Page 13 of Marriage Made In Hate

‘And you think I haven’t done so for exactly the same reason?’ he retorted, not hiding the blade in his voice.

He saw her face darken. ‘You don’t need to tell me that! I know your opinion of me—you made it crystal-clear six years ago! I was dirt beneath your feet. Good enough for sex, but nothing else.’

‘Don’t speak like that!’ His remonstrance was harsh.

Anger flashed in her eyes, emerald-hard. ‘Why not? It’s only the truth.’ Her voice twisted. ‘And even if I was ever stupid enough to think otherwise, you damn well showed me again last night! Thinking you could just help yourself to me!’

Luca’s expression steeled. ‘Last night was a mistake—’

‘Too damn right it was! The whole damn time I spent with you six years ago was a mistake! I was just too blind, too besotted, to see what you really thought of me! To realise you’d just gone slumming it with me!’

It was Luca’s turn to reach for his wine. As he set the glass back she resumed eating, a set look back on her face, her movements jerky.

‘It wasn’t like that,’ he began stiffly.

Her head flew up, eyes flashing again, turning them into green fire.

‘Don’t give me that! It was exactly like that! You said I was a common-as-muck, pig-ignorant, low-class nobody, dragged up in the East End of London—’

‘I never said that!’ Anger was open in Luca’s voice now.

She cast a vicious smile at him. ‘Oh, no, of course you didn’t!

You said,’ she went on savagely, ‘that we came from “very different worlds”, that we’d had “a good time” together, but now it was over.

You were going back to your ancestral palace and I would go back to being a barmaid pulling pints.

Believe me, I didn’t need a translation—I got the message! ’

Luca’s mouth compressed. He didn’t want to be reminded of how their affair had ended. How difficult she’d made it for him. How brutal he’d had to be.

He picked up his knife and fork again, attacking his lamb with displaced ferocity. He could do without her riling him—he really could do without it.

‘The past is gone, Bianca,’ he said repressively. ‘It’s the present we have to deal with. Matteo will want more than he got this morning—he’ll want to go on indulging in his fantasy. He won’t be confined to bed indefinitely. The moment he feels strong enough he’ll be downstairs, wanting evidence.’

The green fire in her eyes was extinguished. ‘Evidence?’ Bianca’s voice was blank.

‘Of course evidence. For a start, he’ll want to see my ring on your finger. Which means we’ll have to go and get one.’

For a moment his thoughts went to the antique emerald and pearl betrothal ring that fiancées in his family had worn for generations. But no, he’d done enough for Matteo.

‘We can go tomorrow,’ he said. ‘Pavenza has decent enough jewellers—we’ll find something there.’

‘ You can go,’ she corrected.

He shook his head. ‘No dice. You’ll come too.’

She looked across at him. ‘I said no.’

‘And I said yes.’ He took a forkful of his food.

‘Bianca, Matteo will expect it. He’ll expect us to spend time with each other.

He said as much to me this morning. You probably didn’t get the gist of it when he spoke to me in Italian, but he acknowledged that as we don’t know each other, he wants us to spend time together.

Yes, of course it’s absurd—this whole sad, pitiful fantasy of his is absurd, and makes no sense except inside his head.

But we’ve committed to it, Bianca. We have to see it through now. For Matteo’s sake.’

Without realising it, he had altered his tone.

Something changed in her face. Slowly, reluctantly, she nodded. As if it were costing her dear…

But it was costing him too. Her vicious denunciation just now was still ringing in his ears. He had to silence it. Silence the past with the present.

He pressed on. ‘Don’t fight me on this. We have to put on a show. The show he wants to see—expects to see. Hopes to see. We can do it if we set aside our…our differences.’

A corner of her mouth pulled. A humourless twist. ‘That’s more ironic than you know,’ she said. ‘Or maybe it isn’t? Six years ago our “differences” were impossible to set aside…’

Her words were pointed.

He gave an impatient shrug. ‘Don’t keep bringing up the past. It’s over, like I said.’

‘Oh, yes, you definitely said! Quite a few times! Every time more brutal!’ The green fire was back in her eyes.

Luca threw up a peremptory hand. ‘Let it go, Bianca. It’s not relevant to the current situation.’

It was a putdown. He knew it and he didn’t care. He didn’t want her throwing their final parting back in his face the whole damn time.

What the hell else was I expecting? We had an affair—it was good, then it ended. It was our differences that made us appeal to each other—and our differences that made anything other than a fling impossible to contemplate.

And if he’d ever thought differently about their differences…?

He pushed the question aside. He hadn’t gone to London to find a wife…

to come home with a bride-to-be. He’d been there to work, to put in his time in the City, build his career and enjoy what London offered.

And enjoy it he had. And so had Bianca. Right up until the messy end he’d assumed Bianca knew the score. It wasn’t his problem that she hadn’t.

He let his hand fall. It was the present he had to deal with now—not the past.

‘Like I say…’ He dropped his admonishing tone.

‘We have to get through this somehow. And it seems to me that the least worst way is to behave as though we are what Matteo thinks we are—complete strangers to each other. So, let’s do that.

Behave like we’re strangers. No past, no recriminations.

Just Matteo’s niece and his godson, thrown together in this pitiful situation and trying to grant a dying man his dying wish, however absurd that wish is against any standard of reality.

A sad, hopeless fantasy he’s clinging to as he makes his untimely farewell to life.

Let’s have the…the compassion to do that. For him. Because we care about him.’

He paused minutely, never taking his eyes from her. Her eyes were on him, unreadable, her face closed.

‘I guess I’m calling for a truce, Bianca. Just so we can deal with what we have to deal with now.’ He took a breath, eyes still on her. ‘Well? Will you agree?’

She didn’t say anything, but something changed in her face, went out of it—as if, maybe, she was letting something go. Reluctantly. Warily.

For a moment she did not speak. Then, ‘All right,’ she said, her voice low. She did not meet his eyes.

Luca reached for his wine. Relief was going through him—or something was. Something he was glad of.

Though he did not know why.