by Liz Carlyle
Viviana plastered the smile back on her face and swept across the stillroom toward him. “An important announcement?” she said brightly. “How exciting! I wonder what it could be?”
Twelve
In which Contessa Bergonzi tells yet Another lie.
T he following day, Viviana went out in the early afternoon for her ride, slapping her crop a little impatiently against her thigh as she walked along the corridor to the back door of Hill Court. She had wasted her morning anxiously awaiting the sun which never broke, and the guest who never came. And so she had decided to go for a ride; a hard, thundering gallop, despite the dreary skies and the skiff of snow which tipped the grass with white.
She was but partway down the hill, however, when she saw Quin emerge from the shadows where the bridle path left the woods. He rode alone, mounted on a large bay horse which was still tossing his head with stable-fresh impatience. He had come straight from Arlington Park, then.
She watched as Quin quieted the horse with a stroke of his hand, then smoothly dismounted and passed the reins to one of Chesley’s grooms. There was no leaving now, she realized. There wasn’t even any point in going back into the relative safety of the house. Confined by walls and the civilizing influence of fine furniture, Quin would still seem just as large and just as ominous.
But somehow, she would handle Quin Hewitt and his questions. She could not afford to let him shake her again as he had done last night. So she stood her ground, and waited.
Quin saw Viviana in the distance as soon as he set off up the hill from the stables. She looked as beautiful and as fiery as ever in her plain wool habit and jaunty hat. With resolute steps, he ascended the path, still unsure of the wisdom of his decision yet perfectly certain of what he meant to do.
They had agreed on “just once.” Well, once was not enough. He wanted Viviana, and he was determined to either have her, or to be rid of her. They could not go on as they had last night, making idle social chitchat, and pretending that there was nothing more between them. There was more. Much more. And if she persisted in saying otherwise, then she was a damned liar—or worse, a tease.
Quin did not think she was either. He was beginning to wonder if she was hiding something, but what? There was a coolness and a distance to Viviana which he neither liked nor recognized. Even his sister did not seem to know what was on Viviana’s mind, and he had quizzed Alice quite thoroughly this morning.
Only in his arms did Viviana seem herself to him. And then, when the barriers went down between them, she was again the girl he’d loved. The solution, therefore, was to keep her in his arms. And in his bed. So he meant to do what he ought to have done a decade sooner. He was going to marry her. And he really did not care what price had to be paid in the doing of it, either. He did not care if Arlington Park fell down about his ears, or his mother had a damned apoplectic fit.
But even from a distance, he could see that Viviana was already tapping her crop impatiently against the skirts of her habit and looking at him with barely veiled suspicion. “You have an affinity for that damned thing, don’t you?” he said, eyeing the crop as he topped the hill.
“One never knows, cara, when it will come in handy.”
At that, he threw back his head and laughed. “You are a hard woman, Viviana Alessandri.”
At those words, Viviana dropped her gaze, and turned away. “I am sorry,” he said at once. “Did I say something wrong?”
“Alessandri,” she murmured. “I have not been called that in a very long time. And if I am hard, Quinten, it is because life has made me so.”
Quin offered her his arm. “Come,” he said quietly. “Walk with me. There is something I wish to ask you, Vivie, and I don’t wish to do it in the house.”
Viviana looked at Quin’s arm, so strong and unwavering, and knew that the conversation they were going to have was unavoidable. His resolute expression told her that much, though his eyes were not unkind. So she took his arm in one hand and caught up the skirts of her habit in the other, the crop swinging from her wrist. “Chesley’s gardens are lovely in December,” she said mordantly. “Shall we stroll there?”
His mouth twitched with humor, and they set off.
Chesley’s house was but a small manor property, but his gardens were some of the most talked-about in Buckinghamshire. In the spring and summer, they were flooded with guests. His late mother, he had once said, had possessed a passion for formal French gardens, Italian statuary, and freshly cut flowers. He had honored her memory by maintaining all of them as she would have wished. Only the maze was less than perfect.
“Good Lord,” said Quin when they reached it. “This looks moth-eaten.”
Viviana smiled vaguely. “There was a blight,” she said. “It had to be cut back by the gardeners.”
It was a large maze, and they circled its outer edge slowly and without another word passing between them. He seemed strangely content just to walk with her hand on his arm. Viviana cut a swift, uneasy glance up at him. Quin’s boyish charm was definitely gone, replaced by the implacability and strength of manhood.
He looked not so much beautiful today, but determined. His jaw was set in a hard line, and his dark blue eyes were cooler, absent the heat of emotion which she had seen in them last night. Indeed, he looked altogether a different man from the one who had gripped her hand and sworn to see her today.
She did not wish for this meeting. She feared too much what he might ask and what she might be tempted to say. And if he knew the truth, he would hate her.
Viviana was a little unsettled by how much the years had changed Quin. She had once believed she knew him; knew what he would want, how he would react. Not so long ago, she had told Quin that she could not bear to question the choices she had made. That answer was growing more honest with every passing day. What if she had been wrong all those years ago? What if?
It would mean that all of her sacrifices had been for naught. Everything she was, and everything she had done, had been predicated on that decision. She could not afford to second-guess herself now. And so she steeled herself, as she had done so many times over the years, and drew a deep breath.
“You wished to see me,” she prompted him. “What is it, Quinten, you wished to ask?”
He looked down at her with a muted smile. “Trust you, Vivie, to get right to the point,” he responded. “What did I wish to say? I hardly know.”
“Then you have come a long way for nothing,” she said.
“Have I?” He stopped on the path, his eyes holding hers. “It does not feel like nothing, Viviana, walking with you like this. It feels…well, a little like old times.”
“We never walked this way, Quinten,” she coolly reminded him. “We fought. We had sex. And then we fought some more.”
“Well, that is a cold, clear-eyed assessment of a relationship if ever I heard one,” he admitted. “Is there nothing of the romantic left in you, my dear?”
“Very little,” she answered. “Romance, cara, is for men. Women can ill afford it.”
He lifted one brow and resumed his pace. “I suppose, in hindsight, that it was not much of a relationship anyway,” he said. “And yet it has loomed large in my life, Vivie, all these years. Why do you think that is?”
“I cannot say.”
“I think it is because we left unfinished business,” he said pensively. “Did you ever feel that way, Vivie? Or did you just…never look back?”
Viviana focused her eyes hard into the distance, toward the long row of outbuildings which rimmed the house’s rear gardens. “I never looked back,” she lied. “I could not. I had a life to live.”
“A life without me,” he said flatly.
“You made your choice, Quinten,” she whispered. “Do not dare to try to make me feel guilty for it now.”
“Ah, you are speaking, I daresay, of that marriage proposal you once made me,” he said, his tone darkening. “I have found myself thinking about that a great deal lately. Why, Vivie, could you n
ot simply tell me that it was all or nothing? Why could you not just be honest? Perhaps I…perhaps I would have answered you differently.”
She snatched her hand from his arm. “How dare you?” she asked, her voice low. “How dare you come here now and accuse me of dishonesty after all that has passed. Was I to hold a gun to your head? A knife to my own throat? And if I did not, is it now all my fault? Well, damn you, Quin Hewitt. Damn you straight to hell. There. I have said what I have long wished to say to you—and in English, so that you may plainly understand it.”
He held up one hand. “Viviana, wait,” he said. “I never accused you of dishonestly.”
“It is precisely what you said,” she answered. “Have you no idea, Quinten, how it humbled me to have to ask you such a thing? Have you any notion how you hurt me with your eyes and your words? And now you claim to wish that I had threatened you into agreement?”
He lost a little of his color. “I just wish, Vivie, that you had been honest,” he said. “I just wish you had told me precisely what was at stake.”
“Oh, si, you wish that I had begged!” she hissed. “Is that it? And what kind of husband, Quinten, would that have won me? A husband who woke every morning seething with resentment? A husband who felt as if he had been trapped or cajoled into lowering himself, and disappointing his oh-so-fine English family? I should sooner die.”
She moved to turn around, but he seized her by the arm. “Now, wait just a minute, Viviana.”
“Andare all’inferno!” she hissed.
His grip quite ruthless, Quin hauled her back. “I’ll be damned if I mean to stand out here in the garden where anyone can hear if we’re to quarrel like a pair of fish-wives,” he gritted, dragging her down the path. “What’s that up ahead? The greenhouse?”
“How should I know?” she snapped. “Release my arm, you arrogant ass.”
“Shut up, Vivie,” he said. “I guess we are going to have this out once and for all, you and I. And I don’t need an audience to witness my humiliation.”
“Your humiliation!” Viviana had stopped struggling, because she looked like a fool, and he clearly did not mean to release her. “You do not know the meaning of the word.”
Quin pulled open the heavy wooden door, and shoved her inside, into a world of muted light and cotton-wool warmth. She blinked and looked around. The smell of damp earth surrounded them. They had entered a large, low-ceilinged shed, but beyond it lay row upon row of wooden beds filled with lush, growing greenery under arching gables of glass.
“Thank God.” He let her go, and stripped off his coat and gloves. “At least they have the fires kindled in here.”
She set one hand on her hip, and glowered at him. But even in her agitated state, she could see that whilst the anger remained, much of the fight had gone out of him. As if disgusted, he flung his hat onto the table where he’d tossed his coat, then dragged a hand through his too-long hair. “Why is it, Vivie, that you can still get to me so?” he asked, his voice frustrated. “Why is it that after all these years, you can still tie me up in knots and make me feel like a goddamned green-as-grass boy again?”
She did not quite follow. “Well, I have no wish to tie you up or make you into grass,” she said regally. “And I certainly have no wish to squabble, Quinten. I thought…I thought we had finished this business two days ago. At the cottage. I do not know what you want of me now. Be so obliging as to explain it, per favore, and let me go.”
“I just want to know—” His words seemed to catch in his throat.
“What?”
“I want to know, Vivie, why you left me.”
The boyish uncertainty had returned. Viviana looked at him, and let the question sink in, fighting the almost overpowering urge to go to him, and envelop him in her arms. “I left you, caro mio, because it was time,” she finally answered, her voice a little sad. “I had a life which I had left behind, and it was time for me to return to it. I had a father whom I loved with all my heart. I would sooner have died than let him see what I had become. A rich man’s mistress. I did not wish to leave you, Quin. I did not. But it was time to make a choice. And so I made it. Can you not understand?”
He closed his eyes and pinched hard at the bridge of his nose. “And if I had said yes, Vivie, would you really have married me?” he asked quietly. “Would you have braved my family’s wrath? And what if my father had cut me off and left us to starve? Would you have seen that through with me, too?”
“I—I do not know,” she lied. “All I know, caro, is that it is easier to marry a man whom you do not love than to marry a man who does not love you.”
He dropped his hand and tried to smile. For a long time, he said nothing. “Well, it is all in the past,” he finally responded. “I suppose there is no point debating it now.”
She shook her head. “No. There is not.”
He set both hands on his hips and paced back and forth across the flagstone floor of the workroom. Amidst the rough-hewn worktables and racks of gardening tools, he looked like a caged animal. She should have taken the opportunity to excuse herself and go, but, inexplicably, she did not.
“Was he good to you, Vivie?” he finally asked, his back turned to her. “Was he a good husband, Bergonzi? Were you happy?”
“It was a marriage, like any other,” she said. “We managed.”
He turned to look at her then, his eyes bleak. “But I think, Viviana, that most marriages are happy,” he said. “Or at least, they should be. Am I the only person in the world who believes that? Am I just…pathetically naive?”
Viviana clasped her hands tightly in front of her. “I do not know about most marriages,” she said. “I know only that I tried to make the best of mine.”
“He must have loved you,” said Quin. “He must have been very proud.”
She shrugged ambivalently. “Perhaps.”
Quin did not take his eyes from her face. “Why else would a man of his wealth and position allow his wife to keep singing publicly?” he asked. “It was because he wished to show you off. To show the world that he had won you.”
Viviana suppressed a wince. Quin’s words hit closer to the mark than she liked to think. “Gianpiero was obsessed with opera,” she said. “To him, I was but another means to an end. And yes, he liked to show me off.”
“And you have three children now,” he said quietly. “Three beautiful children. I still cannot get over it, Viviana.”
“Did you never think of me as a mother?” she asked. “Was I never anything more to you than just a woman to be bedded?”
He flashed a crooked smile. “I often thought of you as a mother,” he admitted. “You had that look, Vivie. Like some sort of marble madonna come to life, so serene and lovely. Sometimes…sometimes, Vivie, when you would walk across the floor, so naked and beautiful, I would imagine…I would imagine that—” His words broke away. “But we were speaking of your children, were we not? They are lovely. You must be proud of them.”
Somehow, she managed to smile. “Si, very much.”
He had begun his pacing again, this time with one hand set against the back of his neck. She wished to God he would stop. There was a grave sense of uncertainty churning in her stomach. A doubt—no, a fear, clinging to her heart like some insidious cobweb. What if she had been wrong about him, all those years ago? And why, now, did she remain here with him? Clearly, Quin would not try to stop her from leaving. And yet, he held her mesmerized, enthralled by his almost cathartic questions.
“I remember now, Viviana, what I meant to ask you last night,” he said out of nowhere. “It was about that trinket Cerelia wears round her neck.”
Viviana stiffened with fear. “I beg your pardon?”
She got her wish. He stopped pacing. “Do you remember that ring I once gave you?” he asked, turning to face her. “The large ruby?”
“I fear I have many ruby rings, Quinten,” she answered. “I cannot remember one from the other.”
His smile faded. “Yes, no
doubt you are awash in them now,” he said. “And how could it be the same one? After all, you sold every piece of jewelry I ever gave you.”
She kept her face a mask of implacability. “They were mine do with as I wished, were they not?”
He shrugged. “But that misshapen chunk of gold with the red stone set into it,” he went on. “The one which Cerelia wears about her neck. I just thought it looked a little bit like a ring I once gave you.”
“Did it?” she asked, her voice surprisingly calm. “Which one?”
His mouth curved bitterly. “The one I gave you on our last afternoon together,” he said. “As I said, it was a rather unusual stone—a square-cut ruby. They are mostly rectangular or oval, are they not?”
“I daresay,” she answered. “I never thought about it.”
“So it is not the same ring?” he pressed.
She shook her head. “Paste and pinchbeck, more likely,” she said. “Something Cerelia found. I cannot think where. She has an unnatural attachment to it. Children are like that, you know.”
He shrugged, and seemed to accept her answer. “Did you sell it, then?” he asked. “That last ring I gave you?”
Quin was not cruel enough to remind her that he had made her promise never to sell it. And so Viviana lifted one shoulder and told another white lie. “I cannot recall,” she said. “Do you wish it back? If so, you are welcome to pick through my jewel case and take it if you can find it.”
He shook his head. “No, it is long gone, just like the others, I am sure.”
She had no wish to hurt him. Not really. And yet she wanted—no, needed—him to understand. “No doubt you are right,” she said quietly. “But you saw those gifts, Quinten, as payment to your mistress for services rendered. If I treated them as such, is it fair for you to cry foul over it now?”
“It was not like that,” he said. “I never saw them that way, Vivie. They were gifts from the heart. And I am not crying foul.”
She gentled her tone. “Then what are you doing, pray?”
