Il Bestione (The Golden Door Duet Book 2) Page 9

  Did the Beast think she was cowed and thus no longer a risk to flee?

  It galled her to think that was true—and galled her more to know he was right. She had no more intention of fleeing. Not only had all her attempts failed, but now she clearly understood it wasn’t her own safety at risk, but her father’s. All these angry men hadn’t hurt her during her captivity not because they didn’t want to—they obviously did—and not because they were waiting for their don to hurt her. They hadn’t because the Beast insisted he did not hurt women.

  It wasn’t true, of course. He’d hurt her a great deal already, in what he’d done to her uncle, and in holding her captive, but he drew a fine and convenient line between hurt to her heart and the kind of her that bruised and bled.

  He didn’t bruise or bleed women. Instead he’d take from her father what he said she owed. That would hurt her more than anything he might do to her body—which, no doubt, the Beast knew already.

  So yes, she would no longer try to escape.

  But was that the message of his return of these small comforts? Was he telling her he knew she’d been cowed? Or was there something else to be understood?

  Mirabella might have been dissuaded from escaping, but she wasn’t quite cowed. She meant to bide her time and find a way out of this without giving the Beast what he wanted.

  Or was he simply making a gesture by returning the furnishings and linens—and offering her books or some other entertainment? Was it possible that there was regret, even a drop of it, in the Beast’s behavior now?

  Still standing in the corner of the room, her eyes fixed on the small stack of books at the corner of the bureau, Mirabella reflected on her dinner with the Beast.

  The food had been good. He’d allowed her to have a sharp knife with which to eat it. He’d shooed the guards and left them alone, though he was clearly early in his healing and still very weak. At any time, she could have picked up that knife and stabbed him again, in his heart this time, before one of his guards might have stopped her.

  She’d considered it—but then discarded the idea when she’d thought of all the men between her and the front door of this building. Yet the Beast, barely beginning to recover from the attempt on his life she’d already made, had taken the risk that she wouldn’t make another. They’d shared a meal with civility between them. He’d explained his ‘problem,’ and asked her to help him solve it. He’d been calm, even gentle, his deep voice soft and cordial. When she’d tried to take the knife, he’d simply stopped her doing so—and stopped his guard from treating her roughly in retaliation.

  She wanted to believe he’d been sincere. She wanted to believe that he truly didn’t want to hurt her, or her father, despite what she’d done.

  Why?

  Why would he seek to show mercy? And why would she wish so fervently to believe in it?

  She didn’t know, and she needed to stop thinking about it for a moment. Her mind was tired of thinking. A book would be nice, in fact. Somewhere to turn her attention, a story to fall into.

  In fact, she enjoyed reading very much. Almost as much as she enjoyed long walks in fresh air. And freedom. There was freedom, and escape, in reading.

  Finally, she unlocked her body from its odd rigidity and went to the bureau to see what books Aldo had left.

  They were all in Italian, thankfully. The first was a collection of Petrarch’s sonnets.

  The second was a novel she’d read before, I Malavoglia, by the Italian author Giovanni Verga. The third was a novel also, though not as prettily printed. She’d heard of it but had never read it. An American story translated into Italian, by Louisa May Alcott.

  Choosing Piccole Donne, Mirabella settled into the upholstered armchair that had been returned to her, beside an electric lamp. She allowed herself to escape for a while and fall into the world of the March sisters.

  For the first time in days, Mirabella eased into comfortable wakefulness. The sun was up but not slicing across her eyelids, because the draperies were closed. The sheets and coverlet were soft, the pillow fluffy, and she’d read well into her novel and had dreamt of spending time with Jo and her sisters.

  In those first moments of returning to consciousness, as the lingering wisps of a pleasant dream faded, a handsome face with heartbreakingly beautiful eyes rose into her mind, and she sighed. Paolo. He really was very handsome. And kind.

  The thought snapped her fully awake. Kind? He was not kind. He was the farthest thing from it. He was the Beast. He’d chopped her uncle’s hand off while she’d watched. No. He was not kind. And those eyes were cold stones. Not heartbreaking. Heartless.

  Somehow she’d pulled him into her dream and made him the hero of her story.

  Why, she couldn’t say. Her nature did not include a romantic tendency, and as she’d read about the March sisters and the men mooning after them, she’d been mainly frustrated at all the love talk. She preferred the story of Jo’s writing, and she felt most emotional about Beth. The lovers and their proper ways bored her.

  That had been the case in her real life, too, in Firenze, when she’d had a life to speak of. Her father hadn’t been wealthy, but neither had he been poor. His position was one that reflected the wealth and influence of the people he’d dressed. They’d lived not lavishly but comfortably. As such, Mirabella had had suitors—more than enough. Yet not one had caught her interest for long. As soon as they began making pronouncements of affection or behaving as if they had a say over her, she’d cut them out.

  Her father had begun to caution her about turning so many men away they no longer came, but the thought of never marrying hadn’t bothered her. She’d spent a lifetime watching sad wives and happy widows at her father’s mirrors. Mirabella had no desire to marry simply because it was expected. With her voice or her fingers, she had skills and could earn her own keep.

  Romance for its own sake did not move her. So why had her dreams of the previous night been full of it? And why had the Beast slipped into them?

  Deciding that she would not read so close to sleeping ever again, Mirabella rose and began to dress.

  Expecting to be summoned into the Beast’s lair for breakfast, Mirabella stood when she heard a key enter the lock and turn. Aldo walked in, his heavy face folded into a scowl. He said nothing, and Maria was right behind him, carrying a tray of food.

  It was on her tongue to ask if she weren’t eating with the don, but the food was answer enough. She was not. So she watched quietly while Maria set the tray on the bureau and slipped from the room. Aldo gave her an even angrier look as he moved to leave as well, and Mirabella’s mouth was open before she could stop the words.

  “Is he all right?”

  He stopped and looked at her. The scowl was still there, but she saw surprise, too. He hadn’t expected her to ask after her captor.

  Neither had she. Her mind was a riot of shock at herself. But also, she wanted to know the answer.

  Last night, he’d been struggling hard, harder as the meal went on, to sit with her. His pain was obvious. He’d barely eaten or drunk anything. Had that encounter, sitting in a chair for an hour, been too much for him? Had he taken a turn?

  “Why do you care?” Aldo asked in a grunt.

  She didn’t answer, because she didn’t know why. The answer should have been simple: she’d tried to kill him and yet had hope she might succeed.

  But somehow the answer wasn’t simple.

  Aldo left without answering her question, either.

  She spent most of the day reading, finishing Little Women and undertaking the sonnets next. They were love poems; Petrarch had written obsessively to Laura, his great love, and finally Mirabella couldn’t take it any longer. There was too much love in her head already, and she’d tear her hair out if she dreamt about it again when the night came.

  Her guards allowed her to use the bathroom now rather than the pot, and she exploited those opportunities extravagantly, taking up as much time as she could in trips to ‘see to her needs.�
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  For the first time since she’d been brought here, she was served a midday meal, and with it, Maria brought a large basket that turned out to be full of more clothing as well as a small box of hairpins and combs—and a different hairbrush, one that would go through her mane.

  In the afternoon, she spent quite some time in the bathroom, standing before the sink and staring into the mirror above it, deciding what to do with her hair.

  She didn’t like the elaborate puffs and twists of stylish women on either side of the Atlantic, but she wasn’t accustomed to letting it fly loose, either. At home or in her father’s shop, she’d tied it simply back and covered it with a kerchief. When she was out, she’d clip it back in something simple but fashionable enough.

  Maria hadn’t brought her a kerchief, nor had she brought the right kinds of clips or bindings for the style she’d prefer. Finally, Mirabella settled on catching the front back with a comb at either side. Combs made her head itch, and didn’t do much to control the mass, but at least it was off her face.

  Making herself pretty again had amused her for a short span of her captivity. She studied herself in the mirror and indulged that bit of vanity.

  The men who’d wooed her had waxed rhapsodic over her beauty, naming her hair as especially striking. Honestly, she thought it was her hair alone that made anyone think she was beautiful, and it wasn’t the brilliant feature they all thought. She wasn’t falsely modest, she understood why men liked it, but she had a practical view of it. Yes, her hair was thick and dark and wild, which seemed to make men salivate, but it was heavy and difficult to wash and dry or style, or find clips sufficient to control it.

  As for the rest of her … without her hair, she doubted anyone would find her worthy of a rhapsody. A few men had called her beauty ‘severe,’ which she took to mean they didn’t much like what was under the mane.

  She thought she was fine looking. Not ugly. Not even plain. But no perfect beauty, either. Her nose was too narrow, her chin too pointed, her brows too thick and too sharply slanted for perfection.

  But perfection was a pretense. She liked her face. It looked like her. And if her features made her look like she was more fighter than lover, then they suited her all the better.

  A sharp rap on the locked bathroom door drew her from her self-study. “Enough. Time to come out,” the man barked. It wasn’t Aldo. She didn’t know the name of this man who’d been guarding her most of the day.

  Mirabella lingered a bit longer, out of sheer spite, and then went to the door and knocked back. It had become her signal when she wanted attention from the guards on the other side of the lock. She could simply have called out, but she disliked speaking to them, even for such a practical matter. They were her jailors, and she didn’t want to strike up a conversation of any kind.

  She’d spoken to Aldo, because he was around most often and also seemed in charge of the others. She’d tried to speak to Maria, but the little maid wouldn’t speak back.

  The lock turned and the door opened. Her guard blinked at the change in her appearance but said nothing. He grabbed her arm—they all kept hold of her when they walked her from room to room—and led her down the corridor.

  As he was about to usher her into her room, a door at the other end of the hallway opened—the door to the Beast’s apartment.

  He stood in the doorway, weaving unsteadily on his feet. His hair was soaked with sweat and his eyelids sagged as if he weren’t truly awake. He wore nothing but a pair of loose, thin pants of black cotton. His chest was bare but for the thick bandage around his middle—a bandage that badly needed to be changed. Blood had seeped through, and more than blood. Fluid with a yellowish tinge.

  Infection.

  Mirabella’s mother had died of infection. Mirabella had been a girl, and they’d been playing together in their garden, splashing their feet through puddles during the rain of a waning storm. Her mother had stepped on a shard of rock or something like it, submerged in a dark puddle.

  Mirabella had been too young to remember how long it had been from that moment when her mother had gasped and kicked her bare foot up to see what had happened, to the moment the undertaker had carried her body from their home. Her father told her it had been barely more than a week, but for Mirabella, the time between was an endless hanging emptiness that could have lasted a day or a lifetime.

  She remembered looking over from her puddle and seeing the blood on her mother’s foot. She remembered that her mother had seemed fine at first, hardly limping at all, and then she was tired and limping badly, and then she was in bed and Mirabella was not allowed near. She’d hovered at the room, though, and had seen the doctor and some neighbor ladies helping her mother. She’d seen old bandages brought out and how they were stained. Once, she’d caught a glimpse of her mother’s foot and its leg.

  And she’d been watching when the undertakers carried her away. She’d never forgiven the world for that loss, and never would. She’d been born with a hot temper, but every day from that one on, she’d been truly angry.

  She knew what a bad infection looked like.

  The Beast’s wounds were badly infected.

  On this day, the hallway hadn’t been so heavily guarded as the first days of her captivity. There was only one more man besides the one who had hold of her arm. That one turned to the Beast and said something in English, reaching for him as he did.

  The Beast shoved him away. The force of his move nearly took him from his feet, but he managed to reclaim his balance. In Italian, in a voice roughened by stress and illness, he snapped, “Get away from me!” and the guard did.

  For a moment, time in the hallway stopped. The Beast stood in the doorway. The guard nearest him stood with his hands out, as if ready to catch his don should he fall. Mirabella’s guard seemed to have been caught in the same frozen moment, forgetting that she was not in her room, that she was a witness to this strange event.

  That small pang of guilt struck her heart again at the sight of the Beast’s weeping wounds, his obvious illness, how much pain he must feel. She’d done that to him.

  But he’d deserved it. Why was that becoming so hard to remember?

  The Beast took a few staggering steps forward, until he reached the railing at the staircase’s upper landing. Clinging to it as if it were the last handhold before his descent into hell, he looked around, frowning deeply, obviously confused. He was delirious.

  Then he saw her. “Rina,” he croaked.

  The hand around her arm twitched, and Mirabella’s guard remembered his charge. “Get in there,” he barked and shoved her—hard, making her stumble—into the room.

  “Don’t hurt her!” the Beast snarled and let go of the railing. He reeled down the hall toward the room. “Leave her alone!”

  “Don,” her guard said putting his hands up. He said something in English, but the Beast only stared at him as if he didn’t understand.

  “Get away!” the Beast finally yelled.

  The guard backed off. He looked down the corridor and said something to the other guard. Mirabella heard the name ‘Aldo,’ and assumed he was asking for Aldo’s help.

  The guard was so afraid of the Beast, even in his obvious weakness, he wouldn’t defy his delirious command to stay away.

  Now the Beast was in her doorway, and Mirabella could smell the sickness on him. The rot. Old memories rose up of that endless emptiness while her mother sickened and died, and Mirabella was suffused with fresh grief.

  He stood before before her, pale and sweating, shaking with weakness, reeking of sickness. His beautiful eyes were not cold at all. In fact, they were ablaze—not only with fever but with emotion. Mirabella saw rage and sorrow and punishing regret.

  She saw those emotions, and knew them, because she recognized them. She understood them.

  This man was not a beast. Or if he was, there was a reason. He hadn’t always, or only, been a beast. Once, he’d been something else. He’d been better.

  “I only wante
d to protect you,” he rasped, cementing her certainty. “I only ever wanted to keep you safe.”

  With that, his knees gave out, and he fell forward, taking her down with him. They landed on the rug in a heap. Mirabella’s head struck the bare floor and bounced, and for a moment she saw stars.

  But only a moment. She was clear again as her guard shouted “Don!” and charged into the room.

  Paolo was sprawled on top of her. His body was an inferno, like he was cooking from the inside out. He raised his head and looked down at her. His neck could hardly manage to hold him up, and his sour, sickbed breath gusted over her cheek.

  “Forgive me,” he said, his mouth so close to hers their lips touched as he formed the words.

  Then his head dropped, and he was unconscious.

  Speaking a rush of English words, the guard lunged for his don, struggling to lift him without hurting him more. Then Aldo was there, rushing into the room with the other guard, and they got Paolo up. No one offered Mirabella help, but she worked her way to her feet. Her ankle hurt again, and now her head as well.

  Aldo had Paolo in his arms, carrying him like a sleeping child. He left the room and went down the hallway, barking English words at the others while he went.

  The guard that had been with her all this time pushed her back into the room. When he began to close the door, she grabbed it and said, “He needs a doctor. He’s dying.”

  “As if you care,” he growled and slammed the door.

  But she did care. She didn’t know why, but she did.

  For the next few hours, Mirabella paced. Her ankle hurt, and her head as well, but she could not keep still, so she limped back and forth across the room.

  She could hear muffled voices in the corridor, and the creaks and squeaks of floorboards and risers as men tromped up and down and around. But no one spoke in Italian or opened her door so that she might get a peek beyond it.