The Bride's Awakening

Ana blinked, then blinked again. She glanced around the room with its flickering candles and half-drunk glasses of wine, the fire burned down to a few glowing embers; the desire still coiled up inside her, desperate to unfurl. What a fool she was. ‘Ah,’ she said slowly, ‘business.’ Marriage must, for a man like Vittorio, determined and ambitious, be a matter of business. ‘Of course.’ She heard the note of disappointment in her own voice and cringed inside. Why should she feel let down? Everything she’d wanted and felt—that had been in her own head. Her own body. Not Vittorio’s. She turned to gaze at him once more, her expression direct and a little flat. ‘So just how is marriage a business proposition?’

Vittorio felt the natural vibrancy drain from Ana’s body, leaving the room just a little bit colder. Flatter. He’d made a mistake, he realized. Several mistakes. He’d gone about it all wrong, and he’d tried so hard not to. He’d seen her look around the room, watched her take in all the trappings of a romantic evening which he’d laid so carefully. The fire, the wine, the glinting crystal. The intimate atmosphere that wrapped around them so suggestively. It was not, he realized, a setting for business. Fool. If he’d been intending to conduct this marriage proposal with a no-nonsense business approach, he should have done it properly, in a proper business setting. Not here, not like this. This room, this meal promised things and feelings he had no intention or desire to give. And Ana knew it. That was why she looked so flat now, so…disappointed.

Did she actually want—or even expect—that from him? Had she convinced herself this was a date? The thought filled Vittorio with both shame and disgust. He could not, he knew, pretend to be attracted to her. He shouldn’t even try. He shouldn’t have brought her to this room at all. He needed to stop pretending he was wooing her. Even when he knew he wasn’t, he still fell back on old tactics, old ploys that had given him success in the past.

Now was the time for something new.

Vittorio leaned forward. ‘Tell me, Ana, do you play cards?’

Ana looked up, arching her eyebrows in surprise. ‘Cards…?’

‘Yes, cards.’ Vittorio smiled easily. ‘I thought after dinner we could have a friendly game of cards—and discuss this business proposition.’

She arched her eyebrows higher. ‘Are you intending to wager?’

Vittorio shrugged. ‘Most business is discussed over some time of sport or leisure—whether it is golf, cards, or something else entirely.’

‘How about billiards?’

Vittorio’s own eyebrows rose, and Ana felt a fierce little dart of pleasure at his obvious surprise. ‘You play billiards?’

‘Stecca, yes.’

‘Stecca,’ Vittorio repeated. ‘As a matter of fact, the castle has a five pins table. My father put it in when he became Count.’ He paused. ‘I played with him when I was a boy.’

Ana didn’t know if she was imagining the brief look of sorrow that flashed across Vittorio’s face. She remembered hearing, vaguely, that he’d been very close to his father.

It’s all right to be sad, rondinella.

She pushed the memory away and smiled now with bright determination. ‘Good. Then you know how to play.’