Prince's Virgin In Venice

by Trish Morey

  She didn’t let her eyes shift from her target as Marcello, knowing it should be the groom who asked him, muttered an anxious, ‘I’d be honoured, of course.’

  ‘We’ll have to have the wedding in the cathedral in Andachstein, of course,’ Sirena said, as if Marcello hadn’t uttered a word, ‘and in spring. It’s so beautiful in Andachstein in spring. But where should we honeymoon? We have to start planning, Vittorio. It’s so exciting.’

  Her nails were raking the skin at the back of his neck, but if the woman thought she was stroking his senses into compliance she was very much mistaken.

  He put his hand over her forearm, pulling her hand away before he dropped it unceremoniously into what little space there was between them.

  ‘No, Sirena. What I meant was that this farce has gone on long enough. Can you for once accept that whatever our fathers might have schemed, whatever they promised you, and whatever fantasy you’ve been nurturing in your mind, it’s never going to happen. That is my promise to you.’

  ‘But Vittorio,’ she said, once again reaching out for him, with a note of hysteria in her voice this time. ‘You can’t be serious. You can’t mean that.’

  ‘How many times do I have to tell you before you accept the truth?’

  ‘The truth is you’re a playboy—everyone knows that. But you have to settle down some time.’

  ‘Maybe I do,’ he conceded, and it was the only concession he was prepared to make. ‘But when I settle down it won’t be with you.’

  She spun away in a clatter of beads. ‘You bastard!’ She turned her regal chin over one shoulder and glared at him, the rage in her eyes all hellfire and ice. ‘Go back and slum it with your little village slut, then. See if I care.’

  Finally the real Sirena had emerged. He sighed. What kind of man would want to hitch himself to that, no matter the packaging? ‘What you care or don’t care about is not my concern, Sirena. But, for the record, that’s exactly what I plan to do.’

  Watching Sirena storm off, her sandalled feet slapping hard on the marble floor, was one of the most satisfying yet exhausting moments of Vittorio’s life. Maybe she had finally got it through her head that there was never going to be a marriage between them. Dio, he was sick of this world of arranged marriages and false emotions.

  But right now he had more pressing needs. He needed to find Rosa. He’d been wrong to bring her here. He’d exposed her to the best and the worst aspects of his life. And he’d exposed her to the worst of himself, using her as cannon fodder to make a point to a woman he had no intention of marrying.

  What had he been thinking, inviting her here tonight? She deserved to be treated better than the way he had treated her. She’d been out of her depth—he’d known that from the start. She’d been overawed by the wealth and sumptuousness of this world she’d been given a glimpse of and yet she had handled herself supremely well, dealing with Sirena’s antagonism with a courage he hadn’t anticipated.

  He slapped Marcello on the back in acknowledgement of what he’d attempted and told him he’d be back soon.

  He didn’t want to contemplate the carnage if Sirena found Rosa before he did. He’d never forgive himself. He was already feeling ill at ease for taking advantage of Rosa’s circumstances the way he had. Serendipity, he’d called it. Serendipity nothing. He’d been out-and-out opportunistic. He’d charged Sirena with that same crime, and yet he was guilty of the charge himself. When he’d found Rosa he’d seen a decoy—a buffer for Sirena’s insistent attention.

  He should just take Rosa home, back to her dingy hotel and her humdrum life. Maybe she would be relieved to be back in her own world. Maybe she would see it as an escape. She should.

  He wandered from room to room, brushing aside the calls to him to stop and talk.

  He knew he should take her home. Except part of him didn’t want to let her go—not just yet. His final words to Sirena hadn’t been all bluff. Not when he thought about Rosa’s upturned face looking into his. He remembered the change in her expression, her laughter drying up, her lips slightly parted. He remembered the hitch in her breath and the sudden rise of her chest.

  He’d seen the way she’d gazed up into his eyes.

  Rosa had been the best part of his evening.

  He hated it that it had to end. And he had enough experience of the female to know that she didn’t want it to end just yet either.

  Eventually he found Rosa, surrounded by a group of guests he recognised—members of Sirena’s retinue, simpering men and women who were her ‘rent-a-court’, always sitting around waiting on her every word, waiting for a rare treat to be dispensed. Now they were formed around Rosa like some kind of Praetorian Guard, looking at Rosa as if she was the treat.

  Sirena’s work, no doubt. It had her fingerprints all over it.

  ‘Here you are,’ he said, barely able to keep the snarl from his voice as he surveyed the smug-looking group. ‘I’ve been looking everywhere for you.’

  She didn’t look pleased to see him. Her eyes didn’t meet his with relief, or with the delight he would have preferred. The brandy in her eyes was un-warmed. Non-committal. Even her body language had changed, her movements stiff and formal.

  ‘I’ve been making some new friends,’ she said.

  He glanced around at the six of them, all dressed the same—or rather, undressed the same. The men were bare-chested, wearing white kilts, blue and white striped headdresses and wide gold armbands. The women had the addition of a golden bralette.

  Cleopatra’s so-called friends. More like a guard of honour. And he knew that, like Sirena, they were capable of tearing an unsuspecting person to pieces. He wasn’t the only one who would be able to see her lack of sophistication and absence of guile. Rosa was like the first bright flare of a matchstick in a darkened room. She was all vulnerability in a world of weary cynicism.

  ‘I’m sorry to disappoint your new friends,’ he lied, eyeballing each and every one of their heavily kohled eyes, ‘but we’re leaving. I’m taking you home.’

  Rosa’s chin kicked up. ‘What if I’m not ready to go home? I know where I am now. I can find my own way.’

  ‘We can take you,’ one of her new friends offered, with a lean and hungry smile.

  ‘Yes,’ said another, his lips drawing hyena-like over his teeth as he took one of her hands. ‘Stay a little longer, Rosa. We’ll see that you get home.’

  ‘It’s up to you,’ Vittorio told her.

  There was no hiding the growl in his voice even as he had to force himself to back off—because if she didn’t want him he could hardly drag her out of here, no matter that his inner caveman was insisting he simply throw her over his shoulder and leave. She was a grown-up, with a mind of her own, and if she was foolish enough to choose them over her it would be on her own head.

  But still the idea sat uneasily with him.

  She looked from the group to Vittorio and he saw the indecision in her eyes, the brittle wall of resistance she’d erected around herself waver. And, like that moment by the bridge, when he’d seen her shoulders slump as she recognised the hopelessness of her situation, he could tell the moment she made a decision.

  ‘No,’ she said to the group with a smile of apology. ‘Thank you for your kind offer. But it’s late and I have to work tomorrow.’

  Vittorio grunted his approval while they pleaded with her to reconsider. So she’d witnessed what was in their eyes and decided he was the lesser of two evils? At least she had that much sense.

  But it occurred to him that he might have to rethink his plans for the evening. Things had changed in the balance between them. He’d thought she was learning to trust him, losing her skittishness, but something had happened in the time she’d been out of his sight. Something that had fractured the tentative bond that had been developing between them.

  It was too bad, but it was hardly the end of the world.
>
  Tomorrow he would return to Andachstein, a tiny coastal principality nestled between Italy and Slovenia. He had duties there. There was a film festival gala to attend and a new hospital wing to be opened, along with school visits to make—all part of his royal duties as heir. So he’d see Rosa safely home now, and then he’d head back to the family palazzo—the legacy of a match between the daughter of a Venetian aristocrat and one of Andachstein’s ancestral princes.

  No doubt his father would be waiting for the news he’d been wanting to hear for years. He was not going to be happy to hear there was none.

  ‘I’ll be fine now,’ she said, once they were out of the room. ‘I’ll find my own way home.’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Listen, Vittorio—’

  ‘No. You listen. If you think I’m going to let you loose in the fog-bound calles at this time of the morning, after half the city’s been partying all night, you’ve got another think coming. That lot upstairs aren’t the only ones who’d take advantage of a lone woman feeling her way home in the fog.’

  She swallowed, and he saw the kick of her throat even as her eyes flashed defiantly. He could tell she saw the sense in his words, even if she didn’t want to.

  ‘So I’m still stuck with you, then,’ she said.

  ‘So it would seem.’

  She turned her head away in resignation and they descended the staircase in silence, together but apart, the earlier warmth they’d shared having dissipated.

  His mood blackened with every step, returning him to that dark place he’d been earlier in the evening. It didn’t help that Rosa had lost the air of wonderment she’d arrived with. It didn’t help that she couldn’t find him a smile and that he had been relegated to mere chaperone—one that she was only putting up with under sufferance. It raised his hackles.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, maybe a little more brusquely than he’d have preferred, but then, he wasn’t in the mood for pleasantries. ‘Perhaps I shouldn’t have brought you here. I shouldn’t have invited you.’

  ‘Why shouldn’t you have invited me?’ she asked. ‘Because I don’t belong? Because I’m no better than a little village slut for you to slum it with?’

  ‘You heard. How much did you hear?’

  ‘I heard enough.’

  Vittorio wanted to slam his head against the nearest wall. As if it wasn’t enough that Sirena had subjected her to those poisoned barbs face to face, Rosa had heard what Sirena had said behind her back.

  ‘I didn’t call you that.’

  ‘I didn’t hear you deny it,’ she said, but she didn’t sound angry, as she had every right to. She sounded...disappointed.

  He could have explained that there would have been no point, that it wasn’t what he thought of her and that Sirena would have taken no notice, but she was right. He hadn’t made any attempt to deny or correct it.

  Dio. What a mess.

  * * *

  They collected their cloaks in silence, and only three words were playing over and over in Rosa’s mind.

  Little village slut.

  Stone-faced, Vittorio covered her shoulders with first her own cloak and then his cursed scented leather cloak. She hated the fact that it smelt so good now, and tried to slip away from beneath it.

  ‘I don’t need that.’

  But he persisted, like a father whose patience with his recalcitrant toddler was all but used up. ‘Yes, you do,’ he insisted, and he turned her towards him and did up the fancy clasp she’d had trouble undoing before.

  She looked everywhere but at him. And the moment he released her she turned away from his touch and his stony features, wishing she could so easily turn away from the warmth of his cloak and the promise it had given her.

  Instead, the evening had finished up a huge disappointment. It had been a rollercoaster of emotions from the start, from excitement to panic to despair to hope. Or a kind of hope. But now she could see that that hope had been like those strings of beads in the glamorous Sirena’s skirt, and that one pulled thread would have seen it fall apart and skitter away into a million irreconcilable parts.

  And now there was just the end to be negotiated.

  She took a deep breath. She’d had a night out. A fantasy night such as she could never have expected or afforded. She’d had an experience with which to reassure Chiara, when her friend apologised profusely about losing her in the crowds without her phone or ticket, as she expected she would.

  And she’d had a glimmer of something special. Of a man who looked like a warrior, a man who’d been chivalrous and generous enough to include her in his world, a man who simultaneously excited and frightened her, a man who made her insides curl when he looked at her as if she was something special.

  At least she imagined that was what he’d been thinking.

  She sighed. Soon she would be back home in the tiny basement apartment she shared with Chiara and this night would be just a memory.

  Little village slut.

  The words kept on circling in Rosa’s mind. It was true, she did come from a small village in the heel of Italy. A dot of a town, to be sure. But that was where the truth ended. And it was so unfair.

  ‘They’re only words,’ her brothers had told her when she’d been bullied at school. ‘Words can’t wound you.’

  She’d wanted to believe her brothers. Maybe she had for a time—except perhaps now, because the man she’d thought he was, the man she’d built up in her mind, had turned out to be somebody else. The man who had been a stranger to her, the man she’d thought was something else entirely, was a stranger still.

  ‘Where are we going?’ she asked, when Vittorio led her down the steps into the garden.

  ‘We’re going home by motorboat,’ he said, as he steered her to the big wooden doors that were opened for them onto the Grand Canal.

  Rosa shivered as the damp air surged in. She’d forgotten how very cold the fog was—although that didn’t make her want to be any more grateful for Vittorio’s cloak or want to tell him that he’d been right. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.

  A few steps below them a motorboat sat rocking on the lapping waters of the canal. Fog still clung low, swirling in the air and rendering the glow of lights to ghostly smudges.

  ‘Palazzo D’Marburg,’ he told the driver, handing her into the boat before bundling her into the covered interior.

  The motor chugged into life once they were seated, and the boat pulled away slowly into the canal, still moving slowly when it cleared the dock. It was so painfully slow that Rosa wished they had walked after all. The journey home would take for ever at this rate, and the interior of the cabin was already too small for the both of them. Too intimate. Vittorio took up too much of the space and sucked up the remaining oxygen in the cabin. Was it any wonder she was breathless?

  And meanwhile the man opposite her had turned to stone, his expression grim, his body language saying he was a man whose patience had worn thin and who was stoically waiting to be rid of her. Or a man who was sulking because she wasn’t falling victim to his charms any more.

  Well, she was waiting too—to be free of this warrior whose charms had long since expired.

  Maybe she should have stayed at the party. She’d been meeting people and having fun, hadn’t she? Okay, so she hadn’t liked the way a couple of them had looked at her enough to want them to take her home, but at least she’d been able to breathe there, and her heart hadn’t tripped over itself like it did every time this man so much as looked at her.

  She would have been perfectly all right if she’d stayed. And Marcello would have looked after her if he’d thought she was in any danger. Vittorio was such a drama queen.

  He chose that moment to shift in his seat, his big knee brushing against her leg, and she bristled in response. What was it about the man? He couldn’t move without making her not
ice. He took up so much space. He had such presence. He made her feel small. Insignificant.

  She sucked in air and, and as if it wasn’t bad enough that she had to put up with the scent of him, even the air now tasted of him.

  Suddenly it was all too much—the fog and the rocking and the cursed muffled silence. It was like being entombed with one of those Chinese stone warriors from the Terracotta Army she’d seen on display at a museum in Rome on a school visit. And she wasn’t ready to be entombed.

  She launched herself at the door that led to the small rear deck.

  ‘It’s too cold out there,’ he growled.

  ‘I don’t care!’ she flung back at him, shoving her way through the door.

  She had no choice. She had to get outside. She had to escape.

  The cold air hit her skin like a slap in the face, but at least the air outside didn’t taste of Vittorio and smell like Vittorio, and it wasn’t filled with the bulk of him. Finally she could breathe again. She gulped in great lungsful of it, letting it cleanse her senses even as she huddled her arms around her chest.

  Of course he followed her, as she’d known he would, standing beside her silently like a sentinel. She didn’t have to turn her head to know he was there. She could sense his presence. Feel his heat. Cursed man.

  The motorboat chugged and rocked its way slowly along the canal. It was other-worldly. The sounds and sights of the city had vanished. Items appeared suddenly out of the fog—a lamp on a post, another motorboat edging its way cautiously by—and then just as quickly were swallowed up again.

  And he was the most other worldly part of it all.

  A fantasy gone wrong.

  She searched through the fog, suddenly frantic, trying to find a reference point so that she could tell how long this trip would last. But there was nothing. Not a hint of where they were. No clue to how long she would be forced to endure this torture.

  Nothing but silence. Tension. And her utter disappointment with how this evening had ended when it had started out with such excitement. Such promise.