Il Bestione (The Golden Door Duet Book 2)

by Susan Fanetti

  Right now, she wanted to live with Paolo without marriage. His offer was still open, a point he’d made again since that evening in her father’s apartment. But she didn’t want to marry him until she could trust that he would be good to her, would treat her as a partner and not a trophy.

  More than that, she wanted a marriage of love. When and if she agreed to be his wife, they would both be sure of their feelings. They would be in love, and neither of them would run from that truth.

  Neither of them were ready for that yet.

  “I will make a life for myself. If I leave Paolo, that will still be true, Pappa. I will make the life I want.”

  Her father smiled and picked up her hand. He brought it to his mouth and kissed her fingers, a wet, paternal smack with which she was happily familiar. “You are a force, little darling. That is true and always has been. If you have what you want, I will be content with it.”

  She closed her fingers around his. “Will you look at that building Paolo is holding for you, then? Let me help you, Pappa. Take this help and make a real life for yourself here. You’re too good to simply be Campanelli’s drudge.”

  “I’ve been worried that you went to him to help me.”

  “I’ve told you I didn’t. I did what I wanted, and got something for you out of it, too.”

  “Love isn’t a transaction, Mira. You can’t make something real if everything you do together is a tit for tat.”

  Just then, the dancing couple on the ice fell—the man stumbled and brought the woman down with him. They slid in a heap several feet. When they stopped, Mirabella could see them each asking the other if they were hurt, both shaking their heads and then laughing. Still sitting on the ice, in the midst of the circuit of skaters, they held each other and laughed.

  “Maybe not a transaction,” she said. “Maybe a dance. Not tit for tat, but give and take.” She turned to her father. “For someone like Paolo, I think it has to start there.”

  “And for someone like you?”

  She smiled. “As you say, I’m impulsive. I can start from anywhere.”

  “How’s that?” Maria asked, giving Mirabella’s corset laces a savage yank. “More?”

  “No!” Mirabella gasped. “That’s enough. Enough.”

  Maria made a soft noise of some sort and tied the corset off. Mirabella’s ribs already ached, and she wondered if she’d manage to get any dinner into her belly at all. Or breath, for that matter.

  Normally, when she had to wear a corset, she wore one that fastened in front so she could handle her own dressing, and leave room to breathe. But her gown for this evening was a snug, emerald green velvet, off the shoulder and with deep décolletage; the laces would have shown under the bodice, and she hadn’t found a corset with other fastenings that fit right. So she needed a back-lacing torture device and a maid to torture her.

  Like most of the women in Little Italy, Paolo’s housekeeper didn’t like her and hadn’t bothered to pretend otherwise. There was an additional edge to Maria’s disdain: not only did she think Mirabella was a whore, she was jealous as well. She would have liked to be Paolo’s kept woman herself.

  They both knew it, and they neither bothered to hide it.

  Neither woman was pleased when Paolo had asked Maria to help Mirabella dress for their next event—a Christmas dinner at the home of a man named Frederick March, with whom Paolo was doing his Long Island business.

  Mirabella was intensely curious about the Long Island business. It seemed to consume most of his work and nearly all his attention. Despite listening keenly at every opportunity, and taking every chance to eavesdrop, she still didn’t quite understand what he was doing. He’d bought land, she understood that. It was the purpose she couldn’t comprehend.

  True to his word, Paolo refused to speak of it with her. She couldn’t imagine how buying land was burdensome to his soul, or otherwise dangerous, but still he wouldn’t budge. When she peppered him with questions and pressed for answers, he became surly and sharp-tongued.

  Now they were going to this man’s home for a meal, and she knew nothing more of him than his name and his wife’s: Annette.

  Maria tied off the corset. “There. What more do you need?”

  “Nothing,” Mirabella answered, trying to sound as if she could breathe freely. Her gown buttoned up the back, but she would figure out how to manage that herself. “You may go.”

  The woman spun and stalked off. When she was alone in the apartment, Mirabella went to the dressing table Paolo had put in the bedroom for her and eased onto the little chair so she could finish her hair and add some rouge and kohl to brighten her face.

  Though she applied rouge to her cheeks and lips lightly, adding a hint of color, she liked to make her eyes dramatic. Aside from her hair—which many commented on but was a constant thorn in her side—her eyes were her best feature, she thought. Her face was sharp and angular, with a long, narrow nose and a pointed chin. She might have looked like a weasel or some other unpleasant creature, but her lips were full, and her eyes were large and dark brown. Under her heavy, slanted brows, with a little kohl along her lashes, she could make them look exotic and mysterious.

  With her face done, she finished her hair. The sleek lines of this dress demanded a sleek hairstyle, rather than the puffs and whorls most women wore. She did a snug version of a Psyche knot and pulled a long tress through to trail over her shoulder. Then she took the hot iron and tamed the curl of the tress so it lay in one smooth twist.

  She was blowing on her fingertips to ease a burn from the stupid iron when the bedroom door opened, and Paolo stepped in, already fully dressed in his white tie and tails. Seeing her, he stopped in the doorway and leaned on the jam.

  Mirabella saw him in the mirror; his beautiful eyes seemed to glow with interest and intent. She smiled, and he tipped his head forward. That subtle nod was a sultry acknowledgment, and her breath caught.

  In the time she’d lived with him, as his, as she was learning him—his habits, his interests and taste, the rhythms of his moods—Mirabella often found herself caught out like this, her heart beating and her breath quick. This was a man she’d once, not so long ago, hated more than any other in the world, and sometimes she could still remember that loathing, like a phantom lurking in the corners of her heart and mind.

  But so much of what he showed as coldness, as calculation, was really protection. He felt so deeply, hurt so keenly, that he couldn’t allow himself to feel at all.

  The man he was in this small apartment, this sanctuary where he wanted her solace, was quiet and thoughtful, self-learned and self-studied. Still careful, but not cold. At times, when they were hardly more than limbs tangled together, he burned so hot she thought she might scorch.

  A phantom was all that remained of her hate. Its shade tethered her impulsiveness. It kept her wary, held her back from giving him everything, and allowed her to keep safe hold of her heart. She needed that restraint, or she would launch herself headlong into trouble with this unsmiling, unhappy man.

  “You are beautiful, Bella,” he said in the deep, husky music of his voice, and Mirabella closed her eyes and let the sound and the compliment swirl through her senses.

  Then she laughed lightly. Because he wanted her to speak English and she would be required to do so at length tonight, she answered his English with the same. “I no even dressed.”

  He stepped into the room, and she watched him in the mirror as he came to her. “You could go just as you are, and you would be the most magnificent woman there.”

  English was much easier to understand than to speak. The compliment flattered her, but their relationship was one of parries and thrusts, so she flicked her hand at him. “Men. You all speak with …”—she tried to think how to say it in English—“with bells on your tongue.”

  That provoked a quiet chuckle from him. “Sometimes the truth is pretty. You certainly are.”

  “I glad you here. My dress, it has … bottoni?” It was a word she should
know, she’d spent many hours in a clothier’s since she’d been in America, but all the seamstresses, and her father, and Mr. Campanelli, spoke Italian in the shop.

  “Buttons,” Paolo provided.

  Surprised, she looked over her shoulder. “Ah? So like?”

  The twisted tress slipped to her back as she’d turned, and Paolo picked it up and let it lie over his hand. “So like. Do you need help with the buttons?”

  “Please, yes.”

  He laid the tress over her shoulder and offered his hand. Mirabella took it and stood.

  She’d laid the dress carefully on the made bed. Paolo began to pick it up, but she stopped him with a touch to his arm and lifted it herself, gathering it carefully so it wouldn’t crease as she slipped it over her head.

  He took it from her with care and lifted it high. Mirabella raised her arms, protecting her coif, and he helped her ease into it.

  With a gentle hand on her arm, he turned her away from him. Mirabella held the bodice in place and waited for him to begin the buttons.

  He didn’t. Instead, for a moment steeped in silent, enthralling tension, he didn’t move at all. She could hear him breathe, could feel each soft exhale shimmer over her skin. Then she felt his fingers on her neck, starting at her hairline and then trailing slowly down the beads of her spine, each one in turn, until he reached the top of her corset.

  For weeks now, they’d shared a bed. Nearly every night, they shared their bodies with each other. Mirabella had known no other man as well as she knew this one.

  Yet he remained so much a mystery.

  “Bella,” he murmured as his knuckle retraced the path his fingertips had made. “Mio Dio.”

  Then he cleared his throat and began to fasten her buttons. When he was done, he kissed her shoulder. “I have a gift for you.”

  She felt him shift behind her, heard the rustle of his tailcoat, and then he reached around and held out an oblong box in black velvet.

  The night of their first uptown event, he’d given her a pair of jet and garnet earrings to match her gown. This time, he hadn’t seen her gown before this moment.

  Smiling, still with her back to him, she took the box and opened it.

  On a bed of creamy satin lay a three-strand pearl necklace with a diamond clasp.

  “Paolo, è così bello.”

  “English, Bella.” She heard a smile in his voice and knew if she turned to him, there would be only a twitch at one corner of his mouth. He was man for whom humor and pleasure made pain.

  “You are a nag,” she said in the language he insisted on. Rather than give him the translation of words he’d understood, she said simply, “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.” Still standing behind her, he lifted the box from her hands. With her next breath, he reached around her and laid the cool pearls at her throat and closed the clasp.

  He took her shoulders and turned her to face him. “Bellisima,” he murmured.

  “English, Paolo,” she teased, lifting her voice to a lilt.

  He cupped her face and leaned down to kiss her forehead. “You are a beauty,” he said, gazing into her eyes.

  Oh, she wanted this man to recognize love, to know the feeling in his heart and feel the truth of the feeling in hers. He experienced life as if he were under siege every minute. She wanted him to know he needn’t defend himself from her. Her days of trying to hurt him were behind her. In the days before her, she wanted to find solace in him. More than solace. Joy. And she wanted him to find the same in her.

  In the present, buffeted by the romance of the moment, Mirabella was sorely tempted to utter words she meant to hold in safekeeping until she knew he was with her, open to her. But before she could, he blinked, dropped his hands, and stepped back.

  “We should finish getting ready. Do you need more help?”

  The change in tone was abrupt and disconcerting. Without his hands on her, Mirabella thought she might wobble, but the unsteadiness passed quickly, and she turned back to her dressing table. “I can finish on my own,” she said, keeping her voice light.

  What would it take to bring his battlements down?

  The Marches’ home was almost as grand as Dellers’. It wasn’t exactly on Central Park but only two blocks from it, where it hulked on a corner like a squat limestone castle. All the windows were ablaze with light, and heavy ropes of pine and holly, festooned with shiny red balls, brilliant gold braid, and clusters of pinecones and holly, draped across the façade.

  An arrogant butler in formal dress peered down a hooked nose at Paolo, and he read the invitation Paolo presented as if he were determined to prove it a forgery. But he allowed them passage, and they handed their outerwear to a maid.

  Mirabella’s experience with American society was severely limited, this being only her second event, but she’d been studying the Times like a primer for weeks, practicing her English and learning about society here as well. What she’d read and observed suggested that New Yorkers cleaved to tradition as if it were the highest land in a great flood. They appreciated sameness and predictability and kept rigid boundaries around their definition of propriety.

  She would never, never fit in amongst these people, and she couldn’t understand Paolo’s determination to do so. Even the servants looked on Paolo and Mirabella as inferior, when they were dressed as finely and fashionably as any other guest.

  The vowels at the end of their names were outside the bounds of propriety. They were not born in the right place on the maps. And that was something they could never change—nor would Mirabella ever want to.

  But Paolo wanted this, and Mirabella was with him. So she let him lead her with a warm hand at the small of her back into a large, brightly lit room.

  They’d been invited for a holiday dinner, so she’d expected to enter a dining room, with a large table at the center.

  Instead, it was a ballroom, where many round tables, each set for eight people, were scattered through the room. Hundreds of people would be here.

  Did Paolo realize he wasn’t being invited to truly mingle among this set? These huge, impersonal events he was invited to—they were throwing him bones. If he were gaining a foothold here, he’d be invited to a gathering where he couldn’t be lost in a crowd. In this large room, with so many people, their hosts could ignore them entirely without making a show of the slight.

  Paolo was being managed.

  Yes, they were afraid of him. Yes, they owed him, or he had some kind of leverage over them. But they did not respect him. He was a blister on their heel, to be endured but ignored.

  She cast a sidelong look at him, but he was intent on finding their names on the engraved cards at the place settings.

  When he found them, at a table in the far back corner, he frowned and turned to consider the ballroom before him.

  “They’re hiding us,” she said in Italian. “They hope to pretend we’re not here.”

  His expression grew taut, and he turned angry eyes on her. “Don’t speak about things you don’t understand, woman,” he snarled.

  He was angry with her? No, he was angry at them, and perhaps at himself, and at her for having observed and understood the slight. But she was not about to stand here and be snarled at for being where he wanted her to be and seeing what she couldn’t help but see.

  “Get fucked, Paolo,” she snarled back. She said it in Italian, for propriety’s sake.

  His eyes narrowed to slits, and he gave her a little shove toward the place with her name on it.

  She sat. But oh, when this night was over and they were in the privacy of his carriage, she was going to make a hole where his pretty cock hung.

  The other diners at their table were clearly also invited by obligation. A slightly shabby doctor and his plump, dowdy wife. Two middle-aged unmarried women, one of whom was a distant cousin of Mr. March. And a very well, if a bit ostentatiously, dressed man with thick, slicked-back black hair and a set of eyebrows so impressively large and expressive they seemed to ha
ve their own personality.

  The eighth seat, between Paolo and Mr. Aarons and his extraordinary eyebrows, went unclaimed for quite a while. Mirabella couldn’t see the place card, and she was too irritated with Paolo to ask him, so she was surprised—to the point of gaping—when Miss Lilith Barton made her stilted way to their table.

  The first course, a bland soup—the American rich seemed to have a fear of flavor—was already underway. As Miss Barton approached, looking infuriatingly lush and beautiful in a snug golden gown that barely contained her curvaceous body, the men at the table all stood.

  When she arrived at her place, she looked down at the card, her mouth pinched and her nose wrinkled as if she smelled something rotten. It couldn’t be the soup; it didn’t have enough taste to smell like anything.

  Then she took in a deep breath, and with it seemed to inhale an entirely new frame of mind. She smiled brightly. “Yes. Well, good evening, everyone. I’m sorry I’m late. Please, sit, gentlemen.”

  Mr. Aarons pulled her chair for her, and she gave him a weak smile. Mirabella knew that smile well. A woman used that smile to tell a man she was too polite to say her true feelings for him, but to make sure he knew what those feelings were. All women learned that smile.

  Mirabella rarely used it; she was rarely polite enough to keep her truths at bay. However, she supposed this was the kind of environment in which she would—or, at least, should.

  She found herself of two minds regarding Miss Barton. One mind hated her and the way she turned a very different smile on Paolo. She knew that smile, too—Miss Barton thought Paolo was far beneath her, but he was interesting, and attractive, and she meant to use him to deflect Mr. Aarons’ obvious interest in her.

  Mirabella’s other mind was exceedingly curious how this woman, so beautiful and obviously wealthy, who knew all the people at the top, had come to be placed at this table of the unwanted. Barely more than a month ago, she’d been in the thick of the crowd, laughing and chatting with all the bright society lights. But then, too, Mirabella had seen signs that she was slipping. There had been sidelong looks and whispers as the woman had floated through the Deller home.