Princess From the Past

by Caitlin Crews

  “As you are not a student but the Principessa di Felici, it would be preferable if you dressed in a manner more befitting your station,” the dry, disapproving Nuncio had told her.

  She reminded herself that she had only moments ago claimed to have grown up; such spiteful, petty thoughts rather undermined that claim.

  She smiled with as much politeness as she could muster and waved a hand toward her bag where it stood near the door.

  “As you can see, I brought very little,” she said. “I doubt I have anything appropriate. I am more than happy to take a tray in my room.”

  “There is no need,” Leo said smoothly, a smile playing near his sensual lips.

  He moved then, his long strides bringing him far too close to her until he stopped at the large dressing-room that led away from the bed chamber itself. He opened the door and indicated the interior with a slight nod.

  “Your wardrobe remains intact.”

  Bethany felt her mouth open and snapped it closed.

  “You cannot mean …?” She blinked. “I have been gone for three years.”

  Leo’s smile deepened. “Eight o’clock,” he said soft ly.

  She did not know why she should feel so …disarmed. She did not know why it felt as if he had kept her things out of some sense of emotional attachment to her—when she knew such a thing to be impossible. Leo did not have emotional attachments, to her or to anyone. It was far more likely that he had simply forgotten this room existed the moment she’d left and the contents of her closet along with it.

  Still, she felt a fluttering in her stomach and a kind of ache in her chest.

  Leo was too close now, within a single step, and she knew the exact moment that both of them realized that: the air seemed to disappear even as it heated. His eyes grew darker, more intent. His smile took on an edge that made a tight coil of need twist inside of her.

  “No,” she said, but it was little more than a whisper. Need. Longing. She did not know which was worse.

  “What are you refusing?” he asked, taunting her. “I have offered you nothing.”

  Yet, was the unspoken next word. It seemed to shimmer between them. Bethany could imagine his hands cupping her face, his hard, impossible mouth on hers. She knew exactly how it would feel, exactly how deeply and fully she would feel it.

  But she knew better than to let him touch her. She knew better than to trust herself this close to him. It was not him she feared, it was herself. Once she touched him again, how could she ever stop?

  “I am here for one reason, Leo,” she said, wanting to back away from him but worried that doing so would make her look weak, and encourage him to push his advantage. “I am not here to dress in fancy gowns for lavish dinners I do not want, much less to play bedroom games with you.”

  “Bedroom games?” His voice was like chocolate, dark and sweet. “I am intrigued. What sort of games do you have in mind?”

  “A divorce,” she said, feeling desperate. He still had yet to move! He simply looked at her in that knowing, shattering way, and it made her shiver. Her body wanted everything he had to offer and more. It always had. “All I want is a divorce. That is the only thing I have on my mind.”

  “So you have mentioned, I think,” Leo said in that low, rich voice that seemed to connect directly to her nerve endings, sending sensations rippling throughout her limbs. “Repeatedly.”

  There was no magic, she told herself fiercely. He was not magical. It was simply because she was here, in this room, in this castle, in Italy. It was not his voice. It was not him. It was only the past, yet again.

  If she turned her head too quickly she feared she would see her own ghost and his entwined together—on the thick rug beneath their feet, up against the door, on the window seat. They had always been insatiable. As their marriage had worn on and worsened, that had often been their only form of communication.

  But those were ghosts, and this was now, and she knew exactly what that light in his eyes meant.

  “I am sorry if I have begun to bore you,” she managed to say. “A solution, of course, is to allow me to remain in this room until we go to court. You need never see me until then.”

  She sounded desperate to her own ears, yet Leo only smiled, a lazy, knowing smile that sent heat spiraling through her until her toes curled inside her shoes. It would be far too easy simply to move toward him. She knew he would catch her. He would sweep her into his arms and she would lose herself completely in that raging wildfire that was his to command.

  A huge part of her wanted that, needed that, more than she wanted anything else—even her freedom. And that terrified her.

  If she touched him, if she pressed her lips to his, she would forget. She would forget everything, as if it had all been a nightmare and he was the light of day. Wasn’t that exactly what he’d done for her after her father had died? But she had no idea how she would ever fight her way out of it—not again. Not whole.

  And she could not be this broken again. Not ever again.

  “That would not suit me at all,” he said, his attention focused on her mouth. “As I think you know.”

  “I don’t want you to touch me!” she threw at him from the depths of her fear, her agony and her broken heart. Because she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that she could not trust herself, not where he was concerned. She still wanted him too much. She bit her lip but then pulled herself together somehow, even as his arrogant brows climbed high.

  “I beg your pardon?” He was all hauteur, untold centuries of nobility.

  “You heard me.” She looked around as if there was anything that might redirect her focus when he was standing so close. She sucked in a breath and returned her gaze to his. “The chemistry between us is damaging. It can only lead to confusion.”

  “I am not confused,” he offered, smirking slightly.

  “I do not want you,” she lied, in a matter-of-fact voice. She did not smile; she met his gaze. “Not in that way. Not at all.”

  She expected his temper. His disbelief. She was unprepared for the full force of his devastating smile. He crossed his arms over his tautly muscled chest and gazed at her almost fondly. Somehow, that was far worse than any sardonic expression. It made her almost yearn.

  “You are such a liar,” he said softly, without heat. Flustered, she began to speak, but he cut her off. “You want me, Bethany. You always have and you always will, no matter what stories you choose to tell yourself.”

  “Your conceit is astonishing,” she said even as her heart leapt in her chest and her legs felt shaky underneath her. Even as she felt the roll and sway, the seductive pull, of all that grief just beneath.

  “Just as I want you,” he said, shrugging as if it was of no matter to him—as, she reminded herself forcefully, it doubtless was not. “It is inconvenient, perhaps, but nothing more dangerous than that.”

  “Leo, I am telling you—” she began, feeling flushed and edgy.

  “You need not concern yourself,” he interrupted her, his words casual, almost offhand, though his gaze burned. “I have no intention of seducing you into my bed. In fact, I will not touch you at all as long as you are here.”

  She stared at him, letting those unexpected words sink in, telling herself that this was exactly what she wanted to hear, that this would make everything easy, that this was what she wanted. Though she could not entirely ignore the empty feeling that swamped her suddenly, nearly taking her off her feet.

  “I am happy to hear that,” she said. His eyes seemed to see straight through her and she was as terrified of what he might see as of what she might feel. What she already felt.

  His smile took on that edge again and the tension between them seemed to crackle with new electricity, making it hard to breathe.

  “I will leave it to you,” he said in that compelling voice of his that slid like whiskey and chocolate over her, through her, inside of her.

  “To me?” She could hardly do more than echo him.

  “If you want me
, Bethany, you must come to me.” His deep-brown eyes were mesmerizing, so dark and rich, with that gold gleam within. His voice lowered. “You must be the one to touch me, not the other way around.”

  “That will work perfectly,” she said, her voice betraying her by cracking even as her breasts and her hidden core grew heavy and ached, yearned. “As I have absolutely no intention—”

  “There are your intentions and then there is reality,” he said smoothly. His gaze sharpened suddenly, catching her off-guard. “You cannot keep your hands off me. You never could. But you prefer to pretend that the passion between us is something I use to control you. Is that not what you said so memorably? That I would prefer it if I could keep you chained to my bed? It certainly makes you feel more the martyr to think so.”

  Bethany’s mouth fell open then. There was a heat behind her eyes and a riot in her limbs as she tried to make sense of what he was saying—what he was doing or, more to the point, deliberately not doing.

  “I am not a martyr,” was all she could think to say, instantly wishing she could yank the words back into her mouth. She did not feel like a martyr, she felt adrift and unsteady, as she had always felt here.

  “Indeed you are not,” he said softly, deliberately, that gleam in his eyes growing hard, seeming to take over the room, her pounding heart. “What you are is a liar. It is entirely up to you to prove otherwise.”

  He thought she was a liar. He had said it before, and she had no doubt he meant it. It was almost amusing, she thought, unable to look away from him for a long, searing moment. It should have been amusing, really, and she wanted to laugh it off, but she found she had no voice. She could not seem to find it.

  She could not reply in kind, or at all, and she did not know why that seemed to highlight everything they’d lost. What was being called a liar next to all of that?

  “Eight o’clock,” he said with a certain finality and evident satisfaction. “Do not make me come and fetch you.”

  Then he walked from the room and left her standing there, shocked, trembling and lost again, so very lost—as he had no doubt planned from the start.

  There was so much she had forgotten, Bethany thought as she made her way through the castle’s quiet halls toward dinner moments before eight o’clock, as requested.

  She had not expected to find so many memories when she’d ventured into her former closet and searched for something simple to wear to dinner. It was not quite a homecoming, and yet every gown, every bag, every shoe had seemed to whisper a different half-forgotten story to her.

  They had all come flooding back to her without warning, leaving her raw and aching for a past she knew she needed to keep firmly behind her if she was to escape it. But the memories had rushed at her anyway.

  A night out at the opera in Milan, where the glorious voices had seemed to pale next to the fire in Leo’s gaze that she’d believed could burn out everything else in the world. A weekend at a friend’s villa outside of Rome, replete with sunshine and laughter—and with her growing fear that she was losing him a constant sharpness underneath.

  A rare public eruption of his fiercely contained temper on a side street in Verona while walking to a business dinner, quick, brutal and devastating. A passionate moment on a quiet bridge in Venice; the explosive, impossible desire that still shimmered between them had been the only way left to reach each other across the walls of bitterness and silence they’d erected.

  So many images and recollections, none of which she had entertained in ages, all of them buffeting her, storming her defenses, making her feel weak, small, vulnerable in ways she hadn’t been in years.

  She ran her hands along the swell of her hips as she walked, smoothing the silken, kelly-green material that flowed to her feet, trying to calm herself. The simple cowl-necked dress was the only item she’d been able to find that was both relatively restrained and unconnected to any of the explosive memories she had not known she’d been carrying around with her.

  But it was not only the memories connected to her forgotten clothes that had unnerved her.

  More than that, she’d realized during that confusing interaction with Leo that on some level she had forgotten who she was back then. The woman Leo had referred to so disparagingly—the one who had behaved so appallingly, who had, she was humiliated to recall, more than once destroyed more than one piece of china while in a temper—was not her.

  That was not who she was, not anymore. It made her stomach hurt to think of it. To think of who he must see when he looked at her. To think that she remembered her isolation and the loss of all she had loved, but he remembered nothing but a termagant.

  It had been that last night that had changed her, she realised, as she descended the great stone stair that dominated the front hall, rising from both sides to meet in the center and then veer off to the east and west wings. That last, shameful night. It was as if something had broken in her then, as if she’d been faced with the depths of her own temper, her own depraved passions. She’d lost that fiery, inconsolable part of herself, that wild, violent, mad part. For good? she thought.

  Or perhaps it is Leo who stirs up all those dark and disgraceful urges, an insidious voice whispered. Perhaps he is the match. Perhaps without him you are simply tinder in a box, harmless and entirely free of fire.

  “I am shocked,” came his lazy drawl, as if she’d summoned him simply by thinking of him.

  Bethany’s head snapped up and she found Leo standing at the foot of the great stair, his brown eyes fathomless as he watched her approach.

  “I had anticipated you would ignore what I told you and force me to come and deliver you to the table myself,” he continued, and she knew there was a part of him that wished she had done just that. Because there was a part of her that wished it too.

  “As I keep attempting to explain to you,” she said, forcing a smile that seemed to scrape along all the places she was raw, “You do not know me any longer.”

  “I am sure that is true,” he said, but there was an undercurrent in his rich voice that made her wonder what he did not say.

  It was so unfair that he was who he was, she thought in a kind of despair as she continued to walk toward him, step by stone step.

  The walls were covered with heavy tapestries and magnificent portraits of the Di Marco family from across the ages. Every step she took was an opportunity to note the well-documented provenance of the thrust of Leo’s haughty cheekbones, the fullness of his lips, the flashing, dark richness of his gaze, all laid out for her in an inexorable march through the generations. His height, his rangy male beauty, his thick and lustrous hair: all of this was as much his legacy as the castle they both stood in.

  And he was not only the product of this elegant, aristocratic line—he was its masterpiece. Tonight he wore a dark suit she had no doubt he had had made to his specifications in one of Milan’s foremost ateliers, so that the charcoal-hued fabric clung to his every movement. He was a dream made flesh, every inch of him a prince and every part of him devastatingly attractive. It was hardwired into his very DNA.

  How could she explain to this man what it was to feel isolated? He was never alone; he had servants, aides, dependants, villagers, employees. Failing that, he had some eight centuries of well-documented family history to keep him company. He was always surrounded by people in one way or another.

  Bethany had only had her father since she’d been tiny, and then she’d had only Leo. But soon she had lost him too, and it had broken her in ways she knew that he—who had never had no one, who could not conceive of such a thing—would never, ever understand. She only knew that she could not allow it to happen a second time or she was afraid she would disappear altogether.

  “Why do you frown?” he asked quietly, his gaze disconcertingly warm, incisive—dangerous.

  “Am I?” Bethany tried to smooth her features into something more appropriate as she finally came to a stop on the step just above him—something more uninviting, more appropriate for a d
ivorcing couple. “I was thinking of all these portraits,” she said, which was not untrue, and waved a hand at the walls. “I was wondering when yours will grace the walls.”

  “On my fortieth birthday,” he replied at once, his brows arching. He smirked slightly, and his tone turned sardonic. “Do you have an artist in mind? Perhaps your lover is a painter. What a delightful commission that would be.”

  Bethany pulled in a long breath, determined not to react to him as he obviously wished her to do. Determined not to feel slapped down, somehow—after all, she was the one who had introduced the concept of a lover into this mess. She was lucky Leo preferred to make sardonic remarks and was not altogether more angry, as she’d expected him to be. She was somewhat mystified he was not.

  She forced another smile, hiding the sharp edges she did not wish to feel, pretending they did not exist.

  “I only wondered how odd it must be to grow up under the gaze of so many men who look so much like you,” she said. “You must never have spent even a moment imagining who you might be when you grew up. You already knew exactly what was in store for you.”

  She looked at the nearest painting, a well-known Giotto portrait of one of the earliest Di Marco princes, who looked like a shorter, rounder, eccentrically clad version of the man in front of her.

  “I am my family’s history,” he said matter-of-factly, yet not without a certain resolute pride. She could feel the current of it in him, around him. “I am unintelligible without it.”

  He spoke in an even sort of tone, as if he expected her to fight him about it. Had she done that before? she wondered suddenly. Had she argued simply for the sake of arguing? Or had she simply been too young then to understand how any history could shape and mold whomever it touched? She wondered if some day she would think about their complicated history without the attendant surge of anger and the darker current of grief.