly. ‘Does a shower cure a headache? I did not know that.’
Her lashes felt gummed together by the water, but she prised them open somehow staring up at him with mingled anger and shock.
‘What are you doing here?’ she demanded breathlessly, stepping back and trying not to trip on the trailing bath sheet. Trying, too, not to blush and failing miserably. ‘How dare you—walk in on me like that?’
The sculpted mouth curled. ‘And how dare you invite your sciattona of a cousin here in my absence?’ he retorted coldly. ‘Did you think I would welcome such a guest—or simply hope I would not find out? I am waiting to hear.’
She’d had a rotten afternoon and now this—this hideous embarrassment of knowing he’d seen her naked for a second time. She longed for the floor to open and swallow her, but it was clearly not going to do so, so she lifted her chin defiantly. ‘I do not have to explain myself to you, signore.’
‘Think again,’ he invited crisply.
‘Most of your family have visited us here.’ She was hardly able to believe she was saying these things. That she was being such an idiot. Almost as stupid, she thought mutinously, as he was arrogant. What right had he to—turn up out of the blue like this and challenge her? ‘Am I not allowed to see my only living relative in return?’
‘I am astonished you should wish to do so.’ The dark gaze narrowed. ‘Or do you have more in common than I thought? Did the pair of you perhaps work together to fool us all that night at Largossa?’
She wanted to slap him hard across the face for that, but her arms were confined inside her wrapping, and she dared not try to free them in case the beastly towel slipped or fell off altogether.
‘Believe whatever you want,’ she snapped. ‘It makes no difference to me. Now will you please go and allow me some privacy.’
‘Privacy?’ Angelo queried derisively. ‘Santa Madonna, what has there ever been in this marriage but privacy?’
She stiffened defensively. ‘I’m sorry if you’re not satisfied with your bargain.’
‘And you are?’ He looked her over in such a way that the sheltering towel seemed, disturbingly, no longer to exist. ‘Perhaps I no longer believe that.’
‘As I said before—think what you wish.’ She was beginning to shiver in the damp folds, and did not want him to conclude that she was trembling. That she feared him in any way.
But—there was something different about him today. His unannounced arrival in her room was not the kind of aloof, courteous behaviour to which she’d become accustomed. Besides, his whole attitude seemed edgy—challenging, and this change in him bewildered her. Made her—anxious.
She added in a low voice, ‘Angelo—please go.’
‘When I am ready,’ he said. ‘Also when you have told me the truth about your cousin. Why was she here? What did she want?’
The bald answer to that was—‘You,’ but Ellie hesitated to return it, instinct telling her that these were dangerous waters when she was already out of her depth.
She said quietly, ‘She wished to see the house. And, of course, to laugh at me.’
Oh God, she thought, I didn’t intend to say that.
His gaze sharpened. ‘For what reason?’
She swallowed. ‘Because I’m completely out of place here. And everyone must know this.’
He said slowly, ‘Elena, you are the Contessa Manzini. There is not a soul beneath this roof who does not regard you with affection and respect.’
Except yourself …
Dismissing the thought, Ellie bent her head. ‘How can you say that when they know—they all must know that we’re only pretending to be married.’ And Silvia in particular …
‘Forgive me, but I did not think you would be concerned.’ His voice was level. ‘Dopo tutto, you have never given that impression.’
She stared at the floor. ‘Perhaps it was today—seeing Silvia here—looking again at the portraits of the previous Contessas in the salotto and the dining room and seeing how beautiful they were, just as she is.’ She added bitterly, ‘How they would all have known how to behave—what was expected of them all the time—instead of being a fish out of water like me.’
The hardness of his mouth relaxed a little, and he spoke more gently. ‘Elena, let me assure you that you do not resemble any fish known to the mind of man.’
‘I’m being serious!’
‘I am glad to hear it, because it is time we spoke seriously.’
She still didn’t look at him. She said with faint breathlessness, ‘Is