One Reckless Decision

He watched that red flush on her skin deepen one shade darker, then two. Her soft mouth firmed into a hard line he found unaccountably fascinating.

“How incredibly patronizing you are, Leo,” she said coolly, though he could hear temper and something else crackling through her voice. “Patronizing and dismissive.”

Leo shrugged. “If you feel you must call me names because it is difficult for you to accept that you have returned here, I will not blame you,” he said.

Whatever it took, she would truly be his wife again, he vowed. She would be the principessa he had imagined she could be. He would not allow for any other outcome. Not this time.

Her blue eyes blazed into hard sapphires.

“I am having no difficulty at all accepting that I am here,” she bit out. “I am, however, unable to process the fact that you feel comfortable speaking to me as if I am a child.”

“I am well aware that you are not a child,” he said. His gaze met hers and held. “It has always been your behavior that causes the confusion.”

Her eyes narrowed. He could sense her temper skyrocketing, but could not imagine what it was that so enraged her. The simple truth? He was surprised she had not already thrown something at him, or launched her own body at his, nails like claws, as she would have done in the past.

He watched, fascinated despite himself, as she visibly fought for control. This was not the Bethany he knew. His Bethany was a creature of passion and regret, rages and tears. She threw precious china against the wall, screamed herself hoarse, threw tantrums that shook the ancient stones beneath their feet. She was not capable of reining in her temper once it ignited, like the woman before him.

He could see it in her eyes, the rage and the passion, the fury and the heat. But she did not move to strike him. She did not scream like a banshee. She only faced him.

He did not know if he admired her unexpected fortitude, or felt it as a loss.

“I will not be spoken to as if I am a recalcitrant adolescent or a lowly member of your staff, Leo,” she told him, her voice tight and hard. “I understand that you live in a world where you need only express a desire and it is met, but I am not your underling. I am a grown woman. I do, in fact, know my own mind.”

Leo let out a short laugh. “I am delighted to hear it,” he said. “Does that mean the antique vases are safe from your rampages? I will notify the household staff.”

Her face darkened, but she did not scream at him. Against his will, Leo’s fascination deepened.

“Treat me like a child and I will treat you exactly the same way,” she said instead, her words very precise, very pointed. “And I very much doubt your exalted sense of self could handle it.”

She was an adult? She had outgrown her childishness? He was thrilled, he told himself, eyeing her narrowly. Overjoyed, in fact. Wasn’t that why he’d allowed her to run off to Canada in the first place? She had been so very young when he had met her; far younger than her years. Hadn’t he wanted her to mature?

He had only himself to blame if he did not quite care for the specific direction her show of maturity had taken—if he found he preferred the angry child to this unknowable woman who stood before him with unreadable eyes.

“You are still my wife,” he said after a long moment, his tone even. “As long as that is true, you cannot stay in the village. It will cause too much comment.”

“Thank you for speaking to me as an adult for once,” she said. Her chin tilted up and her bright eyes sparkled with a combination of defiance and a certain resignation that made his hackles rise. “What does that say about you, I wonder, that it was so hard to do?”

CHAPTER FIVE

“I TRUST that was rhetorical,” he said mildly enough.

But Leo’s gaze was too sharp, and Bethany knew that she could no longer maintain any pretense of calm if she continued to look at him.

She moved, restless and more agitated than she wanted to admit, wandering further into the room. She let her gaze dance over the painting that dominated the far wall, a richly imagined, opulently hued rendition of the view outside these very windows, give or take a handful of centuries, painted by no less an artist than Titian.

Murano glass vases glowed scarlet and blue on the dresser, picking up the light from the Venetian chandelier that hung from the ceiling high above. Bethany knew that one of this room’s more famous occupants hundreds of years ago had been the daughter of a grand and noble Venetian family, and this room had ever since been adapted to pay homage to her residency.

What legacy might Bethany have left behind, she wondered, had she stayed? Would she have left her mark at all or would she have been swallowed whole into this castle, this family, this history? Annoyed by her sentimentality, and that wrenching sense of loss that inevitably followed, she shook the thought away.