‘I know what you said.’
His voice was accented. Thick with spiced consonants and mystery. He drummed his fingers—long fingers, with neat nails and a sprinkling of hair over the knuckles—on the arm of his chair.
‘It’s late. Would you like a coffee? Something stronger?’
Emmeline shook her head and her hair, which was long and lay flat down her back, moved a little, like a shimmering curtain. ‘I’m fine.’
He compressed his lips and stood, moving across the room with a stride that spoke of raw, feral power. She watched as he took the glass lid off a decanter and tilted it, filling a round highball tumbler with amber liquid. He threw at least half of it back in one go and then spun the glass in his hand, his fingers moving easily around its circumference as he rotated it purposefully.
‘I know this all seems crazy...’ Emmeline murmured, her eyes large as they found his.
The force of meeting his gaze startled her and she looked away again just as quickly.
His lips curled in an expression of derisive acknowledgement. ‘Un po,’ he agreed. ‘A little.’
‘The thing is, I don’t want to upset my father. I’ve never been able to bear the idea of hurting him.’
Her eyes flicked to his again, and this time she held his gaze, forcing herself to be brave. If she wanted this man to be part of her plan, her bid for freedom, then she needed him to know she wasn’t afraid. Even though the charcoal depths of his eyes made her stomach flip and churn, she kept her courage.
‘Since my mother died he’s wrapped me up in cotton wool. And I’ve let him.’
She bit down into her lower lip. Contrary to his first impression, it was a full, pleasingly shaped lip, Pietro realised distractedly, before throwing back another measure of Scotch.
Emmeline’s sigh was a soft exhalation. ‘I’ve felt for years that I should assert myself more. That I should insist on the freedoms and privileges that any other person my age would have.’
‘So? Why have you not?’
For Pietro’s part, the very idea of Emmeline’s rarefied existence was abhorrent. Virtually from infancy he had bucked against restraint of any kind. He had always wanted more of everything—particularly independence and maturity.
‘It’s hard to explain.’ Even to herself!
She had struggled for years to come to terms with the life she was leading—choosing to lead, in many ways.
‘After Mom’s suicide he fell apart. Keeping me safe, knowing I was protected—it became an obsession for him. I couldn’t bear to see him hurt again like he was when she died.’
Pietro froze, his body stiff, his expression unknowingly wary. The expression in Emmeline’s face touched something deep inside him, tilting him way off balance.
‘Yes,’ she said, answering his unspoken question, interpreting his silence only as surprise. ‘I do know how she died.’
Her face drained of colour and she crossed her slender legs in the opposite direction, her hands neatly clasped in her lap.
‘Your father went to great lengths to...to protect you from the truth.’
‘Yes.’ Her smile was twisted, lop-sided. ‘I just told you—protecting me from everything has become somewhat of an obsession to him.’
When had Emmeline come to realise that her father’s protection was hurting her? That his well-intentioned benevolence was making her miss out on so much in life?
‘How did you find out?’
The gravelled question dragged her back to their conversation, and to a dark time in her life that she tried her hardest not to think about.
‘I was fifteen—not five,’ she said with a lift of her shoulders, her expression carefully neutral. ‘He wrapped me up as best he could, but I still went to school and kids can be pretty brutal. She drove into a tree, sure—but it was no accident.’
Her eyes showed all the emotion that her face was concealing. Perhaps under normal circumstances he might have comforted her. But these weren’t normal circumstances and she wasn’t a normal woman. She was to be his bride, if he agreed to go along with this.
As if he had any choice! The loyalty and affection he felt for Col, combined with the older man’s terminal diagnosis, presented him with a black and white scenario.
‘I don’t think he ever got over losing her, and he’s terrified of something happening to me. As much as this all seems crazy, I can see why he feels as he does.’ She cleared her throat. This next part was where she really had to be strong. ‘So, yes. I think we should get married.’
The laugh that escaped his lips was a short, sharp sound of reproach. ‘You don’t think I’m the kind of man who’d like to ask that question myself?’
‘Oh...’
Her eyes narrowed speculatively and there was a direct confidence in her gaze that unsettled him slightly.
‘I think you’re the kind of man who has no intention of asking that question ever. Of anyone.’ She cleared her throat again. ‘If the gossip pages are to be believed, you’re more interested in installing a revolving door to your bedroom than settling down.’
His smile was laced with icy disdain. ‘Is that so?’
‘Your...exploits are hardly a tightly guarded secret.’
She bit down on her lip again, her eyes dropping to the floor. The lighting was dim, but he could see the flush of pink in her cheeks.
‘No,’ he agreed softly.
The word should have been a warning, but Emmeline had no experience with men at all. And definitely not with men like Pietro Morelli.
‘I don’t propose you stop...um...that...’ She waved a hand in the air, the dainty bangles she wore jingling like windchimes on the eve of a storm.
‘Don’t you? My, my—what an accommodating wife you’ll be.’
‘I won’t really be your wife,’ she pointed out quickly. ‘I mean, we’ll be married, but it will be just a means to an end. I imagine we can live perfectly separate lives.’
She tilted her head to the side thoughtfully, recalling the details she’d seen of his sprawling mansion on the outskirts of Rome.
‘Your house is enormous. We’ll probably hardly see one another.’
He rubbed a hand over his stubbled chin, somewhat mollified by her realism in the face of such a ludicrous suggestion. At least she wasn’t getting carried away with fairy tale fantasies, imagining herself as a Disney princess and he as her long-awaited Prince Charming.
‘And that wouldn’t bother you?’ he drawled, his eyes raking over her from the top of her bent head to the curved body and crossed legs.
She was the picture of boring, high-society America. No fashion, no sense of style or personality—just a beige trouser suit with a cream blouse and a pearl choker wrapped around her slender, pale neck. Why would any twenty-two-year-old choose to style themselves in such a fashion?
‘Of course not,’ she said, the words showing her surprise. ‘I just told you—it wouldn’t be a real marriage. My father will be comforted by knowing that we’re married—he’s so old-fashioned—but I don’t think he expects it to be some great big love-match. It’s a dynastic marriage, pure and simple.’
‘A dynastic marriage?’ he heard himself repeat.
‘Yes. It’s hard for people like us to settle down. To meet a person who’s interested in us rather than our fortunes.’
She