“I suppose he is,” she agreed. “But he is...complicated.”
“All men are complicated,” Cenzo replied. “Men like to claim they are simple, but it is a mask. Where it counts, they are always layered.”
She seemed to take a long time to look up at him again. “Are you remembering?”
He laughed at that, then wondered if servants weren’t meant to laugh when she seemed to react to the sound. Cenzo cleared his throat. “I remember nothing. But I feel certain, nonetheless.”
The signora looked back at her ring, giant and blue, like a pool she wore on her hand. He was surprised he hadn’t noticed it that first night in the doctor’s office, because he’d certainly noticed it every day since.
“I think it is people who are complicated,” she was saying. “And never more complicated than in the ways they interact with each other.”
He thought it ought to have made him feel any number of things that he could not remember his own relationships. He felt certain, yet again, that he’d had them—even if he couldn’t remember any details. In the next moment he knew that was true, because he remembered having sex. Not specifically. Not attached to any particular woman’s face, but he knew. He remembered that much.
As did his sex, he discovered the next moment, when the signora lifted her face to look at him again and the setting sun made her gleam like honey.
Josselyn. The name bloomed inside him as if he had always known it. Her given name is Josselyn.
He grew harder, and understood exactly what the ache in him was, then. “Perhaps complication is a compliment,” he said when he could speak without all that wanting in his voice. Or he hoped he could. “If relationships were simple, they would be boring, would they not?”
Josselyn seemed to have shadows on her face, or maybe it was the night drawing close at last, after another stunning blue Mediterranean day. “We wouldn’t want that. Anything but boredom.”
In his pallet, later, after she’d gone up to her room at the top of the tower, Cenzo found himself thinking far too much about this woman he lived with. And served. And had broken bread with tonight.
And wanted terribly, like a fever in his blood.
She was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. He laughed as he thought that, because he couldn’t remember any others, but even so, he was sure that if he could personally remember the faces of every woman he’d ever encountered she would still blow them all away.
The sun moved all over her the way he wanted to do. Cenzo found himself jealous of the sun.
Josselyn, he thought, her name like a song in him.
As the days passed, he found he focused on her more and more. Some days he thought he could almost taste her. Some nights he dreamed of kissing her, and there was something about those dreams that made him wake, panting. Hard as a spike. Desperate, which he sensed was not his typical state.
He often toyed with the heavy ring on his finger in the dark, finding it hard to believe that he had ever made the vow of celibacy Josselyn had told him he had.
“I find that doubtful,” he had said when she shared this amazing revelation with him. When it had finally occurred to him that if it were a wedding ring, there must have been a wedding. And must therefore be a wife...out there somewhere. A notion that had not sat well with him. “Extremely doubtful, signora.”
“You truly are a Renaissance man, Cenzo,” she had replied, sitting in the little library room in the tower with a book open before her. And surely something was wrong with him that he’d begun to associate that particularly serene smile of hers with information about himself he was not going to like. “You wear that ring as a celebration of yourself. The commitment you made to you.”
Josselyn looked as if she thought that was beautiful. Cenzo thought he’d like to punch himself in the face. That was a commitment that he could make to himself. It rather sounded like he needed it.
“How extraordinary,” he had said. “I do not feel at all like a monk.”
“Do any monks actually feel like monks?” she’d asked airily. “It seems to me that’s the whole point of becoming one. If the vow was easy to make, would it be worth making?”
Cenzo had not shared his personal opinion, which was that some vows were deeply stupid.
Still other nights he lay awake and lectured himself. He told himself that he ought to be grateful. Because it wasn’t as if he remembered any part of the job he’d done here before. Josselyn was constantly reminding him. She was unfailingly nice about it, always kind and patient as she told him he usually did things like gather fresh flowers and festoon them about, or scrub the floors with his own hands as he felt that made them gleam brighter. He knew he should have been far more thankful for her willingness to not simply...have him replaced.
But it turned out he was the sort of monk who struggled mightily with anything like gratitude.
And no matter what, no matter how he tried to trick himself into remembering something that might make sense of these choices he’d made, he always came up against that same wall.
His bruises faded quickly, and that almost made it worse. Because then he simply looked like a normal man, but one who’d been born at the beginning of the month. Fully formed, completely useless, and doomed to be a mystery to himself.
Cenzo felt, strongly, that he was not accustomed to finding himself a cipher.
It was better when he focused on Josselyn rather than himself. And the bonus was, he liked doing exactly that.
Perhaps it was the only thing he enjoyed. And perhaps that was the answer to the puzzle of his identity right there.
“What does your husband do when you take month-long trips to a place like this?” he asked one evening as they sat together in one of the rooms off the kitchen, because the wind had picked up too much to eat outside. She usually came to sit with him in the kitchen as he prepared their dinner each night, and, in turn, he had taken to eating with her all of the time now. It seemed simpler.
And though she hadn’t reissued her invitation, she hadn’t rescinded it, either.
Once again, Cenzo questioned how it was he had ever taken joy in servitude when he took far too much pleasure in pushing boundaries he shouldn’t have.
Perhaps it is precisely the pushing of these boundaries, with her, that you took pleasure in, a voice in him countered.
Cenzo had no trouble believing that.
“I believe my husband has an endless capacity for entertaining himself with his own bank balance,” Josselyn replied in a darker tone than usual. “Some men are like that. It is about what can be bought and sold, always. That’s the pleasure they take in things, if they take any pleasure in anything. And it isn’t about money, because believe me, they already have enough.”
“Men are hunters.” Cenzo shrugged. “What they cannot stalk for their dinner, they must hunt in other ways.”
She looked at him curiously. “What do you hunt? Can you remember?”
“I cannot,” he said. Yet for once it did not bother him. “But I feel certain that whatever it was, I was very good at it.”
He liked the way she laughed then, as if delighted, even though he was baffled by it. For he had come to realize that no matter what, no matter that there was that wall preventing him from remembering the details about his life, he felt very sure about who he was.
Supremely certain.
And as he sat there, thinking about that certainty while Josselyn’s laughter made music between them, Cenzo could suddenly triangulate a life that made sense.
Finally.
There was that ring on his finger that Josselyn told him was a vow he had made. There was what she claimed was his commitment to his role here—his service to and for her. And the third point of that triangle, the most important point, was Josselyn herself. His signora. The beautiful woman whose laugh was brighter than the sun, and who sometimes s
miled at him and made his chest feel too tight.
He could see the purpose in that life. And the beauty in it, too.
And perhaps that was the recipe for joy—maybe even that joy she had told him he had always felt in his work.
Maybe the work was incidental and the point was her.
He felt something in him roar at that, like a dragon, and knew it was the truth.
“It’s a good thing that even getting knocked on the head hasn’t taken away your sense of yourself,” Josselyn said, though she did not sound as if she thought it was all that good.
“Surely losing one’s memory should be clarifying.” He found himself lounging back in his chair, his gaze on her. “Surely I should become more of who I am, not less.”
Her dark eyes seemed particularly mysterious to him then. “That’s the internal debate, isn’t it? Some think a person is made of certain immutable characteristics, set in stone at birth. Others are sure it’s our experiences that make us who we are. It’s the nature versus nurture debate, and I’m not sure either side has ever won it.”
“I cannot speak to your philosophy,” he replied. “But while I may not recall the details about my life, I find that knowing myself does not appear to pose a challenge.”
“You are a man with a singular sense of himself, Cenzo.” Her voice was quiet, and she seemed to cling tighter to her wineglass than she usually did. “You always have been.”
“And your husband?” he asked. Because it was difficult to recall that she had one, he could admit. He didn’t like that she was married. And there seemed no point in pretending that his acceptance of that unworthy thought wasn’t also the acceptance of another, even darker truth. He wanted her regardless of her marital status. That was the beginning and the end of it, because she already felt like his. Cenzo could only hope that the things he wanted weren’t stamped all over him as he gazed at her. “Surely you must have married him for his own collection of...singular characteristics.”
She blinked then, an expression he couldn’t read flashing over her face. He thought she looked almost...uneasy. Even upset. But she lowered her lashes and when she lifted them again, the expression was gone as if he’d made it up.
“My husband and I are separated,” she told him, her voice sounding odd to his ears. “He is...focused on other things at this time.”
“Is that why you are spending a month here?” With him instead of the man she’d married. The one who had a greater claim to her than he did, a notion he did not care for at all. “To find your own focus?”
But she stood then, and he knew that meant she was cutting off this conversation. And right when it had gotten interesting. Sure enough, she smiled in that way he already knew meant she did not intend to continue. Ever.
“I don’t know why I mentioned that. It’s irrelevant.” She cleared her throat, but that smile of hers seemed far less serene than usual. “Good night, Cenzo.”
“Good night, signora,” he replied, because that was the appropriate thing to call her.
Her name was a treasure he hoarded and kept to himself.
Josselyn headed up into the tower, but he lingered in the kitchen long after he’d cleaned away the remnants of their dinner.
It was as he had told her. He couldn’t remember the details of his life, but the things he did know were bedrock certainties.
Like this one: Her husband was a fool, but he was not.
And if her husband was not man enough to claim the wife he had, Cenzo saw no reason why he should respect such foolishness.
Because he was the one who was here, making Josselyn laugh.
He was the one who tended to her, feeding her and caring for her, day in and day out.
As far as Cenzo was concerned, he was the only husband she needed.
CHAPTER EIGHT
JOSSELYN COULD NO longer pretend that she was anything but a terrible person.
Some days that weighed heavily on her. Other days, she rationalized that having made the choices she already had, there was no going back without causing even more trouble.
She had felt guilty immediately. The very moment the words were out of her mouth and Cenzo had blinked, clearly trying to imagine himself a servant. Josselyn hadn’t been able to imagine it herself, really, but she’d said it. There was no taking it back. Surely that would confuse him even more.
That first night, she hadn’t slept, because... Had she really told the man to go sleep on the floor with a head injury? Yes, she’d offered him the master bedroom, but she couldn’t pretend she hadn’t known full well he would refuse. That was why she’d rushed into the tower and moved his things. And surely that level of manipulativeness made her evil. Rotten to the bone, just as he’d believed her father was.
The way she’d told him his mother was, little though he’d wanted to believe her in those last moments he was still himself.
Josselyn thought about that all the time—the poison his mother had fed him that had led him to think his only reasonable course was revenge.
What do you imagine his reaction will be to this act? her conscience liked to ask her daily. He might well prefer a dose of poison to scrubbing floors.
She’d tried to assuage her conscience by surreptitiously checking on him every hour on the hour throughout that first night, and the next few nights as well, just to make sure that her questionable desire to get her own back with him didn’t result in any actual health issues on his part.
But he seemed in perfect health save for his lack of memory.
A few days into it, after she’d waved a hand and told him that he liked to clean the castle’s many windows every Tuesday, she’d taken the hired boat out again. The helpful driver of the SUV that night in the village had arranged the whole thing for her, only too happy to do what he could after she’d demonstrated that she had unlimited funds at her disposal.
It was even a nice boat, she’d thought that first night, and then again when she took it out once more. Fast enough that she could make it back across the water to Sicily in less than half the time it had taken her to sail. That was good to know. It made her feel much better about choosing not to take Cenzo to the hospital. Once she’d determined that she could get to Taormina fairly quickly if she had to, she’d taken the opportunity to call her father. Just to check in. And to assure all her friends that she was alive and well in her archaic arranged marriage, despite all their proclamations of doom.
When she’d calmed all the nerves she could, she’d spent some time downloading articles on head injuries from the internet so she could make sure that she wasn’t irreparably harming the man. And could spot any signs that his health was taking a dive.
As the days passed, Cenzo not only exhibited no signs of decline, he seemed to thrive. More and more by the day. And Josselyn was fascinated that even though he couldn’t remember a thing, he was in no way less himself.
Arrogant. Commanding. Steeped in the whole of his glorious history. And quite obviously mystified by the notion that anyone would ever choose to be a servant, which she couldn’t help but find entertaining.
Because you’re an awful person, she would tell herself again and again.
But then she remembered what his plan had been for their time in this place. The revenge he planned to take on her, thanks to the lies his mother had told him. She knew they were lies. She’d read the woman’s letters. And surely even this terrible charade she was inflicting on him was better than that. Because she wasn’t trying to make him a slavering addict, so that she would somehow break her own father’s heart for more of a taste.
She wasn’t trying to break him. That was the difference, she assured herself.
Though her conscience wasn’t so sure.
“You look distressed,” Cenzo said one evening as they sat out on the balcony, though the air was cool. Even here summer waned, however mildly. He indicated the
first course that he’d only just brought out, a rich stew of eggplant, pine nuts, and plump, sweet raisins. “I hope it is not the caponata.”
“Of course not,” she replied. “How could it be? Your cooking is marvelous and you know it.”
He inclined his head, regally. And despite herself, Josselyn wanted to laugh. Because for all they might have talked about nature versus nurture in their time here, it seemed that Cenzo’s sense of himself was truly innate. He simply was that arrogant.
Even as a servant, he behaved like a king.
“And yet you do not look happy, signora.”
“Is that important to you?”
And then, instantly, she hated herself for asking. Why was she torturing herself? Asking questions that had no answer, because this intent man who cared for her in his own imposing way was not her husband. She was all too keenly aware of that. This was a version of him, but she knew perfectly well that one day Cenzo would remember his true self—or they would leave here and someone would tell him the truth—and he would hate her. The way he had already hated her when he’d married her.
It made her stomach hurt to contemplate.
“It is quite clear that you are the focus of my existence,” he said dryly. “How can you doubt it? You are all I remember.”
“We’ll see how you are in a few weeks.” Josselyn tried to sound severe, because she wanted to laugh again and that felt perilous. It felt intimate. She wanted to bask in this version of Cenzo, who looked at her so intensely but clearly without any desire to harm her.
It made her imagine she could see things in those old coin eyes that she knew were never there.
Or wouldn’t be there if he was himself again.
She was a terrible person for this. Josselyn knew she was. But the longer it went on, the less she seemed able to help herself. She would lie awake at night in that wide bed, high in the tower, and decide that tomorrow she would pack him up in the boat, take him to a real hospital where they would recognize him at once, and face the truth about what she’d done.
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