The Marriage He Must Keep(39)
“He would never be as motivated to lead selflessly. He doesn’t carry your guilt, Sandro.” She found herself moving across, wanting to impress this truth in him with a touch on his arm. “As much as it hurts you, that remorse of yours is a strength.”
His face spasmed with a flash of different emotions: pain and pensive regret. A reluctant kind of acceptance. He swallowed as though he was working past deep emotion and tucked his hand against the side of her neck, thumb caressing her throat.
“I remember thinking, just after we married, that you had an original way of looking at things. I’m sorry I lost sight of that, cara. I won’t let it happen again.”
The infinitesimal threads between them, the ones that had been snapped and floating like spider silk searching for an anchor, touched and melded and began to form a bridge between them.
His expression grew even more somber and the caress on her cheek almost regretful. “You see now why I have to battle through this? Why I must refuse to step aside for Giacomo? You’ll stand by me while I hold my ground?”
“I wish you’d told me all of this before.” This was why he was so deeply bound to his family and why he was so closed off emotionally. To his mind, he must think giving in to his hot feelings that one time was the cause of his father’s death. That’s why his mother’s unbridled sentimentality and grief and cries for love made him so uncomfortable. It was both a reflection of the intemperate reaction that had gripped him that day and the reason she wasn’t still married to the man she had loved.
Octavia absently smoothed the wrinkle from his shirt, thinking of the weight these shoulders carried. She couldn’t help but want to ease his burden. “I don’t know what I can do to help,” she murmured. Had he not noticed that she didn’t even have the guts to defy him and strike out on her own?
“Be here,” he said, the words somewhere between demand and entreaty. “Be strong with me.”
She had never felt united with anyone in her life. She was needed by her son, yes, as a caregiver, but Sandro made it sound as if he wanted her to be his partner.
Her eyes dampened, she was so touched.
“If you want,” she said faintly, nodding jerkily.
His breath hissed out and his mouth tilted in a relieved smile.
Such a beautiful mouth.
His smile faded and he crowded closer, leaning in—
“Oh! Excuse me! I’m so sorry,” Bree blurted as she strode in. She spun to retreat just as quickly.
“Stay,” Alessandro commanded, forestalling her closing the door, but keeping his arm around Octavia, allowing her to turn her blushing face into his chest. “Stay with the baby while I take Octavia down for lunch, please.”
A noise of consternation escaped Octavia before she could catch it back.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, tension returning in an instant. She could practically hear his We just agreed.
She sighed. She hadn’t just been hiding from the family discord when he’d found her on the balcony.
“I have nothing to wear,” she admitted.
Lunch and dinner were fairly horrible affairs and the entire day turned into one of the longest of Octavia’s life. She spoke to her mother briefly, which did not lighten things up.
“We didn’t expect you to be back this soon. I suppose we’re expected to attend this birthday celebration? You’ll have to make our excuses.”
Apparently her grandson’s birth and her daughter returning home after nearly eight months away was not inducement enough to leave the villa for a night.
Aside from Alessandro’s grandfather, who was as quiet and visibly troubled as Sandro had said, everyone in the castello was quite unfriendly. They stopped speaking if Octavia came into a room and closed doors when she happened to pass. It was her first year at boarding school all over again.
Sandro was pulled into private conversations himself, leaving her to navigate things alone. It was exhausting and she was having serious second thoughts about all of this when she finally crawled into bed. How, exactly, did she think she was improving her circumstance by clashing with his family?
She fell into a troubled sleep and woke to feel Sandro settle behind her, carefully spooning his hot body behind hers and splaying his hand on her hip.
A racy excitement glittered through her, making her roll to face him and force a tiny space of distance before she embarrassed herself.
“What are you doing here?” she whispered.
“Coming to bed.”
It was too dark to read his face, but he’d said they would sleep together once they came back to Italy. That had been the last word on the subject and it had been weeks ago. She wasn’t sure she was ready.