by Maisey Yates
“Don’t make the mistake of thinking that I’m some lost child you can save, Allegra. I saved myself. Grew into a man. And I grew hard. That is survival, and I do not regret it. However, it has made me the sort of man unsuitable to be a husband to a woman like you. It has made me the sort of man who should never be a deeply involved father to a vulnerable child. The best thing you could do is divorce me. The best thing you could do is divorce me and give our child a stepfather who can be the man that I can never be.”
“You want another man sharing my bed? You want another man raising your child?”
“What I want and what is right are two very different things.”
She studied him hard, her dark eyes seeing far too much. “Yes,” she said after a long moment. “I do believe that’s true. What you want is to hide. What is right is for you to let go of all of this and move on. Move on with me. Move on with our baby.”
“I will do what I must to give the child a name. I will do what I must to provide the dukedom with an heir.”
“But he’s more than that. He will be. That’s the simple truth of it, Cristian. You can try to distance yourself. You can think of it as nothing more than a theory right now. As nothing more than a carrier of your bloodline. But when push comes to shove, when the reality hits, you’re going to have to face the fact that it’s going to be a child. A little boy or little girl who will want their father.”
“Not when I’m the father they have.”
She shook her head. “You aren’t going to hurt them. You wouldn’t.”
“You don’t have to break bones to hurt somebody, Allegra. What would you think years of cold negligence will do? To you. To the baby.”
“You aren’t cold,” she said.
“That’s sex,” he said, his chest aching.
“But it’s where you tell the truth,” she said. “At least when you’re inside of me you’re honest about how you feel.”
“You have confused orgasm with emotion. A great many virgins have done it before you, so don’t be embarrassed about it.” He watched her respond to the words as though they were a slap. “I’m just really good in bed. It doesn’t mean that I care for you any more than I have cared for any other woman I’ve had flat on her back. And trust me, Allegra, there have been a great many of them. I might have been celibate for the past few years, but I was no monk prior to my first marriage.”
“Stop it,” she spat. “I am starting to think that you actually believe this. But I don’t. You’re making excuses and you’re calling them the truth. Throwing lies in front of honesty, and twisting it so that it’s hard to tell which is which. You have yourself fooled, Cristian. But you don’t have me fooled.”
Each and every word was like a crack from a whip, lashing his skin, breaking it open, making him bleed. He wished... He wished that what she was saying was true. That it was so easy. That all he had to do was decide to move forward, and it would be so. But he felt like he was in chains, and no matter how he struggled he couldn’t get free. And what sort of monster would bind a woman and child to a dungeon? They would have to meet him where he was, and he was in a place no one should ever have to go. He couldn’t do it. Not to her, not to their future child.
“No,” he said. “We will marry next week as planned. And when the baby is born we will divorce. We will not wait a moment after. He will be born within the bonds of wedlock, and that’s the end of the discussion. But as far as you and I are concerned, there is nothing. I will not touch you. I will not kiss you. And I will not go to your bed.”
“Cristian,” she said, his name on her lips a raw, wounded sound. “Please, don’t do this. You knew it was me. And I knew it was you. From the beginning. And that’s why... That’s why we couldn’t. Because we knew that this is where it would end. But it can be more. It can be. You just have to be brave enough.”
“Enough. I have had the bravery to get up in the morning with broken bones and face my father at the breakfast table. As a boy, I had that courage. If bravery were all it took then I would have been free a long time ago. But you want me to resurrect something inside of me that’s dead. It isn’t hiding. It’s gone. And I’m glad that it is. I have never once regretted it.” That lie burned. He regretted it now. More than she would ever know. “It is impossible. I have spoken. And the decision is made. You cannot force me to stay in a marriage I don’t want.”
“I wouldn’t want to,” she said, her words muted. She looked up at him, dark eyes full of tears. And he hoped that she would shed none of them. Because he wasn’t worthy of a single drop. “I don’t want to be with a man who doesn’t want me. Ecstatically. Unreservedly. I had that future placed in front of me once, and I won’t do it again.”
“Good. Then we have an agreement.” He turned away from her, each beat of his heart making it feel like it was cracking. “It is, perhaps, for the best that I have some business to see to in Paris.” He didn’t. It was a lie. But he would go to his Parisian apartment and grant the two of them some space. “I will return before the wedding. In the meantime, feel free to allow your mother to torture the details of the event to her heart’s content. It will make her happy.”
“Yes,” Allegra said, “it will make her happy.” The heavy implication that it would in no way make Allegra happy. But, then, he had always known he never could.
“Get dressed,” he said, his voice sounding rough to his own ears.
Something in her face changed then, infinitesimally. Barely recognizable. But he had a feeling he had made a mistake, and he didn’t know quite what it was.
She nodded once. “As you wish.”
And then, she set about obeying him. And he despised it.
In that moment, he saw that it was too late to extricate himself from Allegra’s life without destroying something in her. Because the Allegra that she had been would have argued with him. And now, she simply complied.
He had never longed for a fight more.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
IT WAS HER wedding day, and Allegra knew that she should feel something other than a thundering, sick dread in her chest. But there was nothing else. Nothing but pain, nothing but nausea. She could blame it on morning sickness, but it wasn’t that. She knew it wasn’t. It was heartbreak. It was the very thing she had been trying to protect herself from since the moment she had looked at Cristian and truly seen him.
She hadn’t managed to protect herself. She had tumbled headlong into an affair that was ill-fated. And as she looked at her wedding gown on the hanger, she wondered if, going back, she would make another decision if she could.
Being with him had changed her. Not in a surface way, in a bone-deep, indelible way that had shifted her cells, made her something else entirely. Something real.
She had a vague thought of that old story, The Velveteen Rabbit. Where the little rabbit had been loved until he was threadbare and worn thin. And only then had he been made real. There was supposed to be a lesson in that story that was encouraging, and she had always found it sad. That someone might love the color straight out of you, and only when you let that happen had you earned your value.
If that was the case, then she had passed that test with Cristian.
But, much like the story, it seemed that now she was a living, breathing creature, she would have to move on to an existence away from the one who had made her that way.
She tried to draw a deep breath, but found she was unable to. Her sadness was settled on her chest like a brick, heavy and uncompromising. She hated it. But there was nothing to be done.
She had to marry him. She had to marry him for the sake of their child. So that their child could inherit...what?
A father who had promised nothing but distance. To avoid a scandal she no longer cared about. To make sure he got a title and a castle that was reduced to nothing.
None of it had brought Cristian any happiness. Why were they acting as though it was necessary to give their child all of the same things that had never appeared to be more
than a millstone to the man who possessed them now?
Standing there looking at her wedding dress, fighting with the sickness in the pit of her stomach, she had no idea.
There was a soft knock on the door, and Allegra turned to see her brother standing there. “Are you ready?”
When she saw Renzo, she nearly burst into tears. She had been holding herself together, being strong as a way of proving to her mother and father that she stood by the decision she had made, because the truest part of the rant that Cristian had subjected her to before he’d flown to Paris last week was that she was most definitely trying to pretend that none of this had been a mistake, for her own pride if for no other reason.
But in front of Renzo, the person who had always supported her, the one person that she had known would love her no matter what, she felt like she might crumble.
“I’m not ready,” she said, indicating the shirt and pants she was still wearing, and her dress on the hanger.
“The wedding starts soon,” he said.
“I know.”
“Cristian is here. He has not run off, as you might have feared. He knows that I would hunt him to the ends of the earth, kill him and mount him on my wall.” There was a dark note in Renzo’s voice that left her in no doubt that he would do exactly that.
“There’s no need,” she said, trying to sound light. Airy.
“However,” Renzo continued, “if you were to walk away from him, I would guess that you had a reason. And I would not chase after you and drag you back.”
“Are you...suggesting that I jilt your best friend?”
“If you want to.”
“Want has nothing to do with any of this.”
“I don’t want him to hurt you,” Renzo said.
“It’s a bit late for that.”
“I feared as much.” He took a deep breath. “There is much expectation placed on you, Allegra. But what is your expectation for your own life?”
“I’m having a baby. I need to do what’s best for him.”
“I’ve always thought that that was ridiculous,” he said. “To pretend that a mother’s happiness has nothing to do with the happiness of her children. That she must be so self-sacrificial so that they’re well aware of what a burden they are to her. No, I have never thought that was the healthiest way to raise children. Our own mother is certainly no martyr.”
Allegra laughed. “No. She isn’t.”
“She’s strong. And even though I know she has imposed expectations on you that made things hard, you have seen her strength. Is that not what you would want your child to see?”
Allegra’s stomach tightened. “I suppose.”
“Be strong, Allegra. And make the life you want to live. You don’t want the example you give your child to be that they ended your existence. That they ruined you.”
She thought back to Cristian. To how he felt about his father. About what he believed he had done to his father.
“No,” she said, “I don’t.”
“If you don’t walk down that aisle, I will be the last person to condemn you.”
“It would disappoint everyone,” she said. “Mother has said they’ll disown me.”
“She won’t. Even if she did...that’s no reason to go ahead with a marriage, Allegra. You’re the only one who has to be married to Cristian. I know that’s not something I would sign up for.”
“For a few reasons, I bet,” Allegra said.
“A few, yes.” He took a deep breath. “This is your life, Allegra. You must live it in the way that makes you happiest.” He paused, and for just a moment she saw a flash of pain in her brother’s dark eyes. “Don’t let mother and father decide for you. Don’t let anyone decide for you. Your future has to belong to you. The alternative is a regret you don’t want. Trust me.”
He nodded once, then Renzo turned and left her there, standing and staring at the wedding dress. He was right about one thing. It was her life. As to happiness... That was a fleeting thing. She couldn’t say whether or not loving Cristian made her happy. It certainly gave her times of great happiness. But it also hurt worse than anything else ever had. Felt more terrifying, more intense than any other emotion ever had. She wasn’t certain that happiness was the name of the game at all.
But...love?
She wanted love. She couldn’t marry Cristian only to divorce him. Couldn’t live under the same roof as him when he was determined not to touch her. And what would that mean in terms of other women? Did he expect her to stay married to him, growing larger with her pregnancy by the day while he ran around with underwear models?
The pain that that thought brought on was like a knife stabbing through her chest. She couldn’t bear it.
Loving Cristian wasn’t easy. And she feared that when it came to that love she was a bit too far gone to turn back now. But she had choices and what she did with it. Exactly what she chose to subject herself to.
And Renzo was right. Their mother was no doormat. Nor was she a coward. She didn’t live the life of a martyr. She had never been shy about saying what she wanted, and while that had put certain demands on both Renzo and Allegra, she sincerely doubted that a woman as strong as their mother would ever want Allegra to make decisions from a position of weakness.
Mostly, it was her life. And it was her love. And she could not, no matter what the noble thing was, no matter what most people might think of as the right thing, stand in front of hundreds of people and make vows to Cristian while he made them in return, if he didn’t mean them. Every promise she made to him, she would keep.
She would love him, she would stay with him and she would forsake anyone else to be with him. But she could not get up there and have him lie to her. Not for honor. Not for bloodline. Not to keep their child from being labeled a bastard.
Allegra looked at the wedding dress one last time, and then, dressed in her casual clothing, she turned and walked out of the bedroom.
* * *
She wasn’t coming. That much was clear. As Cristian stood at the head of the aisle and the music played, and the view in front of him remained abjectly brideless, he realized that she was not coming.
His Allegra, who had appeared so many times when he’d asked her not to. Who had chased him down while he had been digging through the rubble in the castillo. Who had pushed him, and pushed him at every turn, was not coming this one time he had expected her to.
He looked over at his friend who was standing beside him in a tuxedo looking neutral.
“It seems your sister is absent,” he said, keeping his tone soft. “You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”
Renzo arched one dark brow. “You forget sometimes, I think, that Allegra is my sister. Meaning she most certainly has a mind of her own.”
“What did she say to you?”
Renzo turned to him. “I think the more important question is what did you do to her?”
“I only offered to marry her.”
“Yes, that’s all,” Renzo said, his tone dry. “You must have done something. Because if I know one thing, Cristian, it’s that my sister loves you. That she has loved you since she was far too young to understand what a mistake that is. There is very little you could have done to make her abandon you on your wedding day. And so, I can only conclude that you must have done it. I applaud her for not showing up.” Renzo turned back to face the crowd, but Cristian didn’t do the same. Instead, he stormed up the aisle, ignoring the shocked ripple that ran its way through the crowd.
He stormed into the villa, knocking a vase off a table. It was probably a piece that had come from the castillo, priceless and unknowably old. And he didn’t care.
“Allegra?” he shouted her name, even though she wouldn’t answer, and he knew it. He shouted her name while he wandered the halls, his voice echoing back at him, as if to provide yet more evidence of the emptiness of the house. His house that was never empty, but was because his entire staff was outside waiting for the wedding to begin.
/> His house, which was never empty, but was now because his bride was not in it.
He went into her bedroom, and saw her wedding dress, hanging there. Mocking him.
Allegra was gone. And Renzo was right. It was his fault. He had pushed her away. He finally had. This one woman who had been so determined to reach the good in him had finally given up. He deserved it. If he knew nothing else, he knew that. He had never deserved to have her walk down the aisle toward him today, and yet he had wanted her to. He had shouted about divorce, about never touching her, but he had fully intended to claim her tonight, on their wedding night. Had fully intended to continue dragging her down into hell with him. Because he was weak. Because if he couldn’t burst out from the prison that his heart was locked behind, then he was going to bring her into it with him. He was not strong enough to live life without Allegra. He was not courageous enough.
She had accused him of being a coward. He had rejected it. But now, he could see that it was true.
He thought back again, to that night in Venice. To that ballroom. And he let himself remember. Truly remember.
He had walked down the stairs, and that vision of perfect beauty had swam before his eyes. Dark curling hair over beautiful bare shoulders. He had seen her from behind first and a jolt of recognition had kicked him straight in the chest, a jolt that he told himself later was arousal.
She had shimmered. Burned. He had only ever known one woman who did that.
He knew it was her. Of course he had known. Everything in him had responded to her. He had been celibate for three years and not a single woman had ever called out to him except for Allegra.
He had told himself it was irritation, told himself it was anger. And then, that night in Venice he had told himself it was the excitement of being turned on by a perfect stranger.
He and Allegra had a habit of accusing each other of composing great works of fiction. They were both right. Both of them had written a story and removed each other from it. So that they could act without consequence, act without fear.