than that held by the rest of the world.”
She flung her hands up into the air. “Congratulations then, you’re as infinitely terrible as the majority of the population.”
Silence settled between them. It was not an empty silence. It was full. Of anger, of something else that she did not want to identify.
“If there is one thing I have learned, Allegra,” he said, his superior tone maddening, “It’s that you cannot outrun consequences. It doesn’t matter who your father is. It does not matter how much money you have. Consequences will catch up to us all.”
“Especially when you don’t use a condom,” she shot back.
Perhaps she wasn’t blameless in the lack of contraception, but he was the man. Surely he should have been responsible for that. She had been a virgin, besides.
“You didn’t say anything.”
“You made it clear you didn’t want me to speak!”
“You didn’t protest,” he said.
She growled. “You don’t have to do this. I was prepared to deal with this by myself.”
His dark eyes narrowed. “What is your definition of dealing with it?”
“I was going to have this baby and raise it as a single mother. It isn’t as though I don’t have assets. My parents are upset, but they’re hardly going to cut me off.” She was bluffing. Her parents were infuriated and she had no idea what they would do at this point.
“You think?”
“Well, even if they do, Renzo won’t.” Honestly, she wasn’t entirely certain about her parents. They had not spoken to her since she had told them the news.
But her parents had been so deeply enmeshed in every aspect of her life for so long, she couldn’t really imagine them fully disowning her. She had no idea what her mother would do with her time. But then, maybe that had more to do with the impending royal wedding than an actual desire to spend any time with Allegra. Allegra didn’t want to think about that.
“Frankly, I don’t care whether or not your parents are planning to disown you, or whether or not your brother will support the child and you. You are not doing this alone.”
“No one will believe that we slept together. Nobody.”
He chuckled, a dark sound that wound its way through her body, wrapping itself around her veins, heating her blood. He had never affected her like this before. Usually, when Cristian heated her blood it was because he made her angry. This was something else. A shared memory of the two of them that she didn’t want.
“We did not sleep together,” he said, his voice filled with grim humor. “We had sex. Against a wall.”
Heat stung her face. “No one will believe we did that either.”
“Why? Because of my impeccable reputation?”
“For a start.”
“But no one has to know how it happened. Obviously, when we present this to the world it will be in a much different light. You will, of course, tell your parents that you have fallen in love with me, and it was your great passion and deep feelings for me that inspired you to compromise your engagement.”
She sputtered. “They will be more inclined to believe that you impregnated me in a public hallway without knowing my identity.”
“Is that so?”
“No one will believe that I love you. Everyone knows how we feel about each other.”
“That’s fine. It isn’t my reputation that will suffer as a result. You were the one who was engaged. You are the woman. Therefore, all of the judgment will be heaped on top of you.”
She snorted. “It’s already being heaped upon me. In case you hadn’t checked out a headline recently.”
“It may surprise you to hear this, but my life does not revolve around reading news stories concerning your exploits.
“Why should I read the tabloids? I went to Renzo instead and he knew much more than any of the so-called breaking news.”
She recoiled. “Does that mean that... Does Renzo know?”
“Renzo is not an idiot. I assume that once I began questioning him about what costume you had worn to the ball, and then stormed out after the revelation of your pregnancy—combining that with your inquiries about me earlier—he was able to do a bit of simple math.”
“But you’re still alive,” she said, confident that if her brother truly knew that she had made love to Cristian, Cristian would, in fact, be dead.
“Of course. I’m sure it only makes sense to him that I had no idea it was you. He knows that under normal circumstances I would never consider touching you.”
Rage and wounded feminine pride poured through Allegra like a toxic elixir. “Well, he must be very proud that your standards are so high. I’m so sorry that my identity was a disappointment to you. However, we both know that you quite enjoyed what happened. In fact, you enjoyed it so much that it was extremely brief.”
His top lip curled. “You enjoyed it no less for the brief nature of it.”
“So confident?”
“I have a very strong memory of how intensely you came around me, Allegra,” he said, his voice rough. “You cannot fake that.”
“Women,” she said, her voice trembling, “can fake things.”
“Women can only fake things if their partner is stupid, or inexperienced. I am neither.” He took a step toward her. “I felt you. I felt you trembling. I felt the waves as they washed through you. I felt your pleasure as keenly as I felt my own. Do not pretend it was somehow less than satisfying now that you know my identity.”
“It’s so important for you to have your male ego stroked, and yet you can barely stand the sight of me. That’s sort of twisted, Cristian.”
He laughed, dark, merciless. “I never claimed to be anything else.”
“You don’t want me. I doubt you want the baby.”
“Oh,” he said, “that’s where you’re wrong. I need the baby.”
“If you need him for some kind of ritual sacrifice then you’re definitely out of luck.”
“No, thank you. My life has quite enough death in it without adding any more, thank you. That was very poor humor.”
She looked away. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologize to me now. You don’t mean it.”
“Why do you need the baby?”
“Because. For as humbly as I present myself, I am in fact an aristocrat. A duke.”
“I
