How?
“With my success established and the fire in my heart banked, I felt the need to establish some sort of relationship with the king. So I came here on the pretext of doing business. The king was ecstatic that I’d decided to come to him at last. I even felt that he’d finally acknowledge me, that everything was going right. Then I saw you.”
She clutched at his shirt, which she’d soaked in tears. She sensed that she’d now hear what would explain the past—and unravel the future.
“I’d never wanted anyone on sight like that. And I thought I saw the same recognition, the same instant hunger in your eyes. But before I could walk up to you and claim you, the king joined me and something he said made me realize that you were his daughter. I was so appalled that I walked away without looking at him. I think I would have decked him if I hadn’t.”
That was it. The mystery behind the misery that had ruled her for the past six years. Everything fell into place like a hail of bombs. “And you reached for the first woman—or two—to drown your sorrow.”
His gaze stilled before he threw his head back and barked a stunned laugh. “Maledizione, you’re uncanny, mia bella. I was out to prove to myself there were plenty of other fish in the sea.” His lips twisted wryly. “And the moment I felt my sinker bob, I tossed the whole fishing rod into the water and ran away. And that was when the king found me again, dragged me away. The minute we were alone, I turned on him, ranting that I hated him, that he was the reason for every horrible thing that had ever happened to me and that I’d never come back.
“But he understood the reason behind my turmoil. He’d seen the hunger in my eyes as I looked at you, said he was stunned at the clarity of instinct that had told me I could covet you. And he told me the secret he’d intended to take to his grave—that you weren’t his biological child. He’d decided by then to make my parentage known, to let you and the world believe that I was your half brother. I refused point-blank, and he said that meant he’d have to let the truth about your parentage be known.
“And I made my decision. I would remain the illegitimate one among us. I was used to it, and it meant nothing to me anymore. While you—I couldn’t bear to think of your devastation if you found out the king wasn’t your father.”
She heaved a huge sob and burst out weeping again. He stroked and soothed her. “It was in my best interests. As a stranger, I was free to pursue you. When I said that, the king was alarmed, said he wouldn’t let me toy with you. I said he had no say in the matter, but should put his mind to rest, anyway. That clarity of instinct he’d talked about had always made me sure of what I wanted, what would work, and work spectacularly. And I’d never been surer about anything. I wanted you. And I was getting you. And it would be beyond spectacular.”
Her tears stopped, foreboding squeezing her heart. He’d come to the part when she’d smacked his advances back in his face.
“But I shouldn’t have been so sure. I went after you, and you turned me down, so disdainfully. Kept on doing it for six years. It took a crisis in your kingdom and some convoluted blackmail to make you accept me.”
Suddenly his body stiffened beneath her, his jaw muscles bunched as if in excruciating pain. Then he carefully set her away from him, rose to his feet, a defeated slump to his shoulders. “Not that you have accepted me.”
Clarissa lay on the bed where he left her, pinned under a mountain of humility and gratitude and love and awe.
Then her mind caught on this last comment, and she was on her feet, across the room and grabbing him by the arms. “I work with you by day and make delirious love with you every night—at least, before you suddenly seemed to stop wanting me after you found out I was carrying your child. What do you mean I haven’t accepted you?”
Ferruccio looked down at her, his reason and reasons made flesh and bone, his soul made woman. And he let his anguish out. “I mean you’re trapped in our marriage. You don’t want my child, you’ve always believed I’m beneath you. That was always the reason, from that first night, that you rejected me, wasn’t it?”
She gaped at him. Then she started shaking him with all her strength. “Are you really insane? Beneath me? You thought my rejection all these years was rooted in snobbery? How dare you think me that stupid and vicious and shallow. How dare you want me when you thought that of me.”
“I didn’t…” He stopped, swallowed the knot of confusion that had never let him finish a coherent thought in this matter. “I did think that. But then I was with you, and everything you said and did told me you were everything I could admire and love. Then you rejected me again, and I could find no other explanation. I was going around and around in my mind, on an endless spin cycle of belief and doubt, hope and despair.”
“Dio, this is beyond ridiculous. It seems you’re not all-seeing, after all. Not with a blind spot the size of Africa.”
“So, why did you keep rejecting me?” he groaned.
And she yelled at him, at the top of her voice, telling him exactly why she’d been scared to give in to him, to her feelings.
He was shaking with relief and elation when she finished.
But she wasn’t finished. “And just what were you feeling all the time, as you thought that of me? Were you internally gloating at the stupid snob who was herself illegitimate? If so, I wonder at your willpower that you haven’t smeared my face in it. But then, you should have. Maybe then you would have gotten your facts straight, and all this could have been resolved earlier.”
He opened his mouth to protest and she bulldozed on. “And don’t you dare turn this on me. It’s you who seem to be trapped in our marriage, you who are unhappy that I’m carrying your baby. The day you found out, you looked as if you’d been told you had a chronic, debilitating disease.”
He was shaking as hard as she was now, finally seeing it all. “I saw you crying. I went back to thinking you hated me, couldn’t stand having my baby. Dio santo, Clarissa, we’ve both been so afraid to believe all this magic was for real that we kept tormenting ourselves with worst-case scenarios.”
Her violet eyes turned purple with the enormity of emotion igniting them, the silvery tears magnifying their beauty, reflecting shards of pure, agonizing ecstasy into his soul.
“So do you want my baby? And…me?” Then he added the word he’d held back during their marriage ceremony. “Forever?”