Or maybe she had, because she’d been telling herself all along that it didn’t matter that she didn’t have anyone at this wedding. It didn’t matter because it wasn’t a real wedding. It was just a game. A show.
A show she had to perform in, and beautifully, to finally have access to her money so she could pass it on to those in far greater need than she’d ever been.
So the fact that she had no father to walk her down an aisle and no mother to hug her fiercely and make her smile didn’t matter, either.
She’d tried her best to believe it.
Because she could not quite accept that getting married to a man who she knew was only pretending to care about her—likely even when he touched her—made her feel some kind of orphaned all over again.
She told herself what mattered was what came when this particular circus show was finished. That was the only thing she should be thinking about.
But what she really felt as Gabriele ushered her down the steps of the castle, and outside toward the cleverly sophisticated altar that had been arranged in a beautiful spot overlooking the vineyards and the hills, was that she and Leontina had a lot of lost time to make up for. That really, that was something worthfeelingabout. And that when her sister-in-law got married—whether at Umberto’s command or not—Ivy would be there.
Whether she was still playing charades with Giaco or not.
As she thought that, she saw Umberto sitting in the front row of the chairs that had been set up for this wedding, loudly holding court. And the enormity of what was happening here seemed to land on her with all its weight.
It was a charade, sure enough, but it was going to hurt.
Life in this castle had been every person for themselves. There had been no room for connection. Only survival. She had to assume that her marriage would be more of the same. Ivy already knew that when it ended, at the three-year mark she and Giaco had agreed to, her heart would be broken and she would have to find a way to live without the endless frustration and fascination that was Giaco.
She honestly didn’t know how she was going to manage that. Not when she had barely slept last night, too aware of the tender place between her legs that he’d claimed so intensely, so completely.
And because she’d understood, as she’d watched him walk away, that this wedding was no new beginning. Not for them. What she didn’t know washowhe planned to leave her when they’d agreed to the same terms.
But when Gabriele hissed at her to look lively, Ivy headed down the aisle—on her own—and surrendered herself to one of the most over-the-top weddings and receptions she’d ever experienced in her life.
The only way to make it bearable was to remind herself that it really wasn’t about her at all. Because it wasn’t.
There were those moments when she and Giaco said their vows. There was that odd light in his dark eyes, and the way he looked at her when he slid a ring on her finger—but that was overshadowed by the spectacle that Umberto was putting on all around them.
Even Giaco seemed different, lost too firmly behind his mask today.
Ivy told herself that all she had to do was smile, look pretty, and pretend this was all happening to somebody else.
The reception was a whirl. Gabriele collected Ivy’s train and bustled her dress so she could walk around, though she didn’t see the point to it. She didn’t know anyone here. She didn’t care to know them. They weren’t even the sorts of people that she would normally reach out to for donations to her charity. These were powerbrokers on a different scale. They weren’t here to talk about donations. They were trafficking in far higher stakes.
This meant that Ivy could excuse herself from having to do anything at all but observe.
She watched the vultures circle, particularly the women who clearly felt that they ought to have been Giaco’s bride. Not content to simply throw dirty looks at her from across the bit of field near the vineyards that had been turned into a luxurious, tented reception area, they liked to come up and introduce themselves. So she could see their talons up close.
Ivy smiled and greeted each and every one of them as if they were long-lost friends. She wondered if this would hurt her more if she and Giaco actually had true feelings for each other. Or, at least, if they’d started that way. If it hadn’t been an ice-cold business arrangement from the start.
Though as Ivy nursed her drink, because somehow she didn’t think a fuzzy head would help with anything, she had to question her own characterization of the start of this whole marriage thing. Her memories of that day were notice coldat all.
It was all Giaco naked. Then Giaco lounging on that couch. And then the pictures that he’d taken, that she sometimes remembered as if they were the truth of what had really happened. As if the story they told was what had gone on between them when she knew it hadn’t.
Or not then, anyway.
Her body clenched around the memory of his fingers. His mouth.
No,ice coldwas not how she would describe this marriage at all. Nor was it all thatbusinesslike—not according to any definition of that word she’d ever known.
This wedding, on the other hand, was both of those things.
After one too many rounds with the society women who went out of their way to let her know that they had sampled her husband—or wanted to, it was hard to tell the difference—Ivy retreated. She found a place to sit at one of the tables almost out of the tent entirely, where she could smile enigmatically the way her mother always had, looking both unapproachable and at her ease.
Truly, she thought, one of the greatest gifts her mother had ever given her. All the guests continued to look at her but they didn’t come near her and for the first time since she’d woken up this morning, she felt like she could breathe.
