The Villa(54)

I close my eyes again, shaking my head against her shoulder. “It isn’t your fault,” I say, but I hope that it is. I hope that’s all it is, my system going haywire because Chess insisted I call Matt back and then he pissed me off.

Because if it’s not that, then what the fuck is wrong with me?





MARI, 1974—ORVIETO


“I don’t know why you’re so insistent it’s mine. Or that she’s up the duff at all, frankly.”

Noel is sitting on the floor in front of the fireplace in the main drawing room. The good weather has finally returned, and the day is sunny and warm, but Noel has, for some reason, insisted on making a fire. He jabs at it now with an ornate poker, scowling into the flames.

“It’s yours,” Mari tells Noel, her voice flat. “And she’s two months late, Noel.”

This is the third time they’ve had this conversation in two days, and Mari is getting very tired of it. It doesn’t help that the room is boiling, and that Noel is in one of his moods, but Mari is determined to have this matter settled.

“And you’re so sure of this, why?” he asks. “Because she told you so?” He scoffs. “Would think you of all people would know better than to believe Janet about anything.”

Mari doesn’t admit to him that when Lara had first told her, she’d had a moment of sickening free fall, her head spinning, her mind and heart a chant of you promised, you promised, you both promised, never again.

“I told him,” Lara had said through her sobs, “I told him I was on the pill, but I wasn’t. Or I was, but I forgot to keep taking it, you know how I am with that kind of thing, Mari.”

There had been a wheedling note in her voice, her hand coming to rest on Mari’s knee, and the camaraderie, the love she’d felt for Lara just moments before had dissolved. Right then, she had wanted nothing more than to grab that hand, push it off of her.

No, more than that.

She’d wanted to grab that hand and squeeze. Bend. Break.

And then Lara had looked up at the ceiling and wailed, “How can I have a baby with Noel?”

Relief rushed over Mari, dizzying and thick.

“We’ll get through this,” she had promised Lara, gently taking her hand. “We’ll fix it.”

What that actually meant, Mari hadn’t known. Noel certainly wasn’t going to marry Lara. He couldn’t, seeing how he was already married. But he could support Lara in whatever she chose to do. Give her money if she wanted to keep it, give her money if she didn’t.

Mari was sure he’d see reason, understand that he bore some of the responsibility. Yes, he was wild and rude and heedless, but he wasn’t heartless.

Or so she’d thought.

Noel looks up at her now, but she gets the distinct sense that he’s actually looking down at her, and for the first time, Mari truly understands that he’s the son of an earl. Noel may play at being a bohemian, but his blood is deeply blue, and she suddenly feels very sorry for Lara.

“Be that as it may, I made it very clear to her how I felt about her and exactly how permanent I considered our situation. Which is to say that I considered it about as long-lasting as whatever hobby she decides to pick up next. Basket-weaving, perhaps.” The words are languid, Noel’s usual bullshit.

His eyes, though.

His eyes are hard.

“She’s made her own bed, Mistress Mary,” he finishes, “and I suggest she lie in it.”

The nickname is usually affectionate, if a little ribbing, but now she hears it for the insult it is, and her hands clench at her sides, nails biting into her palms.

“You’re such a bastard, Noel,” she tells him, and he gives an elegant shrug.

“So my father occasionally claimed, but I think the only bastard you need to be worried about is the one your sister is going to have.”

“So, you’re not going to help her?”

Noel gives an extravagant eye roll. “Don’t be ridiculous. If it’s money she wants, she can have it. But you know as well as I do that she expects me to marry her and move to some country pile in Somerset where we’ll raise this brat and probably two or three others. She’ll name them things like, ‘Archibald’ and ‘Primrose,’ and I’ll eventually die of terminal boredom.”

He turns back to the fire, pulling his dressing gown tighter around him, and Mari shoves his shoulder as she turns away.

“You don’t know Lara at all then,” she says, and he makes a sort of grumbling noise in protest, but Mari doesn’t hang around to indulge him further.

Money is all Lara really needs or wants from Noel, and money is what he’ll give, so that’s sorted, at least.

She goes in search of her stepsister, but Lara is nowhere to be found, and when Mari heads outside, she sees Pierce sitting by the pond.

The grass is soft underneath her bare feet as she makes her way toward him. He’s wearing that pair of jeans he likes so much, with their faded patches and holes in the knees, and as he strums his guitar, Mari wonders if he’s picturing the album cover already: the brooding rock star reclining in the Italian countryside, hair rumpled, chest bare, the leaves overhead casting atmospheric shadows.

He barely glances at her as she approaches, lost in his own thoughts, and Mari sighs, leaning against one of the trees, her arms folded over her chest. “Noel says he’ll take care of Lara. Financially, that is, which to be fair, is all she wants. So that’s a relief.”