A Baby To Bind His Bride

What did it mean that he could suddenly see so many more places? Places not hewn from wood and tucked away in these mountains, with nothing to see in all directions but trees and weather? He wasn’t sure he wanted to know.

The Count made his way to his own private rooms, set apart from the dormitories where the rest of his people slept. He kept his expression blank as he moved, as if he was communing with the Spirit the way he was supposed to do, the better to discourage anyone from approaching him.

The good news was that no one would dare. They watched him as he walked and the more attention-seeking among them pitched their prayers even louder, but no one tried to catch his eye.

When he got to his rooms, he waited in the outer chamber. When he’d first started to come into awareness, to become himself, he’d recoiled from the starkness of these rooms. It had felt like a prison, though he knew, somehow, he’d never been in one. But now he’d come to prefer it to the relatively cozier rooms on the other side of his doors. Stark-white walls. Minimal furnishings. Nothing to distract a man from his purpose.

It was between him and his conscience that he’d never quite managed to feel that purpose the way everyone assumed he did.

He didn’t have to wait long for them to bring her in. And when they did, the starkness of the walls seemed to make the shock of her black clothes that much bolder in comparison. Everything was white. The clothes he wore, loose and flowing. His walls, the hardwood floor, even the chair he sat in, like an ivory throne.

And then this woman in the middle of it all, black clothes, blue eyes and unbent knees. This woman who stared at him, her lips slightly parted and a sheen in her eyes he couldn’t quite read.

This woman who called herself his wife.

“I do not have a wife,” he told her when his followers had left them alone at last. He told himself there was no reason his anticipation should make him so...restless. “The leader has no wife. His path is pure.”

He stayed where he was, sitting on the only chair in the room. But if standing there before him like one of his supplicants bothered her—though, of course, his followers would all be prostrate before his magnificence rather than stand and risk his displeasure—she didn’t let it show.

In fact, the look on her face was something that edged more toward astonishment. With an undertone he was fairly sure was temper—not that he’d seen such a thing with his own eyes. Not directed at him.

“You’ve got to be kidding.”

That was all she said. It was a harsh little whisper, nothing more.

And the Count found himself fascinated by her eyes. They were so tremendously blue it made him think of the breathless summers here, and they were filled with a brilliant, diamond-cut emotion he couldn’t begin to understand.

“I do not kid,” he said. Or he didn’t think he did. He was certain he never had, anyway. Not here.

The woman before him blew out a breath as if something was hard. As if she was performing some kind of physical labor.

“How long do you intend to hide out here?” She threw the words at him in a tight sort of voice that suggested she was upset.

The Count could not think of any reason at all that she should be.

“Where else would I be?” He tilted his head slightly to one side as he regarded her, trying to make sense of all the emotion he could see swirling around her, written into every line of her black-clad body. Trying to puzzle out its cause. “And I’m not hiding. This is my home.”

She let out a sharp little laugh, but not as if she thought anything was funny. The Count found himself frowning, which never happened.

“You have many homes,” she said in a voice that sounded almost...gritty. “I enjoy the penthouse in Rome, certainly, but there’s something to be said for the New Zealand vineyard. The island in the South Pacific. The town house in London or the Greek villa. Or all those acres of land your family owns in Brazil. You have multiple homes on every possible continent, is my point, and not one of them is a sanitarium in a mountain tree house in Idaho.”

“A sanitarium?” he echoed. It was another word he didn’t know—and yet did, as soon as she said it.

But she wasn’t paying attention to what he did or didn’t comprehend. She was pivoting to take in the stark-white chamber, her arms crossed over her chest.

“Is this supposed to be some kind of hospital room?” she demanded. “Has this been a four-year mental health retreat from all your responsibilities?” Her blue gaze was even sharper when it landed on him again. “If you knew you were going to run away like this, why bother marrying me? Why not pull your disappearing act before the wedding? You must know exactly what I’ve had to deal with all this time. What did I ever do to you to deserve being left in the middle of that mess?”

“You’re speaking to me as if you know me,” the Count said in a low, dangerous voice that she did not seem to heed.

“I don’t know you at all. That’s what makes this so vicious. If you wanted to punish someone with the company and your horrible family, why choose me? I was nineteen. It shouldn’t surprise you to learn that they tried to eat me alive.”

There was something sharp inside him, like broken glass, and it was shredding him with every word she spoke. He found himself standing when he hadn’t meant to move.

“I did not choose you. I did not marry you. I have no idea who you are, but I am the Count.”

His hand had ended up over his chest and he dropped it, ill at ease with his own fervency.

“You are not a count,” snapped the woman he was realizing, too late, was far more dangerous to him than he’d imagined anyone could be. And he couldn’t tell if that was a kind of apprehension that worked in him then or, worse, something far closer to exhilaration. And she clearly wasn’t finished. “Your family has certainly flirted with this or that aristocracy over the years, but you are not titled. Your mother likes to claim that she is a direct descendent of the Medicis, but I’m not sure anyone takes that seriously no matter how many times she threatens to commit a murder over a meal.”

The Count’s head was reeling. There was a faint, dull pain at his temples and at the base of his skull, and he knew it was her fault. He should have had her removed. Tossed back in that cell, or dropkicked down the side of his mountain.

There was no reason he should cross the room, his bare feet slapping against the bare floor, to tower there above her.

There was no reason—but she should have been concerned. If she’d been one of his followers she would have thrown up her hands in surrender and then tossed herself at his feet. She would have sobbed and begged for his forgiveness.

This woman did none of those things.

She tipped her chin up and met his gaze as if she didn’t notice that he was significantly taller than she was. More, as if she didn’t care.

“I would be very careful how you speak to me,” he told her, managing to get the words out through the seething thing that had its claws in him and that broken glass inside.

“What is the purpose of this charade?” she demanded. “You know I’m not going to be fooled by it. You know I know exactly who you are. No threat is going to change that.”

“That was not a threat. It was a warning.” He realized he wanted to reach over and put his hands on her, and that threw him. But not enough to back away. Not enough to put a safe distance between them the way he should have. “There’s a certain disrespect that I confess, I find almost refreshing, since it is so rare. And suicidal. But you should know my people will not accept it.”

“Your people?” She shook her head as if he wasn’t making sense. Worse, as if he was hurting her, somehow. “If you mean the cult on the other side of these doors, you can’t really think they’re anything but accessories to a crime.”

“I’ve committed no crimes.”

But he threw that out as if he was defending himself, and the Count had no idea why he would do such a thing. Nothing in his memory had prepared him for this. People did not argue with him. They did not stand before him and hurl accusations at him.

Everyone in this compound adored him. The Count had never been in the presence of someone who didn’t worship him before. He found it...energizing, in a strange way. He recognized lust, but the form it took surprised him. He wanted to drag his hands through her neat, careful hair. He wanted to taste the mouth that dared say such things to him.

He wanted to drag out the broken glass inside him and let her handle it, since he might not know how or why she was doing it, but he knew it was her fault.

“You swanned away from the scene of an accident, apparently,” she was saying, with the same fearlessness he couldn’t quite believe, even as it was happening. And she was carrying on as if he was about as intimidating as a tiny, fragile female should have been. “Your entire family thinks you’re dead. I thought you were dead. And yet here you are. Hale and healthy and draped in bridal white. And hidden away on the top of the mountain, while the mess you left behind gets more and more complicated by the day.”

The Count laughed at her. “Who is it that you imagine I am?”

“I am not imagining anything,” the woman said, and she seemed to bristle as she said it. Maybe that was why the Count found his hands on her upper arms, holding her there before him. Then dragging her closer. “I knew it was you when I saw the pictures. I don’t understand how you’ve managed to hide it for so long. You’re one of the most recognizable men alive.”

“I am the Count,” he repeated, but even he could taste the faintly metallic tang of what he was very much afraid was desperation. “The path—”

“I am Susannah Forrester Betancur,” she interrupted him. Far from pulling away from his grip, she angled herself toward him, surging up on her toes to put her face that much closer to his. “Your wife. You married me four years ago and left me on our wedding night, charmer that you are.”

“Impossible. The Count has no wife. That would make him less than pure.”

She let out a scoffing sound, and her blue eyes burned.