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As the door to our home closed automatically behind us, sealing us together in the building I’d designed in mind for us to share, I grasped that my life had changed, for better and for worse.
When we reached the top of the staircase and my arms still refused to let her go, to place her small feet onto the floor beneath us, I knew only with death would I ever let us part.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
SERAFINA
The room Salvatoretook us both into at the top of the stairs was incredible. Floor-length voile nets billowed on the soft cooling breeze that was now coming through the open French doors, and the white walls reflected the shades of colours of the setting sun in the sky.
The whole ensemble was breathtaking and in complete contrast to the masculine looking, heavy wooden furniture that was stained a light grey.
‘It’s beautiful,’ I whispered.
‘This building is just stone… women are the beautiful ones, Serafina.’ Salvatore seemed to flinch slightly after speaking and I could only imagine he felt he’d said too much.
‘Do you think I’m beautiful?’ I had no idea when I’d become so brave, but I asked the question I desperately needed to know the answer to.
‘Yes.’ The look on his face as he spoke the words to me told me he was telling the truth. Tentatively, I moved the hand I had placed onto his chest as he’d lifted me from my chair earlier and touched the side of his face. At my touch, he closed his eyes and exhaled deeply.
Then we were moving rapidly. Salvatore took the few steps needed into the room, unceremoniously put me down on the large bed which dominated the space, then to my dismay he moved away.
‘Did I do something wrong?’
When he didn’t reply, I sat up straight and adjusted the way I was sitting on the end of the bed and pulled at the train of my wedding dress. I wrapped it around my legs as I tried to offer myself some sort of protection.
Only seconds ago, I’d been so sure of myself, but then he’d been holding me close to him and I could feel the beat of his heart beneath my fingertips. He’d said I was beautiful. Now I was alone, sitting on a vast grey quilt which covered his bed and my nervousness returned. As I watched him move around the room, I wondered what was going on and what he was expecting of me.
If he wasn’t going to make love to me, how could we take part in the blood ceremony the following morning?
I knew he would have to, by tradition, drape the bottom sheet from the bed over the balcony. It was something I’d read up on a few weeks before and it gave me something else to worry about. Blood from my torn hymen staining the sheet would prove I was a virgin until my wedding night, which would be a great sense of pride for my family, but it would also prove to my new family that any child I conceived would be of their blood.
I was a virgin, but I was also intelligent and well read. I knew that any number of things I’d done in the past few years, such as horse riding on a Sunday morning in Hyde Park in London, could have caused my hymen to rupture. But if he wasn’t going to touch me, I definitely wouldn’t bleed.
Mine and my family’s honour was at stake once again.
Without removing my eyes from him, I watched as he shrugged his shoulders out of his suit jacket and disappeared behind the bed. Hearing metal touching metal, I assumed he had gone to hang up his jacket. When he reappeared and started walking towards the balcony, Salvatore was rolling up the cuffs of his white shirt. As his forearms were revealed bit by bit, and I took in the art he had covering his arms and the veins standing prominently on them both, my mouth dried. I wasn’t sure he wanted me, but I was absolutely certain I wanted him.
‘Have my things arrived?’ I questioned, trying to get his attention.
‘Yes. Your clothes, apart from the case you packed for our honeymoon, have been unpacked and put into the wardrobe.’ Without glancing in my direction, he moved towards what appeared to be a solid wooden wall and after pressing it gently it opened to reveal a tall, built-in fridge.
When he turned to face me, his eyebrow raised in question, ‘What would you like?’
‘Water will do… but wine would be better,’ I admitted.
‘Are you nervous?’ he asked, fleetingly looking up from what he was doing.
‘Do I need to be nervous?’
I knew he’d heard me when his shoulders stiffened and his back straightened under my perusal. I watched as he removed a bottle of grappa and pulling out a purpose-built shelf next to him, he poured out two glasses, one larger than the other. Without yet answering me, he lifted two bottles of mineral water and placed them next to the glasses.
‘Always,’ he replied, as he twisted his head and looked back towards me, sending a shiver down my spine. Then, as if he was satisfied with seeing the fear in my eyes, he looked back to the assembled drink in front of him.
It was then I understood.
He was at war with himself.
‘Salvatore!’ I shouted his name trying to get a reaction from him. ‘I don’t know what’s going on. Downstairs you made me think you were going to…’ I couldn’t yet put it into words what I’d thought. All the romance books I’d read over the past couple of years had firmly fixed the words “ravish me” into my head. There was no way I was going to say that out loud to him. ‘You need to talk to me… please,’ I pleaded and hated the sound of the whine I heard as my voice sounded out.
