The Marriage He Must Keep

“I feel the same,” Sorcha said, eyes shining with emotion. “I’ll feel so cheated, not seeing Lorenzo every day.”

They hugged it out and Sorcha was gone when Alessandro settled Octavia in the back of his town car. Loneliness gripped her, keeping her silent on the short drive to his mother’s mansion.

“Mother is home. She’s anxious for time with Lorenzo before—” He cut himself off.

Before we leave? Was that what he had almost said?

Octavia’s tender stomach muscles tightened.

His mother’s mansion was a few hundred years old, its facade elegant and weathered. Inside, Ysabelle had decorated with the colorful overindulgence that matched her personality and expressive Italian roots.

As they entered, she swooped on her grandson like a gull spotting a sandwich crust, silk sleeves flowing out like wings from her bright blue dress.

Praise and endearments in rapid Italian flowed over all of them along with several embraces into clouds of an ethereal perfume, warm kisses that left lipstick stains on their cheeks and pets of the hair that made Octavia couch a smile. Alessandro was not five and didn’t care to be fussed over like he was.

She didn’t mind the attention. Her own mother wouldn’t greet her like this, drawing her into the lounge where dozens of gifts were arranged with care on every surface, all wrapped in pastel stripes and extravagant bows.

“When did this happen?” Alessandro asked, folding his arms as he took in the grand gesture with an exasperated shake of his head.

“Surprises are fine when they’re nice ones,” his mother assured him, patting his arm on her way by. “Your nanny helped me,” she told Octavia as she directed her into the chair with the balloons tied to the armrest.

“We have a nanny?” Octavia murmured, casting a wary glance at her husband. She didn’t like surprises any more than he did.

Brianna—call me Bree—was young and eager and melted with adoration the moment she saw Lorenzo, but Octavia was reluctant to hand over her son to a stranger when Alessandro’s threats of stealing him back to Italy were still fresh in her mind.

“You’re still recovering,” Alessandro said. “You need the help. I’ll pitch in as much as I can, but work is completely upended right now. I have a lot of demands on my time.”

Octavia hadn’t considered how losing Primo would affect things at the family company. Alessandro must be putting out a lot of raging fires. The Ferrante holdings were a far-reaching and very demanding enterprise.

As she took her son from his car seat and handed the baby to his grandmother, she asked, “You really fired him?” She half expected Primo was still here and couldn’t shake the tension of having to face him.

Alessandro was taken aback. “I told you he was out of our lives. Did you not believe me?”

She blinked. Not really. The men had been so close.

A hint of the torment he’d revealed that first night flickered across his expression, telling her he was still coming to terms with it all. Her heart lurched at seeing him struggle. If she’d been the type who knew how to reach out, if things hadn’t been so strained between them, she might have tried to comfort him.

But she didn’t know how so she only said, “Thank you,” because Primo’s absence lifted a giant weight off her.

“I needed my fainting couch when he told me,” Ysabelle said, lowering to sit on the sofa opposite, Lorenzo in her lap. “It was such a shock.”

The twist of Alessandro’s mouth told Octavia that Ysabelle wasn’t overstating her reaction, not that she wasn’t entitled to some histrionics. Octavia was still reeling.

“Are you up to this?” Alessandro asked Octavia, jerking his head at the multitude of presents. “Or would you rather rest and open these later?”

“I can do it now. This is very nice,” she told her mother-in-law. “Thank you.”

“I’ve ordered lunch. We’ll fetch you when it’s ready. You can go work,” Ysabelle told her son with a clasp of his hand and a kiss on the back of it. “I know that’s where you’d rather be,” she added with a vague scold in her tone. “Since you’ve already heard about my count. We’re in love,” she leaned forward to confide to Octavia. “I thought I’d never make love again and now... It’s like we’re nineteen!”

Alessandro sucked in a long patience-seeking breath, gaze going to the ceiling. “I will work,” he said flatly. “You’ll tell me if you need anything,” he added with a stern look at Octavia.

She nodded, disappointed that he left, even though there was still this rock of tension sitting between them. It didn’t disappear when he did, either, just gave her enough breathing room to relax and chat with her mother-in-law as she began unwrapping Lorenzo’s gifts.