by Maisey Yates
Nothing was to be moved. Ever. And so it had been from the first. He spent a great amount of time here, and was more than able to conduct business from this location. Which was what he would continue to do until he came to a conclusion about exactly what he was to do with Charlotte. She had expected that he was going to force her into marriage of some kind, but he could see no benefit in that.
Marriage was simply a piece of paper. Easily walked away from. Easily destroyed. And Charlotte knew how to disappear. He needed something much more assuring.
Likely you could have gone with seduction if you had not kidnapped her.
He smiled ruefully at nothing and no one in particular. Yes, perhaps seduction would have been the better option. It said nothing good about him that he had gone to kidnapping first, he supposed. But it was too late.
That gave him pause.
Perhaps seduction was still the answer. Charlotte wanted trust. She wanted to feel as though she had some say in the situation. Wanted to feel as though she had some control. Charlotte wanted security and certainty. She wanted something of what they had once had.
He had lost that part of himself along with his sight, and it had never been an overly prominent part of him to begin with. She was the only person on the whole earth that he’d cared for in the way that he had. So, even then his faith in love had been somewhat tenuous.
It was gone altogether now, but that did not mean she had to believe so.
Control. That was the name of the game.
And what he had always found terribly inconvenient was that other people were so damned difficult to control. It was why he preferred his life stripped down to a series of transactions. Where there was him, and there was staff.
His dealings with Charlotte would require a different tactic.
But he was prepared for that. He had her exactly where he wanted. All he would have to do was maintain control of his own actions, and he would be able to obtain exactly what he wanted.
There were a great many things he found difficult these days. But control was not one of them.
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHARLOTTE WAS FEELING ANTSY. After her conversation with Rafe the night before she had gone to bed and slept fitfully. Then she had woken with her mouth tasting like the inside of an old fast-food wrapper, and her body feeling like it had been run over by a car. Her head hurt, and her entire being just felt stale. It was difficult to know what to do now. Difficult to know what the best course of action was.
It was terribly isolating, being in this castle. Not that she wasn’t used to isolation. It was just that this was outside her control. And for the past five years her isolation had been self-imposed.
She had decided when she would move; she had decided where she would live and where she would work. All her interactions with her friends had been carefully planned, of course.
But she was supposed to be done with that, and Rafe had come in and uprooted her. Plus, she was having his babies.
All of that had been lost somehow. Probably in the kidnapping. It was very difficult to maintain one’s wits when one was whisked to a castle in a helicopter against one’s will.
She was having twins.
Her heart clenched tight, and so did her stomach.
She made a dash to the restroom, just in time to lose what little she had eaten the night before. She emerged again feeling clammy and unsteady.
She dressed slowly in the clothes she had been wearing the day before. Last night before bed a member of staff had provided her with a pair of pajamas, but there was still nothing else. She had been informed that a new wardrobe would be coming soon. But as concerns went, it was on the bottom of the list. She sighed heavily, looking at her reflection in the mirror again, which was yet more waxen and disheveled than it had been yesterday.
She opened up the door to her bedroom and saw a tray laden with breakfast sitting outside. She wrinkled her nose, then stepped over it. She wanted nothing to do with food. Not at the moment.
She walked down the circular staircase, and found herself standing in a large antechamber. She thought it was perhaps at the front of the castle. But she found the whole thing mazelike and disorienting. She couldn’t fathom how Rafe navigated it. She had a hard enough time using all of her senses, and he was deprived of one of his and seemed to have no trouble getting around.
But then, as with all things, Rafe liked to maintain control. Which meant getting around the palace wasn’t difficult. That much she could surmise from just knowing him.
Her heart twisted. The way he had talked about being dependent on other people after his accident...
What a horrible thing. For a man like him, feeling powerless, feeling helpless. It truly was one of the worst imaginable fates. Aside from death. His very survival had depended on the kindness of others.
Even given her present circumstance, she could feel bad for him about that.
She inhaled the scent of the air, and she yet again understood exactly what he meant when he spoke of the atmosphere in the palace versus modern architecture. It was different. You could smell the age and the walls, not unpleasant, but certainly unmistakable. It was clean, but this was not something that would get wiped away.
Right now, it was all a bit overpowering to her. Her senses had become notably enhanced over the past week or so, and at the moment smells were an assault.
She moved through the antechamber, and down a corridor, and that led to a room that was made entirely of windows. The light was so bright here, pouring in from outside like buckets of gold, bringing both warmth and a sense of space to the room.
That was when she noticed that toward the back of the room, the two panels in the middle weren’t windows at all, but doors.
That was what she needed. To get outside. To clear her head.
She began to walk across the room when the same woman from last night came in. “Miss,” the woman said. “Mr. Costa is looking for you.”
Of course. The master desired her presence, and therefore she was fetched and expected to comply. She was not in the mood.
“Then Mr. Costa will simply have to keep looking for a while,” she said, feeling stubborn, a little bit nauseous and really not in the mood.
“Miss, I don’t think that is a good idea.”
“If Mr. Costa would like to speak to me, he can come out to the garden.”
The woman looked ashen at the very idea of someone defying Mr. Costa. “Mr. Costa does not come out to the garden.”
But Charlotte was resolute. “Then Mr. Costa will have to wait.”
She walked with a purposeful stride to the doors, then wrenched the first one open. She could tell that it hadn’t been used in a long while. Again, not her concern.
Rafe had spirited her away to his castle out in the middle of Germany, and it was not her job to be a compliant captive. She had done so long enough. And while she was grieved to discover that Rafe was more like her father than he had once been, she knew that he wasn’t going to throw her off the top of the castle for insubordination.
She stepped outside, closing the door behind her, allowing the chill autumn air to wash over her.
It was a garden, but it certainly wasn’t kept up.
Everything was overgrown, in a state of disarray. There were great stone statues with vines growing up around them, making everything look as though nature was trying to reclaim it, drag it back down into the earth and render it to dust again.
She breathed out, her breath lingering on a cloud. It was so quiet here. The only sound was the occasional rustle of the leaves overhead, a few birds flitting here and there, chirping to their mates.
She had often found solace in nature. Actually, this moment reminded her of when she had first escaped into the woods after her father’s men had taken her captive. They had not imagined that she would run to the woods. Because they had thought her too cosseted. What they had not understood was that it was the only thing that kept her sane all that time she’d been captive in h
er own home.
Walks on the estate, where she didn’t feel so much like she was under the watchful gaze of her father.
She kept on walking down the little path that was well overgrown, until she found a stone bench. Then she sat down, closing her eyes and letting the breeze ruffle her hair, which was up in its usual bun.
She hadn’t had a chance to do anything else with it yet. To cut it off.
She had fully intended to after her night with Rafe. And then she just...hadn’t. There had been other things. The will, and making sure her apartment was in order. Hair had been a low priority. Then she had started feeling unwell. And after that, it had become clear that she needed to do some research on that unwellness.
And then there had been the pregnancy tests. And the doctor. And Rafe. It seemed to always come back to Rafe.
She let her eyes flutter closed, and she felt exhaustion sweep over her. Even though she had just woken up, she was feeling unaccountably run down. Pregnancy was hard.
And now she felt like her head was swimming. Just thinking about pregnancy. About the fact that it meant there would be a baby... No, two babies.
She laid her head down against the bench, the cool stone a vague comfort as anxiety overtook her. She just needed to rest. Just for a moment. And then maybe everything would be slightly clearer.
* * *
“Where is she?” he asked, addressing Della, his housekeeper.
“She went outside hours ago,” Della said. “No one has seen her since.”
Rage spiked through him. She had defied him earlier, and he had allowed it in the interest of being less of a tyrant to her. He wanted to seduce her after all. To forge a bond between them. For there he would find true control.
Overtly raging at her over every defiance would not accomplish that.
But this...he could not allow this.
“And you did not think to come and tell me before this?”
“Forgive me, Mr. Costa,” she said, her voice sounding not in the least bit contrite. “I was not clear as to whether or not our guest was in fact a prisoner. It did not occur to me that she could not make her way around the grounds if she did not wish to remain inside.”
“She is a flight risk,” he said, his voice hard. “And she is carrying my children. Therefore, her safety and her whereabouts are of the utmost importance to me.”
Della let out a small, shocked sound. That, at least, he found satisfying. At least something rattled her.
“She went out to the garden?”
“Yes, sir.”
He could easily send a member of his staff out there. But it was not what he wished. Because she was defying him, openly. She would have to learn that he did not bring her here to play games.
He attempted to remind himself of his earlier conclusion. That he needed to tread lightly with her. That he needed to try to seduce her—emotionally and physically. But it was lost somewhere in his rage.
He had brought her to this place that he knew better than anywhere else, and she had taken herself off to the portion of it that he did not frequent.
He made his way to the solarium, and across to where he knew the doors were. The third and fourth panel down from the end of the room. He pressed his hand against it, made certain that it was in fact the exit, and then walked through it into the outside. He listened. But he heard nothing. Not any sound of movement at all. Just the wind in the trees.
She could not have run away. There was no way. It would be an impossible walk to civilization, and he was under the impression she was suffering from morning sickness.
Of course, she didn’t know how far the nearest town was. That was part of the problem. She wasn’t familiar with this place. And when she had run from her father...
He curled his hands into fists, uncomfortable with that thought. That he could possibly compare her running away from her father, running away from her forced marriage, to this.
He wasn’t going to force her into anything.
No, you’re simply going to manipulate her into it.
He scowled, and then continued to walk across the dilapidated garden. He swept the ground with his cane, making sure that he wasn’t surprised by any uneven terrain. His cane struck something hard that protruded from the ground. A rock or brick in an unkempt path perhaps.
He could call her name. And perhaps, she would answer. But that would only work if she wasn’t actually hiding from him. And he suspected that she was. More than suspected, he was certain that she was. Anger and a sense of helplessness washed over him. He hated this. Hated feeling like he couldn’t tackle something on his own, but he was starting to think that he was going to have to walk back to the house and ask for assistance.
Fortunately, he had a strong sense of direction, where he had come from. That was imperative in his situation.
He stopped for a moment, taking stock of the direction the breeze was blowing. He tilted his head upward, a gold circle appearing on his vision. The sun. He could sense changes in light.
It was helpful. Of course, as Charlotte was not charting any kind of natural course, it was of no help to him. Charlotte was simply being difficult.
He continued walking down the path, and then his cane hit something hard. He swept it up, got the impression of a long slab of something—most likely stone—with another slab laid over the top. A bench. That was the most likely item.
“Be careful!” Someone grabbed hold of the end of his cane. And he recognized Charlotte’s grumpy voice instantly.
“Charlotte?”
He heard shifting, and then the rustle of leaves. “I fell asleep. How did you...how did you find me?”
He was so relieved to find her here his knees nearly buckled. So relieved she wasn’t out wandering the forest. Pregnant. Alone.
“I tracked you using only your scent,” he said, his tone dry. “You know, when one loses their sight their other senses are heightened.”
“I don’t believe that.”
He lifted a shoulder. “It’s true.”
“No, I believe your other senses are heightened, but I don’t believe you tracked me like a bloodhound.” He heard a small, shuffling sound and a little snort and he thought she was probably scrubbing her face. He wanted to laugh because the image it created was a cute one; he couldn’t deny it. “I don’t smell,” she protested further.
He begged to differ with her there. She did smell. It was exactly how he had recognized her the first time he had seen her. That sweet floral scent that he had only ever associated with her.
“If you say so.”
“I just needed some time outside the house.”
“Charlotte, you cannot leave the castle.”
“I’m sorry, Rafe, but I will leave the castle if I choose to. I can’t be kept captive in there.”
“Yes, you can. Because you have no idea where you are out here.”
There was a pause. “No, I think you have no idea where you are out here,” she said, far too astute for his liking.
“I found my way just fine.”
“But you don’t know it. You don’t know this whole terrain. And you don’t like that.”
“Charlotte...”
“I am not a thing that you can manipulate at will, Rafe Costa. I never have been. I don’t understand how you can do this to me knowing what my father did.”
The wind kicked up again, the scent of damp leaves and low-hanging clouds on the air. “I’m not your father.”
“You’re treading dangerously close to being cut from the same cloth.”
“Except were I your father, I would be fashioning some way to punish you grandly for your insubordination. He enjoyed that. Punishing people.”
She laughed, a kind of crystalline sound that sounded easily broken. And if it did break, he had a feeling it could cut them both.
“You don’t think I know that?” Her voice trembled. “Of course, he didn’t ever physically harm me. I was a bargaining tool, and he didn’t want to damage my beauty
. But he kept so much from me. The outside world. He did his best to make sure that were I ever to try to go out in it, I would be hobbled. Unable to function without his say-so. I’m well aware of the kind of mental torture my father was capable of putting people under.”
“Physical torture, as well,” Rafe said, his tone grave. He wasn’t in the mood to play nice with her. Moreover, he wasn’t in the mood to be sensitive about her feelings. Despite what she might feel, he was not her father, and she would do well to remember it.
“He had people hired specifically to torture anyone who went against him. To break bones.”
There was a long beat of silence. “Did you ever do that?”
“No,” he said simply. “But I saw it.”
He heard leaves rustling. Charlotte fidgeting. Choosing her next words with care, he imagined. “This is what I don’t understand, Rafe. Why didn’t you stop any of this? Why were you with him at all?”
Much like the story of his blindness, there was no reason to keep this from her either. “I was forced into it. As I said, money is power. Your father saved me from being put in prison back in Rome when I was caught stealing. Not only did he do that—he offered me an education. He paid for my mother to have housing. We had been homeless for a long time by that point.”
“If it were any other man, then I would say that was quite generous of him. But not with my father.”
“He was only buying a sycophant,” Rafe said, “and he knew that once he held my mother’s fate in his hands, he had a great deal of power over me.”
“What happened to your mother after you...”
“That’s the thing. Once he thought I was dead, he had forgotten that he was paying to put my mother up. When he was no longer using her for leverage, there was no reason for him to throw her out onto the street just for fun. If there was no one around to be hurt by her demise, he didn’t have a taste for it. Or he didn’t have a thought about it. And, once I gained my own position of power, I installed her in a home where she very happily lives now.”
