The Bride's Awakening - By Kate Hewitt Page 0,55

laughed in disbelief; he couldn’t help it. ‘Don’t I?’

Constantia looked utterly nonplussed. ‘No—’

He shook his head, too weary to explain. ‘Do you know where Ana is?’

‘You will bring heartache to that girl. You will destroy her—’

Vittorio tensed, steeling himself once more, but this time he couldn’t. Love is a destructive emotion. The thought of bringing such pain and misery to Ana made his head bow, his shoulders shake. ‘Why do you care?’ he asked in a low, savage voice.

‘She is a good woman, Vittorio.’

‘Too good for me, obviously.’

Constantia sighed impatiently. ‘I have made many mistakes with you, I know. I have many regrets. But this marriage—it can only lead to more despair. And surely our family has had enough unhappiness?’

She was pleading with him, as if their family’s misery was his fault? Vittorio turned around, his body rigid with rage. ‘On that point we agree, Mother. Yet it seems odd that the instrument of so much unhappiness should then seek to end it.’

Constantia blinked as if she’d been struck. ‘I know you blame me—’

‘Blame you?’ Vittorio repeated silkily. ‘Are you referring to your attempt to take my inheritance, my father only hours in the grave? Your desperate desire to drag the family into the law courts and give my brother my title?’

Constantia straightened and met his hostile gaze directly. ‘Yes, Vittorio, I am referring to that. God knows you will never let me forget it.’

‘One hardly forgets the dagger thrust between one’s shoulders,’ Vittorio returned, every word encased in ice. He still remembered how he had reeled with shock; he’d come back from his father’s funeral, devastated by grief, only to find that in his absence his mother had met a solicitor and attempted to overturn the contents of his father’s will, disinheriting him completely and giving everything to Bernardo. All the childhood slights had led to that one brutal moment, when he’d understood with stark clarity that his mother didn’t just dislike him, she despised him. She’d do anything to keep him from inheriting what was rightfully his.

He would never forget. He couldn’t.

‘No,’ Constantia agreed softly, her eyes glittering, ‘one does not forget. And I will tell you, Vittorio, that for a woman to be denied love—by her own husband—is not a dagger between the shoulders, but one straight to the heart. For your wife’s sake, if not my own, do not hurt her.’

‘Such pretty words,’ Vittorio scoffed. The rage had left him, making him feel only weary. ‘You have come to care for my wife then, Mother?’

‘I know how she feels,’ Constantia said bleakly and, with one last shake of her head, she left the room.

Her words rang in his ears, and yet Vittorio still made himself dismiss them. I know how she feels. Was his mother implying she’d loved his father? To Vittorio’s young eyes, his parents had agreed on a polite marriage of convenience. Just like the one he’d meant to have. Yet his parents’ marriage had descended into anger and even hatred, and at the thought of that happening to him—to Ana—Vittorio swore aloud. All the old feelings, hurt memories, had been raked up tonight and Vittorio knew why.

Ana.

Somehow she’d affected him, touched him in a way he had never been touched. Made him open and exposed and, more than that, she made him want. Made him need.

Love.

He swore again.

‘Vittorio?’

He whirled around. Ana stood in the doorway, her face nearly as white as her lace gown.

‘How much did you hear?’ he asked, his tone brusque, brutal.

Ana flinched. ‘Enough. Too much.’

‘I told you my family’s history was not worth repeating,’ Vittorio replied with a shrug. He moved to the drinks table and poured himself a whisky.

‘Don’t—’ Ana said inadvertently and he turned around, one eyebrow arched.

‘I’m having a drink, Ana,’ he said, the words a taunt. ‘Whisky. Your favourite. Don’t you want to join me?’

‘No. Vittorio, I want to talk.’

He took a healthy swallow and let the alcohol burn straight to his gut. ‘Go ahead.’

Ana flinched again. Vittorio knew he was being callous, even cruel, but he couldn’t help it. The exchange with his mother, the emerging feelings for Ana—it all left him feeling so exposed. Vulnerable.

Afraid.

He hated it.

Turning away from her, he kept his voice a bored drawl. ‘So what do you want to talk about?’

Ana watched her husband as he gazed out of the window, affecting an air of bored indifference, yet she knew better now. He was hurting. She didn’t understand everything he’d referred to in his conversation with Constantia, didn’t know the