Princess From the Past. Caitlin Crews

pedigree and celebrated blood—a fate that he had accepted as simply one more aspect of the many duties that comprised his title. He was the Principe di Felici. His family’s roots extended back into thirteenth-century Florence. He had expected his future wife to have a heritage no less impressive.

      Yet he had eloped with Bethany instead. He had married her because, for the first and only time in his life, he had felt wild and reckless. Passionate. Alive. He had not been able to imagine returning to his life without her.

      And he had paid for his folly ever since.

      Leo turned from the window, and set his empty tumbler down on the wide glass table before him. He raked his fingers through his hair and refused to speculate as to the meaning of the heaviness in his chest. He did not spare a glance for the sumptuous leather couches, nor the intricate statuary that accented the great room.

      He thought only of Bethany, saw only Bethany, a haunting he had come to regard as commonplace over the years. She was his one regret, his one mistake. His wife.

      He had already compromised more than he could have ever imagined possible, against all advice and all instinct. He had assumed her increasing sullenness in their first year of marriage was merely a phase she had been going through—a necessary shift from her quiet life into his far more colorful one—and had therefore allowed her more leeway than he should have.

      He had suffered her temper, her baffling resistance to performing her official duties, even her horror that he had wanted to start a family so quickly. He had foolishly believed that she needed time to grow into her role as his wife, when retrospect made it clear that what she’d truly needed was a firmer hand.

      He had let her leave him, shocked and hurt in ways he’d refused to acknowledge that she would attempt it in the first place. He had assumed she would come to her senses while they were apart, that she needed time to adjust to the idea of her new responsibilities and the pressures of her new role and title. Neither was something a common, simple girl from Toronto could have been prepared for, he had come to understand.

      After all, he had spent his whole life coming to terms with the weight and heft of the Di Marco heritage and its many demands upon him. He had reluctantly let her have her freedom—after all, she had been so young when they had married. So unformed. So unsophisticated.

      And this was how she repaid him. Lies about a lover, when she should have known that he had her every movement tracked and would certainly have allowed no lover to further sully his name. Claims that she wished to divorce him, unforgivably uttered in public where anyone might hear. Aspersions cast without trepidation upon his character, his honor.

      He took a kind of solace in the anger that surged through him. It was far, far easier to be angry than to confront what he knew lay beneath. And he had vowed that he would never show her his vulnerabilities—never again.

      Revenge would be sweet, he decided, and he would have no qualms whatsoever in extracting it. He thought then of that confusing vulnerability he’d thought he’d seen but dismissed it.

      Di Marcos did not divorce. Ever.

      The Princess Di Marco, Principessa di Felici, had two duties: to support her husband in all he did, and to bear him heirs to secure the title. Leo sank down onto the nearest couch and blew out a breath.

      It was about time that Bethany started living up to her responsibilities.

      And, if those responsibilities forced her to return to him as she should have done years before, all the better.

      Bethany should not have been surprised when she looked up from packing a box the next morning to see Leo looming in the doorway of her bedroom. But she could not contain the gasp that escaped her.

      She jerked back and pressed her hand against her wildly thumping heart. It was surprise, she told herself; no more than surprise. Certainly not that wild, desperate hope she refused to acknowledge within her.

      “What are you doing here?” she asked, appalled at the breathiness of her voice. And, in any case, she knew what he was doing: this was his house, wasn’t it? Three stories of stately brick and pedigreed old-money in Rosedale, Toronto’s wealthiest neighborhood. It was exactly where Prince Leopoldo Di Marco, Principe di Felici, ought to reside.

      Bethany hated it—she hated everything the house stood for. Her occupying such a monied, ancestrally predetermined sort of space seemed like a contradiction in terms—like one more lie. Yet Leo had insisted that she live in this house, or in Italy with him, and three years ago she had not had the strength to choose her own third option.

      As long as she lived under this roof, she was essentially consenting to her sham of a marriage—and Leo’s control. Yet she had stayed here anyway, until she could no longer pretend that she was not on some level waiting for him to come and claim her.

      Once she had accepted that depressing truth, she had known she had no choice but to act.

      “Surely my presence cannot be quite so shocking?” Leo asked in that way of his that felt like a slap, as if she was too foolish, too naïve. It set her teeth on edge.

      “Are you so grand that you cannot ring the doorbell like anyone else?” she asked more fiercely than she’d intended.

      It did not help that she had not slept well, her mind racing and her skin buzzing as if she’d been wildly over-caffeinated. Nor did it help that she had dressed to pack boxes today, in a pair of faded blue jeans and a simple, blue long-sleeved T-shirt, with her curls tied up in a haphazard knot on the back of her head. Not exactly the height of elegance.

      Leo, of course, looked exquisite and impeccable in a charcoal-colored buttoned-down shirt that clung to his flat, hard chest and a pair of dark, wool trousers that only emphasized the strong lines of his body.

      He leaned against the doorjamb and watched her for a simmering moment, his mouth unsmiling, those coffee eyes hooded.

      “Is your lot in life truly so egregious, Bethany?” he asked softly. “Do I deserve quite this level of hostility?”

      Something thicker than regret—and much too close to shame—turned over in her stomach. But Bethany forced herself not to do what every instinct screamed at her to do: she would not apologize, cajole or soothe. She knew from painful experience that there was only one way such things would end. Leo took and took until there was nothing in her left to give.

      So she did not cross to him. She did not even shrug an apology. She only brushed a fallen strand of hair away from her face, ignored the spreading hollowness within and concentrated on the box in front of her on the wide bed.

      “I realize this is your house,” she said stiffly into the uncomfortable silence. “But I would appreciate it if you would do me the courtesy of announcing your arrival, rather than appearing in doorways. It seems only polite.”

      There were so many land mines littered about the floor and so many memories cluttering the air between them—too many. Her chest felt tight, yet all she could think of was her first night in Italy and Leo’s patient instructions about how she would be expected to behave—delivered between kisses in his grand bed. He had grown less patient and much less affectionate over time, when it had become clear to all involved that he had made a dreadful mistake in marrying someone like Bethany. Her mouth tightened at the memory.

      “Of course,” Leo murmured. His dark gaze tracked her movements. “You are already packing your belongings?”

      “Don’t worry,” she said, shooting him a look. “I won’t take anything that isn’t mine.”

      That muscle in his jaw jumped and his eyes narrowed.

      “I am relieved to hear it,” he said after a thick, simmering moment.

      When she had folded the same white cotton sweater four times, and still failed to do it correctly, Bethany gave up. She turned from the bed and faced him, swallowing back any fear, anxiety or any of the softer, deeper things she pretended not to feel—because none would do her any good.

      “Leo,