down to the lake; Fergus was following faithfully a few paces behind. Every now and again he would stop and wait for the elderly dog to catch up. He would stoop down and give Fergus's ears or frail shoulders a little rub before moving forward again.
His care and concern for the dog didn't fit with Bella's impression of him as an aloof lone-agent who shied away from attachment. He had never shown any affection for anyone or anything before. He hadn't appeared to grieve the loss of her father, but then, she hadn't been around to notice all that much. He had been marble-faced at the funeral. He had barely uttered a word to her, or to anyone. At the reading of the will he had seemed unsurprised by the way her father had left things, which seemed to suggest he had a part in their planning.
She had flayed him with her sharp tongue that day. The air had rung with her vitriol. She had ranted and fumed and screamed at him. She had even come close to slapping him. But he had not moved a muscle on his face. He had looked down at her with that slightly condescending look of his and listened to her blistering tirade as if she'd been a spoilt, wilful child having a tantrum.
Bella moved away from the window with a frustrated sigh. She didn't know how to handle Edoardo. She had never known. In the past she had tried to dismiss him as one of the servants, someone she had to tolerate but not like, or even interact with unless absolutely necessary. But she had always found his presence disturbing. He did things to her just by looking at her. He made her feel things she had no right to feel. Was he doing it deliberately? Was he winding her up just to show he had the upper hand until she turned twenty-five?
He had always viewed her as the spoilt princess, the shallow socialite who spent money like it was going out of fashion. When she was younger she had tried her best to understand him. She had sensed the world he had come from was wildly different from hers from the occasional snippet of gossip from the locals, but when she had asked him about his childhood, he would cut her off with a curt command to mind her own business. What annoyed her more was that he must have spoken to her father about her probing him, as Godfrey had expressly forbidden her ever to speak to Edoardo about his childhood. He'd insisted that Edoardo deserved a chance to put his delinquent past behind him. It had driven another wedge between Bella and her father, making her feel more and more isolated and shut out.
Over the years her empathy towards Edoardo had turned to dislike and then to hatred. During her adolescence she had brazenly taunted him with saucy come-hither looks in an effort to get some sort of rise out of him. His aloofness had made her angry. She'd been used to boys noticing her, dancing around her, telling her how beautiful she was.
He had done none of that.
It was as if he didn't see her as anything but an annoying child. But then, that night in the library when she'd been sixteen, she had overstepped the mark. With a bit of Dutch courage on board - compliments of some cherry brandy she had found - she had been determined to get him to notice her. She had perched on his desk with her skirt ruched up and with the first four buttons of her top undone, showing more than a glimpse of the cleavage that had begun to blossom a couple of summers before.
He had come in and stopped short when he'd seen her draped like a burlesque dancer on his desk. He had barked at her in his usual growly way to get out of his hair. But, instead of scampering off like a dismissed child, she had slithered off the desk, come over to him and tiptoed her fingertips over his chest. Even then he had resisted her. He had stood as still as stone, but she had felt empowered by the way his eyes had darkened and the way he had drawn in a sharp breath as her loose hair brushed against his arm. She'd pressed closer, breathing in the scent of him, allowing him to breathe in hers.
She could still remember the exact moment he'd