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The wintry breeze cut through the black cape wrapped around Isolde’s shoulders, sending icy tendrils down her spine as she sat perched beside Angelo on the stone wall. Her heart thrummed with awareness of his proximity. The warmth radiating from his shoulder mere inches from hers, the sound of his breathing in the darkness, the faint scent of rosemary and thyme clinging to his clothing from the kitchen garden.

She was terrified.

Not of the precipitous drop behind them, nor of the whistling wind that sang through the cliffs with its eerie, mournful voice. No, Isolde was terrified of the inevitable moment when Angelo would see her properly in the light. When the moonlight would illuminate the disfiguring marks that sprawled across the right side of her face like spilled wine, deep rose and mauve, proclaiming to all who saw her that she was marked. Damaged. Unlovable.

Her heart hammered against her ribs as she angled her face carefully, keeping the left side toward him. The moon was bright tonight, far too bright for comfort, and she could only pray that the evening would continue to obscure what she most desperately wished to hide. She had become so accomplished at this particular dance over the years. The subtle tilting of her chin, the seemingly casual turn of her head, the art of positioning herself so that candlelight, or moonlight, or any light at all fell only upon the unmarred side of her face.

Even one as kind as Angelo would not be able to avoid that awful flicker of the eyes. She had seen it in the faces of the vicar’s family all those years ago. That involuntary drawing of the gaze to the marks, followed by horror or pity or both.

There had been a few others over the years. Each encounter had carved itself into her memory like letters etched in stone, proof that the world would never see past the marks to the individual beneath. And so she had retreated into a half-life of shadows and secrets, watching the world through grates and peepholes while others lived, laughed, and loved in the light.

These moments in the dark with him might be all I ever have.

The thought pierced her chest like a blade of ice, sharp and unforgiving. She did not know if it was pity that caused him to kiss her earlier, or if he simply did not comprehend how disfiguring the birthmark truly was. Perhaps, in the dim candlelight of the Hall of Reflections, with her face carefully tilted away, he had not seen clearly. Perhaps he imagined her beautiful because he was kind, because his healer’s heart could not help but respond to the loneliness in her voice when she had confessed that people did not like her.

That was what healers did, was it not? They sought to mend the broken, to comfort the afflicted. Perhaps Angelo’s kisses were merely an extension of his compassionate nature. A balm applied to her wounded spirit rather than evidence of any genuine attraction. The thought was unbearable, and yet she could not entirely dismiss it.

But here, in the moonlight, she could pretend. She could pretend that she had a beau, a gentleman who found her desirable rather than pitiable. She could pretend that she might laugh over breakfast with her guests, discussing music and botany and the wonders of Florence. She could pretend to practice her Italian with Angelo, to ask him questions about pharmacy, to share with him the secrets of her gardens. She could pretend that she might one day walk through the village on his arm, her head held high, meeting the gazes of shopkeepers and farmers without flinching.

But those were dreams. Dreams as insubstantial as the mist rolling in from the sea, beautiful to behold but impossible to grasp. Dreams that would dissolve the moment reality intruded, leaving her with nothing but the brutal truth of her circumstances.

She knew, with the terrible certainty that came from years of rejection, that at any moment this illusion would shatter. The fragile bubble of intimacy they had constructed in the shadows would burst the instant he saw her clearly. And she would be left alone again, locked in her tower.

It was monstrously unfair to deceive him. To allow him to kiss such an ugly creature without warning him properly of what she was. A gentleman deserved to know the truth before entangling himself with a woman whose face would cause whispers and stares wherever she went. A gentleman deserved better than to be tricked into affection by shadows and darkness.

But before that inevitable day came, before reality crashed down upon them both, she would take her opportunity. She would steal these kisses, hoard them like a miser hoarding gold, and treasure them in the long, lonely years to come. When she was old and gray and still living in her tower, she would take out these memories and polish them until they gleamed, holding them up to the light of her solitude and remembering what it had felt like, however briefly, to be wanted. Nay, pursued.

Just a few more moments. A few more moments before he knows the truth.

Making her decision, Isolde turned toward Angelo, ensuring the left side of her face remained in his view. Her pulse thundered in her ears, so loud that she was certain he must be able to hear it over the singing of the wind. For a heartbeat, she thought he might pull away, that perhaps he had already glimpsed something in the moonlight that had given him pause, that the illusion was already beginning to crack.

But he did not.

It appeared to Isolde that Angelo hesitated, though the pause was so fleeting she could not be certain whether it existed outside her own imagination. Then he lowered his head, and such doubts scattered like leaves before a gale, for their lips met once more.

This kiss was different from the gentle, tentative brush of mouths they had shared earlier in the Hall of Reflections. It was filled with longing, with a tenderness that shocked Isolde to her very core. His kiss grew in confidence, gentle and sure, sending tremors cascading through her heart.

A sound escaped her throat, something between a gasp and a sigh. A sound she had never made before in all her five-and-twenty years, a sound that seemed to emerge from some deep, previously unknown part of herself. Angelo responded by tangling his fingers in her carefully arranged hair, his touch both bold and tender, as if she were something precious that he feared to break.

Hairpins scattered, pinging against the stone wall and disappearing into the darkness below. Her coiffure came undone, golden-blonde tresses tumbling over her shoulders and down her back in a cascade of locks. She did not care. She could not bring herself to care about anything beyond the tenderness of his touch and the wonder of his kiss.

Isolde had read about such kisses in the novels she consumed in her lonely tower. She had imagined what it might feel like to be held thus, to be kissed with such tenderness. But her imagination had failed her utterly. Nothing she had read, nothing she had dreamed, had prepared her for the reality of Angelo’s kiss, for the way it seemed to awaken something within her that she had not known existed.

The sensation was overwhelming. The solid warmth of Angelo’s nearness. The strength of his arms encircling her, steadying her as her heart beat in a frantic rhythm to match his. The scent of tea and peppermint, of leather, linen, and herbs. The intoxicating feeling of being wanted … truly wanted.

Or so it seemed.

Do not think of that now. Do not ruin this.

“Bellissima,” he murmured softly, the Italian endearment sending shivers down her spine that had nothing to do with the winter wind. “Sei così bella.”

You are so beautiful.

She knew what the words meant. She had studied Italian since childhood, had devoured Dante’s Inferno in the original language, had spent countless hours in her tower parsing the poetry of Petrarch and the prose of Boccaccio. She understood the words perfectly.

And they sliced through her heart like a knife.

Beautiful? Her? The woman marked by the devil, as the vicar’s wife had proclaimed when Isolde was merely a girl? The woman whose face caused children to laugh and point, whose appearance made grown men avert their eyes, and grown women cross themselves in superstitious fear? The woman who had spent the last decade hiding from a world that found her presence offensive?