Gaelen Foley - Ascension 02

by Princess

  He did not. “The repairs you mention are indeed in order,” he warily replied.

  She studied him archly. “These changes are only the beginning. Half of the furniture’s falling apart. Most of the rooms are hopelessly outdated. We will be redecorating after we rebuild.” Again, she waited smugly for his refusal.

  He wasn’t worried. His pockets were deep, else he’d never have let things between them get this far. Shopping was, after all, the delight of her life. “I trust you will bring us to the height of fashion,” he said. “In fact, I know an excellent architect by the name of Signore Ambrosetti.”

  “Has he offices in town? I will go see him.”

  “Not so fast,” he said gently but firmly, staying her with a gesture. “I will send for him and fetch him here, then you can show him yourself what needs to be done. Order him around to your heart’s content, if you like, but I don’t want you going into town.”

  She folded her arms under her breasts. He checked his stare.

  “I am going into town.”

  “No. It is not safe.”

  “Why?” she demanded.

  “Because I said so,” he replied, declining to tell her about the possibility of Tyurinov’s presence. Nothing had been confirmed. Why burden her with something that was his problem? He could handle it alone and certainly there was no point in scaring her on top of making her wretched. “Signore Ambrosetti will need to make a survey of the property anyway.” He smoothed his coat and sat down again.

  “Darius.”

  To emphasize the point that the conversation was closed, he forced himself to take a nonchalant bite of his breakfast. The omelet had gone cold and rubbery. Disgusting, he thought as he chewed. Bravado wasn’t worth this.

  “Darius!”

  “No.”

  “Look at this.” She suddenly flung some papers onto his desk and stepped back, hands on her hips. “I didn’t want to show you this, but I daresay now you’ll see why I must go into town.”

  “What’s this?” he murmured as he took them. It appeared to be a collection of those lurid gossip newspapers she was always reading. He looked down at the top page and promptly choked on his mouthful of cold eggs.

  “They are lampooning us everywhere,” she declared.

  He stopped his choking with a swallow of hot coffee, then stared at the newspaper. It was the issue printed the day their scandal broke.

  The headline was three inches tall: IN FLAGRANTE DELICTO!

  “Dear God!”

  Below it was a heartless caricature. He was depicted bare-chested, a snarl on his lips, his sword drawn to fight off a crowd of outraged people around her bed, while Serafina, curls wild, was shown on her knees behind him, clinging fearfully about his waist.

  She’s mine! read the caption.

  He stared at the sketch for a long moment and then, slowly, he began to laugh.

  “You think it’s funny?” she cried in outrage.

  “Well,” he said. “We can either laugh or cry.”

  “We can bloody well do more than that, Santiago! Ugh, you may suffer in silence as usual if you want, but I’m not going to take this. I’m going into town. They think we are hiding our faces in shame here, but I’ll show them! I’m going to walk in there and hold my head up and—and show them all that I don’t give a fig what they think.”

  “Ah-hmm,” he said skeptically as he skimmed the article.

  Meanwhile, she paced, full of angry, pent-up energy.

  His heart sank when he looked at the final column on the front page. It had a smaller headline that asked, TROUBLE IN PARADISE? and went on to proclaim that their marriage was already in ruins.

  How the hell did they know that? he thought angrily. Damned journalists must have been spying on them somehow.

  From across the room, she turned to him, arms tightly folded. “Now, are you coming with me or not?”

  “Serafina, for the eighth time, you’re not going anywhere.”

  “Yes, I am!” With a sudden look of fury, she marched toward the desk and braced both hands on the edge, leaning toward him, curls flying, violet eyes blazing, her chest heaving with anger, magnificent in her ire. “I am going mad here! There is no one to talk to and nothing to do!”

  He stared up at her, rather awed, then snapped out of her spell. “Nevertheless, here you shall remain.”

  “Why?” she demanded.

  “Because I said so.”

  “I am not your prisoner!” she cried, slamming her fist down on his desk, right on Sir James Richards’s letter.

  Darius looked down at her clenched hand, then flicked his gaze up to her face. “Calm yourself,” he said through gritted teeth.

  “Oh, shall I be like you? Without emotions? I’m going into town and you can’t stop me!”

  He shot to his feet, but refused to lose his temper. “I am your husband and you will obey me. That is what you wanted, isn’t it? That is what you ruined my life for?”

  “Ruined your life?” she gasped. Before he could stop her, she picked up his full breakfast plate and threw it across the room. The plate broke on the floor, cold eggs all over the wall.

  “There! Now I’ve ruined your breakfast, too.” She pivoted on her heel and marched out, fists clenched, curls flouncing down her back.

  For a moment, he was in shock. He hadn’t seen that trick since her nursery days. Then, suddenly, he was incensed.

  “You brat!” he thundered, marching after her. “Get back here and clean it up!”

  He walked out into the foyer to find she was running up the stairs.

  “How old are you, seven, eight, my child bride?” he called angrily after her.

  “Get away from me! I hate you! I never want to see you again!”

  He paused, taken aback. “You hate me?” She had never said such a thing to him before. Had she been pushed as far as she could go? “Serafina!”

  “Just go, Darius! I know you are going to! Just go and get it over with.” She looked down at him over the railing at the top of the steps, her curls falling forward over her shoulders, her creamy cheeks bright pink, tears rising in her eyes. “Maybe I am immature, but I’m not the only one! I see now you only wanted me because I was forbidden. It excited you to take what you thought you could not have. Now that you’ve got me, the thrill is gone and all you want is your freedom again. So, go! And forget the stupid architect. I doubt we will be living here much longer.”

  She shoved away from the railing and disappeared. He could hear her crying as she hurried away down the hall, then he heard the predictable slam of the pink bedroom’s door.

  “Oh, God,” he said under his breath as he dropped his chin almost to his chest. He was very still, his eyes squeezed tightly shut.

  I’ve lost her.

  The thought moved quietly, matter-of-factly through his brain. His eyes flicked open. He stared at the floor, realizing, too late, that her venturing into his office had been her haughty effort to reach out to him. She had held out the olive branch and he had set the other end of it afire.

  She was going to leave him now. He could feel it, had heard it in her voice.

  Throat constricted, he lifted his burning eyes to the empty space at the top of the stairs.

  Don’t leave me.

  Suddenly he was in motion, climbing the stairs, leaping them, two at a time.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  “Open the door,” came her husband’s voice through the wood.

  Serafina glared at the locked door as she moved about the room, angrily packing her belongings into a few open traveling trunks. She was done crying over that heartless Gypsy bastard. She was going home.

  “Let me in.”

  “You won, Darius. I don’t want to see you! Just go away!” She was so sick of his power over her, sick of being in his thrall.

  The doorknob jiggled.

  “You’re not leaving me, Serafina.”

  “I’m sure as hell not staying here by myself!” she shouted at the door.
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  “Nobody’s leaving.”

  “Lie!” she flung at him through the door.

  A moment of silence passed in which she could practically hear him simmering.

  “Serafina, open the goddamned door,” he said quietly. “I want to see you.”

  She merely shot the door another glaring look and pushed her clothes down into the second traveling trunk.

  “Child’s play,” he said in sharp mockery from the other side of the door, then she heard his heavy footfalls retreating down the hallway.

  So, he was gone. Walking away again, she thought bitterly. He gave up so easily.

  She had always been the only one who had fought for their love. He didn’t care. She loved him, yes, so much her body ached for him, but her feelings for her demigod were as unrequited now that she was his wife as they had been when she was a mere smitten sixteen-year-old. She was fed up with it. She was still brooding on this when, about three minutes later, the doorknob made a click.

  Packing some underclothes into the trunk, she glanced over her shoulder at the door, then her eyes widened as the doorknob clicked again, then turned.

  The door opened and Darius sauntered into the room, holding up a hairpin, twirling it nimbly end over end between his fingers with a little sleight of hand. A smug, mocking curve twisted the scarred side of his mouth.

  “Tsk, tsk, tsk,” he said softly, clucking his tongue at her.

  She straightened up near the traveling trunk and turned warily to face him, smoothing a folded chemise over her arm like a shield.

  He slammed the door behind him. She flinched a little as it banged. He paced slowly toward her.

  “You are my wife,” he said darkly as he drew near. “You will go nowhere without my permission, and you will not lock your door to me.”

  “You are my husband,” she replied. “Act like it.”

  He gave her a taut, mocking smile, then his gaze slid to her half-packed traveling trunks. “Where do you think you’re going?”

  “I’m done crying over you, Darius Santiago,” she said as she worked, avoiding his stare. “I know you’re itching to run, so go. I’m sorry I ever meddled in your life.”

  “You’re sorry?” he seemed to marvel, both brows raised.

  She shot him a glaring look, not sure if he was asking in earnest or in sarcasm. “Yes. I’m sorry,” she fairly spat. “It was spoiled and selfish of me to trap you in matrimony. I’m sorry. I believed I was doing the right thing. Obviously, I was wrong. I thought I could help you, but there’s no point trying to reach out to you. You won’t give an inch.”

  His cheeks flushed. “I won’t give? I risked my life for you!”

  “I never wanted that!” She flung down her armful of stockings haphazardly into the trunk and whirled to face him. “Oh, to be sure, you’ve got your heroics to stand on, don’t you? But admit it, Darius—I’m the one who has taken all the risks here—the real risks, the ones that count! I gave you everything, my very self. I’m far more serious about you than you are about me, and I don’t know what else to give to make you stop being afraid.”

  He looked stunned.

  She let out a sigh and lowered her chin, pressing her fingertips to her forehead. “I don’t want to make you unhappy anymore. I know you’re going mad here. I can’t stand seeing you so unhappy and knowing I am the cause. All I want is to give you what you need. Clearly, all you can think about is your precious freedom, so go, Darius. You don’t owe me anything. It’s only your sense of honor that keeps you here, and I’m not going to take advantage of that. I’ll survive without you.” She turned away and gazed down into the half-packed trunk in utter desolation.

  She could feel his tension and his stare, burning into her back. “I don’t want you to go,” he whispered hoarsely. But by the time she turned around in surprise, the vulnerability she had heard in his voice had vanished, as if he, too, had heard it and fought to hide it.

  “You can’t leave. You need me,” he said in rude insolence. “What are you going to do without me? Where can you possibly go?”

  “Back to my parents and the people who care about me, I suppose.”

  “Damn it, I care about you! Don’t you see me standing here—why else would I be here? I love you,” he said harshly.

  Arms crossed over her chest, she turned cautiously to him. “Quite a declaration.”

  “I love you,” he tried again, this time a growl.

  She sighed at the way he forced himself to say it. “What you have toward me is not love, Darius. What you have toward me is a chess game in which you are the mastermind and I am the little pawn being moved about the board—”

  “How can you say that?” he said, his chiseled face flushed with escalating anger, a trace of panic beginning to show in his eyes. “Why do you think I went to Milan—”

  “Because you would rather die than take the chance of opening yourself to me. If you really cared about me, you would try telling me the truth once in a while.”

  “You want the truth? Is that what will make you happy?” he cried sarcastically. “Fine! Pull up a chair, Princess! I’ll give you some truth, my dear. Just don’t blame me for breaking your illusions.”

  She paused, hiding her amazement at his compliance.

  “Have a seat,” he flung out.

  Calmly, she went over and sat down on the stool to the vanity. She folded her hands in her lap and waited. Darius paced. He kicked one of her traveling trunks out of his way to broaden his path.

  “You want the truth? All right. What do I care? I’ve got nothing to lose,” he muttered, then he leveled a glaring look at her and pointed at her. “First, you will leave off with this idiotic notion that any kind of war here is your fault or that the blood is on your hands. Absurd! It is Napoleon’s fault, not yours, do you understand me? You are just a girl. He is the tyrant. He is the aggressor, but the one iota of good that came out of my gigantic failure in Milan is that I was able to unearth some vital information on their war plans. They cannot launch any kind of large-scale attack on us until Spain’s top admiral, Villeneuve, destroys the British flagship. You may find your dragon-slayer in Horatio Nelson, Princesa, if not in me.”

  She absorbed this information, her gaze downward. “It is a relief to hear this,” she said quietly. “I wish you had told me a week ago. I have been torturing myself.”

  “Oh, but I’m just getting started. As for the glorious Anatole, when he arrives in Russia, he is going to find himself a wanted man for treason and”—he hesitated—“the murder of his first wife.”

  Her eyes flew open wide. “Princess Margaret?”

  Darius nodded. “He locked her out in the snow one night in the middle of the Russian winter—punishment for giving a few of the serfs a day off while he was away. He found out about it when he came home and gave her a thrashing for defying his authority, then threw her out. She died of exposure. All she had on was her night rail.”

  “How horrible,” she breathed, barely able to find her voice. “How evil of him! Oh, Darius, how could he do that to her?”

  “I’m sure he had his reasons,” he said bitterly. “They always do.”

  “Why did you not tell me this before? It concerned me directly—”

  “I couldn’t. I just couldn’t.” His raven forelock veiled his eyes.

  “Why?”

  “I didn’t want you to know there were such men in the world. It was too horrible.”

  “Worse than seeing you kill Philippe Saint-Laurent?”

  “Yes, to me.”

  “Why?”

  “Let’s just say it’s a matter with which I have had some early experience.”

  His words reminded her of another point. “What about the fact that you are a count? Care to comment, my lord?”

  He looked over at her. “You know about that?”

  “Julia Calazzi told me.”

  He shrugged. “The title is meaningless. The point is not that I have it, but that my half-brothers do not.”
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  She studied him. “And what of your father?”

  “He’s dead.”

  “I understand he came to you looking for a handout.”

  He nodded with a bitter smile.

  “And you gave it to him.”

  “Don’t think for an instant that it was out of my great sense of charity. There’s only one reason I gave him the money.”

  “To get rid of him as quickly as possible?”

  He shook his head as the cold smile curved his scarred mouth again. “Revenge.”

  “I don’t understand. You helped him. How is that revenge?”

  “Control over his destiny, my dear,” he said tautly, pacing again. “To have merely denied him the money would have been too merciful. I first put his mind at ease—let him think his woes were over. He was in my power—my dependent, utterly. So grateful, the bootlicker,” he said in contempt. “And then . . .” He turned away. “Well, you know what they say. The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away.”

  “What did you do to him?” she whispered.

  “He never should have come looking to me for help.”

  She stared at him, her blood running cold. “Did you kill him, Darius?”

  “No. I thought about it, but he wasn’t worthy of my skill. Instead, I let him believe he could resume his former standard of living, then without warning I ceased paying his bills. He did it to himself, you see. He died of disease in debtor’s prison, old, unwept, and alone. A fitting punishment. Anything else you want to know, wife?”

  Shaken by this revelation of his terrible ruthlessness, she swallowed down her fear. “I—I don’t know. Is there anything else you want to tell me?”

  “Well, let me see . . . the truth. She wants the truth,” he mused aloud, hands clasped behind his back as he paced, head down. He shot her a piercing sideward glance. “Well, I suppose I ought to tell you before someone else does, because then we’ll be right back where we started.”