Page 11 of Bound Enemies
It had been the way he’d looked at her.
Leontina might not have seen that look on anyone’s face before—or that heat in a man’s eyes as they locked to hers—but she’d understood what it was. She’dfeltit.
Words had seemed to flow so easily between them. Everything had felt like light, like magic.
Like there were somewhere—anywhere—else than Umberto’s castle.
Taking his hand and letting him lead her away from the party had felt as easy as breath. Kissing him had felt like a necessity.
Only now, in a city in Spain she’d never visited before, did she understand that it was only in Pau’s arms that she had ever felt that way. Like the truest version of herself.
No hiding. No dissembling.
Just that light, that magic, that seemed to her to last a whole lifetime when it had only been one night.
Maybe, she thought now, that was the truth she needed to claim if she couldn’t bring herself to tell him thewholetruth. And she could start with the clothing she needed to buy. She could dress the way she wanted to dress—not the way that made the most sense because she wanted to be left alone in her father’s house.
Though she cautioned herself that she needed to keep it practical. Surely that was the only way to show how grateful she was for how easy Pau had made all of this on her. Because she certainly didn’t intend to open up a can of worms and tell him that none of this was his fault, or confess to what she’d done to get them here. So that left only acquiescing to the way he clearly intended to run things between them.
Practicalwas the name of the game.
And yet somehow, when she got back to the monastery from her shopping excursion, she found that she hadn’t bought herself any of her usual shapeless items at all. She hadn’t bought anything that was quite as seductive as what she’d worn to her brother’s wedding—because that wasn’t who she was, either. But the difference was, she was deeply pleased with what she’d chosen. She felt likeherselfeven though she knew perfectly well that she wasn’t in her normal, blend-in-with-the-furniture attire—maybe that was the point—when she walked down to dinner that night, a ritual that Pau had insisted upon.
After all, he’d said that first afternoon while they’d been so politely hammering out their terms and competing to see who could be more agreeable, more sanguine, which she found herself more and more irritated by the more she thought about it,we are to be married. We are to be parents. Surely we should know each other a little.
She was sure she’d seen that banked fire in his gaze then, a reminder of exactly how they found themselves in the situation—but it had been gone again in an instant.
You will not need to worry about any demands on my part, he had told her.
Kindly.
Leontina thought a lot about that, too.
And tonight, as then, it was as if she was looking at a different person altogether when the staff led her to the dining room where Pau waited.
There was more than one dining room in this whimsical house, laid out in increasingly erratic wings that told the story of the centuries it had stood here and the whims of its inhabitants. Some of these dining areas had views. Some were exercises in ostentation. If there was a rhyme or reason to how they were chosen each night, Pau did not share his rationale.
It was one more thing she didn’t ask about.
“I see your shopping trip was a success,” he said with no particular inflection when she walked in.
And there it was again. The hint of fire in his gaze—
But on the heels of that answering surge of heat inside her, all she could feel in return was that bright surge of guilt that settled on her like a too-warm blanket.
Because unless she was mistaken, and she was rarely mistaken about the people she’d taken the time to study, Leontina was fairly certain that this man was under the impression that he had seduced her that night. That he had somehow taken advantage of her innocence—or why else would he have mentioned her virginity the way he had?
What she’d discovered was that it turned out that it was one thing to plot and scheme in theory. It was another thing to look directly into the face of the man she’d trapped into this situation, whose child she could feel like an insistent weight in her belly, and understand that in this scenario she was nothing but the sort of liar she’d gone to such pains to escape from.
And would remain a liar, she thought as she took her seat and did her best not to pull at the neckline of her dress. It wasn’t even particularly revealing, but there was something about the way Pau’s cool gaze moved over her flesh. It made her whole body seem toshimmer.
Tonight, like every night so far, they sat at a perfectly set table under an umbrella of exquisite politeness.
“How was your day?” she found herself asking, because surely that was the sort of thing a person ought to ask. How would she know? She’d spent most forced meals with her family trying to disappear into her chair.
“Quite pleasant,” Pau replied.
He did not elaborate.
