Page 23 of Marriage Made In Hate

B IANCA STARED AT her reflection. The evening gown she had bought in Pavenza had been Matteo’s choice.

He’d seen it on the website of Pavenza’s most upmarket boutique and urged her to buy it.

For herself, she would not have chosen it.

It was strapless, silvery white, falling from a softly draped crystal-beaded bodice in silken folds to her ankles.

It was exquisite—but it looked far too much like a wedding dress…

But if this was the gown Matteo had set his heart on, she could not refuse him—whatever her misgivings. She wore it now with a delicate, light-as-air chiffon shawl, woven through with silver thread, gathered over her elbows.

Her jewellery was Matteo’s wife’s pearl collar, once again, with the pearl bracelets on either wrist and the matching pearl and tortoiseshell combs fastening the elegant up-style of her hair, exposing the pearl drop earrings against her throat.

On her finger gleamed the emerald and pearl ring Luca had bought her. Her eyes dropped to it. Disquiet showed in her expression. The ring was proof of the lie she was perpetuating, and now it would not just be Matteo she was lying to, but his friends as well.

The warning words of that old poem flitted in her head.

Oh, what a tangled web we weave

When first we practise to deceive…

But what else could she and Luca do now except go on with the lie? In the two weeks that had passed since Luca had told her what Matteo had done, her uncle had been revelling in anticipation for the coming party.

‘ I want everyone to see—to know—how happy you and Luca have made me! My friends will rejoice with me!’

Would they? Uncertainty filled her, and she lifted her gaze to look at herself again. At least she looked the part in this exquisite gown, which had cost she dared not think about how much, and wearing her aunt’s jewellery—which presumably people other than Luca might well recognise.

A sudden jarring image forced itself into her head—how she had once looked, all those years ago, with her flashy fashion sense, her fake jewellery, her extravagant hairstyles, her lavish make-up.

She had loved the way she looked, and Luca had enjoyed it too, but the Bianca of six years ago would never have convinced any of Matteo’s friends that she was his godson’s fiancée…

And now…?

She let her gaze rest on her own reflection. Now she was Matteo Fiarante’s niece, wearing pearls and a designer evening gown, with Luca’s betrothal ring on her finger—a miniature version, it seemed, of his family’s priceless ancestral heirloom.

Now I look entirely eligible for his elite, rich and aristocratic world.

Emotion twisted inside her. What if she’d looked like this six years ago?

What if she’d met Luca then, as a university student, speaking BBC English and knowing all about Titian and the Renaissance and anything else that he and all the people who would be here tonight took for granted and knew about?

Would he still have finished with me? Declared our affair over?

The questions hung in her head. It was pointless even to ask. Pointless to revisit the past. She had made her peace with it. Now, all she must do was cope with the present. Get through this evening as best she could, playing the part she and Luca had accepted. And so must he.

A tremor went through her. She had not set eyes on him since he had gone back to Rome.

She had schooled herself not to think about him and to focus only on her uncle, on keeping him company, lifting his spirits, letting him enthuse about the coming party, trying the best she could to deflect him from talking about the future, when she and Luca were married…

Yet Luca had stayed in her head, a background presence, all the time. It was worst in the reaches of the night, when she would wake and unguarded thoughts would spring into her unwary consciousness. She’d see him in her mind’s eye, hear him, replay his presence.

She dreaded seeing him tonight.

Tonight would be an ordeal not just because of the lie she must parade in front of her uncle’s friends, but for a far more daunting reason. It would be an ordeal simply to be in Luca’s company again…

Somehow, she would have to endure it.

Somehow she would need to face not just those people, but Luca.

She’d heard his car with its distinctive engine note pull up some ten minutes ago, and presumed he was talking with Matteo, awaiting her descent.

She knew she needed to go downstairs, that guests would be arriving.

But she wanted to delay the moment just a tiny bit longer.

Steeling herself, she reached for the bottle of scent on her dressing table, spritzing lightly, covering the pearls with her hand as she did so.

Then, after a swift pursing of her lips to check her lipstick, and a final glance to check her mascara had not smudged, with a determined movement she headed for her bedroom door.

Just as she did so, there was a quick knock on it. Assuming it was Maria, she called out for her to come in.

But it was not Maria who walked in.

It was Luca.

* * *

Luca stopped dead. It had been two weeks since he had last set eyes on Bianca, that day at his palazzo .

But even if she had been out of sight, she had not been out of mind.

Troublingly so. They had communicated by phone, on updates on Matteo and over the practicalities of this party Matteo was insisting on.

The calls had been mutually civil…amiable, even…

but every one, he knew, had ended with him feeling disquieted.

Knowing that, however much he should not—for what would be the purpose of it? —he wanted to see her again.

And now he was.

And now, as his gaze rested on her, he knew exactly why he had wanted to.

For the reason that was sweeping through him now, making a mockery of all his disquiet, his confusion. Making something inside him totally clear.

Whatever had once been between him and Bianca was blazing again…making everything else irrelevant. The charade they were performing, the lie they were getting deeper and deeper into, the deception they were perpetrating. All irrelevant.

There was only one truth now.

And she was standing there and it was radiating from her.

Barely more than a metre away from him, he saw Bianca face him. He felt something clench inside him and knew exactly what it was. A slug to his solar plexus, wiping the breath momentarily from his lungs.

She looked…breathtaking. And so much more.

He was dazed with it…with the undeniable truth. It was possessing him entirely. Knowing there was only one reason for it, he heard himself murmur in Italian…words that were superlatives of superlatives…expressing his reaction to the vision he was beholding.

As for her reaction—she, too, had stopped dead.

He saw the hand with his ring on her finger tighten over the gossamer shawl around her elbows.

And there was something in the way she was staring at him—something he didn’t bother to put a name to because he knew perfectly well what it was.

Because he had seen it in her eyes a hundred times before… six years ago…

He stepped forward. Made his eyes move over her, his lashes sweeping down, appreciating every centimetre of her.

He was not hiding it from her…

Not even trying to.

Nor wanting to.

* * *

Bianca saw his reaction. It hollowed her out. His eyes were washing over her, doing things to her that swept her back six long years… Things she had spent the last two weeks wanting never to feel again, wanting to arm herself against.

But his single glance was sweeping all that away, like a surge tide demolishing a puny barrier of sand.

And it was impossible — impossible —for all her anguished resolve since he had left the villa for her to withstand it.

Weakness drenched through her, and she felt herself almost sway, disastrously aware that a pulse was throbbing in her throat, that colour was flaring across her cheeks, heat flushing in her veins like a warm, sensuous tide.

Her eyes were locked to him, standing there immaculate in his evening dress.

And as she stood helpless, motionless, she knew with a dismay that it was impossible to dispel that all her defences were no more.

That her resistance to what she saw now in his eyes, felt inside herself, was futile. Impossible to sustain.

From somewhere within, using some last vestige of control, she made herself speak. Made her voice sound nothing more than neutral.

‘Is it time to go down?’ she made herself ask, wanting only that her voice should not tremble.

It was time to take up her role as Luca’s fidenzata— his bride-to-be, his chosen future viscontessa . The woman chosen to be his wife, chosen to share his life.

Emotion stabbed in her, but she refused to recognise it. Bad enough to feel what she could not deny—the helpless weakness sweeping through her under Luca’s sweeping, melting gaze.

‘Yes.’ His answer sounded staccato. ‘I am sent to summon you.’

Luca held the door open for her and she nodded, walking forward, conscious as she passed him of the scent of his aftershave…tangy, with citrus notes, and an underlying ultra-masculine undertone that caught at her senses.

She stepped out onto the broad landing, heard the sound of the band tuning up—for there would be dancing later on, out on the terrace, after a lavish buffet had been served in the dining room.

The practical organisation of the party had fallen on Giuseppe’s apparently infinitely capable shoulders, and he had reassured her, with smiling enthusiasm, that such events had been frequent when her uncle’s wife, the signora , had been alive.

He had told her that the household could easily accommodate what Matteo had in mind, and how good it was to see the signor so happy.

His smile had deepened. And for so good a reason…