Kate Hewitt - The Italian's Bought Bride

And yet it was a reasonable question, wasn’t it? They were about to be married . Yet as she saw Stefano turn slowly around, his body tense and alert, she felt as if it wasn’t.

She felt as if she’d asked something wrong. Something stupid.

‘Allegra?’ he queried softly, and she heard a stern note of warning in the sound of her name.

‘I heard you…and Papa…’ she whispered, wanting even now to explain, to understand. Yet the words trailed off as she saw Stefano’s expression change, his eyes turning blank and hard, the mobile curve of his mouth flattening into an unforgiving line.

‘Business, Allegra, business between men. It is nothing you need concern yourself with.’

‘It sounded…’ Her mouth was dry and she licked her lips. ‘It sounded so…’

‘So what?’ Stefano challenged.

‘Cold,’ she whispered.

Stefano raised his eyebrows. ‘What are you trying to say to me, Allegra? Are you having second thoughts?’

‘No!’ She grabbed for his hand and after a second he coolly withdrew it. ‘Stefano…I just wondered…the things you said…’

‘Do you doubt that I’ll care for you? Protect and provide for you?’ he demanded.

‘No,’ Allegra said quickly, ‘but Stefano, I want more than that. I want—’

He shook his head with slow, final deliberation. ‘What more is there?’

Allegra gazed at him with wide, startled eyes. What more is there? So much more, she wanted to say. There was kindness, respect, honesty. Sharing joy and laughter, as well as sorrow and heartache. Bearing one another’s burdens in love. Yet she saw the hard lines of Stefano’s face, the coldness of his eyes, and knew that he was not thinking of these things.

They didn’t matter.

They didn’t exist.

Allegra licked her lips. ‘But Stefano…’ she whispered, although she didn’t know what to say. She barely knew what to feel.

Stefano held one hand up to stop her half-spoken plea. Something twisted his features, flickered in his eyes. Allegra didn’t know what it was, but she didn’t like it. When he finally spoke, his voice was calm, cold and frightening. ‘Are you questioning what kind of man I am?’

His voice and face were so harsh, unfamiliar. Allegra shook her head. ‘No!’ she gasped, and it came out in a half sob for she knew then that she was. And so did he.

Stefano was silent for a long moment, his gaze hard and fastened on hers, until Allegra could bear it no longer and stared at the floor.

She realized he was treating her like a child—a child to be charmed or chastened, placated or punished.

With sudden, stark clarity, she realized he’d always treated her this way. She’d never felt like a wife, or even a woman.

She wondered if she ever would.

‘Go to bed, Allegra.’ He tucked a tendril of hair behind her ear, his thumb skimming her face once more. ‘Go to bed, mylittle bride. Tomorrow is our wedding day. A new beginning, for both of us.’

‘Yes…’ she whispered. Except it didn’t feel like a beginning. It felt like the end. Her throat was raw and aching and she couldn’t look at him as she nodded. The implications of what he had said to her father—what he had now said to her —were flooding through her, an endless tide of confusion and fear. ‘Yes…all right.’

‘Do not be afraid.’

She nodded again, jerkily, as she moved backwards up the stairs. Stefano gazed up at her, his eyes burning into her mind, her heart, her soul. Burning and destroying.

She turned around and ran the rest of the way up.

‘Allegra!’

Gasping aloud in frightened surprise, she saw her mother, Isabel, striding down the upstairs corridor. Allegra glanced behind her, but she could no longer see Stefano.

‘What is the meaning of this?’ Isabel demanded, belting her dressing gown, her long, still-blonde hair streaming behind her in a smooth ripple.

‘I…I couldn’t sleep.’ Allegra stumbled into her bedroom and her mother followed. Everything was unchanged, she saw—the teddy bears, the tattered books, her wedding dress. All signs of her innocence, her ignorance.

‘What is wrong?’ Isabel asked. Her face, with its austere beauty, was harsh. ‘You look as if you’ve seen a ghost!’

‘Nothing is wrong,’ Allegra lied quickly. ‘I couldn’t sleep and I went for a drink of water.’

Isabel arched one eyebrow and Allegra shrank back a little. She wasn’t frightened of her mother, but she couldn’t help but be nervous around her. After a lifetime of nannies and boarding school, she sometimes wondered if she even knew her mother at all.

Isabel’s cold eyes swept over Allegra’s dishevelled appearance. ‘Have you seen Stefano?’ she asked, and there was a sly note in her voice that made Allegra’s skin crawl even as she shook her head.

‘No. No, I—’

‘Don’t lie to me, Allegra.’ Isabel took her daughter’s chin in her hand, forcing her to remain still, as pinned as a butterfly uselessly fluttering its fragile wings. ‘You never could lie to me,’ Isabel said. ‘You’ve seen him. But what’s happened?’ There was a cruel note in her voice as she added, ‘Has the fairy tale been tarnished, my dear daughter?’

Allegra didn’t know what her mother meant, but she didn’t like her tone. Even so, she felt trapped, helpless. And alone.

And she wanted to confide in someone, anyone, even her mother.

‘I saw him,’ she whispered, blinking back tears.

There was a tiny pause that spoke far more than anything her mother could have said in words. ‘And?’

‘I heard him talking to Papa…’ Allegra closed her eyes, shook her head.

Her mother exhaled impatiently. ‘So?’

‘It’s all been a business arrangement!’ This came out in a wretched whisper that caught on the jagged edge of her throat. Tears stung her eyes. ‘Stefano never loved me.’

Her mother watched her with cool impassivity. ‘Of course he didn’t.’

Allegra’s mouth dropped open as another illusion was ripped away. ‘You knew? You knew all along…?’ Yet even as she spoke the words, Allegra wondered why she was surprised. Her mother had never confided in her, never seemed to enjoy her company. Why shouldn’t Isabel know? Why shouldn’t she have been in on the sordid deal, the business of brokering a wife, selling a daughter?

‘Oh, Allegra, you are such a child.’ Isabel sounded weary rather than regretful. ‘Of course I knew. Your father approached Stefano before your eighteenth birthday and suggested the match. Our social connections, his money. That was why he was at your party. That was why you had a party.’

‘Just to meet him?’

‘For him to meet you,’ Isabel corrected coolly. ‘To see if you were suitable. And you were.’

Allegra let out a wild laugh. ‘I don’t want to be suitable! I want to be loved!’

‘Like Cinderella?’ It would have been a taunt if her mother didn’t sound so tired, so bitter. ‘Like Snow White? Life is not a fairy tale, Allegra. It wasn’t for me and it won’t be for you.’

Allegra spun away, her hands scrubbing her face, bunching in her hair as if she could somehow yank the memory from her mind, forget the words Stefano had spoken to her father and then to her. Both conversations had damned him.

‘It’s not the Dark Ages, either,’ she said, her voice trembling. ‘You speak of this…this as if people can just barter brides…’

‘For women like us, well-placed, wealthy, it is not so far,’ Isabel returned grimly. ‘Stefano seems like a good man. Be thankful.’

Seems , Allegra thought, but was he? She thought of the way he’d spoken to her father, the way he’d spoken to her, the coldness in his eyes, how he’d scolded and then dismissed her. What more is there?

She realized she didn’t know him at all.

She never had.

‘Honourable,’ Isabel added, and now true bitterness twisted her words, her face. ‘He has treated you well so far, hasn’t he?’ She paused. ‘You could do worse.’

Allegra turned to stare at her mother, the cool beauty transformed for a moment by hatred and despair. She thought of her father’s words, I know a woman in Milan , and inwardly shuddered.

‘As you did?’ she asked in a low voice.

Isabel shrugged, but her eyes were hard. ‘Like you, I had no choice.’

‘Papa spoke…Stefano said…things…’

‘About other women?’ Isabel guessed with a hard laugh. She shrugged. ‘You’ll be glad for it, in the end.’

Allegra’s eyes widened. ‘Never!’

‘Trust me,’ Isabel returned coldly.

Allegra was compelled to ask, her voice turning ragged, ‘Have you ever been happy?’

Isabel shrugged again, closed her eyes for a moment. ‘When the bambinos come…’

Yet her mother had never seemed to enjoy motherhood; Allegra was an only child and she’d been tended by nannies and governesses her whole life, until she’d gone to the convent school.

Would children—the hope of children—be enough to sustain her through a cold, loveless marriage? A marriage she had, only moments ago, believed to be the culmination of all her young hopes. Now she realized she had no idea what those hopes had truly been. They had been the thinnest vapour, as insubstantial as smoke. Gone now. Gone with the wind.

She thought of how she’d compared Stefano to Rhett Butler and she choked on a terrible, incredulous laugh.

‘I can’t do it.’

A crack reverberated through the air as her mother slapped her face. Allegra reeled in shock. She’d never been hit before.

‘Allegra, you are getting married tomorrow .’

Allegra thought of the church, the guests, the food, the flowers. The expense.

She thought of Stefano.

‘Mama, please,’ she whispered, one hand pressed to her face, using an endearment she’d only spoken as a child. ‘Don’t make me.’

‘You do not know what you’re saying,’ Isabel snapped. ‘What can you do, Allegra? What have you been prepared to do besides marry and have children, plan menus and dress nicely? Hmm? Tell me!’ Her mother’s voice rose with fury. ‘Tell me! What?’

Allegra stared at her mother, pale-faced and wild eyed. ‘I don’t have to be like you,’ she whispered.

‘Hah!’ Isabel turned away, one shoulder hunched in disdain.

Allegra thought of Stefano’s smooth words, the little gifts, and wondered if they’d all been calculated, all condescensions. Not too bad a price . He’d bought her. Like a cow, or a car. An object. An object to be used.

He hadn’t cared what she thought, hadn’t even cared to tell her the truth of their marriage, of his courtship, of anything .

Something hardened then, crystallised into cold comprehension inside her.

Now she knew what it was like to be a woman.

‘I can’t do it,’ she said quietly, this time without trembling or fear. ‘I won’t.’

Her mother was silent for a long moment. Outside, a peal of womanly laughter, husky with promise, echoed through the night.

Allegra waited, held her breath, hoped …

Hoped for what? How could her mother, who barely cared for her or even noticed her at all, help her out of this predicament?

Yet still she waited. There was nothing else she could do, knew to do.

Finally Isabel turned around. ‘It would destroy your father if this marriage fell through,’ she said. There was a strange note of speculative satisfaction in her voice. Allegra chose to ignore it. ‘Absolutely destroy him,’ she added, and now the relish was obvious.