‘Thank you, it was lovely. I’m not really that hungry.’ She smiled up at him, wondering if he ever smiled. ‘Does Bruno do the cooking too?’ she asked as he disappeared with their plates, looking for a safer topic to discuss.
‘Of course not.’ Alessandro almost snapped the words, seemed to think twice and made another effort. ‘Of course I have a cook.’
‘Oh, I think I saw her. A pretty dark-haired girl?’
‘You saw her?’
‘I happened to see the boat come in earlier today. She was on it. I thought she must work at the castle.’
A muscle in his jaw twitched. ‘My cook is named Pietro. There are no women who work at the castle.’
‘Oh.’
He didn’t volunteer who the woman was and she wasn’t about to ask. Maybe she should have picked another topic. An antique mantel clock rang out the hour and then fell silent again. She studied her hands, busy tying themselves into knots in her lap, while outside the rain continued to come down. It would clear tomorrow, she reassured herself, just like it had cleared today.
Right now the boat couldn’t come soon enough.
Somehow, stiffly, they made it through the rest of the courses, and Grace was never more grateful than when coffee was served. Conversation had been stilted and terse and limited to little more than the likes of, ‘How is your duck?’ and, ‘Lovely, thank you.’
It had been an ordeal rather than a meal. She knew he was angry with her, but what she couldn’t work out was why. He’d been the one to make her feel unwelcome from the start. He’d been the one who’d insisted she leave as soon as she was finished. And now he was acting as if she was cutting and running. And now he was the one who glowered at her with those dark eyes until she shivered with the intensity of it all.
What was his problem?
‘It’s late,’ she said. ‘I should get my things packed.’
‘Of course,’ he said, standing as she rose. ‘You will forgive me, Dr Hunter, if I do not see you off in the morning. Bruno will collect your things and take you to the boat.’
Something lurched inside her—something beyond the unexpected hurt of him dropping the Grace and resuming use of her title. So this would be the last time she’d see him? How strange that felt, when she’d been expecting relief.
‘Thank you, Count Volta. Both for your hospitality and for returning the lost pages of the Salus Totus to the world. I will be sure to accord your contribution due recognition in my report.’
He gave a slight bow, formal and brief. ‘Goodnight, Dr Hunter.’
She was halfway to the door when he called her, and she turned uncertainly, unable to prevent or understand the tiny bubble of hope that came with his call. ‘Yes?’
‘Take the dress when you go,’ he said. ‘I have no use for it.’
She knew she shouldn’t be disappointed. He’d made it clear he was angry with her. But she would take the dress. She doubted she would ever have cause to wear it, but she would treasure it for ever. ‘Thank you. I meant to ask—wherever did it come from?’
His eyes looked back at her, bleak and soulless. ‘It was my fiancée’s.’
She was leaving. He sat at the empty table, a hint of her perfume the only remaining trace of her.
She was leaving.
Somehow he’d made it through the dinner, forcing food into a body already shutting down.
She was leaving. And, beyond locking her in a turret room or throwing her into the caves below the castle, he had no choice but to let her go.
He’d always intended to let her go.
She did not belong here.
She did not belong to him.
But, God, he had not planned on losing her so soon.
The blackness was there, lurking in the fringes of his mind, bubbling away like boiling mud and fouling the air with stinking gases. It was there and mocking him for letting her go, ready to claim him again. He’d thought there was a chance of.
He searched helplessly to latch onto what he was looking for. He didn’t know.
Only that he had come to recognise she offered a chance of something—a chance to reclaim what he’d once had, a chance to reconnect to a world of light instead of dark. He wanted to at least taste that light.
And after a decade of burying himself away in the dark he’d seen that light in her expression and lusted after it for himself.