Chapter 3 The Man I Couldn't Understand

Bella's POV 

The paper was under my door when I woke up.

Folded once, pushed halfway through, sitting on the carpet like it had been there for hours. 

I looked at it for a long time before I picked it up, because some part of me already knew that whatever was written on it was going to make my life worse.

Three words. Black ink, pressed hard enough to dent the paper.

LEAVE HIM NOW.

No name. No explanation. Nothing on the back.

Sitting down on the floor in a nightdress I hadn't picked, in a house I'd been in for one day, I read three words over and over like the fourth one might show up if I was patient.

Whoever wrote it hadn't said he'll hurt you.

They hadn't said he's dangerous.

They'd said leave him, the way you'd tell someone to get out of a building.

If Matteo Moretti was what everyone said he was, a broken man who couldn't walk, couldn't fight, couldn't finish a sentence on a bad day, then who exactly was I supposed to be running from?

I folded the paper twice and put it in the pocket of my robe.

Then I did something I'd never done in twenty-five years of living in the Carter house.

I made up my mind not to give it to anyone.

°°°°°

By nine, the entire staff had been told that nobody enters my room without permission.

I found out because a woman came to change the sheets, got two steps inside, and then stopped like she'd hit glass.

"I'll come back," she said. "When you send for me."

"You can do it now."

"No, ma'am." She was already backing out. "It was very clear."

"What was?"

She shut the door.

I found him in the east sitting room an hour later, near the window, with a folder open on his lap that he wasn't reading.

"You gave an order about my room?"

"I did."

"Why?"

He turned a page he hadn't looked at. "Because it's your room."

"That's not an answer, that's a sentence."

Something happened at the corner of his mouth then. "You're my wife," he said. "People will remember it or they'll be reminded."

"We've known each other for just one day," I said.

"That's true."

"And you didn't come to our wedding."

"That's also true."

"So why does it matter to you who walks into my room?"

He closed the folder.

"Because you flinched," he said. "Yesterday. When the girl came in with the box. You didn't move, but you flinched." He looked up at me. "I don't want you doing that in your own room."

°°°°°

He kept finding me after that.

He'd be in the library when I got there. He'd be near the garden doors when I came in from the cold. By the third time, I'd stopped pretending it was a coincidence, and I was annoyed at myself for not minding.

"Tell me about your family," he said.

We were in the long room downstairs and I had a cup of tea I'd let go cold.

"There's nothing to tell."

"You have a mother, a father and a sister."

"I have a ledger." It came out before I could stop it. "Sorry. I have parents. They're fine."

Fine was my favourite word. I've been using it since I was nine.

I waited for what always comes next. What ledger, Bella? What do you mean by that, Bella? 

Matteo looked at me for maybe two seconds.

Then he said, "The tea here is terrible. I've never been able to fix it."

He talked about the tea. He talked about the cook who refuses to change brands. He complained about a window in the north hall that whistles when the wind comes off the water, and I sat there with my cold cup and felt something in my chest come unlocked so fast it frightened me.

He'd seen the door and he hadn't gone through it.

I don't think anyone had ever done that for me before. Not once.

"Can I ask you something?" I suddenly asked.

"You will anyway."

"The rumours."

He didn't move.

"People say you're violent." My heart was going hard now. "People say you're not right in the head. People say you can't…" I stopped. Started again. "People say a lot of things about you. Are any of them true?"

The room was very quiet.

"Would you leave if they were?" he asked.

"That's not fair."

"It's the only question that matters."

I opened my mouth to say of course I would, because that was the sensible answer, that was what any woman with sense would say.

But nothing came out.

Because I don't have anywhere to go. Because I'd already made this trade. And because, and this is the part I hated, some small stupid part of me had already thought that a man who notices you flinch isn't a man who hurts you.

"I don't know," I finally said.

Matteo nodded slowly, like I'd passed something and failed something at the same time.

"Then don't decide what I am from what other people say."

"What should I decide it from?"

He rolled towards the door.

"Watch me," he said. "Take your time."

°°°°°

It happened that afternoon, and it was entirely my fault.

I was carrying a stack of books across the library, walking backward to say something to him, and my heel caught the edge of the rug.

I went down.

Except I didn't.

His hand closed around my arm.

I don't know how to explain how quick it was. I was falling and then I wasn't, and the stop was so complete it knocked the air out of me — no jerk, no stumble, no scramble. 

My other hand had landed flat on his chest, and under my palm he was really strong, and his arm didn't shake at all while it held my entire weight in the air.

For half a second neither of us moved.

Then he let go and put his hand back on the wheel and looked at the window.

"You should watch the rug," he said.

I stood there holding four books against my ribs.

He was a man who couldn't use his legs. Fine. I'd accepted that. 

But he'd caught a falling woman from a seated position, one-handed, before I'd finished falling, and there'd been a moment, right at the start, where his whole body had come forward off the back of that chair.

‘He's strong from the chair,’ I told myself. ‘People in wheelchairs have strong arms. Everyone knows that.’

The second thing happened before dinner, and I would pay money to get it out of my head.

I was pushing him through the narrow doorway of the study, he'd let me, and the wheel caught on the frame and stopped dead. 

But I didn't. Instead I went forward over the back of the chair and ended up half in his lap with my hand on his dick.

I froze.

He froze.

The house was completely quiet, and I was close enough to feel him breathe, and there was no possible way on God's earth for me to misunderstand what I was feeling.

The rumour was wrong.

The rumour was extremely wrong.

I looked up at his face, which was a mistake, because whatever was happening behind it had stopped being controlled. 

His jaw was tight. His hand had closed hard on the arm of the chair. And his eyes came down to my mouth and stayed there for one full second too long.

That was the first time I ever saw Matteo Moretti lose.

"I'm sorry," I said, and got off him so fast I nearly fell again. "I'm so sorry, the wheel…"

"Bella."

"I'll send someone." I was at the door. "For the… someone else can do this."

I didn't run down the corridor.

I want that on record.

I walked very quickly, with dignity, and shut my bedroom door, and then stood with my back against it and pressed both hands over my face while my heart tried to get out through my throat.

°°°°°

I went down for a glass of water at eleven, and that's the only reason I heard him.

The door to the west study was open three inches. Light on the floor and voices.

And one of them was Matteo's.

Except it wasn't.

The man I'd spent all day with spoke slowly, with long pauses, in a voice that never went above the level of a normal room.

The man behind that door was quick, flat, and cold, and he was taking someone apart.

"—not the route. The route was clean. Somebody sat on it for nine days and waited." A pause. "No. Don't tell me what he says. Tell me what he did."

I should have gone back upstairs. But I didn't.

"Two of ours at the north gate on Thursday. Both new." His voice dropped. "Find out who signed for them."

Someone answered, too low to hear. Then a chair moved, and the temperature of the room changed even from where I stood.

"Let me be clear, because I won't say it again." Every word landed like it was being set down on a table. "You can lose the shipment. You can lose the warehouse. If it goes badly you can lose me a great deal of money and I'll survive it."

There was a moment of quiet.

"Nobody touches my wife."

I stopped breathing.

Not my wife should be protected. Not keep her out of it.

Nobody touches my wife said in a voice that had already thought what happens if somebody does.

He'd known me for two days. He'd married a woman he never came to see. And he was standing…

Sitting.

Sitting in that room, at eleven at night, sounding like the most dangerous man in New York, over me.

I stepped back and the stupid floorboard under my heel let out a long, slow creak.

And the voices stopped.

I quickly moved. Down the corridor, around the corner by the tall clock, my bare feet completely quiet on the carpet and my heartbeat loud enough that I couldn't hear anything else. 

I had one hand out towards my bedroom door.

"Bella."

Calm and behind me.

He wasn't even out of breath.

I turned around slowly, and there he was at the end of the corridor, in his chair, in the dark, hands resting on the wheels. Perfectly still. Perfectly composed.

The whole house had gone quiet around us. Neither of us said anything for what felt like a year.

Then he tilted his head, and asked, in a voice like a hand on the back of my neck:

"What did you hear?”