Unwrapping The Innocent's Secret

She made a scoffing sound. “Please. We were never friends.”

To her surprise, his mouth curved. “Cecilia. Of course we were.”

Something in her chest seemed to stutter to a halt then. Something different from the panic, the heat.

Because she remembered other things, too. Long afternoons when she would sit by his bedside, holding his hand or mopping his brow with a cool cloth. In those early days, when no one had known if he would make it, she’d sung to him. Songs of praise and joy interspersed with silly nursery rhymes and the like, all calculated to soothe.

When he grew stronger, he would tell her stories. He couldn’t believe that she had never been to Rome. That she had never been more than a couple of hours out of this valley, for that matter. Or not that she could recall. He painted pictures for her with his words, of ancient ruins interspersed with traffic charging this way and that, sidewalk cafés, beautiful fountains. Later, when she was no longer a novitiate and often found herself up in the middle of the night—either because she was worried about her future, or because sleep was a rarity for a woman in her position—she’d looked up pictures online and found the city he described. In bright detail.

He’d made her feel as if she knew it personally. Sometimes she thought she hated him for that.

“Either way,” she said resolutely, “we’re not friends now. Do you wish to know how I know we’re not? Because friends do not disappear like smoke in the middle of the night, without a word.”

She regretted that the moment she said it. This was not about her, not anymore, and if she wanted to tell herself a harsh truth or two, it was possible it never had been. She could have been the field outside his window. The mountains looming about in every direction. She was simply here. He was the one who crashed the car, tore himself to pieces and got the luxury of telling dramatic stories about what the experience had taught him in televised interviews.

Not that she planned to admit she’d ever watched them.

Meanwhile, Cecilia was the one who could remember nothing but this valley. This village. The comfort of the abbey walls and the counsel of the women she’d believed would be her sisters one day.

It was true that he had taken all of that away from her. But another truth was that she’d given it to him. And she knew she shouldn’t have mentioned that night.

Something she was in no doubt about when his expression changed. His eyes were too hot suddenly. His mouth was too stern and yet remained entirely too sensual.

Now that she was standing up, she could better appreciate what the years had done for his form. He had always been beautiful, like something carved from soft stone and twisted into that flesh that had healed so slowly. Now he seemed made of granite. His shoulders were so wide. And the excellent tailoring of the suit he wore did absolutely nothing to disguise the fact that his torso was thick with hard, solid muscle.

And somehow she’d expected that because he’d filled out he would be less tall. But he wasn’t. She still had to look up at him. And for some reason, even though she was no longer on her knees, it made her feel a little too close to powerless for comfort.

“By all means,” he said in that dark, silken way of his. “Let us discuss that night.”

And she’d already started down this road. She might as well say all the things she’d been carrying around inside her all these years, or at least the highlights, because she had no intention of having this discussion again.

“What is there to discuss?” she asked. “I fell asleep in your arms. It was the first time I had done something like that, as every other moment we’d had together had been so furtive. Stolen. But not that night. You asked me to stay and I stayed. And when I woke up in the morning, you had left the valley for good.” She made a noise that no one could mistake for a laugh. “In case you’re wondering, I woke up the way you left me. Naked. With the sun beaming in the windows and Mother Superior standing at the foot of the bed.”

Back then she could have read every expression that moved over his face. Every glint in his eye. But though she could see something shift there today, she couldn’t twist it into any kind of sense. And it was stunning, the things that could wallop a person. The ways that grief could sneak into the most surprising crevices and well up there, like tears.

“Is that why you’re not a nun?” he asked.

She wondered if he knew what a loaded question that was.

It is not for me to tell you what to do, child,Mother Superior had said when Cecilia’s condition became clear. That is between you and God. But I will tell you this. I have known you since you were delivered to our door. I watched you grow up. And I greeted, with joy, the notion that you might join the sisters here. But the truth is, the order is the only family you’ve known. I have to ask myself if you truly wish to dedicate yourself to this life, or if what you want most of all is family. And now you will have your own. Do you truly wish to give that up?

“In the end,” Cecilia said now to the man who was a catalyst for both her greatest shame and deepest joy in life, damn him, “I was not a good fit for the order.”

“Not a good fit? You’d already been living in that abbey for most of your life. How could you not be perfect for them? Why would they let you walk away?”

She glared at him. “These are all interesting questions. But not from someone who ran off in the middle of the night. If you had questions to ask me, Pascal, you could have asked them then.”

“I did not run off,” he bit out. And if she wasn’t mistaken, there was something like temper in his voice then. Sparking in that black gaze of his. “You must always have known, cara, that my destiny was never here.”

Her palms stung and she realized she’d curled her hands into fists. She forced herself to unclench her fingers, one by one.

“That became clear once you left. And then failed to return for six years.”

“I’m here now.”

“And I’m sure that any moment, the heavens will open up and hosannas will rain down upon us all,” Cecilia retorted. Archly. “But until that moment, you will forgive me if I am somewhat less enthused.”

“The Cecilia I remember would never have spoken to me this way.” One of his brows rose. Imperiously. “I remember soft, cool hands. A pretty singing voice. And cheeks that were forever pinkening.”

“That girl was an idiot.” Cecilia sniffed. “And she died six years ago, when she woke to find herself not at all the person she’d imagined herself to be.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“Don’t you? I thought that I was a moral, upstanding, pure and wholesome individual. A woman who truly wished to dedicate herself to a life of service. But it turned out that I was wicked straight through, shameless enough to flaunt it in the very abbey that raised me, and so foolish that I actually believed that the man who had engineered my fall might stick around to help with a rough landing. Alas. He did not.”

His stern mouth looked starker somehow. “I was told that all sins would be forgiven if I were to do what was inevitable, what I would do anyway, and leave.”

Cecilia opened her mouth to argue that, but something about the way he said it tugged at her. “What do you mean, you were told?”

But he didn’t answer the question. He studied her for a moment, then another, his hand on his jaw.

“You have yet to explain to me what my board members were doing here. Let me guess who it was. An older gentleman, perhaps? Silver hair and beard, a theatrical cane and a penchant for dressing like an uptight Victorian? And his trusty sidekick, the younger man, round and possessed of an overly glossy mustache?”

He had described the two men exactly.

She shrugged. “They didn’t leave their names.”

“But I can see from your expression that they were the ones who came here. Why?”

“Your story of narrowly escaping death in the Dolomites, and the recovery that allowed you ample time to shore up your scheme to take over the world, is practically a fairy tale told to small children at this point. Everyone has heard it.”

“I’m delighted that you have paid such close attention.”

“But that’s my point,” Cecilia said coolly. “No attention was required. The story was everywhere. You’re fairly ubiquitous these days, aren’t you?”

“If by ubiquitous you mean wealthy and powerful, I accept the description proudly.”

“Because that’s what matters to you.” She couldn’t seem to help herself. Because she had to keep poking and poking to make sure that he really was this stranger he’d turned into. That the man she’d thought he was had never been anything but a figment of her own imagination. She had to be certain. “Money at all costs. No matter who it hurts.”

“Who does it hurt?” His gaze was far too bright. Particularly with his mouth set in that harsh line. “There will always be rich men, Cecilia. Why shouldn’t I be one of them?”

“I think the real question is why you’re here,” she said past the lump in her throat for the man she’d nursed all those weeks. The man she’d believed was different. The man who had never existed, not really. “Because I want to be clear about something, Pascal. We like this valley quiet. Remote. The sisters spend their lives here engaged in quiet contemplation. If they want the bustle of the city, they know how to drive themselves down to Verona. What none of us need or want, villager and nun alike, is whatever scheming Roman nonsense you or your minions brought with you.”

“I told you.” And his voice was harsher then. “I came here to face a ghost, nothing more.”

“I know that ghost is not me. Perhaps the ghost is the man you were, when you were here before. Because if we’re being honest, you left him that night, too.”

He didn’t flinch. He didn’t reel away from her as if she’d hit him. And yet, somehow, Cecilia had the distinct impression that she’d landed a blow. Possibly with a very sharp knife.