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СКАЧАТЬ 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.

      Allegra let her breath out slowly. ‘I don’t care,’ she said in a low voice. ‘He destroyed me by manipulating me—by giving me away!’

      ‘And what of Stefano?’ Isabel raised her eyebrows. ‘He would be humiliated.’

      Allegra bit her lip. She’d СКАЧАТЬ