That was when I heard the doors open, letting in a burst of sound of the ball outside. And more than that, a merry, tinkling laugh that I had known my whole life.
Celeste.
I surged to my feet, reaching over to throw back the lock and launch myself out of the stall and at my sister. She would know what to do. She always knew what to do. She had somehow gotten that gene while I had gotten...madly curling, obstinately red hair.
But I froze there, my hand on the lock.
Because I could hear what she was saying and I suddenly wished I was anywhere in the world but here.
“Did you see her lumbering furiously across the floor?” Celeste was asking her companions, all of whom tittered in response. “Storming off with that look on her face in the middle of the ballroom. As if she was planning to break out in some kind of brawl at any moment!”
I had no reason to be standing there, I told myself sternly. No reason at all not to reveal myself. But I still didn’t move.
“Your sister does seem a bit overwhelmed by things, doesn’t she?” asked another woman, in a syrupy sweet voice that I knew I could identify. If I wanted to identify it.
I didn’t.
“Imogen is my half sister, thank you very much,” Celeste said with a sniff. “I don’t know what my father was thinking, messing about with that common trollop.”
“I was under the impression Imogen’s mother was a duchess or something,” someone else murmured, managing to sound apologetic, as if they weren’t sure about correcting Celeste even when they were right.
I squeezed my eyes shut. I could feel my hands curled into fists, but I didn’t know who or what I wanted to hit. Or even how to hit. My stomach was a terrible knot and there was something too heavy to be simple pain at my temples. I might have thought I was sick, but I knew it wasn’t as simple as that.
“Oh, she was the daughter of someone. The Viscount Something, I think. Who can keep track of all those endless British titles?”
That was Celeste speaking. Celeste, who I had always loved. Celeste, who I had trusted.
Celeste, who very clearly hated me.
There was something about that terrible notion that spurred me into action at last.
I shoved open the door and stood there, aware that my chest was heaving as if I’d been running. There was a wall of mirrors in front of me, which allowed me to see exactly how pale I’d become.
It also allowed me to lock gazes with my sister.
Half sister, I reminded myself bitterly.
If Celeste was surprised to see me, she didn’t show it. She was dressed like a column of gold tonight, a color that drew attention to her sheer perfection. Her blond hair was elegantly styled in a sweeping updo that I only dared to dream about. She was tall and long and lean. She was the sort of woman who belonged on the covers of a thousand magazines, smiling mysteriously.
Though she didn’t smile at me.
“Lurking about in bathrooms now?” she asked, and I couldn’t tell if she had always looked at me that way. Or if, after those bright weeks with Javier, I could see all kinds of things in the shadows that I had never seen before.
It was amazing what a difference it made to be wanted.
Loved, something in me whispered, though I didn’t dare call it that.
All I knew was that I’d never felt anything like it before. And that meant that this had always been bubbling in my sister. The way she was looking at me. That awful tone I’d heard in her voice. None of it was new. It couldn’t be. And that meant...
“My mother, Lady Hillary to you, was the daughter of a duke,” I said quietly, not wanting to accept what all this meant. “As I think you know.”
“If you say so,” Celeste said dismissively, and then made it worse by rolling her eyes for the benefit of her group of minions.
There was no more pretending. It didn’t matter if Celeste had always been like this or if this was something new. She wasn’t making any attempt to hide it.
“Are you just going to stand there, Imogen?” Celeste asked after a moment. That was when I realized I still hadn’t moved.
“When I first heard you walk in, I thought I might come in for a hug,” I said drily. “That seems to be off the table.”
Her friends tittered again, but not with her, this time. It was likely childish that I felt that as a victory.
Celeste certainly didn’t like it. Her perfect features flushed, and when she turned back to face me, it was as if I had never seen her before. Temper made her face twist.
And for the first time in as long as I could remember, she didn’t look beautiful to me at all. I knew what beauty was now. I knew what warmth was. And I couldn’t help thinking that I deserved better than spite in a bathroom stall, no matter who it came from.
“Eavesdroppers never hear anything good about themselves, or did you not learn that in all your years locked away in that convent?” Celeste let out one of those laughs. “You certainly didn’t seem to learn anything else.”
I thought about that look on her face the day of my wedding. I studied the look she wore now. And I remembered what it had been like ten years ago. Her dramatic sobs, loud enough to be heard all over the house, but more important, the fact she hadn’t run outside to prevent Javier from leaving. Very much as if it was a performance designed to hasten her own wedding and her own exit from my father’s house.
Maybe everything about Celeste was a performance.
But I played my hunch anyway. “Jealousy doesn’t become you, Celeste.”
This time, that peal of laughter she let out had fangs. I could feel it sink into me and leave marks. Yet I refused to react. Not even when she stepped closer to me, a mottled sort of red sweeping down over her neck to her chest.
“You foolish, absurd child,” she said, her voice scathing and pitying at once. “Don’t you understand what Javier is doing? He’s using you.”
I would die before I showed her how that landed on me like one of the walls around us, hard stone crushing me into dust. I stared back at her, lifting my chin, and it occurred to me in some dim part of my mind that I had been preparing for this for years. Hadn’t I?
Because my feelings were hurt. There was no getting around that. But I couldn’t say I was surprised.
“Yes, Celeste, he is. In much the same way your count used you to fill his coffers and provide him with heirs. Some might call this sort of thing mercenary, but in our family we have always called it marriage.”
Something rolled through her. I could see it, ugly and sharp, all over her face.
“You mistake my meaning.” Behind Celeste, her group of tittering friends had gone silent. The better to listen so that they might repeat it to the crowd outside, I knew. “The count married me for all the reasons you name, of course. That is simply practical. Realistic. But look in the mirror, Imogen. You know what I look like. Do you ever look at yourself?”
“My husband has yet to turn to stone, if that’s what you mean.”
But my heart beat too hard. Too wild. As if it already knew what she would say.
Celeste leaned closer so there could be no mistake at all.
“Javier could have had anyone’s daughter. He is wealthy enough that even royals would have considered him in these progressive times. But he chose you. Have you never asked why?”
I wanted to say something that would hurt her, I realized. But before I could pull myself together enough to imagine what that might be, she kept going.
“He chose the ugly, embarrassing Fitzalan daughter when he is a known connoisseur of only the most beautiful women in Europe.”
If she saw the way I sucked in a breath at that, she ignored it. Or worse, liked it.
“Don’t you see?” Celeste’s voice only grew colder the longer she spoke. Colder. Harder. “He is Javier Dos Santos. He possesses wealth greater tha
n kings. He can do what no other man can, Imogen. He can flaunt an ugly duckling and pretend she is a swan. He can make even the disappointing Fitzalan heiress into a style icon if he so desires. He can do whatever he likes.”
I made a sound, but it wasn’t a sentence, and in any case, Celeste ignored me.
“Are you truly as simple as you act?” she demanded, pulling herself up to her full height. She shook her head at me, haughty and something like amazed at my naïveté. “It’s a game, Imogen. Nothing but a game.”
For a moment, I heard nothing else. I was aware that Celeste’s friends were whispering among themselves. The water was running in one of the sinks. Someone opened the door and I heard the music again. But the only thing I was truly aware of was the scornful way Celeste had said that last bit.
Nothing but a game.
She smiled then, but this time I could see the pity in her gaze. And worse, what I thought was triumph.
“I am sure you find this cruel,” she said with great dignity. “But in time, when you have resigned yourself to the reality of your position, I think you’ll realize that I was only trying to be kind.”
I knew, beyond any shred of doubt, that she was lying.
Or performing, anyway.
And then it didn’t matter, because Celeste had always been better at both than me. She swept around, gathering up her skirts and her friends, and left me there to stew in what she’d told me.
And for some reason, I didn’t break down when the door shut behind her. Instead, I thought of what it had been like to step off that plane on Javier’s island after a lifetime, it seemed, of gray and gloom. I thought of the light. The blue.
I thought of the heat and fire I had found in Javier’s arms. Again and again and again.
I took a deep breath, blew it out, and understood deep into my bones that I would rather steal a few weeks of fantasy with Javier whenever he had a mind to indulge himself than subject myself to all of Celeste’s chilly, practical “reality.”
I would rather be filled with almost too much sunlight to bear. I would rather have wild curls and freckles all over my shoulders. I would rather earn the contempt with which these people treated me than slink around trying to please them and only find myself in the same place.
And there was something about that that felt like liberation.
Because the glory of never fitting in, I realized in a sudden rush, was that I was never going to fit in.
And there was no one left to punish me for it.
No governesses. No nuns. My father had no more power over me. He had sold that right. And Celeste...didn’t matter. I knew that Javier was determined and relentless enough to have chosen the Fitzalan daughter he wanted no matter what my father might have said about it. And he’d chosen me.
He could have had anyone, as Celeste had said. And he’d still chosen me.
Because he had, he was the only one who mattered.
I knew it was possible—even likely—that Celeste was right and Javier was playing some game. But I wasn’t sure it mattered.
I was in love with him either way.
I didn’t know a lot about love. Or anything about it, really. Grand-Mère had always banged on about higher purposes and duty, but love had never been a part of the Fitzalan experience. I had assumed that Celeste and I had loved each other the way sisters did, but it turned out I was wrong about that, too. And it was possible there was a part of me that would mourn the loss of a sister it turned out I never quite had and the family that might as well have been carved from the same stone as my father’s manor, but I couldn’t process that here. Not now.
Because I was in love with my husband.
I was in love with him.
And I knew that of the sins women in society marriages like mine could commit, this was perhaps the worst.
Just as I knew that the man who touched me so softly and held me so closely, who made me cry and sob and shake around him, would not want to hear that I loved him.
That didn’t change the fact that I did.
And I might have been afraid of the things he made me feel. They overwhelmed me. They were sticky and dark, too much and too wild to contain. I could hardly believe they were real. Or that he was.
I was afraid that he would tell me it was only sex and I was unnecessarily complicating a simple business transaction. I was afraid that he would banish me, send me off to one of his other properties where he could keep me under lock and key and my feelings couldn’t inconvenience him. I was afraid that he would laugh at me.
I was terribly afraid that Javier would never look at me again the way he had this morning, when he’d been deep inside of me and I’d thought I might die. That I had died. That I wanted to die. I was afraid I would never feel any of that again.
But I wasn’t afraid of him.
And I had spent a lifetime locking myself up before anyone could come and do it for me. I had tried to minimize myself. Hide myself. Stuff myself in a box and be something I wasn’t. No matter how many times I’d sneaked off down the servants’ stairs, I’d always come back and tried to be what was expected of me.
I wasn’t going to do it anymore.
I stepped up to the wide counter, ignoring the sinks before me and keeping my eyes on the bank of mirrors. I peeled the mask off my face and tossed it aside.
Then I reached up, tugged the clip from my hair, and threw it on the counter as well.
I shook my head, using my fingers to help pull out all the pins. I tugged and I pulled, and I tore down the hairstyle I’d considered a compromise. There would be no more compromises.
My hair fell around me, red and gold and curling wildly.
And it wasn’t fear that moved in me then, I knew. It wasn’t reality according to Celeste.
It was that power I hadn’t been able to access, cringing in a bathroom stall.
It was that long, tough line of women who had come before me and survived, one after the next.
It was what had happened in those weeks with Javier. On that beautiful island, the place where I had learned that surrender was not weakness. That it could be a glorious strength.
I had fallen in love with my husband, and that changed everything.
Me most of all.
I didn’t think it through. I didn’t worry or prepare. I wheeled around, ignored the other women in the powder room who looked my way, and pushed my way back out into the ball.
I was tired of hiding.
Finally, I was tired of it.
I kept my head high, moving through the crowd as if I was made of silk. I paid no attention to the commotion I caused. I kept my eyes on my husband, finding him easily in the crush and then heading straight for him.
Javier, who I had considered a monster.
If he was a monster, I thought now, then so was I. If what it meant was that all these people, these circling wolves, considered us too different from them to matter. But I thought the truth of the matter was that this ball was filled with the real monsters, gorgons fashioned from snobbery and toxic self-regard, bitterness and centuries of living only to get richer.
I kept my gaze trained on Javier. The one man here who didn’t belong. He was too...real. Even with a mask on, the truth of who he was seemed to fill the whole of the palazzo. As if everyone else—as if Venice itself—was little more than a ghost.
“You changed your hair,” he said in that dark, stirring way of his when I made it to his side. It was the kind of voice that made me wish we were naked together, sprawled out in our bed, where none of this mattered. As if he heard that same note in his voice, he stood straighter. “I didn’t realize this was the sort of party that called for different costumes.”
“Imogen can always be trusted to do the most embarrassing thing possible,” my father sneered from beside him.
I hadn’t even seen him there. Bec
ause I was free of him, I realized. And it felt like an afternoon of La Angelita sunlight, here in the middle of a cold winter’s night.
“My wife’s hair—and indeed, my wife herself—cannot be embarrassing, Fitzalan,” Javier bit out, with the kind of violence that usually never made it into ballrooms such as this. My father stiffened. My husband’s dark eyes blazed. “She is my wife. That makes her, by definition, perfect in every way.”
“Javier.” I liked saying his name. I more than liked it. I waited for him to drag that thrillingly vicious glare away from my father. When it landed on me, it was no softer, but I liked that, too. “I love you.”
I saw the way he froze. I heard the astonished laughter from my father and the terribly genteel men around him, none of whom would ever use that word. Or allow it to be used in their presence—especially not in public.
But I had decided not to hide. Not from anyone. Not ever again.
“I love you,” I said again, so there could be no mistake. “And I’ve had enough of this nonsense tonight, I think.”
I turned around like some kind of queen. I held my head high as I started across the floor.
And only breathed again when Javier walked beside me, taking my arm in his.
I told myself that come what may—and there was a storm in those brooding dark eyes of his that already felt like thunder inside me, a reckoning I wasn’t sure I wanted to face—I would never regret falling in love with my husband.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Javier
I FOLLOWED HER.
I had no choice.
Imogen had made a scene when she’d dropped her little bombshell, and if I let her walk away, they would say I had already lost control of my brand-new marriage. They would smugly agree with each other that it was only to be expected. Blood will out, they would assure themselves.
But if I truly didn’t wish to lie to myself, I didn’t much care what they said.
I cared more that the bomb she’d dropped was still going off inside me.
Again and again and again.
I did not allow myself to think about my hand on her arm. I ignored my body’s automatic response to her scent. Or her firm, smooth skin beneath my palm that made me want to touch her everywhere.
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