Nodding, he looked down at his hands. They seemed much larger than he remembered. Perhaps it was just in contrast to hers.
“I’m my father’s only child. His heir...” It was a poor excuse. He should have had to courage to end it himself. “I’m sorry I pretended,” he whispered.
Across the table, she shifted in her seat. “What did you pretend?”
“That I was a normal man. When I was around you, it was so easy. I felt fine at the time. That’s what happens...after one of my spells. My head clears, and I feel like myself again. Or something like myself. I’m almost not sure how I used to be anymore. All my memories from before don’t seem real.”
Isobel looked thoughtful now, sympathy sneaking into her expression despite her disgust of him. His heart in his throat, he summoned to courage to ask.
“Isabella, can you fix me?”
Her face fell and so did the fragile hope that had risen in him.
“You did something to me last night. I woke up myself without...without having to hurt anyone.”
“And that hasn’t happened before? Does someone always have to die before you return to yourself?”
He nodded, his throat thick. “Yes. Otherwise I stay that way. I have spent days completely mad, and my father became desperate...”
She absorbed that in silence. “I don’t know what I did last night,” she whispered eventually.
He looked at her entreatingly. “But you have magic. You can see the evil in me and last night you defeated it.”
Isobel’s hands twisted on one another. “I told you, I don’t know what I did,” she said. Her voice had grown slightly shrill. “What happened was chance. I don’t have the training. I only know what my grandmother taught me and those lessons stopped very early in my life. I can’t help you.”
“But you already have,” he said desperately. “Can’t you just do what you did again? If it comes back, that is...”
Strands of her hair flew into her face as she shook her head violently. “I don’t know.”
He took hold of her hand. She stiffened, but he held on. “If you had to try, could you? Please?”
Isobel’s mouth opened and shut a few times, but the door behind them swung wide before she could reply. Ottavio came in, nodding to him.
“I sent a man on horseback to the Conte with a message that the girl has been found,” he said in Italian.
Matteo turned, shooting daggers at him. “I didn’t tell you to do that.”
Ottavio shrugged. “Those were the Conte’s orders. He’ll join us within the day,” he said, giving a shallow bow before taking his leave.
“Your father is coming here?” Isobel gasped, eyes wide in a rapidly paling face.
The impulse to lie was strong, but he couldn’t do it. “Cara, we can’t let you go. You’re my only hope. Even if I could release you, he never would. Not after what you did. He’ll keep you under lock and key and make you try and try and try.”
Her expression could have singed paper. “And if I fail, will he send me to my death again?”
His mouth gaped as he tried to find words to reassure her. “I won’t let him hurt you. Not again.”
She scoffed, her eyes the only brightness is the dim light. “How are you going to stop him?”
Matteo sat up straighter, his old resolve and sense of determination flooding him.
He had missed feeling this way, and he wouldn’t be if it wasn’t for Isobel. It was her gift to him and he would use it to protect her however he could.
“I’ll find a way.”
Chapter 11
The weather had improved by mid-afternoon. Feeling claustrophobic in the private parlor, Isobel asked Matteo if they could walk around the village to get some fresh air. They’d walked past the small rows of buildings that comprised of the town center, to the lanes that ran alongside the fields when Matteo complimented her on her disguise.
Trying her best to ignore the large servant trailing them, she turned her attention to his comment. “My grandmother always said widows had the greatest freedom in society. She wore black my whole life, long after my grandfather passed.”
“As a disguise, it was a stroke of brilliance.”
“Not precisely. You still recognized me somehow.”
He smiled briefly, and she was ashamed at the sudden warmth that flooded her chest despite the chill in the air.
“I know the way you move.”
Isobel flushed. It was a terribly intimate thing to say. She didn’t even try to come up with a response, but one was unnecessary.
“How did you get it so quickly?” he asked.
She glanced at him. “I purchased it ages ago when I first went into service.”
Matteo frowned. “Then you didn’t get it because of me? Because of what you thought I might do?”
His voice was a low rasp, but he looked at her expectantly until she answered.
“No.”
“You were prepared to run away? Why? Was there someone else who was bothering you? One of the other servants or a local man?”
The concern in his voice seemed discordant and wrong after everything that had happened.
“No.”
“Then why?” he asked softly.