One Reckless Decision

I do not think marriage should be a monarchy, he heard her say over and over again on an endless loop in his brain. I am tired of feeling flattened by you.

His instinct was to dismiss what she said out of hand. She would say anything to try to hurt him. She had proven that to be true over and over again. She was interested in scoring points, that was all.

But he could not quite believe it.

It would have been one thing if she’d lapsed into her customary hysteria. It was so easy to ignore what she said when it was screamed or accompanied by a flying missile in the form of priceless china or ancient vases. But the Bethany who had faced him this morning had not flown off the handle, though she had been visibly upset by one more round in their endless, excruciating war.

She had fought for calm instead of succumbing to her temper and emotions, yet even so he had seen exactly how much that fight had cost her. He had seen the defeat and the pain written across her face as if, once more, he had disappointed her.

He wished that did not eat at him, but it did.

You only want me if you can keep me in a convenient box of your choosing, she had said. It resonated within him in a way he hated. She had accused him of wanting to be the father figure, the parent, the adult in their relationship. He had never wanted that, had he? That had been a reaction to her, hadn’t it? Never a husband, she had said. Always the parent. What could I be, except a child?

A feeling he did not like at all snaked through him then as he accepted the fact that three years ago, he would not even have tried to figure out where she was coming from. He had not bothered.

He had simply let her go when it had occurred to him that perhaps the polish and experience of a few years’ growth might work wonders for the brand new, far-too-young wife he had inexplicably taken, upsetting a lifetime’s worth of expectations. He had been weary of all the fighting, all the wild uncertainty and drama. He had wanted her to turn into the wife he had been expected to marry all along, the wife he’d always been told he, as the Principe di Felici, needed to marry to fulfill his obligations. He had wanted her to be dutiful and unobjectionable.

What was that, if not a box? The very same box, in fact, in which he had lived his whole life?

The day’s business was concluded in due course, and Leo sat through a tedious dinner with his soon-to-be new partners, forcing himself to play along with the expected joviality when he could not have felt less disposed to do so. Finally, after an endless round of drinks and toasts—that he found slightly premature, given the contracts that had yet to be signed and his lawyers’ ability to ferret out objections to every clause they viewed—he was able to retire to his rooms and drop the act.

He had long ago stopped questioning how Bethany could haunt him so thoroughly in places she had never been. And yet, as he sat out on the balcony and soaked in the mild Sydney autumn night, it was as if she sat beside him, astride him. It was as if he could smell the rich, sweet scent of her skin, as if he could hear the cadence of her voice echo all around him, as if from the city itself.

Was every man doomed to become his father? He rejected the idea, but it was harder to push away than it should have been. Because, if he cast aside his own anger and frustration long enough, the view into their marriage from Bethany’s perspective was not at all pretty. He had failed her.

He faced the truth of that and sighed slightly.

He had not protected her from his spiteful cousins, when he should have known the trouble they would cause with their insinuations and their ingrained snobbery. He had not properly prepared her for how different his daily life was from their Hawaiian idyll. And he had been the older, experienced one. He still was. It had surely been his responsibility to make sure she felt secure, safe, at home in a place that he knew had been wildly foreign to her. And he had not done it.

He had not done it.

He had been so quick to accuse her of all manner of ills, but he had never thought to examine his own behavior. Who was the child—the woman who had been so sheltered and naïve? Or the man who had such a high opinion of himself it had never occurred to him to see what responsibility lay at his feet for the mess of his own marriage?

Leo sat in the dark for a long time, staring out at the lights of the city, lost in his own thoughts. In the past. Deep in a pair of bright blue eyes he was determined he would see smiling once again, if it killed him.

CHAPTER EIGHT

“I DO NOT wish to put you in a box,” Leo announced, striding into the small drawing room off the principessa’s suite.

Bethany was so startled she dropped the book she was reading, letting the heavy first edition thud to the floor beside the gracefully bowed legs of the scarlet and white settee.