Secrets of His Forbidden Cinderella

by Caitlin Crews

  Amelia didn’t want to look at her reflection, because she didn’t want to see herself turning into her mother. Right here in real time. Or maybe she wasn’t turning into Marie fast enough. “I know what I look like.”

  “Fair enough,” Marie said airily. But then her expression grew solemn again. “But Amelia, marrying the Duke of Marinceli is something that sounds good on paper. When really, it’s a cage. I couldn’t see myself in that cage. Are you sure you can?”

  Amelia changed the subject, and Marie let her, but she couldn’t get her mother’s words out of her head as easily.

  Later that afternoon, as the winter sun brooded its way into a gloomy evening, she made her way back to that study where she’d found Teo on her first day here. There was something about walking down that same hallway that got to her. She almost wanted to go fetch the butler and have him march with her, so she could fully reexperience it.

  Then again, she already knew how it ended.

  Amelia pushed open the door silently, and stood there a moment, watching Teo at work.

  And she knew him now, in a way she never would have imagined was possible back when all she’d had of him was that thing her mother had clearly known about all the while. She knew what his close-cropped black hair felt like beneath her palms. She knew that his jaw would feel rough at this time of day, an erotic abrasion against her skin. She knew how he slept, which seemed an improbable miracle. What his face looked like in repose. She’d tasted him, everywhere. She’d felt those beautiful, aristocratic hands on every part of her body.

  And yet as she looked at him, sitting at his desk going through stacks of documents his business manager would have left him earlier in the day, Amelia thought that she had never in her life seen a man so alone.

  That wasn’t something that seemed to change, no matter how well they seemed to know each other in bed. No matter how they talked, late at night, when the dark held him close and it seemed so much easier to share things that might make her blush in the light of day.

  He told her secrets, there in the dark. His big hand on the back of her head she lay against his chest, his voice a rumble she could hear as well as feel beneath her. He told her what it was like to grow up knowing all of this would be his one day. She couldn’t really remember her father, so he’d told her about his mother. She made him laugh. He made her heart swell.

  It was those nights, laced together, that gave her hope. Or the mornings he would wake her, his hands spread over her growing belly, and that curve in the corner of his stern mouth as he talked in a low voice to their baby.

  She thought they were getting somewhere. She really did. But her mother’s words pounded her head tonight. They felt like a prophecy. Like a curse.

  “I want more than a marriage of convenience,” she blurted out.

  And when Teo raised that simmering black gaze of his to hers, she understood that he’d known she was there all along. Had known it from the moment she’d turned down this particular hallway, if she had to guess.

  “What do you propose instead?” he asked, and he still sounded austere. As affronted as he had the day she’d come here to tell him she was pregnant, but she could hear the laziness beneath it tonight. That casual hint of a drawl that she was sure was only hers.

  “I want everything.”

  The ducal brow rose. “If there is more to everything than a lifetime as a Marinceli Duchess, I must confess I do not know what it is.” He sat back in his chair, regarding her with that steadiness of his that was in itself reproving. “Is there something you want that you feel you cannot have? I find that hard to believe, Amelia. Look around. I am fairly certain I have everything. This means you do, too.”

  And she understood, as little as she wanted to, what her mother was trying to tell her.

  It was easy to roll around in a bed. To let sex cloud her head and make her think it was the same as love. When it was only a part of it. An expression of it, certainly, but not the whole.

  She slipped her hands over her belly and held them there, taking strength from the child she carried. Their child. The Twentieth Duke of this magical, monstrous place, and it was up to her to see to it that he was more than just a collection of musty old titles. That he was vivid and vulnerable, able to love and live. She didn’t want for him the kind of life that her mother had given her, that Marie would call a madcap adventure and Amelia considered far more of a collection of catastrophes.

  But Teo was a result of his childhood, too. And a father who had made certain Teo knew his duty, then left him to it.

  There had to be a place between the two. There had to be.

  And Amelia could think of only one way to achieve it.

  “You have everything that money can buy,” she said softly. “Ancient money. Modern money. And everything in between. If it can be claimed by might or money, you have it. I know that.”

  His brow rose even higher. “You are welcome, cariña.”

  “I want more,” she said simply. Terribly. “I want love.”

  And she expected the very walls to crumble, perhaps. Or Teo to burst into flame. Something suitably dramatic for a man she was fairly certain had never experienced much love at all. Not in so many words.

  “Love,” he repeated, looking as if she’d suggested he fly naked over the whole of Spain. “I beg your pardon. Is it the wedding that is addling your senses, Amelia? What has love to do with anything?”

  “Love has to do with everything,” she said, and if it wasn’t so important she might have been embarrassed by her own earnestness. “My mother gave me none of the security you take for granted, but she loved me. And you can argue how much all you like. You can claim she loves herself more. I know she does. I don’t want to know it, but I do. And I may have spent too much of my life trying to get her to love me that much, too, but in the end, she still loves me just as much as she’s able. What else is there?”

  “This feels like a very Californian conversation,” Teo said, distinct acid in his voice and his gaze dark. “Does it require my participation?”

  There was nothing in that that should have emboldened her, but Amelia moved farther into the room, walking over to that massive desk of his and slapping her palms down on the surface—mostly to keep herself from reaching out to him.

  “You can make fun all you like. But we’re bringing a child into this world, and life is hard enough—even as a de Luz—without whatever version of tough love it is that your father gave you.”

  The ice Teo wore like armor cracked a little, then. She could see it in his eyes. And the tightness of his jaw. “My father raised me to step confidently into my position as Duke. A man is not a man unless he teaches his son how to take his place, and do better than he ever could.”

  “Then do better,” Amelia challenged him. “What would happen if you not only trained your son to take your place, but taught him how to love? Openly. Fully. Not hidden behind talk of duties and bloodlines. What would happen then, Teo?”

  “I don’t understand any part of this conversation. We already made a deal. The wedding is in two days. Or is this some kind of a threat?”

  Amelia made herself take a breath. She straightened from the desk, but still stood there, staring across at him. And he looked like some kind of a god. Haughty, untouchable. But it occurred to her for the first time that that thread of arrogance she saw in his expression was as much of a mask as the one she’d worn to the Masquerade.

  The Duke was a costume.

  The truth about this man was the dark. The weight of his hand on the nape of her neck. The stark need on his face as he drove inside her.

  This urbane performance, this role, was the character he played.

  She knew this as surely as she knew how much she already loved the son inside her. It was a simple fact made entirely of complexities and what-ifs and ferocity.

  “I was a virgin,”
she said, suddenly flooded with a sense of calm. A purpose, even.

  Teo laughed. “Do you mean, you were once a virgin? So were we all, Amelia.”

  “The night of the Masquerade,” she said, and watched as he reacted to that. Badly. “That was the trouble, you see. I could never get past a kiss with another man. You were always in my head. It was as if I locked myself away when I left here as a teenager. And you were the only key.”

  “This is absurd.”

  “I thought so, too,” she agreed. “That’s why I went to such lengths last fall. I didn’t want you to know who I was because I didn’t want to explain this to you. I just wanted to do it, if it could be done.”

  “How could you have been a virgin?” he demanded, and he sounded almost...anguished.

  And suddenly he was on his feet, separated from her only by the wide expanse of his desk.

  “I think the usual way is by not having sex.”

  “That is not what I mean.” To her astonishment, she saw Teo’s hands curl into fists at his sides. “I mean you. How could you have been a virgin then?”

  Understanding dawned, a bit like a kick to the solar plexus. It was possible she wheezed.

  “Because, of course, you think my mother is a whore.” She shook her head, but it didn’t help. “And it must be catching. Is that it?”

  “I don’t know what game this is you’re trying to play,” Teo threw at her, his voice low and hard in a way she’d never heard before. “And I don’t know what you want out of this. Of me. Is it not enough that I am making you my wife? My Duchess? That because of that night, you have everything any reasonable person could possibly want or need? I don’t understand the point of twisting it all around.”

  “It’s not twisted,” Amelia managed to say, though her lips were numb. “It’s the truth. No more and no less.”

  “Enough of this, Amelia. It helps no one.”

  “Why does my innocence that night upset you?” she asked, but for all that odd calm inside her, there was a sadness, too.

  Because she knew.

  Teo said nothing. He only stared at her, and the stark expression on his face made her want to weep.

  “It’s so much easier if I’m simply the villain, isn’t it?” she asked softly. “It makes so much more sense if I’m the Mata Hari in this story, who had my wicked way with you. You already know how to play the role of the victim, don’t you?”

  “How dare you call me the one playing victim.”

  But she ignored him. “What we know about you, Teo, is that you dearly love a role to play. Your father loved my mother too much and foisted her upon you. How could you do anything but hate her? And then there’s me. My mother’s daughter. Wouldn’t it make everything perfect if I was a whore just like her?”

  “Stop calling yourself a whore,” he gritted out. “I have never used that word.”

  “You don’t have to when it’s written all over you.”

  “Amelia—” he started, but she didn’t let him finish.

  Not now. Not when she was this close to being fully and madly and foolishly honest with him. About everything, at last.

  Because she didn’t know any other way forward.

  “Do you know why I did it?” she asked him, one hand on her belly. And not caring at all if he could see her emotions right there on her face. “Why I went to such lengths to give my virginity to a man who I knew wouldn’t take it if it was offered? A man who I had to hide it from, hide my face from, hide me from?”

  “I shudder to think.”

  She shook her head, sadly. And for a moment, she wondered if she really did dare to push this as far as it could go.

  But she could feel the swell of her son beneath her palm. And she didn’t know if it was possible to truly have everything. All of the Marinceli wealth and power and love? Could anyone really have all of that?

  If anyone can, it will be you, she promised their baby. Fiercely.

  And it had to start here. With her.

  And with Teo.

  “I think you already know,” she said, letting out a sound that was like a laugh, but far too hollow. But she pushed away the fear, pressed her hand against her belly and held Teo’s gaze with hers. Unflinchingly, so there could be no mistake. “I love you.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  TEO WAS FROZEN SOLID, yet ash straight through. Charred, somehow, and the longer Amelia stood here dropping these bombs of hers, the less likely it seemed that he would ever recover.

  “You do not love me,” he told her, hardly recognizing his own voice. “Love is no part of this.”

  “Then how do you plan to be a father?” she replied.

  Far too calmly, to his way of thinking.

  “My father—”

  “Your father, as far as anyone can tell, loved one person, Teo. You told me so yourself.” And her hands were on her belly, making it impossible for him to look away. Making it impossible for him to think. “Is that what you want for this child?”

  He had the sense that the walls around him were crumbling, when he could see full well that was not the case. Because it was never the case. This house, this dukedom, endured. As he would endure, whether he liked it or not.

  He tried again. “The Dukes of Marinceli—”

  “I care about the dukedom,” Amelia said quietly, cutting him off as surely as if she’d wielded a machete. “Don’t get me wrong, I do. Because you care so very much. Because it is so important to you, and you have dedicated your whole life to it. I care about it, Teo. But I care a great deal more about the man. About you.”

  “I did not ask for any of this.” He heard the words come out of his mouth, and the strangest part was, he couldn’t even bring himself to pull them back. To temper them. “I did not ask for your disguise. Your virginity. Or this child. But I’m fully prepared to do what must be done. That does not mean—”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  Something in him stuttered, then stopped. He was terribly afraid it was his heart. He waited for the storied shooting pains in his arm. To drop to the floor and be done with this conversation, at the very least.

  But Amelia’s gaze was steady. Not without pain, it hurt him to note, but she didn’t waver. And he didn’t understand how on the one hand, he wanted to do something utterly out of character, like make a run for it. While on the other, he wanted to give thanks that this fierce creature would be the mother to his son. To the next Duke.

  His own mother had been elegant. Soft and sweet. He had missed her when she was gone. He missed her still. He sometimes thought he would go to his own grave never ready to forgive his father for moving on, so fast and so shamelessly. But he had never considered her protective in any way. She had not had that kind of fierceness in her. Rather, she was one more thing he needed to defend.

  He had done his best, hadn’t he? He had hated Marie French in and out of his father’s life, and still. He had done what he could in the face of his father’s betrayal of her.

  “You don’t believe me?” He heard the harshness of his voice, yet did nothing to fix it. “I’m not the one who has made a habit of lying, Amelia. By omission or otherwise.”

  “I’m not even sure I believe that.” When he stared at her, she shrugged. “Did you really not recognize me, Teo? Are you truly that unobservant? A different hair color and a mask, and suddenly a person you’ve known for half your life is a stranger? Why do I find that difficult to imagine?”

  How ash could turn into more ash, and grow colder, he could not fathom. “I don’t know what you’re suggesting.”

  “And then, I turn up here out of the blue, and you let me in.” Her head tilted slightly to one side, though that steady gaze didn’t waver. “Which makes more sense, do you think? That you admitted the daughter of a woman you profess to hate without question and even claimed at first you couldn’t remember h
er? Or that you admitted a lover who you’d seen quite intimately only a few months before?”

  Teo was moving before he knew it. But not toward her. He rounded the desk and headed for his door before these things she was saying took root in him. And grew.

  “These conspiracy theories are fascinating, I grant you that,” he said gruffly as he went. “But they only make me question what goes on in your head. And whether or not I will need to limit your influence on the child you carry.”

  “Threats, threats, threats,” she murmured, as he remembered she had before. “You say you don’t want me. That I’m beneath you in every way. But it seems to me, Your Excellency, that the only way you’re really interested in seeing me beneath you is in bed. And getting me there was the entire crux of your argument in that cabin. It wasn’t that you need me to marry you. It was that you insisted on the marital bed.”

  Teo had stopped, there on the carpet where she had once stood and he’d imagined that she might know her place. But did he know his? Because the walls of this house might not have been crumbling. But he was.

  He was already ash. He was quickly becoming little more than dirt, fit for little but a return to the earth. The land outside these walls that his ancestors had fought and died for.

  What would he fight for? And if he didn’t know the answer to that, how could he know what he would die for?

  “I don’t believe you,” she said again.

  And some other, terrible fury rose in him then. Suddenly, instead of making for the door, he advanced on her instead. But this was Amelia, so she did not shrink away. Her hands found her hips, her chin tilted up and she paid him exactly none of the deference that he was due. That he was given by every other person on this earth.

  It was like a panic in him. Instead of finding it the greatest insult of all time, all Teo wanted was to get his hands on her.

  Again. More. Always.

  He did.

  He gripped her shoulders in his palms, and he didn’t know which one of them he was punishing when he didn’t pull her close to get his mouth on her.